More than a year ago, Comcast temporarily suspended its nationwide 250GB usage cap to study its impact and consider what to do about increasing broadband traffic.

For the majority of Comcast customers, this means the provider has ditched its usage cap altogether, allowing customers to use their broadband service without limits.

“This is the way it should have been all along, especially considering how much I spend every month for Comcast broadband,” says Comcast customer Geoff Cox. “I think usage caps at these prices are unacceptable. If Comcast stops antagonizing me, I will reward them with more of my business.”

For Cox, that meant one week after the cap was lifted, he upgraded his service from Performance to Blast. His usage did not immediately increase that much and Comcast now gets more of his money.

“We do about 280GB a month today between me, my wife and our four kids,” Cox tells Stop the Cap! “When the third one becomes a teenager, we will probably upgrade again to Extreme because of all the streamed media being used in this house.”

But if Comcast brings back the cap, Cox will downgrade his service back to where he started.

“AT&T U-verse isn’t much competition for Comcast broadband because U-verse is slower and their 250GB cap I can see getting enforced when AT&T smells money,” Cox tells us. “As I have told my family, usage caps are not acceptable and we have to take a stand somewhere and let them know caps will cost them business, not earn them more money.”

Whether Comcast will listen remains unknown. The company has said little about its usage cap program since suspending it May 17, 2012. At that time, Comcast did say they had not given up on usage caps in principle — they just wanted a more flexible approach while managing those caps.

Last May, the company announced two trials to test which direction Comcast would take with respect to limiting broadband usage.

In Nashville, Comcast increased the usage allowance for all tiers to 300GB per month and planned to sell additional gigabytes in increments of $10 per 50GB;

In Tucson, Comcast adopted variable usage allowances depending on the type of service a customer selected:

• Economy 300GB
• Economy Plus 300GB
• Internet Essentials 300GB
• Performance Starter 300GB
• Performance 300GB
• Blast 350GB
• Extreme 50 450GB
• Extreme 105 600GB

The rest of Comcast customers get to test unlimited service, at least until the company determines whether it actually needs caps at all. Cox does not think the company does.

“Cable broadband upgrades have really made neighborhood congestion a non-issue and while the company keeps raising the price of broadband service, their costs keep dropping.”

After more than a year of aggressive promotions for new customers and those threatening to switch to a competitor, Time Warner Cable has pulled back to boost revenue and make greater profits.

CEO Glenn Britt told Wall Street investors on this morning’s quarterly results conference call that the cable operator is moving in a different direction.

“It’s based on a simple premise: sell people what they want and what they can afford in the first place,” Britt said.

In February, Stop the Cap! noted that Time Warner Cable’s new customer promotions had dramatically changed for the worse. The package prices remained the same — around $80 for a double-play or $89-99 for a triple-play package of cable, broadband, and/or phone service, but customers received a lot less for their money. For example, last year’s promotions bundled Standard/Turbo Service broadband (10-15Mbps) with most offers. Starting this year, only 3Mbps Internet is included. Equipment fees are still extra, but more costly than ever – $8.99 a month for a traditional set-top box, $21.94 a month for a DVR-equipped box and service.

Robert Marcus, Time Warner Cable’s chief operating officer now admits it was all part of the plan, and the company now earns 15-20% more from customers subscribing to the less-aggressive new customer promotions.

“In January we implemented a new pricing and packaging architecture that’s designed to drive greater [new customer revenue] and profit,” Marcus told investors. “We still advertise the same beacon prices, but the product packages are leaner, with lower speeds and fewer channels and features. Once our beacon offers get the phone to ring, our inbound sales reps are trained to help customers select options that are important to them, like faster broadband or a DVR. As a result, customers are up-sold into packages that better meet their needs.”

This year’s promotions largely only bundle 3Mbps broadband instead of the standard 10-15Mbps bundled last year.

Marcus admitted the trade-off is customers shopping around for the best deal who read the fine print are likely to consider an offer from a competitor more closely. Others are disconnecting service when their promotion expires.

Marcus

“By and large, when were talking about triple play disconnects, they are going to our telco competitors,” Marcus said. “When we’re talking about single-play video disconnects, they, by and large, leave us for satellite. We’re increasingly finding that phone customers are dropping landline phone for wireless-only, and there are video customers who are leaving — and broadband customers for that matter, who are leaving the category, and that’s probably more of an affordability issue than anything else.”

Verizon FiOS is Time Warner’s most dangerous competitor because it beats the cable operator on broadband speed and promotional pricing. Time Warner faces some of the highest disconnect numbers in FiOS areas. AT&T U-verse is also having a greater impact because AT&T recently decreased the price of both their triple and double-play promotions and has increased broadband speeds in some areas, Marcus reported.

Marcus said Time Warner is handling the subscriber churn fine, and the cable company now cares more about higher revenue and profits than attracting deal-hunters who shop on price.

“Last year’s aggressive triple play offers drove significant connect volume, which led to the highest quarterly subscriber net adds we’ve had over the last several years,” Marcus said. “But in large part, we were attracting discount seekers who are more likely to [switch after the promotion ended]. In many cases, we caused customers who didn’t need or want phone to take a triple play offer just to get the low triple play rates.”

What new customers Time Warner did attract largely took one or two products from the cable company, usually cable television and broadband. New phone service customers have declined year-over-year as a result of less attractive pricing. Instead, Marcus noted customers are spending on incremental broadband speed upgrades, which cost Time Warner much less than delivering phone service.

Nobody needs 1Gbps, argues Britt.

With the looming threat of Google Fiber in both Kansas City and Austin, Britt seemed generally unconcerned about the impact the gigabit broadband provider would have.

“At the end of the day, what we’re doing is not any different than an overbuilder, and we’ve had overbuilders for the last several decades in this business so that’s what they appear to be doing,” Britt said. “They appear to be very aggressive on price. They’re even giving some tiers away essentially for free, and we’ll see where that goes. Despite the glow and all of that, the products are essentially the same others are offering today in a practical sense.”

Britt said gigabit speeds probably won’t have the impact many customers think they should because most websites are not built to deliver content at those speeds.

Marcus noted that in Kansas City, Google has only passed 4,000 homes so far, about 2,000 of which are Time Warner Cable customers.

“The number of defections we’ve seen is de minimis at this point,” Marcus said.

Both Britt and Marcus responded to a question about consumption billing saying nothing had changed in the company’s thinking about usage caps or charging for what customers consumed.

“We have in place in almost all of our footprint the option for people to pay less money if they wish to really consume less,” Britt said. “People who want to keep getting unlimited and pay for that, can do that. So we really don’t have anything new. It is in place in our whole footprint, I think, except one location.”

“The take rate on that offering has still been fairly modest, but we think it’s a very important principle that there’s a relationship between usage and the price that customers pay,” Marcus added.

Some other highlights:

• Time Warner Cable’s cloud-based set-top box guide is now testing in employee homes with plans to roll the new boxes out to subscribers later this year. Britt said these were the first of a new generation of all-IP boxes, which means if you have a device in your house that knows how to receive IP, you’ll get access directly via WiFi or through a cable technology called MoCA;
• Time Warner Cable will digitally encrypt its entire television lineup in New York City;
• Time Warner Cable’s recent restructuring cost 500 employees their jobs, mostly in finance, marketing and human resources.

Austin, Texas is likely the next Google Fiber city.

Austin, Texas will be the second major U.S. city to receive Google Fiber’s 1,000/1,000Mbps service, perhaps as early as 2014.

A “major announcement” at a news conference scheduled for Tuesday morning is expected to bring more than 100 community leaders together to hear Google’s plans for the city.

Local media reports, an accidental mention of Austin as the next Google Fiber city on Google’s Fiber Blog, and at least one confidential source at Austin’s public utility company (that owns the poles Google Fiber will be strung across) makes it all-but-certain Austin and its nearby suburbs will get the service.

Austin would seem a natural target for Google as home to the high-tech South by Southwest. Austin also hosts Dell, Texas Instruments, AMD, Samsung, IBM, Intel, and a myriad of Internet start-ups. But a key factor for Google also seems to be the presence of Austin Energy, the nation’s 8th largest community-owned electric utility, serving more than 420,000 customers and a population of almost one million. Kansas City, the first choice for Google Fiber, also has a municipal utility company.

Milo Medin, Google’s vice president of access services, made it clear that Google is targeting cities where it does not have to deal with intransigent privately owned utility companies that make life difficult (or expensive) to attach Google Fiber to utility poles. Municipally owned providers have proved easier to work with, and in Kansas City elected officials also helped cut through administrative red tape and facilitated a working relationship between Google and government officials responsible for issuing work permits and clearing up zoning headaches.

Areas served by investor owned electric giants like Southern California Edison, Florida Power & Light, Commonwealth Edison, Consolidated Edison, Georgia Power, Dominion Resources, Detroit Edison, Public Service Enterprise Group, and others may be at an immediate disadvantage in the race to become the next Google Fiber city if those companies attempt to throw expensive roadblocks or disadvantageous bureaucracy in front of Google.

Another factor in Kansas City’s favor was the large amount of pre-existing conduit available to pull fiber infrastructure through without tearing up streets. Cities with this type of infrastructure already in place dramatically reduces construction costs and permit delays.

Google Fiber’s project in Austin will compete directly with Time Warner Cable and AT&T U-verse. Time Warner Cable customers antagonized Austin residents in the spring of 2009 with a planned market test of consumption billing and usage caps for its Internet service. Google Fiber makes a point to say its broadband service is never usage-limited. AT&T U-verse customers in Austin have so far  not faced punitive measures from the phone company when exceeding its 250GB U-verse usage cap.

Many cable industry analysts predicted Google Fiber was simply a show project in Kansas City, designed to embarrass the telecommunications industry’s mediocre and expensive broadband service offerings. But a move into Austin signals Google more likely sees its fiber network as a lucrative business opportunity — one that could gradually be expanded to other cities.

What communities could get the service next? Google seems likely to avoid serving areas covered by Verizon FiOS, because competing fiber networks would likely not produce the bang for the buck Google needs to draw subscribers, and Medin makes it clear the company has found working with publicly owned utility companies easier than privately owned ones, so future Google Fiber cities will likely have these factors in common:

Having a publicly owned utility helps.

• A high-tech business community and well-educated workforce in a medium to large city;
• A publicly owned municipal utility willing to work with Google;
• Pre-existing infrastructure to support fiber service without tearing up streets and neighborhoods;
• A local government willing to cut red tape and ease Google’s expansion;
• No Verizon FiOS fiber service in the immediate metropolitan area;
• A reasonable level of regulations covering environmental impacts of utility infrastructure work, permits, and licensing.

Such requirements would wipe out almost all New York (except Rochester, Binghamton and the Southern Tier around Ithaca — all completely bypassed by Verizon FiOS) and New Jersey as possible candidates. California outside of Mountain View would also seem untenable because of government regulations, sprawling cities, and private utilities. Florida and Georgia have two major private power companies to contend with as well. But there are opportunities in Texas, the Carolinas, Minnesota, Washington, Arizona, Colorado, Tennessee, Massachusetts, and across several midwestern states, especially those served by AT&T’s inferior U-verse system.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/KXAN Austin Google Fiber Expected in Austin 4-5-13.mp4[/flv]

KXAN in Austin spent almost seven minutes of its weekend evening newscast talking about forthcoming Google Fiber in Austin.  (7 minutes)

Residents of some cities north of Dallas are in the unique position of being able to choose between two phone companies and at least one cable operator for television, phone, and broadband service.

AT&T U-verse competes head to head with Verizon’s advanced FiOS fiber to the home service in communities like Allen, Plano, and Frisco, Tex.,  because of franchising agreements that opened to door for both companies to compete in overlapping territories.

The aggressor was Verizon, which took advantage of Texas’ statewide video franchise law to “overbuild” its FiOS fiber operation into AT&T’s landline territory, particularly in affluent Frisco and Allen.

Verizon got interested in the area in 2008 because of the population boom and housing growth in North Texas. It was easy to lay fiber in the large housing developments under construction. When the economy crashed along with the housing market during the Great Recession, Verizon’s investment and interest in expanding FiOS declined. Today, some areas have access to both Verizon FiOS and U-verse from AT&T, as well as at least one cable operator. Other areas, especially in unfinished planned neighborhoods, only have access to only one provider, AT&T.

Verizon’s decision to overbuild and face AT&T was a decision to target investment into some of the richest areas in the Dallas-Ft. Worth Metroplex. Lower income areas often have neither service, as Verizon has focused efforts north of the city and AT&T U-verse is still not available in certain areas of downtown Dallas.

In a rebranding effort some Time Warner Cable employees and viewers are fuming about, all 17 of the cable company’s local news operations including YNN (Upstate NY), NY1 (NYC), and News 14 (the Carolinas) will be renamed “Time Warner Cable News” by the end of this year.

The new look will include a studio makeover, new theme music, and a more uniform presentation across all the news broadcasts.

The experiment in creating the cable company’s local news channel began in Rochester, N.Y. in 1990, even before Time Warner Cable as a brand existed. WGRC-TV was launched by Greater Rochester Cablevision that year with a handful of daily newscasts interspersed with off-network syndicated programming. In 1992, WGRC-TV left channel 5 for channel 9 and was rebranded “GRC9News.” When the newly named Time Warner Cable arrived in town, the channel was rebranded yet again as “R News.”

In August 2009, Time Warner changed the name to YNN (Your News Now) Rochester, just one of several YNN channels operating upstate in Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, and Albany.

For YNN viewers, it is just one more name change for a news channel that has increasingly shed its veneer of independence from the cable company that lives under the same roof.

NY1 fans are far less sanguine about the change.

“It’s a boneheaded move that will punish a unique, standalone brand like NY1 — by reminding viewers just how corporate TV news has become,” wrote Don Kaplan, the New York Daily News television editor.

“This might be the stupidest media rebranding scheme I’ve ever heard of,” Seth Fletcher, a science writer who lives in Brooklyn, wrote in a Twitter post.

“Time Warner — rebranding NY1 into TWC News might be your dumbest move since merging with AOL,” wrote the band They Might Be Giants.

Time Warner said the change is intended to give the news operation a higher profile and more closely identify it as a cable-only service not available on their biggest competitors, Verizon FiOS and AT&T U-verse.

But critics of the change note most of Time Warner’s local news channels have relentlessly pounded home the channel is only available on Time Warner Cable — never on FiOS, satellite, or U-verse — for years.

At least one observer privately noted the rebranding could be another attempt to cut costs by allowing the news channels to share anchors, reporters, and news content without viewers catching on it isn’t always produced locally. YNN’s network of news channels in upstate New York have already proved this, with certain content produced in Buffalo for viewers in Rochester, Syracuse, and Albany.

Time Warner Cable is also in the process of rebranding its various local and regional sports channels under their new name: Time Warner Cable Sports.