Cable, satellite and telco-TV subscribers around the country can now watch most of the hit shows on Turner’s TBS and TNT Networks for free, assuming two things are true:

1. You pay for a package of television channels from Comcast, DirecTV, Dish Network, Cox Communications, Cablevision Systems, Suddenlink Communications, Verizon FiOS, or AT&T U-verse.
2. You are not a Time Warner Cable subscriber.

The new TV Everywhere app, available for phones and tablets, comes free of charge.  Once authenticated as a legitimate pay television subscriber, users can watch hit series and some older shows from both networks.

Once again, Time Warner customers are on the outside, looking in.  The nation’s second biggest cable operator has not been a TV Everywhere team player, preferring to launch its own live streaming iPad application and steering clear, so far, from on-demand, online viewing from most of its partner networks, including HBO.  Time Warner Cable executives have, in the past, alluded to licensing fees and user authentication complications for not launching TV Everywhere on-demand viewing for its customers, but the company has not explained why it has not signed on for Turner’s app.

TV Everywhere, a concept on the drawing board for almost two years, is an attempt by the pay television industry to lock down online video programming for paying customers, in an effort to slow down “cord cutting” by consumers trying to save money on their cable TV bill.  The concept delivers unlimited access to popular cable programming, but only to those who already pay to subscribe.

Many TV Everywhere projects have been soft-launched without much publicity, but that is not true for Turner’s app.  The network has commissioned several clever advertisements featuring various network stars promoting the app, and now Turner wants to educate consumers about how to use it to watch shows online.

The most complicated part of the process is getting “authenticated” by the application for authorized viewing.  Some cable companies like Time Warner want customers to launch access to TV Everywhere programming from the cable company’s website, where customers have already been authenticated when they sign up for an online account.  Other companies are using customer account numbers, PIN codes, or passwords printed on monthly bills to let customers register directly for access.  When the application matches a customer account number or PIN code, the content becomes accessible.  It is typically a one-time-only hassle, but there have been cases where customers have had to grab a recent bill more than once to re-authenticate themselves.

Not every show will be made available for online viewing.  Many rerun off-network shows shown on TNT and TBS don’t currently include streaming rights.  So while users can watch past episodes of Conan O’Brien, they’re out of luck if they want to watch Friends.

[flv width=”640″ height=”500″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Turner App.flv[/flv]

Watch a selection of spots from the new advertising campaign for Turner’s ‘TV Everywhere’ app.  (4 minutes)

The Chicago Tribune‘s advocacy for the merger of AT&T and T-Mobile leaves the facts far behind, and raises questions about just how much the newspaper understands about telecommunications company mergers.

In this morning’s edition, the newspaper claims efforts by the Justice Department to block the merger will “slow [wireless] progress to a crawl.” That’s a half-baked conclusion, considering AT&T’s own accidentally-public internal documents reveal a willingness to spend $39 billion on a merger while balking at spending one-tenth of that amount to upgrade its own 4G network.  The injury to rural America the Tribune fears most was self-inflicted by AT&T even before the merger was announced.

Access to advanced wireless Internet is the key. A merger of AT&T and T-Mobile would bring an under-served swath of America into the 21st century of high-speed mobile data communication. Much like the rural electrification movement of the 1930s, this deal offers a chance for many Americans to leap ahead technologically.

If Justice gets its way, progress will slow to a crawl. We think the FCC should approve the merger after obtaining appropriate concessions — and Justice should settle its case sooner, not later. Dragging out this proceeding stands to hurt a nation that can ill afford more damage from a government too often hostile to business interests.

Evidently the editorial writers at the Tribune have been drinking AT&T’s Kool-Aid.  There is more to see here than AT&T’s advocacy kit, if one is willing to look beyond lucrative, saturation advertising campaigns and lobbying.

The government got the bright idea of helping wire rural America for electricity when commercial providers refused.

AT&T’s own merger announcement spoke glowingly of the “increased efficiencies” a more concentrated wireless marketplace will deliver, but said very little to investors about T-Mobile’s cellular network being the key to unlock rural wireless.  The reason is simple: T-Mobile doesn’t have a rural wireless network.  In fact, T-Mobile’s long-standing focus on urban markets means considerable duplication of resources in medium and large cities — resources that might help reduce the number of dropped calls in cities like New York, Chicago or San Francisco, but hardly a boon for residents of Ottumwa, Iowa, who barely get a signal today from AT&T, much less T-Mobile.

We agree with the Tribune editors when they say improved advanced wireless Internet is important to rural America. But nothing within AT&T’s massive document dump guarantees rural 4G service, especially after four national companies judged it didn’t make much business sense.  Three national carriers hardly strengthens the case.  In fact, investors will expect AT&T to use precisely the same Return on Investment-formulas that have always ruled rural 4G wireless out of bounds.

The Tribune forgets rural electrification came in spite of private power companies, who viciously opposed government electrification projects (unless they benefited from them).  The reason rural Americans went without electrical service until the late 1930s was the same reason rural Iowa doesn’t have lightning-fast 4G service — it doesn’t make much business sense to provide it.

When President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared electricity an essential utility service every American should be able to access at a fair price, government resources picked up where Wall Street left off — financing electric generation projects and encouraging the development of power cooperatives and municipal utilities. It often took more than 20 years to pay off the costs of the infrastructure — at a price (and wait) unwilling to be covered by giant power companies like Chicago’s Commonwealth Edison at the time.

It’s much the same story for AT&T today.  The enormous telecommunications company was provided an estimate of $4 billion to upgrade its network to 4G service nationwide.  Company executives refused, suggesting the time required to recoup that investment was too far out for their tastes.  But a $39 billion dollar merger with T-Mobile, despite the much higher price tag, delivers immediate benefits they can take to the bank: decreased competition and pricing innovation.  T-Mobile delivers both on its own, and even in fourth place influenced the service plans and pricing at other wireless carriers.  By eliminating that competition, the pressure to reduce prices or enhance service is diminished.  The ability to raise prices, or reduce the number of services, is enhanced.

Astonishingly, the Tribune writers completely ignore the biggest reason why AT&T cannot afford to slow progress to a crawl.  Its name is Verizon Wireless, and AT&T ignores its own network at its peril.  That’s why competition, even from America’s #4 carrier, remains critically important.

While the Chicago Tribune seems comfortable rallying for the cause of one of their advertisers — a multi-billion dollar corporation it sees as a victim of government “anti-business” hostility, we’re more concerned about protecting American wireless consumers from the results of AT&T’s efforts to cut competition (and consumer-friendly services) to a bare minimum.  AT&T’s carrot is the illusory promise of enhanced wireless service in rural communities the company routinely ignores.  The Justice Department, thankfully, prefers the stick — recognizing an anti-competitive, anti-trust feeding frenzy when it sees one, and is correct when it gives it a good whack.

A new study from the University of Michigan suggests one U.S. cell phone company is intentionally throttling cell phone speeds by as much as 50 percent, potentially to engage in “deep packet inspection” of their customers’ wireless traffic.

The researchers also found bad network management may be costing you up to 10 percent of your daily battery life.

The study, published by a team of researchers at the university and Microsoft Research, relied on nearly 400 volunteers running a diagnostic application while using 107 wireless providers around the world.  Researchers found company policies at several carriers in conflict with practices guaranteeing the fastest wireless data speeds, maximum battery life, and protection from malware and other hacker actions like IP spoofing.

The researchers refused to name the biggest offending carriers, citing legal reasons, but rang the alarm that network performance and security was clearly hampered by management decisions designed to keep costs down and maximize company network efficiency, at the expense of the quality of your service.  Among the conclusions:

• Microsoft engineer Ming Zhang believes the one U.S. carrier with dramatically reduced speed performance is probably using “deep packet inspection” techniques to analyze what individual customers are doing with their wireless connections.  The overhead from that inspection process is implicated in reduced speeds and performance;
• At least 11 wireless carriers are hurriedly shutting down TCP data connections that applications want to leave open in order to communicate on the network.  When an app discovers the data connection has been closed, it has to request a new connection, wasting up to 10 percent of daily battery life;
• Four of 60 cellular networks allow IP spoofing, which can make hosts vulnerable to scanning and battery draining attacks even though they are behind a firewall.

TWC WiFi in Los Angeles County

TWC WiFi in Orange County

Time Warner Cable has unveiled free Wi-Fi service for their broadband customers on-the-go in selected portions of Los Angeles and Orange counties.

TWC WiFi comes free for Road Runner customers.  Others can access the network for $2.95 for one hour, $6.95 for one day, $19.95 for a week, or $49.95 a month, which is at least as much as the price of a traditional Road Runner account.

The first phase of the $15 million dollar wireless network covers 40 square miles, including downtown Los Angeles, Newport Beach, Santa Ana, Venice Beach, and West Hollywood.

That’s only a tiny fraction of Los Angeles County’s total size, encompassing more than 4,700 square miles, but the cable operator promises it will be expanding the wireless network to cover Westside coastal communities and more of Orange County.

Los Angeles joins New York City as Time Warner’s second Wi-Fi-enabled city.  The cable company is introducing Wi-Fi service to help improve the perceived value of the company’s broadband product.

For years, most prepaid cell phone providers charged a flat per-minute rate for calling, usually without a monthly service fee, for those who didn’t want or couldn’t afford a traditional postpaid calling plan that came with a large bucket of calling minutes.

But now prepaid cell phone providers are increasingly announcing new bundled service pricing for prepaid users that would be familiar to any cell phone user with a two-year contract.

AT&T today announced a new plan (available Sept. 18) for its prepaid GoPhone customers that bundles 250 voice minutes with unlimited texting for $25 a month.  It joins AT&T’s $50 unlimited talk, text, and web plan for GoPhone customers, without any contract commitment.

AT&T also announced a new International Long Distance add-on package for prepaid customers.  For $10 a month, customers get 250 minutes of calling to over 50 countries, good for 30 days.

GoPhone customers can also now roam with their prepaid phones in Canada at special roaming rates, according to AT&T:

• Voice – $.39 per minute (no surcharges)
• Text – $.25 per message sent, $.20 per message received