We saved the only good part.

The best part of Cablevision’s latest ridiculous advertising campaign is the 12-month introductory price new subscribers will pay for phone, broadband, and television service: $84.95 a month. Not bad. The same cannot be said to the advertising agency that created this mess and the executives who approved it.

Richard Greenfield from BTIG Research, which covers Cablevision for Wall Street, isn’t impressed with Cablevision’s ads either:

We believe it is time for Cablevision to find a new ad agency, bring in some new marketing executives internally and seriously rethink what their consumer proposition is – going back to pitching the triple-play at an ever lower (now $84.95 price point) is not particularly compelling. Cablevision already has very high level of bundling of video, data and voice services across its customer base.  Given that, Cablevision should be devising a marketing approach to upsell existing customers, especially higher speed, higher ARPU broadband services (given their high margin).

Consumers concerned about the high cost of cable may not agree with Greenfield’s assessment. Paying $85 a month for a triple play package is a great deal, at least until it expires.

But we suspect a lot of consumers will never get that far through the ad, particularly when most viewers don’t pay that much attention to advertising in the first place.

At least 88 percent of Dutch consumers are getting 50Mbps from their broadband provider, with the remaining 12 percent expected to get similar speed increases within two years.

A Telecompaper survey found nearly one-third of those consumers consider 50Mbps speeds necessary and almost the same number believe they will need 200Mbps service at some point in the future.

The Netherlands has benefited from a series of provider speed upgrades which have lifted connection speeds to 50Mbps or more.

Only 12% of Dutch consumers do not already receive 50Mbps broadband service. They will have it within two years according to Dutch telecom observers.

This year, enhanced competition from fiber broadband providers have forced cable companies to boost speeds. Some providers now offer tiers as fast as 100-200Mbps, mostly over fiber networks. Two-thirds of Dutch consumers believe fiber networks are necessary to get the best speed increases.

At the end of 2012 there were 1,450,000 households connected to fiber to the home service, 440,000 more than one year before. This is reflected in the growing number of consumers reporting they have fiber broadband, which has halted the growth in cable broadband’s market share.

The report ‘Dutch Consumer Connected 2013’ is based on the Telecompaper Consumer Panel, an online survey conducted between March and May 2013 among almost 15,000 consumers aged 12-80. The report also presents the results for 2010, 2011 and 2012.

Powell

You and I may think America can do better providing fast and inexpensive broadband service. But a former chairman of the FCC now representing industry interests waved shiny keys of distraction to explain away why cable companies are still delivering Internet speeds slower than those found in Romania, Latvia, South Korea and Japan.

Michael Powell, the poster child of D.C.’s “revolving door” problem gave a well-compensated, rousing (yet fact-lacking) defense of an industry he was supposed to oversee in the public interest as the Bush Administration’s FCC chairman from 2001-2005.

“America is home to the world’s very best Internet companies,” said Michael Powell, chief executive of the National Cable and Telecommunications Assn. at the annual Cable Show in Washington, D.C. “We have worked hard to reach everyone, and now offer service to 93% of American homes. Despite our success, many people like to denigrate U.S. broadband by painting false comparisons to other countries. There are some nations doing very well, but it is foolish to compare countries like Latvia and France to the United States of America.”

Powell’s response is hardly a fact-filled defense for cable company broadband that still delivers slow speeds at high prices. Instead of attempting to call the statistics inaccurate, he tried to explain away the discrepancy by complaining people are ignoring the size of the country and its population.

In denial

Powell’s arguments might have some merit if the cable industry did not make a point of bypassing vast rural areas that do not meet Return on Investment tests. It is difficult to claim cable companies cannot deliver comparatively fast service in rural Iowa when they don’t offer any service at all.

The People’s Republic of China’s population is far larger than our own and is now a vital market for fiber optics manufacturers and suppliers. While some of America’s cable industry CEOs repeatedly argue America does not need fiber broadband or gigabit broadband speeds, the Chinese government has insisted that every new housing development be pre-wired with fiber that will easily and inexpensively supply those speeds in the near future.

Powell is correct to say speeds are improving in the United States, but there is growing evidence they are improving even faster overseas, especially in countries that are basing their primary telecommunication infrastructure on fiber optics, which can support enormously fast Internet speeds. As those fiber networks are lit, America will fall even faster in broadband rankings as long as cable operators continue to insist there is no demand or interest in the next generation of high-speed service. At the prices they charge, they may just prove their own “no demand”-argument, at least in this country.

Powell himself helped lay the foundation for America’s broadband duopoly by deregulating the industry with one hand while ignoring the need for competitive checks and balances with the other. At the end of Powell’s tenure, his greatest achievement was constructing an industry-friendly personal resumé to win lucrative employment as a telecommunications lobbyist.

Who better to speak with “authority” on telecommunications matters than a well-connected former FCC chairman that does the industry’s bidding? The NCTA hired him to deliver just the kind of defense cable operators hope Americans will believe.

Those that are aware of what broadband is like abroad don’t.

Still waiting for Verizon FiOS in New York City? Are you annoyed that your neighbors have impressive broadband speeds from an all-fiber network while you suffer with DSL or cable broadband from Time Warner or Cablevision? Your landlord may be the problem.

While cities upstate clamor for Verizon’s fiber upgrades, FiOS has gone unappreciated and unwanted by more than 40 building owners either blocking the company from entering their properties or ignoring repeated letters from Verizon requesting permission to begin upgrades. In many instances, Verizon has tried to make contact since 2010 with no success. Some building owners want extra compensation (sometimes to the extreme) before they will grant permission. Others don’t want the phone company performing work inside their buildings, period.

Now Verizon is appealing to the New York State Public Service Commission to ask for their intervention.

Verizon has the right to install cable television facilities, regardless of the landlord’s objections, under Section 228 of the New York Public Service Law, which states: “No landlord shall interfere with the installation of cable television facilities upon his property or premises ….”

Verizon has promised it will bear the full cost of the installation of its equipment, wiring, and other facilities to offer the service, as well as indemnify the landlord for any damage caused by the installation work.

In April, Verizon was criticized by New York City public advocate Bill de Blasio for falling behind schedule providing access to FiOS in low-income communities.

“Five years into one of the biggest franchise agreements issued by the city, roughly half of homes still have no access to fiber network connections—most of them concentrated in low-income areas like Upper Manhattan, the South Bronx, Western Queens and Central Brooklyn,” said de Blasio.

The public advocate added:

Under Verizon’s 2008 franchise agreement, all New York City residents are supposed to have access to fiber optic networks by June 2014. As a benchmark, the contract required the company to reach more than three-quarters of City residents by the end of 2012, but according to data released through the New York State Office of Information Technology Services, only half of New York City’s 3.4 million housing units had access to fiber broadband services at year’s end—putting the company far behind schedule. Brooklyn and the Bronx lagged furthest behind, with only 40 percent and 46 percent of household having access to fiber, respectively.

de Blasio

Verizon and the Bloomberg Administration dispute de Blasio’s findings, noting fiber upgrades often depend on surrounding infrastructure. Where overhead wiring predominates, Verizon FiOS is available nearly everywhere in New York City. In other areas, Verizon says it is meeting its obligations and points to landlord impediments for slowing down FiOS expansion.

But de Blasio’s maps of FiOS availability do depict a pattern of preference for FiOS service in areas where higher income residents live. In areas where average annual income is below $20,000 annually, there are obvious service gaps. Neighborhoods like Washington Heights, High Bridge, Astoria, Woodside, Bedford-Stuyvesant and Bushwick have been largely excluded from FiOS to date, according to de Blasio.

Verizon’s franchise agreement with the city only requires the company to make service available to buildings, not necessarily within them. A landlord can delay Verizon’s entry into a building or the company could choose to prioritize some buildings over others for service.

With large sections of New York covered by multiple dwelling units like apartments and condos, some could find themselves without FiOS service for several years, particularly if a property owner decides to make life difficult for the phone company.

Among the latest who have:

On May 24, Verizon notified the PSC the following property owners had complied with their request to conduct a site survey inside their buildings and were requested to be dropped from the list republished above:

• Sama Los Tres LLC – c/o Metropolitan Realty Group
• Lenoxville Associates – c/o Metropolitan Realty Group
• 2816 Roebling Avenue LLC
• East Village Gardens
• 194 Bleecker Street Owners Corp.
• US Manhattan II Housing Corp.
• 40 Renwick Street LLC