You can’t blame a guy for trying.  As the Cablevision-Fox dispute continues to drag on — keeping several Fox-owned cable networks and two New York stations off Cablevision screens, Hamilton Mayor John Bencivengo decided it was time to start shopping for some cable competition.

Bencivengo wrote thoughtful letters to executives of Comcast and Time Warner Cable trying to sell the two cable companies on coming to Mercer County.

“I am writing to inquire as to any interest your company may have in entering into Hamilton Township (Mercer County), NJ as a cable television provider,” Bencivengo’s letter reads. “I understand that any business decision would be predicated on the economic feasibility of entering into a new market, either through a franchise agreement with Hamilton Township or through a statewide franchise agreement available from the State of New Jersey through the BPU (Board of Public Utilities),” the letter reads. “It is a vibrant market that seems ripe for picking at this time.”

He’s also reminding both cable companies they are free and clear to deliver service just by signing a franchise agreement — the one Hamilton Township had with Cablevision expired back in 2005.

The New Jersey Times notes the area is not well-served by cable competition.  Verizon FiOS is an option for only about half of the residents of Hamilton, and only a quarter of residents in nearby Robbinsville.  The only other alternative is attaching a satellite dish to the roof.

Hamilton Township is part of Mercer County, N.J.

“Here we are again with stations that are pretty popular off the cable network without any reimbursement to the cable customers, and that’s unfortunate,” Bencivengo told the New Jersey newspaper. “I want to be proactive to try to woo these people to Hamilton Township.”

Unfortunately, the cable industry in the United States resembles an organized crime network (their prices sure are a crime), each with their own respective territories companies have quietly agreed never to cross.  Comcast and Time Warner Cable are the Godfathers of their respective service areas, and neither will compete head-to-head.  Even though many residents affected by the Fox blackout may think of Cablevision as the Fredo of the cable industry, the chances of another cable company arriving in town to compete with them is next to zero.

Verizon offers the most immediate opportunity for cable competition, but consumers will find pricing generally comparable to what Cablevision charges.

The mayor of Hamilton need not tilt at windmills, however.  There is another way.

If Hamilton Township is fed up with Cablevision’s HissyFits and Verizon’s high prices, the alternative is to build support for a community-owned municipal system that can deliver video, phone, and broadband service to residents.  That’s what communities ranging from Wilson and Salisbury, North Carolina to Opelika, Alabama are doing, among many others.

They’ve decided the future of their communities’ telecommunications needs can no longer be entrusted to a handful of bully boys who put customers in the middle of every dispute over the money those customers will ultimately have to pay no matter who wins.

It’s a far better long term solution than replacing one bad cable company with another.

South Florida Comcast customers signed up for the Blast! broadband plan are getting noticeably faster speeds from the cable company this week with a free speed upgrade.

Blast! in southeastern Florida used to deliver 16/1Mbps service, but customers in the region are now reporting speeds are up to 20/2Mbps.  PowerBoost, which delivers a temporary speed boost, has also been upgraded to provide improvements in both downstream and upstream speeds at rates as fast as 25/5Mbps.

Comcast will inform customers with outdated cable modems they’ll need to upgrade them to receive the newest available speeds.  All others only need power cycle their existing modem by briefly unplugging it to obtain the new speeds.

The Washington Post editorial page yesterday published a self-serving piece that openly advocated the approval of a merger between NBC-Universal and Comcast, creating one of America’s largest and most concentrated media companies.  But considering who owns the Post, the editorial might as well have been written by Comcast CEO John Roberts.

Containing only a non-specific disclosure that the newspaper “has interests in broadcast and cable television,” the editorial laments interference from “advocacy groups” that oppose the merger, claiming they are “poor prognosticators of the effects of large media mergers.”  The newspaper found no problems with media concentration in the United States, which itself should be an indictable offense, until one realizes the company that publishes the newspaper is, itself, a concentrated media company.

The Washington Post and Cable One are both owned by the same company.

The newspaper owns Cable One, a particularly nasty, low-rated cable operator that spied on its broadband customers and overcharges them for broadband service through a complicated Internet Overcharging scheme.  In fact, Cable One is the cable company that brought America the “$10/GB overlimit fee,” a low blow for the company’s customers on the so-called “economy tier,” which delivers pathetic 1.5Mbps service with a maximum limit of just 1GB!  This is the kind of cable company that proves sometimes dial-up service -is- better.

As far as the Post is concerned, the FCC will keep America safe from any uncompetitive market-power-enabled-abuses from a Comcast-NBC behemoth, itself a stunning statement from a newspaper that claims to know what is really going on in Washington.

Even our readers know complaining to the FCC about anything is like talking into a black hole.

When it comes to the Washington Post editorial page, profits come first, and Cable One can generate them with its own abusive pricing practices.

For the rest of the country, the irony of a dead-tree-format newspaper finger-pointing at advocacy groups (that don’t own cable companies), accusing them of getting the future wrong is a mighty rich irony.

The reality-based America I live in thinks media is already too-consolidated, too shallow, and increasingly abusive and too expensive.  The Post‘s advocacy of a mega-merger like Comcast-NBC only points to just how out of touch the newspaper is getting these days.  As Americans clamor for more media diversity, more competition, and more choices at lower prices, the Washington Post is just fine with the exact opposite.  But then you’d expect that from a company whose business plan depends on it.

Time Warner Cable’s TV Everywhere authentication system went live today for customers, who can now access several channels of ESPN on their broadband connection, assuming they can prove they subscribe to a video package that includes ESPN.

Time Warner’s agreement with Disney-ABC, which owns ESPN, made online viewing possible for Time Warner Cable subscribers.  Viewers can authenticate themselves by visiting ESPN’s website and invoking the live video player, which will connect with Time Warner Cable’s MyServices website.  Just log in and Time Warner will send authorization to ESPN to unlock the video streams to watch.  There is no additional charge for this service.

Earlier, there was some confusion over whether broadband-only customers could have access.  A message on ESPN’s website indicates the answer is no — you must be a Time Warner Cable customer with at least Standard Service to get authenticated.

Unfortunately, once logged in and watching, the results were underwhelming, at least for ESPN3.  The picture quality from Stop the Cap!‘s Brighton, N.Y., headquarters was dreadful, even from a Road Runner Turbo account.  A “signal strength meter” barely moved into second position about five minutes after I started watching.

Results were much better for ESPN’s primary channel feed, currently showing a football game between the New York Giants and the Dallas Cowboys.  That managed to peg the meter one position from maximum.  On a 28″ LCD monitor, the picture looked reasonably good, but frankly not as impressive as either Netflix streaming or Hulu.  Pixel problems and other video artifacts were far too common.  But for on-the-go-viewing, the results were adequate.

Commercial breaks were replaced with either ESPN’s logo or, in the case of the football game, short ad spots for NFL gear.  Watching a slowly moving logo for two plus minutes in uncomfortable silence, especially with a group, can be unnerving enough to actually prefer the commercials.

The results for ESPN3, "powered by Time Warner Cable" were unimpressive, with a "signal strength" meter showing just a single bar on our 15/1Mbps Road Runner service.

Things looked better on ESPN's primary network, which managed to peg the signal strength meter to one position below maximum.

Cisco has released the results of the third annual study from the Saïd Business School at Oxford University, which looks at broadband quality in 72 countries and 239 cities around the world.  The results are an embarrassment to much of North America’s broadband.

Using data from 40 million real-life broadband quality tests conducted in May-June of 2010 on the Internet speed testing site, Speedtest.net, the researchers were able to generally evaluate broadband conditions in the 72 countries which generated enough tests to provide useful results.

Although these kinds of studies often end up indirectly promoting Cisco’s own products (which they’d argue go hand-in-hand with broadband improvement), the findings highlight the very real problem that most aggressive broadband development is taking place outside of North America.  Here at home, reduced investment and foot-dragging has kept growth in check, even as prices continue to rise.

Based on the findings, the countries with the most sophisticated and advanced broadband networks are:

While the United States and Canada both languish in 15th place, broadband in South Korea has gone from excellent to outstanding as it continues aggressive, almost revolutionary improvements in service and speed:

• South Korea tops the broadband leadership ranking for the second year in a row;
• Broadband quality in South Korea is ranked the highest and has set a new benchmark for the world;
• Average download throughput is 33.5 Mbps, an increase of 55% from 2009, average upload throughput is 17 Mbps, an increase of 430%, and average latency is 47ms, an improvement of 35% vs. 2009 figure;
• South Korea has achieved 100% broadband penetration.

Cisco’s study found North America is in peril of falling even further behind because providers are trying to incrementally upgrade inferior, obsolete copper-wire phone networks on the cheap instead of replacing them.

As long as providers in the United States and Canada maintain a Dollar Store-mentality towards broadband improvement, both countries will increasingly fall further and further behind countries many Americans couldn’t find on a map.

Developing economies, especially in eastern Europe, are poised to leapfrog over North America and potentially become new powerhouses in the digital global economy of the future.  Among the nations on the verge of blowing past the United States and Canada: Lithuania, Latvia, Bulgaria, Romania, the Czech Republic and Hungary.

Welcome to the 500GB Broadband Economy

Cisco’s study also includes some important findings about data consumption that expose North American broadband providers who support Internet Overcharging schemes as direct threats to our economic future in a knowledge economy:

The study assessed the average consumption of different household segments and found major differences between basic-digital homes and smart and connected homes:

• Basic digital homes which mainly use the web for simple-quality requirement applications such as web browsing, instant messaging and social networking, consume about 20 GB per month;
• Smart and connected households, who would use the web for high definition video communication, high definition entertainment, tele-education or telemedicine, home security and others, can easily consume 500 GB per month and require an assured bandwidth of 18 Mbps.

Under these terms, Canada’s digital economy is already destined to fail because virtually every provider in the country limits broadband consumption to levels far below that required by “smart and connected households.”  In the United States, some providers have suggested as little as 5GB would represent “enough usage” under residential broadband accounts.  The nation’s largest cable company, Comcast, limits consumption to half the amount required.  Those advocating unlimited broadband or far higher limits are accused of being “bandwidth hogs” or pirates by many of these providers and their dollar-a-holler friends.

World leaders in broadband have some things in common: availability of inexpensive, unlimited broadband delivering fiber-fast speeds.  Those falling behind or at the bottom are raising broadband prices, putting limits on consumption and delivering slow broadband speeds that would draw laughter in countries as diverse as Japan, Sweden, and the United Arab Emirates.