From writing friendly reports defending Internet Overcharging to the FCC’s new chief economist — D.C.’s revolving door keeps on spinning for Professor Steven Wildman.

The Federal Communications Commission has proved that Washington’s revolving door enjoys perpetual motion with the announcement it hired a new chief economist who just three weeks earlier was peddling his findings favoring usage caps and consumption billing before a National Cable & Telecommunications Association gathering that paid for his research.

Professor Steven Wildman’s move from the cable industry’s go-to-guy for defending Internet Overcharging to a cushy new position at the FCC just weeks after shilling for the country’s largest cable industry lobbying group is shocking even by Washington’s standards.

Remarkably, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski praised this cheerleader of wallet-pilfering by saying “his deep economic expertise and problem solving abilities” are the perfect fit for an agency pressed with challenging initiatives – like charging you more for your broadband service and calling it “pro-consumer.”

There is no doubt Wildman has deep economic expertise — he has found success penning dubious research bought and paid for by an industry that expects his findings to echo their own talking points. His problem-solving abilities at fixing the facts around the cable industry’s agenda are also unquestioned.

But his research reports aren’t worth wasting your monthly usage allowance to download because they only tell part of the story.

At the December NCTA Connects event, Wildman was the darling of the cable industry echo chamber telling tall tales about the problems of broadband penetration in a country where providers enjoy up to 95 percent gross margins on broadband pricing:

“One of the key mechanisms through which positive welfare effects are realized is the crafting of lower-priced plans for users who otherwise might not take service, while users who have a more intensive demand for broadband are able to contract for more advanced services. We also showed that UBP has flexibility advantages for users whose data service needs vary over time. Because UBP creates an incentive to offer lower cost-lower usage plans to consumers who otherwise could not profitably be served at a unitary price, UBP can be an effective tool for promoting increased broadband penetration in the United States, a role that is enhanced by the fact that low price-low usage options reduce the financial risks to consumers thinking about trying broadband for the first time.”

“Tiered pricing also has benefits for the recovery of shared network costs and for network investment. Whereas investment decisions are also influenced by other factors, including the costs of extending networks, potential revenues, and overall economic conditions, we found that, other things equal, usage tiers will likely contribute to better cash flows and stronger incentives to invest in broadband plant, both to improve the quality of service for current customers and to extend networks into unserved and underserved territories.”

Wildman does not mention his cable benefactors earn a higher percentage of profit on broadband than oil sheikhs in the Middle East rake in charging $90+ for a barrel of oil. So it is unsurprising his analysis lacks one simple solution providers could use to differentiate their services and enhance broadband penetration: lower the price to compete. He also ignores the fact that true usage pricing would offer consumers a chance to pay only for what they actually consumed during a month, but those plans are not on offer anywhere.

Wildman ignores the real industry agenda: monetizing broadband usage to create even higher profits. The cable industry is well on its way, using the enormous market power enjoyed in the current monopoly/duopoly state of consumer broadband to preserve today’s near-extortionist pricing while trying to pick up customers currently unwilling to pay, charging for slightly discounted service that comes with a paltry usage allowance.

The meme that unlimited, flat rate broadband is somehow responsible for America’s broadband-unserved is a popular one at the FCC, where Chairman Genachowski has applauded usage based pricing as an “innovative” experiment that could change how broadband is marketed in the U.S. and promote its expansion.

While those in D.C. may live in a bubble populated by industry lobbyists, others do not.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/NCTA Connects The Pros and Cons of Broadband Peak Load Pricing Dec 2012.flv[/flv]

Message Confusion: While some in the cable industry still advocate usage pricing and caps as a matter of “fairness” and as a salve for peak time congestion, today’s advocates of usage-based billing appearing at a cable-industry event in December admit congestion is simply no longer a problem on wired networks. Sandvine’s Dave Caputo and Professor David M. Lyons of Boston College Law School dismiss the notion of congestion-based pricing only during peak usage, arguing congestion is no longer the real issue driving usage caps. That is why everyone must be subjected to higher priced, usage-capped broadband no matter what time of day they use the network. (3 minutes)

The inevitable outcome of “differentiated pricing” is charging consumers more to access popular websites, as is already the case in countries like Colombia.

Wildman argues that like car manufacturers that offer many different models ranging from basic to well-appointed with luxury extras, providers should be free to offer different types of plans to consumers.

Wildman’s auto analogy fails because consumers have more than a dozen different manufacturers to choose from, each making a range of different models. For broadband, the overwhelming majority of Americans have two choices: the cable and phone company. Unlike auto manufacturers that respond to consumer demand, broadband providers are hellbent on eliminating the overwhelmingly popular flat rate, unlimited option in favor of mandatory usage pricing and/or usage caps. It would be like telling auto-buyers that their Honda Accord, Toyota Camry, or Chevy Malibu no longer met the needs of manufacturers. Instead, you have one choice: the Toyota Yaris. But you can get it with heated leather seats, so what’s the problem?

Wildman also ignores the fact providers already sell different plans, based on different speeds. Customers with only light web use can select a cheaper, lower speed tier and never notice the difference. Heavier users buy up into premium speed tiers, paying higher prices to cover their additional usage and expectations of performance.

Providers have spent the last few years trying to justify adding a usage component to the pricing equation and Wildman is perplexed by public policy and consumer groups overwhelmingly hostile to plans that would leave current pricing largely intact and add an artificial usage cap. Considering who pays for his research, this is not too surprising.

Wildman’s style of “innovation” already exists in countries like Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and in parts of Europe allowing everyone to witness what actually happens when these pricing schemes gain a foothold. Usage-based pricing has successfully boosted the profits of providers but has done nothing to expand rural broadband networks or offer customers big savings. When providers gorge on profits made possible in uncompetitive markets, the money goes straight into bank accounts or back to investors, not into capital spending to improve service or expand into areas deemed unprofitable to serve.

Customers despise usage caps so much that in Australia and New Zealand, the government has partially taken over rebuilding infrastructure with new fiber to the home networks and promoting international capacity expansion that will eventually banish usage pricing for good. In western Canada, Shaw Cable heard so much condemnation about usage caps during its listening tour, it greatly relaxed them. (The fact its biggest competitor Telus barely enforces their own caps didn’t hurt either.)

In the rest of Canada, independent ISPs have found a growing niche selling plans with considerably larger usage allowances or flat rate access. How did dominant providers like Bell (BCE) respond? They asked regulators to force the competition to stop selling flat rate service.

How Sandvine helps providers “innovate.” Alaska’s GCI implemented its draconian caps and overlimit fees using Sandvine’s Internet Overcharging technology.

Wildman’s report flies in the face of reality, and every so often the cable industry itself admits as much. Take the word of Suddenlink president and CEO Jerry Kent, who runs a largely rural cable company that launched its own Internet Overcharging scheme:

“I think one of the things people don’t realize [relates to] the question of capital intensity and having to keep spending to keep up with capacity,” Kent said. “Those days are basically over, and you are seeing significant free cash flow generated from the cable operators as our capital expenditures continue to come down.”

Unsurprisingly, that sentiment did not make it into Wildman’s analysis either.

Wildman

Financial reports from providers that have usage caps and those that don’t show the same remarkable trend: broadband expenses are way down, capital intensity is well within expected norms, and cable operators are not pouring their profligate earnings into expanding rural broadband.

That makes Wildman the consummate team player, and hardly the best choice for taxpayers who will cover his salary for a few years before he takes another trip through the revolving door back to his industry friends. When Americans wonder why Washington doesn’t seem to be living in the reality-based community, this is why. We can hardly expect Mr. Wildman to represent our interests when he has spent the last several years representing an extremely profitable industry reviled for its overcharging, poor service, and scheming, and will be more than welcomed back if he remembers his friends while working at the FCC.

This latest move represents another disappointment from Chairman Julius Genachowski, who increasingly appears to be warming up to a telecommunications industry he used to aggressively oversee at the start of his tenure.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/NCTA Connects The Evolving Internet – Patterns in Usage and Pricing Dec 2012.flv[/flv]

Three weeks ago, the Three Musketeers of Internet Overcharging appeared at a cable industry-sponsored event promoting usage caps and consumption billing. Sandvine CEO Dave Caputo makes his living scaring providers and consumers about Internet growth and (conveniently) selling the equipment that manages the traffic “tsunami” with speed throttles and usage limits. Professor David M. Lyons of Boston College Law School calls usage pricing “second degree price discrimination,” a term he hopes the industry will rebrand into something less ominous and obvious. He argues selling broadband at incremental costs will never recover “fixed costs” for networks the cable industry itself admits have already been largely paid off. Professor Steven Wildman, now on the way to the FCC as its new chief economist, peddles research bought and paid for by the cable industry. They got their money’s worth. (1 hour, 9 minutes)

As Verizon Wireless implements its new “Share Everything” plan today, customers who discard their unlimited data plan in favor of Verizon’s new usage-limited plan can give the company even more money to make sure they are not bill shocked if someone on a family plan goes hog wild.

Verizon’s “Usage Controls” feature runs $4.99 a month and gives customers a tool to customize allowances for each plan participant:

Even with the new usage controls, some customers are upset Verizon will extract more from customers’ wallets if they switch plans.

“My plan for my wife’s phone will be going from $33 for minutes, $10 for text, and $25 for data, all per month, to a plan that is $40 for minutes and text and $60 for data, all per month,” writes one Chicago Tribune reader. “So my monthly bill is going from $68 to $100, plus taxes and fees. If I add one more Smartphone, the total goes to $150 per month. How exactly am I saving anything?”

Won first place nationally for the best 4G LTE network with the fastest overall speeds and best performance.

PC Magazine went to a lot of effort to test the data speeds of America’s wireless providers, traveling to 30 U.S. cities sampling both 3G and 4G wireless networks to see which carrier delivers the most consistent and fastest results.

After 240,000 lines of test data, the magazine declared the results a bit “muddy.”

They have a point.

Depending on which carrier’s flavor of “4G” is being utilized, where reception was strongest, how much spectrum was available in each tested city, and how many people were sharing the cell tower at the time of each test, PC Magazine was able to deliver the definitive results. And it was effectively a draw.

Verizon Wireless achieved victory in 19 cities, AT&T won in ten others, and T-Mobile came in pretty close behind, and that carrier does not even operate an LTE 4G network. But taking all factors into account, including upload and download speeds, whether or not test downloads actually completed, and whether streamed media was tolerable, Verizon Wireless won first prize nationwide.

But by how much?

Not enough to matter, if you are using Verizon, AT&T, or T-Mobile.

But the results do offer some things to think about.

1. MetroPCS is a mess. Despite the fact this smaller carrier is building its own 4G LTE network, results were simply terrible. Either its backhaul network from cell towers offers lower capacity or its backbone network is screaming for an upgrade.
2. Cricket was not willing to participate in the test. Their network, still 3G, delivers dependably “meh” results in the places where they actually provide coverage. The company has been reducing data allowances on their mobile broadband plans and raising prices on others. In one conference call with investors, company executives admitted they have been losing mobile broadband customers and expect that to continue at the prices they are charging.
3. Sprint needs their forthcoming 4G LTE network more than ever. Their 3G data service turned in mediocre results and their 4G WiMAX network was yesterday’s news a year ago. Sprint’s 3G network is also notorious for dead-end downloads, a situation I have witnessed on friends’ phones for several months.
4. Verizon Wireless remains far ahead of AT&T in covering more cities with their 4G LTE network. But more customers are also starting to use Verizon’s newer network, and the more customers piling on, the slower the speeds get for everyone. AT&T turned in some superior speed results in several cities, but those networks are often used less than the competition, for now.
5. No network is good if you cannot afford to use it. As America’s wireless carriers keep raising prices and reducing usage allowances to keep data usage under control, there will be a breaking point where customers decide the money they spend for wireless data just is not worth it, especially if they live in a place where Wi-Fi is free and easy to find.
6. What you test today will probably be different tomorrow. Wireless networks are constantly evolving and changing, with a wide range of factors contributing to their overall performance. Perhaps a more useful test would have been measuring how wireless carriers respond when their networks need upgrading and how long it takes them to respond to changing usage patterns. Verizon seems particularly aggressive, AT&T less so based on these results. The real surprise seems to be how well T-Mobile’s older technology is performing, and how quickly Sprint is now falling behind. On Cricket and MetroPCS, “you get what you pay for” seems to apply.

Consumer reporters across the country say Verizon’s boasts of savings for consumers on their new “share everything” plans are hardly universal. Many customers face significantly higher cell phone bills switching to Verizon’s new revenue-boosting plans that eliminate voice minutes and texting allowances.

[flv width=”360″ height=”290″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WCPO Cincinnati Verizon Savings Not So Much 6-18-12.mp4[/flv]

WCPO in Cincinnati’s John Matarese reports why Verizon’s new pricing plan will cost many customers more. (2 minutes)
 [flv width=”360″ height=”290″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WPTV West Palm Beach Verizon Share Plan 6-18-12.mp4[/flv]

WPTV in West Palm Beach talks with CNET about how consumers will need to become better educated to avoid the potential bill shock that comes from expensive, usage-restricted data plans. (2 minutes)
 [flv width=”480″ height=”290″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WWLP Springfield Verizon New Plans 6-15-12.mp4[/flv]

WWLP in Springfield, Mass. informs consumers how quickly they can burn through Verizon’s new $50 1GB wireless data plan. (1 minute)

Phillip "Is this 'innovation' or more 'alienation' from Big Cable" Dampier

While Federal Communications Commission chairman Julius Genachowski pals around with his cable industry friends at this week’s Cable Show in Boston, observers could not miss the irony of the current FCC chairman nodding in repeated agreement with former FCC chairman Michael Powell, whose bread is now buttered by the industry he used to regulate.

The revolving door remains well-greased at the FCC, with Mr. Powell assuming the role of chief lobbyist for the cable industry’s National Cable and Telecommunications Association (and as convention host) and former commissioner Meredith Attwell-Baker enjoying her new office and high priced position at Comcast Corporation, just months after voting to approve its multi-billion dollar merger with NBC-Universal.

Genachowski’s announcement that he favors “usage-based pricing” as healthy and beneficial for broadband and high-tech industries reflects the view of a man who doesn’t worry about his monthly broadband bill. As long as he works for taxpayers, we’re covering most of those expenses for him.

Former FCC chairman Powell said cable providers want to be able to experiment with pricing broadband by usage. That represents the first step towards monetizing broadband usage, an alarming development for consumers and a welcome one for Wall Street who understands the increased earnings that will bring.

Unfortunately, the unspoken truth is the majority of consumers who endure these “experiments” are unwilling participants. The plan is to transform today’s broadband Internet ecosystem into one checked by usage gauges, rationing, bill shock, and reduced innovation.  The director of the FCC’s National Broadband Plan, Blair Levin, recently warned the United States is on the verge of throwing away its leadership in online innovation, distracted trying to cope with a regime of usage limits that will force every developer and content producer to focus primarily on living within the usage allowances providers allow their customers.

“I’d rather be the country that developed fantastic applications that everyone in the world wants to use than the country that only invented data compression technology [to reduce usage],” Levin said.

Genachowski’s performance in Boston displayed a public servant primarily concerned about the business models of the companies he is supposed to oversee.

Genachowski: Abdicating his responsibility to protect the public in favor of the interests of the cable industry.

“Business model innovation is very important,” Genachowski said. “There was a point of view a couple years ago that there was only one permissible pricing model for broadband. I didn’t agree.”

We are still trying to determine what Genachowski is talking about. In fact, providers offer numerous pricing models for broadband service in the United States, almost uniformly around speed-based tiers, which offer customers both a choice in pricing and includes a worry-free usage cap defined by the maximum speed the connection supports.

Broadband providers experimenting with Internet Overcharging schemes like usage caps, speed throttles, and usage-billing only layer an additional profit incentive or cost control measure on top of existing pricing models.  A usage cap limits a customer to a completely arbitrary level of usage a provider determines is sufficient. But such caps can also be used to control over-the-top streaming video by limiting its consumption — an important matter for companies witnessing a decline in cable television customers.  Speed throttles are a punishing reminder to customers who “use too much” they need to ration their usage to avoid being reduced to mind-numbing dial-up speeds until the next billing cycle begins. Usage billing discourages consumers from ever trying new and innovative services that could potentially chew up their allowance and deliver bill shock when overlimit fees appear on the bill.

The industry continues to justify these experiments with wild claims of congestion, which do not prevent companies like Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and Cox from sponsoring their own online video streaming services which even they admit burn through bandwidth. Others claim customers should pay for what they use, which is exactly what they do today when they write a check to cover their growing monthly bill. Broadband pricing is not falling in the United States, it is rising — even in places where companies claim these pricing schemes are designed to save customers money. The only money saved is that not spent on network improvements companies can now delay by artificially reducing demand.

It’s having your cake and eating it too, and this is one expensive cake.

Comcast is selling broadband service for $40-50 that one research report found only costs them $8 a month to provide. That’s quite a markup, but it never seems to be enough. Now Comcast claims it is ditching its usage cap (it is not), raising usage allowances (by 50GB — four years after introducing a cap the company said it would regularly revisit), and testing a new Internet overlimit usage fee it literally stole from AT&T’s bean counters (a whopping $10 for an anti-granular 50GB).

In my life, all of the trials and experiments I have participated in have been voluntary. But the cable industry (outside of Time Warner Cable, for the moment) has a garlic-to-a-vampire reaction to the concept of “opting out,” and customers are told they will participate and they’ll like it.  Pay for what you use! (-at our inflated prices, with a usage limit that was not there yesterday, and an overlimit fee for transgressors that is here today. Does not, under any circumstances, apply to our cable television service.)

No wonder Americans despise cable companies.

Michael Powell, former FCC chairman, is now the host and chief lobbyist for the National Cable & Telecommunications Association's Cable Show in Boston. (Photo courtesy: NCTA)

For some reason, Chairman Genachowski cannot absorb the pocket-picking-potential usage billing offers an industry that is insatiable for enormous profits and faces little competition.

Should consumers be allowed to pay for broadband in different ways?  Sure. Must they be compelled into usage pricing schemes they want no part of? No, but that’s too far into the tall grass for the guy overseeing the FCC and the market players to demand.

Of course, we’ve been here and done this all before.

America’s dinosaur phone companies have been grappling with the mysterious concept of ‘flat-rate envy’ for more than 100 years, and they made billions from delivering it. While the propaganda department at the NCTA conflates broadband usage with water, gas, and electricity, they always avoid comparing broadband with its closest technological relative: the telephone. It gets hard to argue broadband is a precious, limited resource when your local phone company is pelting you with offers for unlimited local and long distance calling plans. Thankfully, a nuclear power plant or “clean coal” isn’t required to generate a high-powered dial tone and telephone call tsunamis are rarely a problem for companies that upgraded networks long ago to keep up with demand. Long distance rates went down and have now become as rare as a rotary dial phone.

In the 20th century, landline telephone companies grappled with how to price their service to consumers.  Businesses paid “tariff” rates which typically amount to 7-10 cents per minute for phone calls. But residential customers, particularly those outside of the largest cities, were offered the opportunity to choose flat-rate local calling service. Customers were also offered measured rate services that either charged a flat rate per call or offered one or two tiers of calling allowances, above which consumers paid for each additional local call.

Consumers given the choice overwhelmingly picked flat-rate service, even in cases where their calling patterns proved they would save money with a measured rate plan.

"All you can eat" pricing is increasingly common with phone service, the closest cousin to broadband.

The concept baffled the economic intelligentsia who wondered why consumers would purposefully pay more for a service than they had to. A series of studies were commissioned to explore the psychology of flat-rate pricing, and the results were consistent: customers wanted the peace of mind a predictable price for service would deliver, and did not want to think twice about using a service out of fear it would increase their monthly bill.

In most cases, flat rate service has delivered a gold mine of profits for companies that offer it. It makes billing simple and delivers consistent financial results. But there occasionally comes a time when the economics of flat-rate service increasingly does not make sense to the company or its shareholders. That typically happens when the costs to provide the service are increasing and the ability to raise flat rates to a new price point is constrained. Neither has been true in any respect for the cable broadband business, where costs to provide the service continue to decline on a per-customer basis and rates have continued to increase for consumers. The other warning sign is when economic projections show an even greater amount of revenue and profits can be earned by measuring and monetizing a service experiencing high growth in usage. Why leave money on the table, Wall Street asks.

That leaves us with companies that used to make plenty of profit charging $50 a month for flat rate broadband, now under pressure to still charge $50, but impose usage limits that reduce costs and set the stage for rapacious profit-taking when customers blow through their usage caps. It also delivers a useful fringe benefit by keeping high bandwidth content companies from entering the marketplace, as consumers fret about their impact on monthly usage allowances. Nothing eats a usage allowance like online video. Limit it and companies can also limit cable-TV cord-cutting.

Fabian Herweg and Konrad Mierendorff at the Department of Economics at the University of Zurich found the economics of flat rate pricing still work well for providers and customers, who clearly prefer unlimited-use pricing:

We developed a model of firm pricing and consumer choice, where consumers are loss averse and uncertain about their own future demand. We showed that loss-averse consumers are biased in favor of flat-rate contracts: a loss-averse consumer may prefer a flat-rate contract to a measured tariff before learning his preferences even though the expected consumption would be cheaper with the measured tariff than with the flat rate. Moreover, the optimal pricing strategy of a monopolistic supplier when consumers are loss averse is analyzed. The optimal two-part tariff is a flat-rate contract if marginal costs are low and if consumers value sufficiently the insurance provided by the flat-rate contract. A flat-rate contract insures a loss-averse consumer against fluctuations in his billing amounts and this insurance is particularly valuable when loss aversion is intense or demand is highly uncertain.

Applied to broadband, Herweg and Mierendorff’s conclusions fit almost perfectly:

1. Consumers often do not understand the measurement units of broadband usage and do not want to learn them (gigabytes, megabytes, etc.)
2. Consumers cannot predict a consistent level of usage demand, leading to disturbing wild fluctuations in billing under usage-based pricing;
3. The peace of mind, or “insurance” factor, gives consumers an expected stable bill for service, which they prefer over unstable usage fees, even if lower than flat rate;
4. Flat rate works in an industry with stable or declining marginal costs. Incremental technology upgrades and falling broadband delivery costs offer the cable industry exceptional profits even at flat-rate prices.

Time Warner Cable (for now) is proposing usage-based pricing as an option, while leaving flat rate broadband a choice on the service menu. But will it last?

Time Warner Cable (so far) is the only cable operator in the country that has announced a usage-based pricing experiment that it claims is completely optional, and will not impact on the broadband rates of current flat rate customers. If this remains the case, the cable operator will have taken the first step to successfully duplicate the pricing model of traditional phone company calling plans, offering price-sensitive light users a measured usage plan and risk-averse customers a flat-rate plan. The unfortunate pressure and temptation to eliminate the flat rate pricing plan remains, however. Company CEO Glenn Britt routinely talks of favoring usage-based pricing and Wall Street continues to pressure the company to exclusively adopt those metered plans to increase profits.

Other cable operators compel customers to adopt both speed and usage-based plans, which often require a customer to either ration usage to avoid an overlimit fee or compel an expensive service upgrade for a more generous allowance.  The result is customers are stuck with plans they do not want that deliver little or no savings and often cost much more.

Why wouldn’t a company sell you a plan you want? Either because they cannot afford to or because they can make a lot more selling you something else. Guess which is true here?

Broadband threatens to not be an American success story if current industry plans to further monetize usage come to fruition. The United States is already falling behind in global broadband rankings. In fact, the countries that lived under congestion and capacity-induced usage limits in the last decade are rapidly moving to discard them altogether, even as providers in this country seek to adopt them. That is an ominous sign that destroys this country’s lead role in online innovation. How will consumers react to tele-medicine, education, and entertainment services of the future that will eat away at your usage allowance?

Even worse, with no evidence of a broadband capacity problem in the United States, Mr. Genachowski’s apparent ignorance of the anti-competitive duopoly’s influence on pricing power is frankly disturbing. Why innovate prices down in a market where most Americans have just one or two choices for service? Economic theory tells us that in the absence of regulatory oversight or additional competition, prices have nowhere to go but up.

To believe otherwise is to consider your local cable operator the guardian angel of your wallet, and just about every American with a cable bill knows that is about as real as the tooth fairy.