Qwest provides local service in 14 states in the Midwest and West.

Antitrust regulators have given the green light for CenturyLink to proceed with its buyout of Qwest Communications, but Qwest executives on their way out are hardly complaining about the deal.

Stop the Cap! has reviewed recent filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission and learned the proposed deal will bring almost $110 million in bonuses and golden parachutes for seven senior Qwest executives, some of whom will leave Qwest as a consequence of the merger.

Qwest CEO Ed Mueller will receive the largest amount: nearly $43 million — $10.8 million in cash he can spend now and $32 million in stock which he can sell later.  Mueller has already made a mint as CEO of Qwest, getting a five percent raise in his base salary to $12 million dollars in 2009, a nine percent boost in his performance bonus — $2.5 million, nearly $250,000 towards personal use of the Qwest corporate jet fleet, and $7.6 million in new stock awards.  While Mueller won, some 2,800 Qwest employees lost — their jobs.  As part of broad cost cutting moves, Qwest eliminated 8.5 percent of its workforce in 2009.  That helped the company achieve an increase in profits of 2 percent despite a 9 percent loss in revenue for the year.

Most of the generous compensation packages were part of the executives’ employment agreements which guaranteed golden parachute payouts and stock options in the event of a merger.  Those employee agreements were well-positioned to pay off for the executives, as Qwest’s “for-sale” sign had been public knowledge for years.

Last week, the Federal Trade Commission determined the deal between CenturyLink and Qwest did not bring any antitrust issues to the table.  But the deal still faces a review from state regulators and the Federal Communications Commission.  Qwest shareholders will have their say August 24th in a special shareholder meeting to vote on the deal.  Qwest has already been negotiating with significant shareholders who have sued the company, claiming the deal did not adequately compensate Qwest’s investors.  Sixteen of those lawsuits have since been quietly settled on undisclosed terms.

Meanwhile, opposition to the merger has come from smaller independent phone companies, consumer groups, labor unions, and some of Qwest’s competitors who rely on Qwest’s facilities to bring services to customers.  The Communications Workers of America is the largest union expressing concerns about the deal and has filed to intervene in public service commission proceedings regarding the merger in four states: Arizona, Colorado, Iowa and Minnesota.  Those are the only four states in Qwest’s 14 state territory receptive to hearing the union’s point of view, according to the CWA.  The others have oversight agencies that exist little beyond rubber-stamping the requests of the companies they oversee or have commission members who are openly hostile to unions.

Despite the opposition, most analysts believe the deal will win approval because CenturyLink only has a limited presence in most of Qwest’s service areas, which are in the mountain west and desert south.

AT&T’s idea of “unlimited service” has its limits.  Five gigabytes to be exact, as some customers are now learning.

Weeks after promising AT&T customers enrolled in unlimited smartphone data plans that they could keep them, AT&T is now calling some subscribers of an earlier unlimited plan, telling them they need to limit their use of the “unlimited service.”

AT&T’s Data Connect Unlimited plan was discontinued by AT&T back in 2008, but the company promised current customers they could keep their unlimited plan.  But now, the company has started calling customers when they exceed 5GB of usage during a month.

The Washington Post reports AT&T has been sending mixed messages to customers, and is cracking down on those customers exceeding the company’s arbitrary limits.

“We’ve had a small group of customers on a DataConnect 5GB plan who were not being charged for overage when they went beyond that limit,” she wrote. “We’re now working to bring their accounts in line with the policy for the other DataConnect 5GB plan subscribers.”

Clark added that users who had signed up for AT&T’s earlier Data Connect Unlimited plans (which it stopped selling in 2008) could keep using them, but if they made “certain changes to their account” — for instance, transferring it to a new line — they would have to sign up for a new $60 plan with a 5-gigabyte usage cap.

That comes as news to several AT&T customers who have been in touch with the Post, who were switched, without permission, to limited service plans when they made minor changes to their account or were told AT&T was going to end unlimited service for all AT&T customers.

Rob Pegoraro, who writes the Fast Forward column for the Post, notes AT&T’s customer-care staff seems a little confused about these matters. He advises users with old, unlimited-data plans should be prepared for lengthy calls to customer service — and keep careful records of their interactions with the company.

Connected Texas is well-connected -- to AT&T and Verizon, charge critics.

Texas Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples in under fire for choosing Connected Nation, a telecom industry-financed mapping group, to draw broadband availability maps for Texas.  Connected Nation has close financial and organizational ties to the nation’s largest telecommunications companies, several of which have also contributed heavily to Staples re-election campaign.

Critics contend Staples should have never chosen Connected Nation for the project, especially when two of its biggest backers — AT&T and Verizon, both made substantial campaign contributions towards his re-election.  Staples also owns small amounts of stock in both companies, according to a report published yesterday in the Dallas Morning News.

The Texas mapping project has been condemned by smaller Internet service providers for leaving them off the map altogether while providing plenty of details about large phone and cable company offerings.  For consumers shopping for broadband service, who is on the map may have a considerable influence over which provider they pick.

“They hit the big guys,” James Breeden, founder of LiveAir Networks, which covers rural parts of Central Texas told the Morning News. “I didn’t even know they were putting together a broadband map until I saw it on the news and went ‘Oh.’ Then I logged in and went, ‘Oh, really!’ ”

Staples

He said he couldn’t find his company or two nearby providers on the map. Some areas didn’t show the correct distributor. Others named one when none existed. “The map is just off. It’s not technically accurate,” he said.

As Stop the Cap! reported earlier, maps produced by Connected Nation are notorious for favoring the telecommunications companies that back the mapping group, in addition to being just plain inaccurate. But more importantly, their maps downplay broadband availability problems and conveniently serve the industry’s position that America doesn’t have a broadband problem.  Connected Nation maintains tight control over the raw data, citing provider confidentiality agreements.  That makes reviewing the data for accuracy impossible.

“It’s a scandal, a total scandal,” Art Brodsky, communications director of Public Knowledge, a public interest group that follows digital culture said in the Morning News piece. A longtime critic of Connected Nation, Brodsky has tracked the nonprofit since Kentucky officials accused it of overestimating broadband availability several years ago. The agency that grew into Connection Nation started there in 2001.

Brodsky said nondisclosure agreements make it difficult to see who really benefits from the mapping process.

The controversy has become campaign fodder for Democratic Ag Commissioner candidate Hank Gilbert, who has been bashing Staples in the press for spending taxpayer money to produce maps that benefit his campaign more than the people of Texas.

“Staples and … [the Agriculture Department] are willing to let a bid go to a company with such close ties to the telecom industry,” said Vince Leibowitz, Gilbert’s campaign manager. “That means they’re not doing their job as a consumer protection agency.”

Other groups given the opportunity to apply either were not given enough advance warning, or simply never heard anything back from the state.

Five other organizations responded to the Agriculture Department’s request for proposals. Luisa Handem of the Austin nonprofit Rural Mobile & Broadband Alliance said her group never heard back.

“We didn’t think the process was transparent,” she said. “We’re not even sure they looked at our application.”

The Agriculture Department restricted the opportunity to nonprofits, based on its interpretation of federal law. The agency told the University of Texas at Austin it could apply, but officials didn’t think they could complete the proposal in a month. The Agriculture Department said the federal government set the timeline.

Rogers Cable: Setting the Bar Lower Than Ever

Just a day after Netflix announced they are coming to Canada, Rogers Cable has responded by announcing it is lowering the usage allowances of its customers.  Stop the Cap! reader Munly writes to inform us Rogers Lite service plan, intended for occasional users, has dropped its 25GB usage allowance to 15GB per month, making it suitable for even less usage.

New customers on Rogers’ popular Extreme plan will find their usage limit cut from 95GB to just 80GB per month.  But if you accept the cut in your allowance, Rogers will increase the speed on that tier from 10Mbps to 15Mbps, allowing customers to blow through that usage limit that much quicker.

Existing customers may be grandfathered in, at least temporarily, but Rogers is notorious for eventually terminating grandfathered plans and moving customers to higher-priced alternatives.

All this from a company that claims it offers its customers “abundant usage.”

Rogers buries in the fine print the fact customers can stay with their current higher allowance if they forego the speed increase.

AND AN EVER INCREASING BILL

With the new lowered usage allowances, Rogers offers tips for customers to reduce their usage, including our favorites:

Use medium quality photos when sending them through e-mail. Your family’s cherished memories don’t deserve high resolution, even if you want to send them to a digital photo lab for printing.  Maybe you could get the kids together and have them draw copies of those vacation pictures with crayons.  At least they won’t be online using up your Rogers Internet ration.

Be aware of how others in your home use your Internet connection.  If you are not spying on your family’s online usage, it’s your own fault if we send you an enormous bill.  In the time it took you to read these tips, your kids could have downloaded over 20 e-mails, looked at more than three web pages, or watched almost a minute of online video.  Don’t make us bill you for that.

Turn off Peer-to-peer programs when you’re not downloading. Better yet, since we know you are using them to steal the content we’d like to sell or rent you, stop using them altogether… or else.

Try the tools. No, we’re not talking about us, silly.  If you are doing more than reading your e-mail or browsing web pages, look out because we’re coming for your wallet.  You can try and outwit our overcharging ways by using our usage notifications service, which will flash messages to you that we’re about to cash in on your over-usage.  Hey, don’t say we didn’t warn you!  Remember, if you use Rogers Internet to download files, stream video or music or play online games, we own you.

Does this mean I should use the Internet less to avoid paying more? Is Sarah Palin American?  You betcha.  We want to get the most out of our customers who use their Internet service too much, which is why we expose them to up to $5.00 per gigabyte if they exceed our ever-dwindling usage allowances.  Our goal is for you to feel free to use the Internet as you always have, just so long as you recognize it’s not free and that you’ll need to pay us for every web page your read, more if you dare to watch cable programming online you should be watching on our cable TV service.  The only surprise you’ll have about your bill is that we haven’t found a way to charge you even more… yet.

What About Netflix? Seriously? You weren’t really thinking of using that service on Rogers were you?  A word to the wise — we can cut your allowance down even further.  Go outside.  Read a book.  Rent a movie from Rogers Plus or enjoy some great Rogers Cable TV.

Rogers Cable’s Internet Packages

A Before And After Comparison

Rogers Old Pricing and Usage Allowances

Rogers All-New Pricing and Usage Allowances, Effective July 21, 2010

Verizon hopes to herd its smartphone owners onto limited use data plans

Engadget is speculating Verizon Wireless is planning to end its unlimited data plan for smartphone customers July 29th.  In a brief story published last night, the site claimed it had heard rumors of the impending demise of unlimited at the nation’s largest cell phone company:

We’re hearing that Big Red intends to move to some sort of tiered bucket strategy on July 29. We don’t have details on whether the pricing will be identical to AT&T’s ($25 for 2GB, $15 for 200MB), but we imagine it’ll be within shouting distance if not. Of course, Verizon has been sending this message for a long time — even before AT&T was — so it shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that this is going down. You might say that Droid Does Caps, eh?

Verizon and AT&T have followed each others’ relentless price increases, tricks and traps for the last few years — forcing customers to accept mandatory service “add-ons” when buying the latest phones, paying higher costs to terminate contracts early, and driving customers onto higher priced service plans bundling services and features many customers do not want.

It therefore comes as no surprise Verizon would follow AT&T’s lead on severely restricting customers’ data use, even though Verizon does not suffer from the level of congestion AT&T has.

We expect Verizon will announce data pricing identical to that offered by AT&T.

However, existing customers can be grandfathered into today’s unlimited plans, so if you think you’ll need unlimited data on Verizon’s network, you have until the end of the month to sign up for a plan should Engadget’s report turn out to be true.