West Virginia’s broadband future is up for hot debate in the state legislature as Internet haves and have nots fight over whether the state should spend money to bring broadband to those lacking it or improve service for those that do.

House Bill 2979, a bill to expand the broadband purview of the West Virginia Infrastructure and Jobs Development Council, has turned into one of the most contentious bills before the legislature this term. An amendment to redefine what speeds represent “broadband” and requiring the council to prioritize efforts on unserved areas has sparked the most debate.

Sen. Robert Plymale (D-Cabell) introduced and won support for an amendment that would discard the current provider-favored standard defining a community as “served” if customers can buy at least 200kbps service. Plymale favors adopting the federal broadband speed standard — 4/1Mbps as the bare minimum. Plymale also wants the state to devote most of its resources to getting broadband to rural areas that do not have the service today.

“If you’re going to compete in this world today, you have to have access,” Plymale told lawmakers. “Access has to be the number one item, and this amendment allows access to be the priority.”

Plymale

But other lawmakers representing constituents in communities that already have broadband, but receive inadequate speed and service, objected to Plymale’s amendment.

Sen. Herb Snyder (D-Jefferson) claims Plymale’s amendment would restrict the council’s ability to manage broadband resources and require it to spend most of its funding on wiring smaller communities at the cost of service upgrades that could reach more people. Approximately 85,000 West Virginians still have no broadband access other than satellite.

“It’s entirely appropriate to use taxpayer dollars to help and assist people to get broadband service and get on the information superhighway rather than upgrading those already on it,” argued Sen. Mitch Carmichael (R-Jackson), who also happens to also be an employee of Frontier Communications.

Much of the state’s broadband infrastructure spending has been devoted to institutional and middle mile networks that consumers and small businesses cannot directly access. Spending on “last mile” infrastructure makes the difference between getting broadband service or being told it is unavailable.

But Sen. Snyder argues satellite broadband already offers access to the entire state, so broadband speed improvements were more important.

“As we speak the entirety of West Virginia is bathed in 5Mbps satellite broadband service,” Snyder said. “So we’re already surpassing that standard in the entire state, unless you’re in a cave where you can’t get the signal.”

Getting the best broadband bang for the buck was a priority for Sen. Clark Barnes (R-Randolph). He wanted to make sure any amendment would not prevent the council from spending money in areas where satellite service was available.

“If we have 10 folks up in Possum Hollow that have no access to broadband, would they receive priority over the thousand people who only have 2Mbps service?” he said.

The answer would seem to be yes under Plymale’s amendment.

More than six months after Hurricane Sandy did her handiwork on coastal New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, hundreds of residents are still getting phone bills from Verizon for phone and Internet service they have been without since Halloween.

Most of the outages are around the Ocean Bay development in Far Rockaway, south of Brooklyn.

For thousands of residents, the only regular communication from Verizon every month arrives in the form of a bill.

“I need that phone to make phone calls for an ambulance or long distance or the police department,” Geraldine Jones, president of the development’s tenant association, told the Daily News. “We’re tired of being without our landlines. It’s terrible. They’ve got the nerve to send me a bill every month. I’m frustrated and angry. It’s not fair. It’s not right.”

WNYC Radio reports local politicians are now getting involved in Verizon’s half-year landline outages on Far Rockaway. (1 minute)
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Verizon’s response has mostly been shrugged shoulders and no firm estimate of when service will be repaired.

“Verizon is working closely with the New York City Housing Authority and together we have made good progress in restoring service to residents to of the Ocean Bay apartment complex,” company spokesman Phil Santoro retorted in a statement. “By the end of this month, we will begin restoring service to all those who live in the complex from 54th to 59th streets on our brand new state-of-the-art fiber optic network.”

But that means some of Verizon’s customers will have been without phone service for more than half a year.

“It shouldn’t take six months,” said City Councilman Donovan Richards. “Some of these people don’t have cell phones. They’re elderly. It’s a public safety issue.”

WNYC’s Brian Lehrer Show takes a close look at telecom outages after Hurricane Sandy. (17 minutes)
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AT&T continues its quest to make landline service a really bad deal with the introduction of a new bill-padding fee that wireless customers will not have to pay.

AT&T’s $1.99 “Tennessee Regulatory Inspection Fee” appeared on customer bills in March, much to the surprise of customers.

“My regular service is only 22 bucks,” Charles “Buck” Meyer told the Chattanooga Times Free Press. “If they add $2 to it, that’s almost a 10 percent increase. I’ve been on the fence about switching off my landline for some months, and this could be the thing that pushes me over the edge.”

AT&T says it is entitled to recoup the money it pays to the Tennessee Regulatory Authority. The $1.99 fee appearing on March bills is a “one-time” fee until AT&T figures out how much it plans to charge customers on an ongoing basis. Most companies subject to TRA fees build them into the monthly cost of the service. AT&T is the only phone company in the state to break the fee out on the bill and collect the money separately.

In 2009, when the company lobbied for widespread deregulation of phone bills in Tennessee, it claimed deregulation would not bring about increased rates.

Meyer does not see it that way. He considers AT&T’s new fee a stealth rate hike.

“Slip a little line item on there that’s just a couple bucks and is a one-time deal,” he told the newspaper. “Then pretty soon it’s on there every month.”

The new fee is permitted because of a 2009 change in Tennessee’s statutes that now allow companies to pass along regulatory fees on customer bills.

Companies like AT&T heavily lobbied for statewide deregulation of telephone bills that year, and spent $180,000 in campaign contributions to lawmakers, their political action committees or party organizations. AT&T hired at least 20 lobbyists to help push deregulation through the Tennessee legislature. Critics of the bill warned its passage would lead to rate increases, something AT&T denied at the time.

AT&T Tennessee president Geoff Morton told the Times Free Press back in 2009, “the company needs to compete with rivals and is not interested in raising rates.”

AT&T refused to say how much it will collect from the new fee, but Morton said the company is now lobbying for another law that would gut the fees AT&T pays to the TRA to oversee the quality of phone service in the state.

“In the previous administration, telecommunications inspection fees increased despite a dramatic decrease in telecommunications services regulated by the commission,” AT&T spokesman Bob Corney told the newspaper. “We are hopeful that legislation will pass this session to reduce the regulatory burden on landline telephone customers in Tennessee.”

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WMC Memphis ATT Mystery Fee 3-21-13.mp4[/flv]

WMC’s “Ask Andy” segment has some non-answers from AT&T about their new $1.99 “regulatory authority inspection fee.” When the Memphis consumer reporter called AT&T, the company said, “no comment.”(1 minute)

Data caps protect incumbent big studio and network content creators at the expense of independent producers and others challenging conventional entertainment business models.

That was the conclusion of several writers and producers at a communications policy forum hosted by Public Knowledge, a consumer group fighting for an open Internet.

A representative from the Writers Guild of America West noted that cord-cutting paid cable TV service has become real and measurable because consumers have a robust online viewing alternative for the first time. John Vezina, the Guild’s political director, noted how Americans watch television is transitioning towards on-demand viewing.

New types of short-form programming and commissioned series for online content providers like Netflix are also changing the video entertainment model.

Welch: It is about the money.

But a digital roadblock erected by some of the nation’s largest broadband providers is interfering with that viewing shift: the data cap.

Data caps place artificial limits on how much a customer can use their Internet connection without either being shut off or finding overlimit fees attached to their monthly bill. Critics contend usage caps and consumption billing discourage online viewing — one of the most bandwidth intensive applications on the Internet. With broadband providers like Time Warner Cable, AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast also in the business of selling television packages, cord-cutting can directly impact providers’ bottom lines.

Providers have traditionally claimed that usage limits are about preserving network resources and fairness to other customers. But Time Warner Cable admits they exist as a money-making scheme.

Rachel Welch, vice president of federal legislative affairs at Time Warner Cable, says the cable company is not worried about limiting data consumption. It considers monetizing that consumption more important.

“We want our customers to buy as much of the product as possible,” Welch told PC World. “The goal of companies is to make money.”

Time Warner now offers customers a choice of unlimited service or a $5 discount if customers keep their monthly usage under 5GB, but some worry that is only a prelude to introducing expanded usage limits on a larger number of customers in the future.

For many consumers already hard-pressed by high broadband bills, worrying about exceeding a data allowance and paying even more may keep viewers from watching too much content online.

For that reason, Vezina called data caps “anti-innovation.”

“It hurts consumers [and] it hurts creators who want to get as much out to the public in as many ways” as possible, he said.

Public Knowledge has become increasingly critical of data caps in the last two years. The organization has questioned how ISP’s decide what constitutes a ‘fair’ usage limit and criticized inaccurate usage meters that could potentially trigger penalties and overlimit fees.

Time Warner Cable subscribers in Wisconsin are facing the third rate increase since October 2012.

The cable operator has announced a $3/month rate hike for most television packages — a four percent increase for those with the popular digital variety package.

Time Warner blamed increasing programming costs in a notice attached to this month’s cable bills. The company defended the increase, stating the rate rise was half of what it could have been if the cable company tried to recoup all the programming costs incurred over the last year.

Customers facing higher cable bills and still paying regular prices should consider our advice on winning a lower rate from the company. With just 10 minutes, our readers are saving $20-50 a month on Time Warner Cable services with attractive customer retention deals.

In October, Time Warner announced it was introducing a cable modem rental fee of $3.95 a month. In November, the company raised rates on its converter boxes by $1.05 a month. The latest rate increase for cable television takes effect next month.

 Thanks to Stop the Cap! reader Nkundinshuti in Milwaukee for sending word.