Comcast is running “welcome back” ads in Chattanooga that still claim they run America’s fastest ISP, when they don’t.

EPB, Chattanooga’s publicly-owned utility that operates the nation’s fastest gigabit broadband network, has already won the speed war, delivering consistently faster broadband service than any of its Tennessee competitors. So when facts are not on their side, competitors like Comcast and a conservative “watchdog” group simply make them up as they go along.

Comcast is running tear-jerker ads in Chattanooga featuring professional actors pretending to be ex-customers looking to own up to their “mistake” of turning their back on Comcast’s 250GB usage cap (now temporarily paroled), high prices, and questionable service.

“It turns out that the speeds I was looking for, Xfinity Internet had all along,” says the actor, before hugging an “Xfinity service technician” in the pouring rain. “But you knew that, didn’t you?”

The ad closes repeating the demonstrably false claim Comcast operates “the nation’s fastest Internet Service Provider.”

“I see those commercials on television and I’m thinking, I wonder how much did they pay you to say that,” says an actual EPB customer in a response ad from the public utility.

It turns out quite a lot. The high-priced campaign is just the latest work from professional advertising agency Goodby Silverstein & Partners of San Francisco, which is quite a distance from Tennessee. Goodby has produced Comcast ads for years. The ad campaign also targets the cable company’s other rival that consistently beats its broadband speeds — Verizon FiOS.

EPB provides municipal power, broadband, television, and telephone service for residents in Chattanooga, Tennessee

Comcast tried to ram their “welcome back” message home further in a newspaper interview with the Times Free Press, claiming “a lot of customers are coming back to Xfinity” because Comcast has a larger OnDemand library, “integrated applications and greater array of choices.”

Comcast does not provide any statistics or evidence to back up its claims, but EPB president and CEO Harold DePriest has already seen enough deception from the cable company to call the latest claims “totally false.”

In fact, DePriest notes, customers come and go from EPB just as they do with Comcast. The real story, in his view, is how many more customers arrive at EPB’s door than leave, and DePriest says they are keeping more customers than they lose.

EPB fully launched in Chattanooga in 2010, and despite Comcast and AT&T’s best customer retention efforts, EPB has signed up 37,000 customers so far, with about 20 new ones arriving every day. (Comcast still has more than 100,000 customers in the area.)

Many come for the EPB’s far superior broadband speeds, made possible on the utility’s fiber to the home network. EPB also does not use Internet Overcharging schemes like usage caps, which Charter, AT&T, and Comcast have all adopted to varying degrees. Although the utility avoids cut-rate promotional offers that its competitors hand out to new customers (EPB needs to responsibly pay off its fiber network’s construction costs), its pricing is lower than what the cable and phone companies offer at their usual prices.

Comcast claims customers really don’t need super high speed Internet service, underlined by the fact they don’t offer it. But some businesses (including home-based entrepreneurs) do care about the fact they can grow their broadband speeds as needed with EPB’s fiber network. Large business clients receiving quotes from EPB are often shocked by how much lower the utility charges for service that AT&T and Comcast price much higher. It costs EPB next to nothing to offer higher speeds on its fiber network, designed to accommodate the speed needs of customers today and tomorrow.

The competition is less able. AT&T cannot compete on its U-verse platform, which tops out shy of 30Mbps. Comcast has to move most of its analog TV channels to digital, inconveniencing customers with extra-cost set top boxes to boost speeds further.

The fact EPB built Chattanooga’s best network, designed for the present and future, seems to bother some conservative “watchdog” groups. The Beacon Center of Tennesee, a group partially funded by conservative activists like Richard Mellon Scaife through a network of umbrella organizations, considers the entire fiber project a giant waste of money. They agree with Comcast, suggesting nobody needs fast broadband speeds:

EPB also offers something called ultra high-speed Internet. Consumers have to pay more than seven times what they would pay for the traditional service — $350 a month. Right now, only residents of a select few cities worldwide (such as Hong Kong) even use this technology, and that is because most consumers will likely not demand it for another 10 years.

Actually, residents in Hong Kong, Japan, and Korea do expect the faster broadband speeds they receive from their broadband providers. Americans have settled for what they can get (and afford). DePriest openly admits he does not expect a lot of his customers to pay $350 a month for any kind of broadband, but the gigabit-capable network proves a point — the faster speeds are available today on EPB at a fraction of price other providers would charge, if they could supply the service at all. Most EPB customers choose lower speed packages that still deliver better performance at a lower price than either Comcast or AT&T offer.

The Beacon Center doesn’t have a lot of facts to help them make their case. But that does not stop them:

• They claim EPB’s network is paid for at taxpayer expense. It is not.
• They quote an “academic study” that claims 75 percent of “government-run” broadband networks lose money, without disclosing the fact the study was bought and paid for by the same industry that wants to keep communities from running broadband networks. Its author, Ron Rizzuto, was inducted into the Cable TV Pioneers in 2004 for service to the cable industry. The study threw in failed Wi-Fi networks built years ago with modern fiber broadband networks to help sour readers on the concept of community broadband.
• Beacon bizarrely claims the fiber network cannot operate without a $300 million Smart Grid. (Did someone inform Verizon of this before they wasted all that money on FiOS? Who knew fiber broadband providers were also in the electricity business?)

The “watchdog” group even claims big, bad EPB is going to drive AT&T, Comcast, and Charter Cable out of business in Chattanooga (apparently they missed those Comcast/Xfinity ads with customers returning to Kabletown in droves):

Fewer and fewer private companies wish to compete against EPB, which will soon have a monopoly in the Chattanooga market, according to private Internet Service Provider David Snyder. “They have built a solution looking for a problem. It makes for great marketing, but there is no demand for this service. By the time service is needed, the private sector will have established this for pennies on the dollar.”

Ironically, Snyder’s claim there is no demand for EPB’s service fall flat when one considers his company, VolState, has been trying to do business with EPB for two years. He needs EPB because he is having trouble affording the “pennies on the dollar” his suppliers are (not) charging.

Snyder tells “Nooganomics” his company wants an interconnection agreement with EPB, because the private companies he is forced to buy service from — including presumably AT&T, want to charge him a wholesale rate twice as much as EPB currently bills consumers. Snyder calls EPB’s competition “disruptive.”

Nooganomics calls EPB’s low priced service a “charity” in comparison to what AT&T and Comcast charge local residents, and the free market can do no wrong-website seems upset consumers are enjoying the benefits of lower priced service, now that the local phone company and cable operator can’t get away with charging their usual high prices any longer.

Deborah Dwyer, an EPB spokeswoman, told the website the company got into the business with state and city approval, followed the rules for obtaining capital and pays the taxes or payments-in-lieu of taxes as the same rate as corporate players. “We believe that public utilities like EPB exist to help improve the quality of life in our community, and the fiber optic network was built to do just that. One of government’s key responsibilities is to provide communities with infrastructure, and fiber to the home is a key infrastructure much like roads, sewer systems and the electric system.”

Snyder can’t dispute EPB delivers great service. He also walks away from the competition-is-good-for-the-free-market rhetoric that should allow the best company with the lowest rates to win, instead declaring customers should only do business with his company to support free market economics (?):

“If you are a free market capitalist and you believe in free markets, you need to do business with VolState,” Mr. Snyder says. “And if you’re highly principled, every time you buy from a government competitor, what you’re voting for with your dollars is, you’re saying, ‘It’s OK for the government come in to private enterprise and start to take over a vast part of what we used to operate in as a free market.’”

Perhaps Snyder and his friends at the Beacon Center have a future in the vinegar business. They certainly have experience with sour grapes.

[flv width=”640″ height=”500″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Comcast Ad Welcome Back.flv[/flv]

Comcast’s emotionally charged ad, using paid actors, was produced by advertising firm Goodby Silverstein & Partners. The commercial running in Chattanooga is a slight variation on this one, which targets Verizon FiOS. (1 minute)

[flv width=”640″ height=”500″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/EPB Ad.flv[/flv]

EPB uses actual customers, not paid actors, in its own advertising that calls out Comcast’s false advertising.  (1 minute)

Prism is CenturyLink’s fiber to the neighborhood service, similar to AT&T U-verse.

CenturyLink is feuding with the mayor of Colorado Springs, Colorado over whether or not the company intends to roll out its Prism IPTV service in lower income neighborhoods in the city.

The phone company is planning expansion of its fiber-to-the-neighborhood television service in Colorado for the first time, but has run into problems negotiating a franchise agreement with city officials that guarantees equal access to the upgraded broadband, phone, and television service.

“To be candid, CenturyLink does not want to put in the franchise agreement any specificity as to serving lower-income neighborhoods,” Mayor Steve Bach said last Wednesday during a meeting with City Council. “I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t work for me.”

CenturyLink wants to secure a franchise agreement that will permit the company to gradually roll out their Prism service to 22 percent of the city of Colorado Springs. But the company has refused to commit to a specific percentage of homes in lower income neighborhoods the company will wire for the new service.

Bach has the apparent support of incumbent cable operator Comcast, who seems in agreement CenturyLink should deliver its service equitably across the city.

Comcast spokeswoman Cindy Parsons told The Gazette any new cable company should be held to the same standards as Comcast was.

“Just as Comcast was required to make video services available throughout the city, we believe a new entrant into the video business should also be held to those same regulatory requirements,” she said.

“I honestly thought we had reached an understanding about the language that was to be included in the agreement,” Mary LaFave, CenturyLink’s director for public policy told the newspaper. “What we have discussed with the city is something that we have never discussed (in other communities). I’ve never seen it before.”

Bach

The newspaper last week met with CenturyLink executives to discuss the dispute and found them to be unaccommodating.  The newspaper issued an editorial critical of CenturyLink’s apparent unwillingness to get specific:

To lay fiber, the company needs to use public right-of-way. That means it needs permission of city government, in the form of a franchise agreement.

Allocation of right-of-way is a subsidy, given that companies are granted permission to use a public resource in pursuit of profits. As such, some politicians take quite seriously any request for an agreement.

Mayor Steve Bach went public this week with a concern that CenturyLink might choose to serve only the most affluent neighborhoods, giving no assurance to the city that it would invest in less advantaged areas. His concern has led to a proposed agreement in which CenturyLink would provide a “significant” amount of service to low-income areas.

[…] “What we have discussed with the city is something that we have never discussed. I’ve never seen it before,” said Mary LaFave, CenturyLink’s director for public policy.

Welcome to the new Colorado Springs. We don’t try to match best practices elsewhere. We try to surpass them.

In our meeting, a Gazette editorial board member expressed concern about a contract that relies on the wiggle word “significant.” That could mean 10 percent to some, 80 percent to others. It’s a recipe for potential consternation and even litigation. We suggested a contract that specified a percentage of service, even a very low percentage, to low-income neighborhoods. LaFave said no way.

Low-income households often buy cable. So Bach’s concern may be mostly political, as market demand will likely cause CenturyLink to reach into a cross section of neighborhoods.

Given this likelihood, and the heartfelt assurance that CenturyLink will serve a broad socioeconomic spectrum, it is hard to understand why the company balks at committing to a base-level percentage.

We urge City Council and Bach to approve a business-friendly agreement with a specified safety-net percentage of service that will go to low-income households. Set a number slightly below CentryLink’s anticipated service to low-income areas, but achieve contractual specificity.

When local government trades in right-of-way, it allocates a resource that belongs to every resident of Colorado Springs. A reasonable effort to protect them, with a contract that codifies at least the minimal goals stated by CenturyLink, makes good business sense. This is not just any old town, and it should not settle for just any old contract.

CenturyLink was already awarded a cable franchise in Monument and is seeking franchises in Fountain and unincorporated El Paso County. The company currently operates Prism in eight cities nationwide.

Smoke signals achieve a faster transmission rate than DSL can manage in the Scottish village of Kettleholm.

The village of Kettleholm, near Lockerbie in Scotland has effectively given up on DSL service from British Telecom and has upgraded the community’s telecommunications service to technologies including smoke signals, messages inserted into bottles and thrown into nearby streams, carrier pigeons, and for urgent communications — the village’s pony express.

All of these communications methods have proven much more effective than the area’s copper wire-based DSL service, which villagers report is often less than useless. In fact, it can take at least 10 minutes to load Google’s home page in Kettleholm on a bad day, and Apple software updates require additional patience — more than 4,525 hours worth (that is more than 188 days) for the latest version of iMovie to arrive.

BT engineers sent to the area to investigate found nothing wrong with the service, which they initially said was operating within normal expectations for DSL “broadband.” But at least 150 local residents strongly disagree, and several made their point producing a video demonstrating how two yogurt cups attached by string provide more reliable communications than BT was managing in their part of Scotland.

The problem, according to local residents, is the decrepit state of the copper-wire based telephone exchange, installed just after World War 2. Broadband advocates say the solution is rubbishing the ancient copper wiring and replacing it with optical fiber that is spreading across the rest of Great Britain. But neither BT or Virgin Media consider Kettleholm worth the investment, placing the village squarely in the undistinguished category of last priority — the one-third of the United Kingdom deemed economically unsuitable for fiber broadband.

UK residents are paying for broadband improvements as part of their TV License Fee, and the government has amassed at least £800 million for upgrades. It irritates some residents that their portion of the license fee is paying for someone else’s broadband upgrades, and salt is rubbed in those wounds when viewers see BT — the largest recipient of government money — spending it on advertisements mailed to Kettleholm residents for services they can never get.

Even worse, the BBC recently learned the phone company isn’t exactly spending every resource on better broadband in the UK. BT recently found £738 million laying around to pay for the rights to Premier League football games for the next three years.

Where there is smoke (signals) there is fire, especially after the BBC picked up the story. BT suddenly had a change of heart about the state of their network in Dumfries and Galloway:

“Kettleholm telephone exchange is a modern digital exchange, System X and offers broadband speeds of up to 8mb/s. We were not initially aware of a problem with broadband in Kettleholm as only a small number of the 120 end users reported problems with their service. The service appears to have gradually degraded over time without triggering any of our alarms. Engineers recently reset equipment in the exchange and tests show that broadband speeds have risen. We will continue to monitor the situation and would like to apologise to everyone for the frustration and inconvenience they have experienced.”

Kettleholm residents appreciate the new attention BT is paying to their network, but the village has been reminding everyone they can find that BT is their sole provider and when they stop paying attention to their DSL facilities, the entire community suffers.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Kettleholm Poor Broadband 6-2012.flv[/flv]

The village of Kettleholm shows off their new telecommunications systems: smoke signals, carrier pigeons, messages inserted into bottles, semaphores, the pony express, and yogurt cups attached by string.  All perform better than BT’s DSL service.  (2 minutes)

Your modem needs an expensive upgrade, even if you own your own.

Frontier Communications customers may get less than they bargained for when calling the company about a malfunctioning modem or problem with service. Andrew, a Stop the Cap! reader from Tennessee discovered a simple service call left him stuck with two separate contracts for phone and Internet service, a major broadband speed reduction, and a sense that Frontier is willing to sign up customers without fully disclosing what they are selling.

Andrew reports he originally called Frontier to discuss a possibly damaged DSL modem. Upon hearing the model number, a Frontier customer service representative needed to hear no more — the modem “needed to be upgraded.” In fact, Frontier has been mailing postcards to customers with older modems not subject to monthly rental fees telling them their existing modem was “no longer supported” and needed to be replaced with a new model. In the fine print, the customer learns if they proceed, they will end up paying a monthly modem rental fee starting at $6.99… forever.

But things got much worse for this Frontier customer after he contacted the company to say he’d be keeping his current DSL modem, which turned out to be working just fine:

I was then told there would be about a $20 price drop on my next bill (for July). I asked the agent why and her response was, “oh, our prices are going down.” I said okay, thanked her and hung up the phone.

The next morning, I got an email from Frontier thanking me for my ”recent purchase or renewal of services,” further asking me to click and view the Terms of Service agreement for High Speed Internet (and to submit the PIN number associated with my account).

I then called Customer Service about the email. I was told that I had upgraded my phone service the previous day. It turned out that the agent upgraded my phone service to include their ”Digital Essentials” phone features package and had locked me into two price protection plans for both services. There was a one-year plan regarding the phone service and a two-year plan for the High Speed Internet.

I was shocked and informed the agent that I had made no such changes to my phone/Internet services and that I had simply called about cancelling a support ticket on my account regarding the modem.

He later tried to claim that I had given the previous agent authorization when I said okay after she had informed me about the price drop. I told him that was absolutely ridiculous, especially since she never discussed any upgrades to my phone service or any changes regarding my Internet. I asked him how it could be an authorization when what was done to my account was never fully explained (or asked for).

We’ve got a deal too good to refuse.

The Frontier agent then proceeded to hard-sell Andrew the same plan the former agent already applied to his account. The Frontier representative did not bother to mention the “upgrade” and “savings” he was getting included a drastic speed reduction. Frontier sold Andrew a package that included just 1.2Mbps broadband.   That is less than half the speed of his original 3Mbps service, for which he paid $40 a month with no modem rental fee.

Now Andrew is stuck with two contracts, both which carry early termination fees that will total well in excess of $100, the likelihood of a modem rental fee for a new modem he has never received and does not want, and less than half the broadband speed he used to get.

“I was never told by either agent I spoke with that my Internet speed would be [reduced] once the ‘upgrade’ was performed,” Andrew writes. “This, in my opinion, is fraud. Had I known a slower speed would be the end result of their price drop, I would have never [signed up].”

Now Andrew wants his old plan back and Frontier is stalling.

Frontier has a track record of retiring older service plans and packages, but leaving existing customers grandfathered on them until a representative can convince a customer to switch to something else. Unfortunately, newer plans often come with higher prices and more surcharges than older ones, which is part of the company’s effort to increase average revenue earned from each customer. Once off a discontinued plan, low level customer service representatives typically cannot re-enroll a customer.

But those who complain the loudest can get back the service they used to have, just by becoming a nuisance. Start by calling Frontier and asking to speak to a supervisor or manager. If that fails, ask to be transferred to the department that handles disconnections and threaten to drop all Frontier services if the company does not relent and put you back on the plan you started with.

Customers can also file complaints with their state utility regulators. In Tennessee, that is the Tenessee Regulatory Authority. Their online complaint form is here. Unfortunately, many states have succumbed to deregulation rhetoric and state regulators lack significant enforcement powers. But utilities that routinely filibuster state officials risk generating enough legislative energy to support a “re-regulation” effort, so most utilities will connect complainers to an executive level customer service department that can cut through red tape.

Customers can also file complaints with the Better Business Bureau and their state’s Attorney General. The more noise you generate, the more likely Frontier will satisfy your request.

Frontier customers are advised that anytime a customer service representative asks you to complete an online agreement using your PIN number, it signals you are about to commit yourself to a term contract or other major change in service that could prove costly to undo.

Always ask the Frontier representative to e-mail you a copy of the terms of the plan you are enrolling in, including broadband speeds, phone features, contract length and early termination fees.

Always read the agreement you are being asked to complete online.

If you have any questions, call Frontier before you sign. Some plans include a 14 or 30 day penalty-free cancellation provision. While this alone may not restore your old service, it can prove an important negotiating tool to win back the service you had before.

Customers don’t care who wins, because they don’t need faster broadband, claims Bright House Networks.

Bright House Networks thinks customers do not need or want faster broadband speeds and have no plans to match newly-announced speed increases offered by its competitor Verizon FiOS.

The cable operator, which serves central Florida, is downplaying the importance of Verizon’s upgraded service which will bring 300Mbps broadband to cities like Orlando and Tampa.

“Research indicates that the vast majority of customers do not have interest in these types of speeds for their homes, not to mention the potential expense,” Bright House spokesman Joe Durkin told the Tampa Bay Times. “Our network can deliver these speeds if we felt there was a residential market for it.”

Bright House speeds currently max out at 40Mbps. The cable operator says customers seeking faster service won’t face the sticker shock Verizon delivers for their fastest speed package, which comes in at $200 a month. Bright House sells its fastest package at “an additional $15 or $30 a month,” Durkin said.

Durkin believes most consumers can survive just fine with a slower speed package, even with multiple wireless devices sharing the connection.

“Whether you are downloading music or streaming video to your laptop or iPad, you can do it all with Road Runner Lightning,” he said.

Bright House retains the Road Runner brand for its broadband service that Time Warner Cable retired earlier this year. Bright House has partnered with Time Warner to handle programming and certain other contract negotiations.