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.

Broadband life in Frankford, Greenbrier County, W.V. may be slow, but few customers of Frontier Communications thought things could get even slower.  And then they did.

Stop the Cap! reader DJ has been frustrated with the performance of his phone company — Frontier, that took control of Verizon’s landline network across the state.  Verizon rarely got the hopes up for customers waiting more than a decade for broadband service to reach them.  Dana Waldo, Frontier’s senior vice president and general manager did, telling West Virginians Frontier would propel the Mountain State from its current rank of 47th in the country to the top 5.  Achieving that goal seems unlikely when the company quietly reduces some customers’ broadband speeds.

“We are on the High Speed Max plan which gives us, or should I say gave us 3.5Mbps,” DJ shares.  Although his phone line supported that speed, Frontier’s congested network could not, especially at night when speeds dropped dramatically.  It took several months for Frontier to upgrade local facilities in the county to better manage the broadband demands of customers who pay $110 a month for DSL and phone service.

Frontier representatives promised the Pocahontas Times further upgrades were on the way by February of 2011, DJ says. February came and went and promised speeds of 5Mbps never arrived and Frontier representatives told DJ they didn’t know a thing about a 5Mbps broadband plan.

Fast forward to last spring: Frontier’s website suddenly advertised speeds up to 12Mbps.

“I first contacted them through their Twitter account and was told I could receive 8Mbps, went through all the processes and a few days later I was told I [already] had the maximum speed available for my area and nothing was ever done,” DJ writes.

The Phantom “Network Upgrades” List

More discouraging to DJ was the surprise appearance of a Network Upgrades listing on the company’s website that again promised better days for customers in states like West Virginia.

“The geniuses at Frontier listed us as Frankfort instead of Frankford but either way we were listed to get upgrades at the end of [this past] November,” DJ says. “The date came, the date passed. Never once did I see a Frontier truck out working. I still found myself [with] 3.5Mbps and after being lied to about upgrades for the third time in a few years I was ticked.”

Frontier representatives would later wonder where DJ obtained the Network Upgrades list, which has since disappeared from the company’s website.  Stop the Cap! has an archived copy here (PDF).

The worst part of DJ’s story came on Jan. 24, when Frontier reduced his speed from 3.5Mbps to 1.3Mbps without notice or explanation.  Frontier, the phone company that provides free speed decreases for customers, is not part of any marketing plan DJ knows about, so he began calling the company for answers.

“I was told my speed would be fixed when “upgrades” were complete,” DJ reports. Later that day, after a series of complaint calls, his old speed returned, leaving him right where he started in 2010.

“There is no excuse for that kind of treatment and it has been going on for years,” DJ says. “It’s a shame we can’t get anything else; Suddenlink literally stops serving just down the road with 10Mbps service — sad.”

[Updated 3/26 2:31pm ET:  Changed piece to reflect unincorporated Frankford is actually in Greenbrier County, not Pocahontas.]

 

The city of Savannah, Georgia is at the mercy of Comcast Cable, and city officials and local residents are fed up with high bills, the “don’t care” attitude from customer service, and cable and broadband that fails repeatedly, sometimes extending for weeks.

The fervor came to a head in December when city council had accumulated more than 150 complaints from local residents, deciding public hearings were warranted to deal with the city’s dominant cable company, Comcast.

“Comcast Destroyed My House”

Diana Thibodoux called Comcast to deal with a cable issue in her Ardsley Park home and never expected the service call would turn into an expensive nightmare.

Thibodoux says the Comcast technician who showed up decided on his own to rewire the house for cable and began drilling through brick and expensive plaster, stringing easily visible black coaxial cable along outside walls, inside baseboards and up over doors, all in plain sight.

“My house looks like a frat house,” Thibodoux complained to Comcast officials who were on hand to listen to customer complaints at the first of four public “town hall” meetings.

“I’ve never dealt with a company so incompetent,” another local resident said.

[flv width=”640″ height=”500″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WTOC Savannah Ive never dealt with a company so incompetent 2-6-12.mp4[/flv]

WTOC in Savannah shares the horror story of Diana Thibodoux, who says Comcast destroyed her house thanks to an overzealous, incompetent repairman.  (3 minutes)

Residents used the public sessions to vent about long hold times which can extend to as much as two hours, poor quality service, and what city officials call the predictable outcome of a company that has “a stranglehold” over Savannah’s cable TV market.

“Comcast has treated Savannah like a third world country for years, delivering the best service to the wealthiest neighborhoods while leaving cable lines dangling on the ground in the areas they don’t care about,” said Stop the Cap! reader Jenny Child, who has kept a folder of papers documenting more than a dozen service calls regarding poor Internet service at her small business.

“If it rains in Savannah, and it does so a lot, our Internet goes out,” Child complains. “We have called and called but the technician shows up when it is bright and sunny and shrugs his shoulders and says there is no problem.”

Child and her two employees now handle their online business activities based on local weather forecasts.

“If the man says we’re getting rain today, we handle our Internet things real quick, because as sure as I’ll be in church on Sunday, we won’t have service after the first drops fall from the sky,” she says.

Child keeps calling Comcast when her Internet service drops out, but long hold times to reach the company’s outsourced-to-India customer service department have cut into her business.

“I can’t be sitting here on hold with Comcast for 45 minutes waiting for some representative’s nails to dry so she can pick up the phone and deal with customers,” Child complains. “It’s the biggest cable company ever, and don’t they own NBC? How many people do they have working there that they can’t answer the phone. Maybe everyone else is calling to complain too.”

Comcast’s Business Broadband Blockade Prompts Whining When Potential Competition Shows Up

While fielding complaints from more than 50 local residents at a second meeting held to address complaints, Comcast executives questioned whether the city of Savannah was giving favorable treatment to Hargray, a new entrant pushing to bring 21st century broadband into the city of Savannah for businesses Comcast has refused to serve for years.

Comcast complained they didn’t mind competition, but wanted “a level playing field,” a statement that prompted an immediate and angry response from some members of the city council, who blasted the cable company for its attitude.

Aldermen Tony Thomas, John Hall, and Tom Bordeaux all noted Comcast has steadfastly refused to wire many downtown business buildings for cable broadband service, despite years of requests.  Comcast claimed the relatively low number of customers did not justify the cost to expand the service.

All three could not understand why Comcast had a sudden urgency to complain about unfair treatment when a competitor sought to provide the service they never did.

“If [Comcast] did not want to offer that service previously and someone else is coming in to provide the service, where is the sticking point?” Thomas said.

Bordeaux was more blunt in his remarks intended for Comcast.

“Tell them to sue us,” he said.

In contrast to service from AT&T and Comcast, which often markets 3-6Mbps broadband in Savannah, Hargray’s fiber broadband project will deliver speeds up to 1Gbps, first to business customers. But the company promises it is considering selling to residential customers as well.

Great Deals, But Only for “Selected Neighborhoods”

As Comcast’s bad press has become fodder for the nightly newscasts on several of the city’s television outlets, Comcast literally took to the streets to try and mitigate their public relations nightmare. In the process, they created a new one.

Councilman Tony Thomas is happy Comcast is approaching upset customers and offering them substantial discounts on their cable bill.  But he’s not happy Comcast is only extending those deals to certain customers, not all.

Thomas wants the deals offered to everyone, something that he says is not happening today.

Andy Macke, Comcast’s Vice President of Communications counters, “All they have to do is call 1-800-COMCAST and they will hear the same deals that the same people are getting from those reps going from door to door.”

“Comcast’s attitude in Savannah is see no evil, hear no evil,” says Jeff White, a Comcast customer who has watched the scuffle. “They don’t even admit there is a problem until it runs on the evening news and city council waves 150 complaints they are getting at the camera — the ones Comcast ignored.”

Macke himself told WJCL-TV, which has covered the dispute with Comcast repeatedly, he was “unaware of the extent of the concerns that our Savannah customers had with us.”

Despite promises to make things right, Alderman Thomas says many complaints are still unresolved.

“We were told that all of those folks had been contacted and that their problems were being worked on. I have since found a few of these people [who] have had no contact whatsoever with Comcast,” Thomas told the TV station.

“Under no circumstances should City Council let the situation with Comcast get pushed under the rug,” one person wrote in the Vox Populi column in the Savannah Morning News. “We the people need help!”

No Help On the Way

Unfortunately for that reader, and other Savannah residents, an attempt by Savannah city officials to attract competing cable service has met with no success and no interest.  Cable operators almost never compete head to head, each respecting the service areas of fellow providers.  Hargray’s interest in Savannah is primarily serving business customers, and the option for municipal service may not be possible much longer if a bill supported by Comcast, SB 313, ever becomes law.

[flv width=”640″ height=”500″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Comcast in Savannah 2-8-12.flv[/flv]

A compilation of news reports from WJCL, WSAV, and WTOC exploring Comcast’s performance problems in the city of Savannah, Georgia.  (15 minutes)

A coalition of high tech companies including Google and Alcatel-Lucent are warning South Carolina legislators they are playing with future high tech jobs and will stifle the state’s digital economy if they grant the request of large phone and cable companies to make it difficult, if not impossible for community-owned broadband to compete.  Alcatel-Lucent, American Public Power Association, Atlantic Engineering, Fiber to the Home Council, Google, OnTrac, Southeast Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors, Telecommunications Industry Association, and the Utilities Telecom Council all co-signed the letter addressed to the state’s Senate Judiciary Committee:

Dear Senator McConnell and Members of the Senate Judiciary Committee:

We, the private-sector companies and trade associations listed below, urge you to oppose H.3508 because these bills, on top of South Carolina’s existing barrier to public communications initiatives, codified in SC Code §§ 58-9-2600 et seq., will harm both the public and private sectors, stifle economic growth, prevent the creation or retention of thousands of jobs, hamper work force development and diminish the quality of life in South Carolina. In particular, these bills will hurt the private sector in several ways: by curtailing public-private partnerships, stifling private companies that sell equipment and services to public broadband providers, and impairing educational and occupational opportunities that contribute to a skilled workforce from which businesses across the state will benefit.

The United States continues to suffer through difficult economic times.  The private sector alone cannot lift the United States out of this crisis.  As a result, federal and state efforts are taking place across the Nation to deploy both private and public broadband infrastructure to stimulate and support economic development and jobs, especially in economically distressed areas.  For example, in South Carolina, Orangeburg and Oconee Counties have received broadband stimulus awards to bring much-needed broadband services and capabilities to communities that the private sector has chosen not to serve adequately.  H.3508, together with SC Code §§ 58-9-2600 et seq., would impose burdensome financial and regulatory requirements that will prevent public broadband providers from building the sorely needed advanced broadband infrastructure that will stimulate local businesses development, foster work force retraining, and boost employment in these economically depressed areas.

Consistent with these expressions of national unity, public entities across America, including South Carolina, are ready, willing, and able to do their share to bring affordable high-capacity broadband connectivity to all Americans. Enactment or retention of direct or effective barriers to community broadband, such as H.3508 and SC Code §§ 58-9-2600 et seq., would be counterproductive to the achievement of these goals.  These measures are also inconsistent with our country’s National Broadband Plan, which recommends that no new barriers be enacted and that existing barriers be removed.

We support strong, fair and open competition to ensure that users can enjoy the widest range of choices and opportunities.  H.3508 is a step in the wrong direction.  South Carolina should be removing barriers to public broadband initiatives rather than establishing new ones, so that high technology companies can spread and prosper into all the communities in this beautiful state.  Please oppose H.3508, repeal SC Code § 58‑9‑2600 et seq., and reject any future measures that could significantly impair municipal broadband deployments or public-private partnerships in South Carolina.

Stop the Cap! earlier noted this legislation is heavily sponsored by AT&T and other telecommunications companies already operating in South Carolina.  Several months ago, we reported on South Carolina’s woeful broadband: A Corridor of Shame, with large sections of the state without anything close to “broadband” service, even as state legislators in 2009 leased away the state’s publicly owned Educational Broadband Service-spectrum to private companies like Clearwire that don’t appear to be delivering any service in South Carolina.

Columbia County, Georgia has been talking about fiber optic broadband for two years — two years that the state’s largest phone and cable companies have not stepped up to provide suitable broadband to local schools, residents, and libraries.  In 2010, enough was enough and the county applied for, and won, a $13.5 million Broadband Technology Opportunity Program grant to increase broadband and wireless access to the Internet throughout the area.  Local taxpayers chipped in about $4.5 million in 1-percent sales tax dollars, and in-kind voluntary donations worth $2.3 million fulfilled the grant requirement that local matching funds be provided.

To residents long-suffering with satellite-delivered Internet, usage-capped mobile broadband, spotty DSL service, and frequent outages and slow speeds, a modern fiber network would help 120,000 county residents obtain the kind of broadband service people elsewhere take for granted.  Columbia County’s rural character is evident when you consider it contains only two small incorporated cities and 91 percent of the population lives in unincorporated areas, making the eastern Georgia county an afterthought for big phone and cable companies who see better profits in bigger cities.

Now these companies, with the help of a campaign contribution-gorging state legislator, are intent on stopping projects even in areas they could care less about.

Columbia County’s local newspaper, the News-Times, is alarmed at the prospect of public tax dollars already spent on the project burned for the benefit of Big Telecom companies:

Republican State Sen. Chip Rogers, fueled by generous contributions from telecommunications companies, has filed a bill in the Georgia Legislature that, he claims, would protect private service providers from unfair competition by government-subsidized broadband systems.

Nonsensically, some in Columbia County welcomed the news as a slap at the county’s government. While we’re on record opposing the concept of the $13.5 million federal grant that allows the county’s entry into broadband, the fact remains that the project already is underway.

That federal program is designed to expand broadband Internet service to rural areas that, because of the up-front infrastructure costs, aren’t deemed profitable by private companies. Our county has plenty of those areas, served at best only by spotty, expensive cellular-based services.

Columbia County’s program wouldn’t compete with private companies. Instead, it uses the federal grant and local sale-tax funding to build that high-speed infrastructure, which private companies can then lease to provide Internet service to underserved areas.

Rather than undercutting local communities and sacrificing rural customers on behalf of the private companies, Rogers ought to look for ways to improve such public-private partnerships. Columbia County taxpayers had better hope so, too, unless they want all the money they’ve spent wiring the county with fiber optic cables to have been wasted.

SB. 313 is just another contract taken out on community-owned broadband networks that could deliver competition (and worse — far better service) to areas of Georgia where even conservative-minded voters wary of spending public money on anything are simply fed up with the status quo.

So much for the Columbia County Broadband Network, a 220-mile, county-wide fiber middle mile network that will connect nearly 150 community anchor institutions and enhance health care, public safety, and government services throughout the county. Anchor institutions hoping to be connected at broadband speeds of 100 Mbps to 10 Gbps include K-12 schools, fire and emergency facilities, public libraries, Augusta Technical College, and the Columbia County Health Department. The project also planned to facilitate the creation of a high-capacity data center at the Medical College of Georgia, support a sophisticated county-wide traffic and water control system, and construct five wireless towers to enhance public safety communications as well as improve wireless communications capabilities throughout the region.

If Rogers’ bill passes, the county may have to go back to begging for access from the companies that have repeatedly said it wasn’t worth the investment or their time.

County officials have been more generous, offering all along to share access to the fiber network with the very providers who are seeking to destroy it.  So far, that hasn’t changed any minds.

“If we don’t own it, that means we don’t want you to have it” is standard operating procedure for the state’s phone and cable operators, even in the service areas they routinely ignore, even if it means flushing millions of dollars already spent on new networks down the drain.

That’s money-fueled politics.  State legislators with Big Telecom dollars in their eyes can’t see the 120,000 Columbia County residents waiting years for better broadband.  Perhaps the best way to reach legislators in Atlanta is to condemn them to the same kind of broadband service local residents in Evans, Martinez, and Appling are forced to endure, if they have it at all.