Time Warner Cable’s Business Class division has introduced new high-speed broadband packages designed for at-home teleworkers and telecommuters. But unless you need the advanced security, prioritized repair, and assurances that your Business Class online traffic will take precedence over residential traffic on Time Warner’s broadband network, you may be better off with residential service.

Four Teleworkers Solutions broadband bundles are now available in New York, New England and the Carolinas:

There is a setup fee for $75-150, a $23 fee for a static IP (free with Basic Plus or Premium Plus service), and rates are guaranteed for 1-3 years depending on the final contract. Businesses with 20+ telecommuter accounts will receive a volume discount.

In contrast, the best available residential promotional price for broadband-only 50/5Mbps service in the northeast outside of New York City is $78.94 a month, which includes the modem rental fee, does not include a Wi-Fi router, and is good for 12 months before the prices increases.

Comcast’s David Cohen

Comcast is an American success story, but Americans that do business with the cable giant are getting slighted by overpriced, too-slow broadband service.

In a commentary piece in the Financial Times, Edward Luce indicts the company that bought NBC-Universal for pay-for-play campaign contributions that have kept the company from much  regulatory scrutiny and free to charge whatever it likes for a service now increasingly considered a necessity.

Comcast’s key employee as far as Washington is concerned is its senior vice-president, David Cohen, who also happens to be one of President Barack Obama’s largest fundraisers.

The revolving door between Comcast in Philadelphia and the federal government in Washington is always spinning.

Of Comcast’s 121 lobbyists, 85 are former government employees, according to Open Secrets, which monitors money and politics.

“Comcast employs the royalty of K Street [lobbyists],” says Sheila Krumholz, head of Open Secrets.

In 2011, the year the FCC approved Comcast’s merger with NBCU, the company spent more than $14 million on lobbying – the ninth-highest of any US company (it ranks 49th on the Fortune 100 list).

Luce adds Meredith Atwell-Baker, a former Republican FCC commissioner, took an executive position at Comcast shortly after voting to approve the merger-buyout between the cable operator and NBC.

This month Comcast acquired the 49 percent of NBC-Universal it did not already own in a $16.7 billion transaction that got less attention at the FCC than the lunch menu at the Chinese takeout down the street.

So while Comcast enriches itself, customers are left with Internet service that is nothing to brag about.

While only 7% of the U.S. is wired for fiber broadband, more than half of South Korea and Japan can buy fiber-fast broadband service from a range of broadband suppliers. Back home, Comcast and the local phone company have built a comfortable duopoly:

The company’s meteoric rise in the past decade parallels the relative decline of Internet service in the US. In the late 1990s the US had the fastest speeds and widest penetration of almost anywhere – unsurprisingly given that it invented the platform. Today the US comes 16th, according to the OECD, with an average of 27 megabits per second, compared with up to quadruple that in countries such as Japan and the Netherlands.

The contrast on price is just as unflattering. The average US cost for 1 Mbps is $1.10 compared with $0.42 in the UK, $0.34 in France and $0.21 in South Korea. It is not only places such as Hong Kong that put the US into the shade. Countries such as Estonia, Portugal and Hungary offer a significantly better Internet service. South Koreans joke that when they visit the US they are taking an Internet vacation. Yet bringing the US up to speed appears to be low on Mr Obama’s list of priorities (it did not even get a mention in his State of the Union address last month).

Verizon FiOS has made it easy for broadband customers to upgrade to 50/25Mbps service for $10 more a month.

Getting access to the company’s introductory Quantum tier is as simple as going to FiOS TV Channel 500 and clicking the OK button twice with your remote control. Within one hour, your speeds will be upgraded. For those who don’t subscribe to FiOS TV, you can visit the FiOS Quantum website or use the MyFiOS smartphone app.

A promotion for new customers includes an introductory offer of FiOS TV, Quantum 50/25Mbps, and telephone service for $89.99 a month with a $250 debit card rebate in certain markets.

Last summer, the company launched the Quantum brand to market its highest speed tiers: 50/25Mbps, 75/35Mbps, 150/65Mbps or 300/65Mbps.

Verizon says the company noticed an increasing demand for faster speed service because customers are connecting more devices to the Internet. Streaming multiple online videos at the same time, for example, can burden slower speed Internet services.

Verizon says the faster speeds also keep the company ahead of its cable competition, which has struggled to provide affordable faster tiers of service and remains limited on upstream speeds.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Verizon FiOS Quantum Upgrade 2-15-13.flv[/flv]

Verizon FiOS is now offering broadband customers a $10 upgrade to 50/25Mbps service just by clicking a button on your FiOS TV remote control twice.  (1 minute)

The Kansas House of Representatives voted 118-1 to pass a bill they admit was written and pushed by the largest telecom companies in the state. The chief supporters all received campaign contributions from AT&T and other telecom interests.

Kansas’ House of Representatives voted 118-1 Monday to support a bill largely crafted by AT&T that will let the state’s largest phone company discontinue service at-will in rural areas of the state.

H.B. 2201 had near-universal support from legislators that openly admitted the legislation was conceived and written by the state’s largest telecommunications companies, chiefly AT&T, and grants the phone companies a third round of deregulation.

The legislation is expected to sail through the Kansas Senate with bipartisan support and Republican Gov. Sam Brownback, who generally favors telecom deregulation, is likely to sign it.

The legislation was originally pushed as a money-saver for Kansas ratepayers. The bill calls for a major reduction in funding requirements for the Kansas Universal Service Fund (KUSF), which subsidizes rural telecommunications services in the state. The KUSF is principally funded through a surcharge found on customer bills. Under the terms of the bill, funding requirements will be drastically reduced, cutting the surcharge in the process.

The Kansas Citizens’ Utility Ratepayer Board testified if H.B. 2201 only contained KUSF reform, the group would have supported the measure. But the bill also has a myriad of deregulation measures that received little apparent attention by legislators:

1. H.B. 2201 eliminates quality of service requirements. AT&T and other phone companies can deliver any level of phone service they choose with no oversight and nobody to answer to;
2. Allows price discrimination based on geographic location, which could mean substantially higher phone rates in rural areas, especially for nearby toll calls;
3. Allows telecom companies to exit the Lifeline program for inexpensive service for the poorest Kansans after 90 days written notice;
4. Removes AT&T and other phone companies as “carriers of last resort,” which means they are no longer required to provide phone service upon request.

The elimination of the “carrier of last resort” provision is essential to AT&T’s plans to abandon rural landline service, forcing customers to buy substantially more expensive cellular phone and data service. With the passage of H.B. 2201, AT&T can notify rural Kansas customers it will drop their landline service and/or broadband at-will.

Siewert

The single “no” vote came from freshman Rep. Larry Hibbard, (R-Toronto), who noted landline service was essential in many rural areas. Hibbard worried AT&T would use the legislation as an excuse to raise rates or force elderly Kansans to use a wireless cell phone, which could prove too confusing for them.

“This bill may come back to haunt rural Kansas,” Hibbard warned.

“We have this mentality, ‘if I don’t have a wire, I can’t make a phone call.’ That’s not true,” countered Rep. Scott Schwab, an Olathe Republican who supports the bill. “That copper line is being replaced with an antenna, and it’s more reliable.

“We are not killing Lifeline,” Schwab added. “We are just not mandating it.”

Other supporters were far more sanguine, even disclosing the substantial role telecom companies had getting the legislation written and shepherded through the House.

“This was an industry bill that they all worked very hard” to put together, admitted Rep. Joe Seiwert (R-Pretty Prairie) during a House Republican caucus meeting. “[This bill] puts legislators in an easier position of not having to ‘choose between friends.'”

Kuether

Seiwert, for example, did not have to disappoint his largest campaign contributor — AT&T — or others who donated to his campaign, including the Koch Brothers, Cox Communications, CenturyLink, Verizon, and the Kansas cable lobby.

Rep. Annie Kuether of Topeka, who is the ranking Democrat on the Utilities and Telecommunications Committee, also supported the bill. Kuether is the recipient of campaign contributions from AT&T, Cox Cable, Time Warner Cable, Kansas cable and telephone company PAC groups, and more than a dozen independent telecommunications providers doing business in Kansas.

For ordinary Kansans, the bill does not assure savings, and could lead to dramatic price increases, especially in rural areas forced to pay for cell service. The measure also eliminates the Kansas Corporation Commission as a last resort for customers with service problems that go unresolved. Those customers would be on their own after the bill becomes law.

Legislators did not see any incompatibility between the proposed bill and Kansas state policy, set forth in Statute 66-2001:

It is hereby declared to be the public policy of the state to:

(a) Ensure that every Kansan will have access to a first class telecommunications infrastructure that provides excellent services at an affordable price;
(b) ensure that consumers throughout the state realize the benefits of competition through increased services and improved telecommunications facilities and infrastructure at reduced rates;
(c) promote consumer access to a full range of telecommunications services, including advanced telecommunications services that are comparable in urban and rural areas throughout the state;
(d) advance the development of a statewide telecommunications infrastructure that is capable of supporting applications, such as public safety, telemedicine, services for persons with special needs, distance learning, public library services, access to internet providers and others; and
(e) protect consumers of telecommunications services from fraudulent business practices and practices that are inconsistent with the public interest, convenience and necessity.

The Associated Press notes this is AT&T’s third trip through the state legislature to win deregulation. A 2006 state law deregulated prices for bundles of services that included wireless, Internet access, cable TV or other video and moved toward deregulating rates for local service in exchanges where competition existed. A 2011 law went further, allowing companies to avoid most state price caps. This year’s bill would allow those companies to avoid even the Kansas Corporation Commission’s consumer protection regulations and minimum quality-of-service standards.

Atlantic Canada provider Eastlink still offer unlimited access for speeds of 20Mbps or slower, but the fastest speeds now come with usage caps and overlimit fees, as depicted on this sample invoice.

While broadband pricing in the United States depends primarily on whether one lives in a rural or urban area, in Canada, which province you live in makes all the difference.

Canadian broadband pricing varies wildly across different provinces. If you live in northern Canada, particularly in Nunavut or the Yukon, Internet access is slow and prohibitively expensive, assuming you can buy it at any price. Customers in Atlantic provinces including Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, Labrador and Newfoundland pay the next highest prices in the country, often exceeding $60 a month. But Atlantic Canadians often find unlimited use, fiber optic-based plans are often part of the deal. In the west, fervent competition between dominant cable operator Shaw and telephone company Telus has given residents in British Columbia and Alberta more generous usage allowances, faster speeds, and lower pricing.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reports the most significant gouging takes place in the Canada’s two largest provinces: Ontario and Québec, where Bell (BCE) competes with three dominant cable operators: Rogers and Cogeco (Ontario) and Vidéotron and Cogeco (Québec). Critics contend that “competition” has been more in name-only over the last several years, as prices have risen and usage allowances have not kept up.

“These disparities are influenced by the competition,” Catherine Middleton, a professor at the University of Ryerson’s Ted Rogers School of Management told CBC News. “For example, Bell competes against Rogers in Ontario, but against Vidéotron in Quebec, with different plans for different markets.”

(Coincidentally, in 2007 the University of Ryerson accepted a gift of $15 million from the late Ted Rogers, founder of Rogers Communications, which won him naming rights for the Ted Rogers School of Management.)

Rogers and Cogeco charge Ontario residents more money for less access. Vidéotron treats their customers in Québec somewhat better, so Bell has plans to match.

“Ontario gets the worst when it comes to competitiveness,” Michael Geist, a law professor at the University of Ottawa and Canada Research Chair in Internet and e-commerce law told CBC News. “It tends to be the least competitive when it comes to getting bang for your buck.”

Prices start to moderate in the prairie regions. SaskTel and MTS Allstream are the largest providers in Saskatchewan and Manitoba. Both offer customers unlimited service plans, something of a shock to those further east. But unless you live in a larger city where the two companies are upgrading to faster fiber-based networks, DSL at speeds averaging 5Mbps is the most widely available service.

Nearing the Canadian Rockies, usage-restricted plans are a reality once again. In Alberta and British Columbia, Telus and Shaw competition means more generous usage allowances, and Telus does not currently enforce their usage limits. Shaw raised its own usage limits significantly beyond what a customer would find from Rogers back east. Prices are often lower as well.

The CBC notes unlimited broadband from cable operators has become a rarity. Eastlink, which provides service in Atlantic Canada, has phased out unlimited access on plans above 20Mbps. Rogers has a temporary “unlimited use” offer for customers paying for its premium-priced 150Mbps plan, and only until March 31.

The most significant recent change for eastern Canada was Bell’s decision to offer an unlimited-use “add-on” for $10 extra a month for Bell customers in Québec and Ontario who choose at least three Bell services (broadband, television, phone, satellite, or wireless service). Rogers has matched that offer for its own triple-play customers. Those who only want broadband service from either provider will pay three times more for unlimited access — an extra $30 a month.

The mainstream Canadian press often ignores third party alternative providers that offer an escape from usage-capped Internet access.

But there are other alternatives, often ignored by the mainstream media.

A growing number of third-party independent providers buy wholesale access from large Canadian networks and sell their own Internet plans, often with no usage limits. TekSavvy, Distributel, Acanac, among many others, provide Canadians with DSL and cable broadband at prices typically lower than one would find dealing with Bell, Rogers, Shaw, or other providers directly. Some discount plans still include usage caps, but those limits are often far more generous than what the phone or cable company provides, and unlimited access is also available in most cases.

One website allows consumers to comparison-shop 350 different providers across Canada. Despite the growing number of options, the majority of Canadians still buy Internet access from their phone or cable company and live under a regime of usage caps and high prices, if only because they do not realize there are alternatives.

Usage caps have cost Canadian broadband consumers both time watching usage meters and money paying overlimit penalties. But the cost to innovation is now only being measured. While online video has become so popular in the United States it now constitutes the largest percentage of traffic on broadband networks during prime time, usage limits have kept the online video revolution from fully taking hold in Canada. That is a useful competition-busting fringe benefit for large telecom companies in Canada, which own cable networks, cable systems, broadcast networks, and even satellite providers.

Netflix’s chief content officer called Canadian broadband pricing “almost a human rights violation.” The online video provider was forced to introduce tools to let Canadians degrade the quality of their online video experience to avoid blowing past monthly usage allowances.