Bright House Networks customers now have access to more than 100 channels of online video entertainment thanks to the cable company’s release of Bright House TV, a new free app for the Apple iPad.

Essentially a rebranded version of Time Warner Cable’s TWCable TV app, Bright House TV comes with the exact same restrictions that have peeved more than a few Time Warner customers trying to use it:

• You must have a minimum of Bright House Networks’ Digital-Basic Cable TV service to watch;
• You must use your Bright House-supplied Internet connection to access the service on your home’s Wi-Fi connection;
• The service will not work outside of your home, over alternative Internet connections, or through your smartphone;
• You cannot currently access the service on any device other than an iPad.

For customers who do manage to meet all of these conditions, many report they are satisfied with the performance of the app.

“A great 1.0 version, acts as advertises, and HD looks great on the iPad,” says Bright House customer Chris McGonigal. “I would like to see fullscreen option (even though it cuts image), and the ability to hide the Status bar at the top. Also a favorite channels list, which kind of works with channel history.”

One other thing Bright House customers have in common with Time Warner Cable — they are still waiting for HBO Go, too.

“Here’s to seeing HBO Go on BHN next,” he adds.

Most cable operators are doing a better job of providing telephone service than traditional telephone companies, according to a new J.D. Power and Associates survey.

Among the worst providers across all regions were Frontier Communications, which scored dead last in the East and North Central regions, and cable operator Charter Communications, which won the lowest score overall for service in the western United States.  Cox delivered the most consistently reliable service across three of the four regions it serves, although it was beaten by Bright House Networks in the south.

The results:

The study measured customer satisfaction with both local and long distance telephone service in four regions throughout the United States. Five factors were examined to determine overall satisfaction: performance and reliability; cost of service; billing; offerings and promotions; and customer service.

Satisfaction with performance and reliability-the most influential factor contributing to overall satisfaction-has declined by 6 percent to an average of 7.4 (on a 10-point scale) in 2011 from 7.9 in 2011. Within this factor, satisfaction with the service provider’s ability to keep outages to a minimum has experienced the greatest decline.

“The brutal winter weather that plagued much of the country clearly took a toll on service levels,” said Frank Perazzini, director of telecommunications at J.D. Power and Associates. “In fact, the proportion of customers who contacted customer service to report an outage jumped to 21 percent in 2011 from 12 percent in 2010.”

According to Perazzini, a key driver for mitigating losses in satisfaction due to outages is effectively managing customer expectations regarding service restoration. On average, customers who experience an outage are advised that service will be restored within 30 hours, while actual service restoration time averages 25 hours. Overall satisfaction among customers whose service was restored approximately three hours earlier than the time quoted by the service provider averages 705 on a 1,000-point scale. In comparison, among customers whose service was restored three hours after the estimate given by the provider, satisfaction averages 591.

The study also finds that among customers who use an alternative phone service (for example, cellular or Internet service, rather than wireline), the proportion who replace wireline telephone calls with cell phone calls, texts and email remains relatively unchanged in 2011, compared with 2010. However, use of Internet calling services such as Skype or Vonage has increased to 21 percent in 2011 from 16 percent in 2010. Customers who use Internet calling services are significantly less satisfied with their telephone provider (622 on average, which is 14 index points below the industry average of 636) and are more likely to switch telephone providers (23% vs. the industry average of 16%).

Last Tuesday, Bright House Networks suffered the worst outage in the company’s history, knocking out cable, broadband, and telephone service for over one million Tampa Bay-area customers.

Bright House customers from the beachfront to Lakeland to Spring Hill were forced to rely on cellphones for much of the day.  The company’s own 24-hour news channel, Bay News 9, couldn’t keep their Florida viewers informed about the outage, because that channel went dark as well.

Company officials blamed a software glitch for the series of progressive failures which began after 10:30am and were not repaired until later that evening.

Although Pinellas County’s 911 system remained in operation, Bright House customers couldn’t call the number from their Bright House “digital phone” line.

While customers without broadband or cable TV service were left bored during the outage, Bright House’s business customers without telephone service incurred real losses, unable to process credit card transactions or receive business calls.

Bright House has no plans to issue automatic refunds for the day without service, but WTSP-TV reports customers can directly request three days’ credit for the outage:

1. Send an e-mail to Bright House Networks using their online form.
2. Cut and paste the following into the “Describe your issue or concern” box: I am writing to request credit for Tuesday’s (9/6/11) service outage affecting phone, Internet, and cable-TV.  As seen on WTSP-TV and Facebook, I am requesting three days’ credit that Bright House representatives have offered other customers. Please credit my account.
3. Hit submit.  A credit should be issued within 48 hours, to appear on your next billing statement.  The amount of the credit will vary, depending on the number of services you receive.

[flv width=”540″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Bright House Outage 9-6-11.flv[/flv]

Bright House Networks’ worst-outage-in-history was a major news story in the Tampa Bay-St. Petersburg area.  Watch a selection of stories from WFTS, WTVT, WFLA, and WTSP-TV.  (9 minutes)

Frontier Communications customers in North Escambia have spent a very frustrating summer trying to use Frontier’s Internet service.  The phone company has left their Internet customers in Walnut Hill, Bratt, Molino and Atmore (Ala.) offline from at least six major outages since June, often lasting as long as 12 hours at a time.

“This is happening way too often, with no reimbursement for not having the service,” says Frontier customer Susan. “It is crazy to pay as much as we do for dinosaur equipment. I was being charged for High Speed Max for over three years and was actually only getting 756kbps. When we found this out, they only gave me credit for half of what they were overcharging me.”

Frontier Communications blamed AT&T for the latest outage, which lasted nearly eight hours.

Escambia County, Fla.

Karen Miller, spokesperson for Frontier, said the outage occurred when an AT&T fiber line was cut near Bay Minette, interrupting the connection between Atmore and Atlanta.

Miller admitted Frontier has just a single strand of fiber optic cable for their Panhandle customers.  When something happens to that fiber, there is no backup and service goes offline… for everyone.

Without redundancy, Internet customers are at the mercy of AT&T, and any contracting work done between Atlanta and Atmore.  That’s a major problem for some Frontier customers.

“If Atmore and Northwest Florida is managed with only a single cable and the [connection] point of this service is at Bay Minette, Atmore is in bigger trouble than they know,” writes JimD.

Bay Minette is vulnerable to serious Gulf hurricanes.

Customers were also not happy to learn Frontier was largely blaming AT&T, particularly as some customers pay Frontier upwards of $50 a month for less than 1Mbps service that has failed them at least a half-dozen times in the past 90 days.

“Frontier routinely gives high cost deficient service and holds a monopoly on the local market,” writes one local customer. “It is nearly impossible for businesses to find another option. It’s a case of mind over matter: they don’t mind so we don’t matter.”

Miller says Frontier is currently conducting an engineering study to get a backup fiber route from Atmore to Atlanta, but for some customers it is too late.

“We switched to Bright House Networks for both Internet and landline service,” says another customer. “It’s better quality, less expensive and it works. No more Frontier-anything for us.”

These kinds of testimonials help fuel our fight on behalf of consumers for better (and cheaper) broadband:

Hi Guys,

I don’t usually take the time to write thank you’s, but I found your site the other day and managed to save over $20 on my cable bill by switching to ”Earthlink” which I had no idea was possible. When I signed up with Bright House I was promised the $45 a month price for standard Internet, but I signed up a day before their prices jumped to $50. I managed to fight to get my price down for $45, but all of a sudden that stopped and they were refusing to give me the price I signed up for, for the remainder of the year. Due to that, I switched to the Earthlink promo prices and got Bright House to switch me over. They tried to lie to me on the phone to make me think I couldn’t get the Earthlink promo pricing, but I won the argument and am now very happy.

In six months, I’ll try to switch back to Road Runner and get their promo prices.

This is such a hidden unknown gem and has saved my family lots of money. Thank you!

— Scott

Thanks Scott.  Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks have Earthlink as a hidden little secret most customers know nothing about.  It’s an arrangement that started way back in 2001 with the now-long-forgotten (and broken up) merger between AOL and Time Warner.  A voluntary agreement to allow third party ISPs to sell broadband service over Time Warner Cable has been ongoing ever since, even though customers would routinely find Earthlink’s regular prices not so exciting, if they found them at all.

The Earthlink savings are best realized for broadband-only customers who do not want to get tied down with a double or triple-play package from their cable company.  Both Time Warner Cable and Bright House charge considerably higher prices for standalone broadband service.  It’s part of a marketing tactic to convince you better savings are possible with a bundled service package.  But if you don’t care about the phone line or cable TV, why pay for either?

For every third-party ISP we’ve encountered reselling service on Time Warner Cable or Bright House, it seems mostly an exercise in branding.  For example, Earthlink’s standard and “turbo” products are totally identical to Road Runner offered by both cable companies, with two important distinctions:

• You do not get the benefit of SpeedBoost, a temporary speed increase during the first few seconds of a file transfer;
• You are assigned an Earthlink e-mail address, not one from Bright House or Time Warner Cable.

In fact, Earthlink as a company seems to be running mostly on auto-pilot these days.  We found their website woefully outdated, still selling speeds upgraded several years ago. If Bright House locally sells 10/1Mbps standard Road Runner service and Earthlink offers 7Mbps with a 384kbps upload speed, you will actually get 10/1Mbps from Earthlink as well.  The only difference is the name of the service as it appears on your monthly Time Warner Cable or Bright House bill.  Both cable companies literally just select Earthlink from a drop-down menu on the customer service computer screen.  All service calls and billing are handled by the cable companies.  If you need technical support, however, it will come from an overseas call center or online “chat” platform Earthlink runs.  But Earthlink includes something Time Warner Cable and Bright House customers lost several years ago — up to 20 hours a month of free dial-up usage when away from home.

After the Six Month Promotion….

Earthlink charges $29.99 a month for speeds that are identical to Time Warner Cable or Bright House’s Road Runner Standard service.  In most areas this is or will soon be 10/1Mbps.  Turbo, which usually increases speeds to 15/1Mbps, costs another $10 a month.  These promotional prices are good for six months.

When the six months are up, you are then qualified to participate in whatever New Customer Promotions Time Warner and Bright House are running for their broadband service.  We are commonly seeing offers of $29.99 a month for a year of standard Road Runner service in upstate New York, with occasional offers of a year of free Road Runner Turbo service thrown in.  Assuming those prices remain in effect, you should be able to secure at least 1.5 years of broadband service for $30 a month.  Remember, if your cable company charges you a modem rental fee, consider investing in your own to save that additional charge.  They are priced well under $100.

When your six months of Earthlink and a year of Time Warner/Bright House promotional pricing is up, simply threaten to take your business elsewhere, and you will usually find them willing to extend the promotion for an additional year.  If not, schedule a cancellation date two weeks out and wait for an inevitable phone call from the customer retentions department with a special “winback” offer.

Also remember you can always start new service under the name of a spouse or family member.  Third party resellers (Google “Time Warner Cable “and pay attention to the online ads) may even throw in a prepaid rebate card for signing up for service through them, so shop around when the promotions expire.

These shopping tips may apply to other cable broadband providers as well.  Remember, if your local phone company is now providing more than traditional DSL, most cable companies will go out of their way to hang on to a customer threatening to walk to AT&T U-verse or Verizon FiOS.  Let them fight to keep you as a customer, and you keep the savings.