Residents of southern Vermont are upset about Comcast’s proposed acquisition of an independent cable company that has served the region for more than 30 years, fearing the cable giant will bring its reputation of high rates, poor service, and abusive customer relations to an area known for resisting large corporations.

The Southern Vermont Cable Company (SVCC) owns several small cable systems serving about 2,450 subscribers around Brattleboro, just a short distance from the Massachusetts and New York borders. SVCC launched service because larger cable companies including Comcast and what was formerly Time Warner Cable did not see a viable business opportunity serving southern Vermont. The independent operator successfully launched service on its own, but has faced business pressure from cord-cutting and a constant need to upgrade its cable plant to meet growing demands for fast and robust broadband service.

“For more than 30 years, SVCC has offered great local service to its customers and has made significant capital investments in its system throughout the years,” Daniel M. Glanville, vice president of government/regulatory affairs and community impact for Comcast’s western New England region, said in testimony before state regulators reviewing the sale. “However, there is a need for continued capital investment as technology continues to evolve and video competition continues to increase due to an ever-growing number of video service options.”

Instead of offering to sell the system to the communities it serves, SVCC executives elected to sell the system to Comcast.

“I am confident that an organization like Comcast will provide SVCC’s subscribers with quality customer service and will continue to invest in SVCC’s systems,” said Ernest Scialabba, president and owner of SVCC.

Customers have a much different view, according to the Brattleboro Refomer:

Steve West of Dummerston told regulators he has “only praise for the good folks at SVCable, and nothing but contempt for Comcast.”

“As a computer repair professional for 20 years, I’ve had many dealings with Comcast/Xfinity, nearly all of it bad,” he wrote. “Many of us in rural Vermont have few options. I view them as one of the most toxic companies in the U.S., and I’ve successfully avoided being a customer.”

Martha Ramsey of Brattleboro told the commission she is a Comcast customer and “can attest, along with all my neighbors, that Comcast has a long way to go to providing reliable cable service” to southern Vermont.

“Therefore, I can only assume that this sale would simply be a hostile buyout for the benefit not of customers but of shareholders, and so should not be permitted, in order to prevent any further erosion of decent utility services in Vermont,” she wrote. “My Comcast bill has already increased by an outrageous percentage in the last five years without any credible explanation, and I expect such increases to continue. Helping Comcast to become the only player in the market would be to accelerate this race to the bottom — that is, increasingly unaffordable and increasingly shoddy infrastructure and service — that at a scary pace is impoverishing all but the very wealthy.”

“Comcast will provide increased reliability and network capacity which will enable former SVCC customers to enjoy the full suite of Comcast’s Xfinity TV services, including the X1 platform, Xfinity on Demand (Comcast’s video on demand service), multiple high-definition offerings, sports programming and international programming,” said a Comcast representative. “Comcast will also introduce Comcast Business Services, which provides business-grade products and services for businesses of all sizes. Video customers will also be able to use the Xfinity Stream app on their tablet or smartphone to view live and Xfinity On Demand programming.”

But the idea a giant multinational company like Comcast, with more than 830,000 customers, will preserve a local touch to SVCC’s operations is absurd, according to local residents.

“Please don’t allow this to happen,” Kathleen Fleischmann wrote. “One of the reasons we chose to move to Vermont was that it wasn’t owned by the multinationals. Southern Vermont Cable is a great company, and our service would certainly be degraded by having to deal with Comcast. You must be aware that they are one of the most hated corporations in the country. Their lack of customer service is legendary.”

Eli K. Coughlin-Galbraith urged the commission not to “let this one go. We’re all being strangled by massive multinational corporations piece by piece. Fight it. Fight it any way you can.”

The Vermont Department of Public Service will hold a public hearing about the proposed sale from 4-8 p.m. on Feb. 3 at the O’Brien Auditorium in the East Academic Building at Landmark College in Putney.

Lobbyists for Mediacom, one of America’s medium-sized cable operators, are reportedly behind the latest effort to curtail public broadband in the state of Iowa with a new bill designed to make life difficult for municipalities trying to get internet access to their residents.

Senate Study Bill 3009, proposed by Sen. Dan Dawson, the new chairman of the Iowa Senate Commerce Committee, would create an unfair playing field between cities and towns attempting to offer their residents broadband service and the state’s private cable and phone companies which often do not.

In addition to tying the hands of local officials in their efforts to obtain funding for such projects, the bill would also make a public record of private strategies used by providers to construct systems and market service to the public. Cable operators like Mediacom could be able to obtain business records from municipal providers that would give the company an unfair advantage identifying financial information and rollout schedules about where municipal systems would offer service next.

Iowa’s report for Mediacom’s lobbying activity shows their support for restricting public broadband.

The bill would also forbid communities from marketing their broadband service on bills sent for other municipal services, including power, gas, sewage, garbage removal, and water. Municipalities would also be forbidden from lowering rates to levels deemed unprofitable, even when incumbent providers like Mediacom cut prices in competitive service areas to keep business while quietly subsidizing those lower prices on the backs of their other subscribers in non-competitive areas.

Iowans can protest the new bill by sending e-mail to Sens. Dan Dawson ([email protected]) and Carrie Koelker, ([email protected]) the subcommittee chairperson reviewing the bill. Ask them to kill the bill, because Iowa needs more broadband service, not less.

Comcast and Charter Communications have begun to compete outside of their respective cable footprints, potentially competing directly head to head for your business, but only if you are a super-sized corporate client.

Comcast Business has targeted selling large Fortune 1000 companies internet service through contractual partnerships with Charter, Cox, and Cablevision/Altice USA for a few years now. The cable giant recently entered the Canadian market, at least for U.S.-based companies that have satellite offices north of the border. Comcast now directly competes with other cable operators selling enterprise-level broadband service, whether the customer is inside Comcast’s footprint or not, but will not offer a similar service to consumers looking for better options.

The cable industry’s longstanding de facto agreement not to compete head to head for customers will probably remain intact even as Charter this week unveils its own national broadband service called Spectrum Total Connect. It will be available across the country, offering customers up to 940 Mbps broadband service at a highly competitive price, but only if you are running a large business and have an account with Spectrum Business National Accounts, which provides connectivity for large business franchises, national retailers, and companies utilizing a large network of telecommuters scattered around the country. Consumers need not apply here either.

Charter has refused to say who it has partnered with to provide the service, but it is likely a reciprocal agreement with Comcast and other cable companies it already works with to provide enterprise-level service. The new service will be rolled out in the next several weeks.

Cable companies have been successful selling connectivity products to small and medium-sized businesses, but large national companies have traditionally relied on phone companies to provide them with total connectivity packages that can reach all of their locations. Until Comcast began selling service outside of its footprint, cable companies have had to turn down business opportunities outside of their respective service areas. But now Comcast and Charter can reach well beyond their local cable systems to satisfy the needs of corporate clients.

But neither company wants to end their comfortable fiefdoms in the residential marketplace by competing head to head for customers. Companies claim it would not be profitable to install redundant, competing networks, even though independent fiber to the home overbuilders have been doing so in several cities for years. It seems more likely cable operators are deeply concerned about threatening their traditional business model supplying services that face little competition. In the early years, that was cable television. Today it is broadband. Large swaths of the country remain underserved by telephone companies that have decided upgrading their deteriorating copper wire networks to supply residential fiber broadband service is not worth the investment, leaving most internet connectivity in the hands of a single local cable operator. Most cable companies have taken full advantage of this de facto monopoly by regularly raising prices despite the fact that the costs associated with providing internet service have been declining for years.

Cherry-picking lucrative commercial customers while leaving ordinary consumers mired in a monopoly is more evidence that the U.S. broadband marketplace is broken and under regulated. Competition is the best solution to raising speeds while reducing prices — competition regulators should insist on wherever possible.

Dunne

Verizon will hold off on expanding its millimeter wave 5G wireless home broadband service until at least the second half of 2020, citing equipment availability issues.

Ronan Dunne, executive vice president and group CEO of Verizon’s Consumer Division, told attendees at a Citi investor’s conference that Verizon’s initial introduction of Home 5G was just a market test, and until newer high-powered wireless routers arrive that will be capable of more robust reception of the very high frequencies the service works on, Verizon will not expand the service further.

Dunne called the next generation of 5G home receivers “key” to Verizon’s wireless home broadband strategy. Dunne said the new equipment will let consumers receive more distant and weaker 5G wireless signals, allowing Verizon to expand coverage of the service to more households. The current generation of 5G receivers were designed for use in smartphones, which hampers in-home reception quality.

Verizon initially promised to serve about one-quarter of the United States with its wireless home broadband service, eventually capable of supplying 500/200 Mbps and more to subscribers. But Verizon’s goal to reach over 30 million households will take the company as long as seven years to reach.

Dunne also warned Verizon is prioritizing 5G coverage in urban commercial areas instead of suburban, rural, and residential neighborhoods. Verizon’s core 5G network will target dense urban areas, including commercial shopping, business, and entertainment venues like concert halls and sports stadiums where the company measures the highest traffic demand it hopes to satisfy with 5G. Verizon’s home 5G broadband service piggybacks on Verizon’s 5G mobile network, which means it will only be available in neighborhoods where Verizon has deployed its network of small cells.

“It’s very much a mobility strategy, with a secondary product of Home [5G], rather than us changing our overarching mobility deployment to try to accelerate Home at the expense of the overall 130 million customer base,” Dunne explained.

Verizon hopes to offer customers 5G-capable mobile phones for as little as $600 in the coming year and getting widespread adoption of 5G by Verizon customers is a long-term goal for Dunne. He added that once 5G becomes more widely available, Verizon and other wireless companies will consider shutting down Wi-Fi hotspots in favor of 5G.

“In a world of 5G millimeter wave deployments, we don’t see the need for Wi-Fi in the future, because we have a more secure network environment,” Dunne said. “Our view is that when fully deployed there are substantial environments where public Wi-Fi will be eliminated in favor of millimeter wave.”

More than 121,000 homes and businesses in 17 states will receive subsidized satellite internet service from Viasat, after the Federal Communications Commission awarded $87.1 million to connect customers at those locations at a cost of just over $715 per customer.

The money is part of the ongoing Connect America Fund (CAF) program, designed to subsidize the costs of delivering internet access in high-cost, typically rural areas. The current iteration of the program is dispensing funding over 10 years to 45 states. Viasat won the funding through an auction procedure that makes it easy for satellite providers to win funding because of low infrastructure costs to service rural areas that lack a wired internet service provider.

An additional $2.1 million was awarded to some other providers:

• Fixed wireless provider LTD Broadband, which relies on 1,500 wireless internet tower sites covering over 40,000 square miles of Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska and South Dakota.
• Horry Telephone Cooperative, which serves rural customers in Horry County, S.C.
• Bruce Telephone Company, which won funding for parts of Wisconsin to deliver gigabit internet service.
• JCWIFI, which provides fixed wireless internet within a 3,000 square mile service area covering parts of Illinois, Iowa and Wisconsin.

In addition to the upper Midwest and South Carolina, the biggest states expected to benefit from the latest awards are (northern) California and Wyoming.

At least $2 billion in subsidy funds became available after larger providers — AT&T, CenturyLink and Verizon turned down funding because the companies had no interest in building out their networks in rural service areas.