Customers don’t care who wins, because they don’t need faster broadband, claims Bright House Networks.

Bright House Networks thinks customers do not need or want faster broadband speeds and have no plans to match newly-announced speed increases offered by its competitor Verizon FiOS.

The cable operator, which serves central Florida, is downplaying the importance of Verizon’s upgraded service which will bring 300Mbps broadband to cities like Orlando and Tampa.

“Research indicates that the vast majority of customers do not have interest in these types of speeds for their homes, not to mention the potential expense,” Bright House spokesman Joe Durkin told the Tampa Bay Times. “Our network can deliver these speeds if we felt there was a residential market for it.”

Bright House speeds currently max out at 40Mbps. The cable operator says customers seeking faster service won’t face the sticker shock Verizon delivers for their fastest speed package, which comes in at $200 a month. Bright House sells its fastest package at “an additional $15 or $30 a month,” Durkin said.

Durkin believes most consumers can survive just fine with a slower speed package, even with multiple wireless devices sharing the connection.

“Whether you are downloading music or streaming video to your laptop or iPad, you can do it all with Road Runner Lightning,” he said.

Bright House retains the Road Runner brand for its broadband service that Time Warner Cable retired earlier this year. Bright House has partnered with Time Warner to handle programming and certain other contract negotiations.

Wi-Fi access is about to become a lot more ubiquitous if you happen to buy broadband from Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cablevision, Bright House Networks, or Cox.  All five companies on Monday announced they will open up their free Wi-Fi hotspots to customers of any of these companies nationwide.

The collaborative agreement extends the authentication platforms cable operators use to verify customer accounts when granting access to services like TV Everywhere — the online video streaming services operated by pay television providers. By sharing basic account information, customers traveling outside of their home cable service area can “roam” on free Wi-Fi networks operated by the other providers.

For example, a Cablevision subscriber who lives on Long Island will be able to access Bright House Networks’ Wi-Fi in central Florida or Time Warner Cable’s growing wireless network in Los Angeles.

The cable industry calls it a back door entry into mobile data, and unlike its existing partnership with Clearwire for WiMAX 4G service, Wi-Fi hotspots are available at no additional charge.

“We believe that Wi-Fi is a superior approach to mobile data,” said Kristin Dolan, head of projects at Cablevision. “Cable providers are best positioned to build the highest-capacity national network offering customers fast and reliable Internet connections when away from their home or business broadband service.”

More than 50,000 Wi-Fi hotspots are to be included in the project, all unified under the name “CableWiFi.”

Eventually, the companies hope to unveil automatic log-ins on the network, regardless of where customers access it.

The industry is aggressively expanding Wi-Fi services to give subscribers another reason to stick with their local cable company. Some may require customers to maintain both a cable-TV subscription and broadband to qualify for the service, others will only require a current broadband account. The free add-on may also make subscribers think twice about canceling service if it means losing access.

Comcast, Cablevision, and Time Warner Cable already have a deal in place to share their networks in southwestern Connecticut, New York City, parts of New Jersey and Philadelphia.

Cable operators will target high-traffic areas for Wi-Fi expansion — especially public parks, beaches, malls, eateries, stadiums and convention centers.  Don’t expect cable Wi-Fi to be common in residential neighborhoods, and users will have to temper their expectations. Most provide access suitable for web browsing and e-mail, but often have trouble keeping up with streaming video and other high bandwidth services.

Last fall, our regular reader Scott wrote us about recent rate increases Bright House Networks imposed on broadband-only customers: $50/month for Internet access.  He learned from Stop the Cap! that a virtually identical, but lesser-known provider was ready and willing to provide six months of essentially equivalent Internet service for $20 less a month.

If your new customer promotion with Bright House or Time Warner Cable has ended, Earthlink can deliver essentially equivalent cable Internet service for $29.99 a month for six months. You do not receive the Powerboost temporary speed jump or a Road Runner/Bright House e-mail account, but you do save $120 over the promotional period.

Scott’s six month promotion with Earthlink was almost up, so he started calling Bright House looking for a returning customer promotion from them, and ran into a brick wall.

A Bright House promotion from a third party reseller

“Corporate wouldn’t budge,” Scott shares. “Two people kept giving me the run-around and excuses.”

“I was able to make the switch back to Bright House from Earthlink to keep my $30 a month promotional price for a second consecutive six month period,” Scott explains. “[But] I had to call an authorized [reseller] to give me the price as a ‘new customer.'”

But it wasn’t easy.  Involving third party resellers can become complicated because those independent businesses rely on commissions earned when new customers sign up.  An existing cable customer bouncing between providers may not be eligible for a commission, and can stall the switching process.

Scott spent an hour on the phone with Bright House getting them to apply the promotion to his account.

In general, Time Warner Cable customers have been able to bounce between new customer promotions from Earthlink and the cable company and back again without too much trouble.  Time Warner’s own promotion offers $29.99 a month Internet for a year, which is actually better than Earthlink’s six month deal.  Do a Google search for “Bright House promotions” and you will find third-party resellers all pitching six months of Bright House broadband service for $29.99 a month.

We recommend calling providers directly to establish service where possible, and if they refuse, you can always threaten to walk.  Providers become a little more willing to deal if you’re prepared to pull the plug.

Bright House Networks Thursday switched on a huge network of free Wi-Fi hotspots for its broadband customers across central Florida.  Concentrated on coastal beach communities in eastern Florida and in the cities of Orlando, Tampa, and St. Petersburg, the new Wi-Fi service can be found on beaches and parks, inside malls and shopping destinations, downtown business districts, and medical facilities across their Florida service area.

Bright House Networks Wi-Fi Coverage Map

Existing Bright House broadband customers can log in and use the service for free:

• Most wireless devices will display available networks. If the device doesn’t show networks, open the network options and select My BrightHouse or Bright House Networks.
• Open the Internet browser of your choice.
• When the WiFi HotZones page opens, click ‘log in’ under Bright House Road Runner Customer.
• Log in using Road Runner email and password or My Services credentials.
• Agree to the terms of use and connect to the WiFi network.

Non-customers can purchase access with a credit card in increments of as little as three hours.  Stop the Cap! readers in central Florida report speed test results of around 5/1Mbps from many of the Wi-Fi locations, which is much better than many other publicly available Wi-Fi networks.

Bright House says it has launched the Wi-Fi service to help customers hang on to their usage-limited mobile broadband allowances.

“We’re trying to save our customers money, time and energy,” Bright House spokesman Donald Forbes said.  “Plus, Wi-Fi is so much faster and such a better connection.”

Cable provider-delivered Wi-Fi is often used by the industry as a customer retention tool and goodwill gesture.  It typically uses the company’s pre-existing broadband infrastructure, which keeps costs low.

Bright House is soliciting customer feedback about possible new locations for future Wi-Fi hotspots.  The company plans to add at least 2,000 additional hotspots by the end of this year.

[flv width=”640″ height=”500″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Bright House launches major Wi-Fi initiative 1-12-12.flv[/flv]

Bright House produced this informational video introducing its Wi-Fi service.  (2 minutes)

Time Warner Cable has opened up access to HBO GO and Max GO to all customers who subscribe to the premium movie channels.  A brief beta test for Time Warner’s super-premium Signature Home customers concluded earlier this week and the service is now available to all.

Stop the Cap! tested the HBO GO service earlier today and can report the service is up and running for Time Warner customers.

HBO GO's current movie selection includes a number of older titles.

The most cumbersome part of both services is the authentication process.  Graceful it is not.  Customers have to start their journey at either the HBO or Cinemax “TV Everywhere” portal, select their cable operator, and then get prompted to authenticate their cable TV service.  Time Warner’s authentication process makes this especially confusing by notifying customers not to use their bill payment service account username and password.  Instead, customers are told to use login credentials for the cable company’s customer information and authentication portal — My Services.  It is easy to get confused which username and password to use.  If you do not have a “My Services” account, the registration process is even more tedious, because you have to wait for confirmation e-mail messages and hunt down a current cable bill, if you receive one in the mail at all.

Having registered for other TV Everywhere services from Time Warner Cable before, it was more than a little annoying going through the same process all over again for HBO.  HBO and Max GO also require the subscriber to choose a username and password on those sites as well, which means yet another account and password to remember.  After about 10 minutes of the irritating multi-step process, access was finally granted.

HBO Go currently has 230 movies available for instant viewing, a large number of which are hardly recent.  The 1953 version of Titanic, for example.  Really?  Oh, God with George Burns and John Denver, the 1979 please-edit-me snoozefest Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and all three Back to the Future movies seemed like a lot of dated filler material for a $15 a month premium movie channel.  Better offerings were found under the series, specials, and comedy categories which delivered a full library of a number of HBO productions, as well as current events shows like Real Time with Bill Maher.  (The latter only included a handful of episodes from the current season and some earlier editions.)

Our biggest trouble came when we tried playing from the menu of titles.  This is no Netflix.  We found picture quality often lacking, with plainly visible screen anomalies, and the stream was interrupted several times for buffering.  Either pent-up demand for HBO Go is causing Time Warner customers to pound the service during the business day, or HBO needs to beef up its server capacity. We did several speed tests and found our connection stable at 30/5Mbps, so this was not a Time Warner Cable broadband problem.

The best part about HBO and Cinemax GO is that it comes free with subscriptions to one or both channels.  We’d have a hard time justifying paying extra for the current online viewing experience.  It also remains ironic that Time Warner Cable executives continue to foster a desire to implement Internet Overcharging schemes like usage caps and/or consumption billing while encouraging customers to consume more bandwidth with online video services such as these.

Time Warner Cable partner Bright House Networks is anticipated to launch both services themselves shortly.