Time Warner Cable dropped the ball… right on the heads of temporary customers Alice and Dan Beissel, who signed up for service and canceled just ten days later.

The Corpus Christi, Texas couple decided to cancel service from AT&T and give the cable company a try and, according to them, it was trouble right from the start.

The Beissels say the cable service never worked right, with picture outages and other equipment troubles that came and went.  Frustrations mounted when a service call found nothing wrong, until the Time Warner truck pulled out of the driveway and the picture again went blank.

But the final straw was a conversation Dan Beissel had with the company’s customer service support center.

“What did you do that was wrong,” the representative asked Beissel.

Beissel must have thought the answer was ‘signing up for cable service,’ because the family decided to cancel after that call ended.

Now the couple has been forced to turn to KZTV’s Troubleshooter consumer reporter in an effort to collect an overdue refund check for their service.  The station ran into the same kind of frustration the Beissel family did:

We’ve made several calls to Time Warner Cable in an attempt to speak with anyone who can help the couple.

Unfortunately, there is no customer service contact in Corpus Christi.

Time Warner Cable says refund checks are normally processed within four weeks and mailed from a California office.  A local employee working for the cable company in the Corpus Christi area said he would look into the missing refund check.

KZTV in Corpus Christi is helping one family find a missing refund check owed to them by Time Warner Cable.  (2 minutes)

An increasing number of wireless data users are getting some tough love courtesy of AT&T.

“Your data use this month places you in the top 5% of users,” the text message reads. “Use Wi-Fi to avoid reduced speeds.”  Our regular reader Earl hopes we’ll keep spreading the word.

AT&T’s speed throttle has now moved beyond the pages of tech blogs and into USA Today, where the newspaper explores the trials and tribulations of wireless data management policies at the nation’s largest wireless companies.

Mike Trang, along with at least 200,000 other AT&T customers, has been caught in AT&T’s wireless speed trap.  The result can be speeds punitively reduced to dial-up for the remainder of a billing cycle, leaving customers on AT&T’s “unlimited use” plan waiting up to two minutes for a single web page to load.

While AT&T tells the newspaper it only throttles the speeds of unlimited customers who use an average of 2GB or more per month to ease congestion (if that), the company’s “congestion problems” seem to disappear when customers switch to a usage-billing plan that charges fees based on different usage allowances:

Trang’s iPhone was throttled just two weeks into his billing cycle, after he’d consumed 2.3 gigabytes of data. He pays $30 per month for “unlimited” data. Meanwhile, Dallas-based AT&T now sells a limited, or “tiered,” plan that provides 3 gigabytes of data for the same price.

Users report that if they call the company to ask or complain about the throttling, AT&T customer support representatives suggest they switch to the limited plan.

“They’re coaxing you toward the tiered plan,” said Gregory Tallman in Hopatcong, N.J. He hasn’t had his iPhone 4S throttled yet, but he’s gotten text-messages from AT&T, warning that he’s approaching the limit. This came after he had used just 1.5 gigabytes of data in that billing cycle.

Many customers who have received the text message warning about their usage now think twice about everything they do with their phone, which may be part of what AT&T intended for its remaining customers grandfathered on a now-discontinued unlimited use plan.

John Cozen, a Web and mobile applications designer in San Diego, told USA Today he’s now “almost scared to use the phone.”

Cozen’s complaints to AT&T have been ignored and now he’s shopping for a new carrier.

AT&T’s warning-and-throttle system is the strictest among America’s largest wireless carriers. When customers exceed AT&T’s arbitrary declaration of being among the “top 5% of users,” their speeds are subject to severe slowdowns until their next bill is issued. This leaves customers who may have needed their phone at the beginning of the month for a business trip or vacation suddenly throttled for weeks because of what AT&T calls “congestion,” even if nobody else is using the cell tower.  Even worse, customers not yet deemed to be offending AT&Ts usage manners, or who pay per gigabyte, can overload a cell tower and create the very congestion AT&T claims it hopes to manage.  But only “unlimited use” customers get “time out” in the usage penalty corner.

Among other carriers:

• Verizon Wireless also uses a network management system that can throttle speeds for exceptionally heavy users, but their speed throttle is engaged only when individual cell towers are overloaded with traffic, and the speed reduction level will vary with the amount of traffic on that tower.  When congestion eases, speeds return to normal for everyone;
• T-Mobile throttles customers after a maximum of 5GB of usage per month, unless other arrangements are made with the company;
• Sprint Nextel does not have usage limits or a throttle on smartphone data plans at this time.

Ethernet over Copper is becoming an increasingly popular choice for business customers stuck in areas where companies won't deploy fiber broadband (Graphic: OSP Magazine)

With Verizon and AT&T effectively stalling expansion of their respective “next generation” fiber and hybrid fiber/coax networks, and independent phone companies fearing too much capital spent improving their networks will drive their stock prices down, telephone companies are desperately seeking better options to deliver the faster broadband service customers demand.

The options over a copper-based landline network are not the best:

• ADSL has been around for more than a decade and is highly distant dependent. Get beyond 10,000 feet from the nearest switching office and your speeds may not even qualify as “broadband;”
• DSL variants represent the second generation for copper-broadband and can deliver faster speeds, but usually require investment to reduce the amount of copper between the customer and the switching office;
• Fiber networks are more expensive to build, and some companies are using it to reduce, but not eliminate copper wire in their networks. But companies traditionally avoid this solution in rural/suburban areas because the cost/benefit analysis doesn’t work for shareholders;
• Ethernet Over Copper (EoC) is increasingly the solution of choice for independent phone companies because it is less expensive to deploy than fiber and can quickly deliver service at speeds of up to 50Mbps.

Unfortunately for consumers, EoC is typically way above the price range for home broadband.  Most providers sell the faster service to commercial and institutional customers, either for businesses that have outgrown T1 lines or where deploying fiber does not make economic sense.  Some companies have tried to improve on DSL by bonding multiple connections together to achieve faster speeds, but Ethernet is quickly becoming a more important tool in the broadband marketing arsenal.

With phone companies pricing EoC service from several hundred to several thousand dollars a month, depending on the speed of the connection, they hope to remain competitive players against a push by the cable industry to more aggressively target business customers.  In more rural areas, phone companies lack cable competition, so they stand a better chance of success.

Fierce Telecom‘s Sean Buckley published an excellent series of articles outlining the current state of EoC technology and what phone companies are doing with it:

• AT&T: Inherited EoC from its acquisition of BellSouth, and barely markets it. Instead, AT&T uses it as a quiet solution for challenging customers who cannot affordably be reached by fiber.  AT&T will either deliver the service over copper, copper/fiber, or an all-fiber path depending on the client’s needs.
• CenturyLink: No phone company is as aggressive about EoC as CenturyLink. When CenturyLink acquired Qwest, interest in the technology only intensified. EoC is a CenturyLink favorite for small businesses that simply cannot get the speeds they need from traditional DSL.  Most EoC service runs up to 20Mbps.
• Verizon: Verizon’s network is the most fiber-intense among large commercial providers, so EoC is not the first choice for the company. However, it does use it to reach multi-site businesses who have buildings and offices outside of the footprint of Verizon’s fiber network/service area.
• Frontier: In the regions where Frontier acquired Verizon landlines, EoC has become an important component for Frontier’s backhaul traffic. EoC has been deployed to reach cell tower sites and handles broadband traffic between central office exchanges and remote D-SLAMs, used to let the company sell DSL to a more rural customer base.  Frontier looks to EoC before considering spending money on fiber service, even for commercial and institutional users.
• Windstream: EoC is the way this phone company gets better broadband speeds to business customers without spending a lot of money on fiber. Small and medium-sized customers are often buyers of EoC service, especially when DSL can’t handle the job or the company requires faster upstream speeds.  Windstream markets upgradable EoC capable of delivering the same downstream and upstream speeds and can deliver it more quickly than a fiber project.
• FairPoint: Much of this phone company’s EoC efforts are in territories in northern New England acquired from Verizon.  FairPoint targets small and medium sized companies for the service, especially those who have remote offices or clinics that need to be interconnected. FairPoint has also gotten more aggressive than many other companies working with ADSL2+ or VDSL2 to deliver faster broadband to office buildings and complexes more economically than fiber.
• SureWest: This company is strong believer in fiber to the premises service, so its interest in EoC has been limited to areas where deploying fiber makes little economic sense. In more out-of-the-way places, EoC is becoming a more common choice to pitch businesses who need more than traditional broadband.
• Hawaiian Telcom: HawTel uses copper-based EoC to provide connectivity across the diverse Hawaiian Islands.  Speeds are generally lower than in mainland areas, partly because HawTel still relies heavily on traditional copper-based service. But fiber-based EoC is increasingly available in more densely populated areas.

AT&T increases upgrade fee. (Photo courtesy: Engadget)

AT&T has announced it is doubling the price of its equipment upgrade fee, now charging $36 when a customer activates a new phone on their wireless account.

Our regular reader Scott sent word AT&T raised the upgrade fee Feb. 12, from $18 to $36, to “cover their costs. ” The fee now matches that charged by Sprint.

From AT&T’s official statement:

Wireless devices today are more sophisticated than ever before. And because of that, the costs associated with upgrading to a new device have increased and is reflected in our new upgrade fee. This fee isn’t unique to AT&T and this is the first time we’re changing it in nearly 10 years.

Wireless companies in North America encourage more frequent phone upgrades because of their business model: pitching subsidized phones in return for a two-year contract commitment, along with higher-priced service plans which gradually recoup the cost of the subsidy.

Consumers who hang on to their phones longer than two years continue to pay higher prices for service plans designed for those who always upgrade phones every two years at contract renewal time.  Phone companies also prefer customers who live under a term contract because they are less likely to switch providers.

In the past, loyal customers not only received extra incentives and discounts when they renewed their contracts, they also had these kinds of service fees waived.  No more.  Most companies have discontinued extra upgrade discounts for existing customers and increasingly refuse to waive service and equipment fees.

AT&T’s vision for 21st century broadband will not extend beyond the 30 million homes that can or will soon be able to access the company’s fiber-to-the-neighborhood service U-verse.

Speaking on an investor’s conference call to discuss 4th quarter earnings results, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson announced the expansion of its fiber to the neighborhood service is now effectively over.

“Our U-verse build is now largely complete, so we have in place an IP video and broadband platform that reaches 30 million customer locations, which gives us significant headroom now to drive penetration,” Stephenson said.

In practical terms, Stephenson’s announcement means AT&T will continue work on building its U-verse platform in cities where the service is already available, but other areas are unlikely to see an introduction to the service anytime soon.  AT&T President John Stark originally envisioned U-verse for 30 million homes and that vision remains unchanged today.

AT&T’s news for its rural customers is worse.  The company admits it has run out of ideas how to provide rural broadband to its landline customers.

“We have been apprehensive on moving, doing anything on rural access lines because the issue here is, do you have a broadband product for rural America?,” Stephenson said. “And we’ve all been trying to find a broadband solution that was economically viable to get out to rural America and we’re not finding one to be quite candid.”

If you can buy it at any price

Stephenson was hoping LTE 4G wireless service could provide a rural broadband solution, a central theme in AT&T’s lobbying campaign for a buyout of T-Mobile, since abandoned.

“That having been set aside, now we’re looking at rural America and asking, what’s the broadband solution? We don’t have one right now,” Stephenson said.

Stephenson earlier told a July meeting of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners that DSL, the most common form of broadband in rural America, was “obsolete.”

The two announcements immediately raised questions in South Carolina and Georgia where AT&T and other telecommunications companies are fiercely lobbying for restrictions on community-owned broadband.

Broadband advocates in both states are wondering why the company is spending money trying to stop other broadband projects while not spending on building better broadband service in those areas themselves.