Knology's Shakedown in Lawrence

Pesky facts have a way of getting in the middle of silly marketing campaigns.  Knology of Kansas (actually Georgia) has run into this problem in a big way with its glitzy, carefully-crafted welcome website KnologyKnows.

Some of the company’s facts are uncoordinated.

Lawrence blogger Joe Davis sure noticed:

Knology put up a new website to help build their brand in Lawrence, Kansas. In big capital letters, they write:

Allow us to introduce ourselves. We’re Knology, the new (115-year-old) kid on the block.

Sounds eerily familiar to the beginning of “Sympathy for the Devil” by the Rolling Stones.  Trust me… I have no sympathy for the Devil (in this case, a non-local company), also known as Knology. Their website is called KnologyKnows.com. But considering how many “facts” they’ve put out this past week that have been wrong, they really don’t know.

[flv width=”640″ height=”253″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Sunflower Broadband is Now Knology.flv[/flv]

Knology’s opening welcome video to residents of Lawrence, Kansas has some fact-checking problems. (1 minute)

Davis caught a fact-checking lapse in the company’s introductory video, which claims the world record for handshakes was 13,372.  Oops.  In 2002, while campaigning for office, soon-to-be Gov. Bill Richardson set a world record for the most number of handshakes in an eight-hour period: 13,392.

The only thing Knology has been good at so far in Lawrence is shaking down their customers with Internet Overcharging schemes.  The company has plenty of money to invest in promoting itself, but has so far retained Sunflower Broadband’s costly usage limits and overlimit fees.

Knology hasn’t been around for 115 years either — a company it bought out was.  The Interstate and Valley Telephone Company was one of many independent phone companies created to serve areas AT&T dismissed as rural backwaters not worthy of their service.  Knology itself has only been around since 1994, owned by ITC Holding Company — the people who also brought you Mindspring, a defunct Internet Service Provider sold to Earthlink one month before the dot.com crash.

Did you know Lawrence omits several states?

Davis is also unimpressed with the company’s sell-out of its customer support staff, many of whom will lose their jobs as part of the company’s “rightsizing” initiative.

For Davis, first impressions mean a lot, and Knology is doing themselves no favors.  Some of their other trivia isn’t always accurate, either:

This “fact” is told to anyone who first comes to Lawrence. However, it is wrong. Truth is, 14 states are missing from the Lawrence street grid. The first thing I did when I was told this in 2006 was to find where Connecticut street was located. The funny thing is… Of the 36 state streets in Lawrence, Georgia is not included. Knology is based out of Georgia. Whoops.

Davis says Knology has turned Sunflower’s well-regarded Twitter customer support account into an automated marketing spambot, spewing out continuous tweets telling customers to enter its giveaway and visit its newly branded website.

Stop the Cap! reader Brian, also from Lawrence, agrees with Davis.

“Knology has no concept of the truth in their marketing campaign. This is a scary test of things to come. Fortunately, we just switched to AT&T’s U-verse.”

Perhaps Knology should learn from the ghost of Mindspring, which used to have legendary customer service and a list of:

By filling out Knology's survey, you can give the company a piece of your mind over its Internet Overcharging schemes and possibly win this 32" Samsung flat panel TV.

The 14 Deadly Sins of Mindspring (a/k/a “the ways that we can be just like everybody else”)

1. Give lousy service- busy signals, disconnects, downtime, and ring no answers.
2. Rely on outside vendors who let us down.
3. Make internal procedures easy on us, even if it means negatively affecting or inconveniencing the customer.
4. Joke about how dumb the customers are.
5. Finger point at how other departments are not doing their job.
6. Customers can’t get immediate “live” help from sales or support.
7. Poor coordination across departments.
8. Show up at a demo, sales call, trade show, or meeting unprepared.
9. Ignore the competition, they are far inferior to us.
10. Miss deadlines that we commit to internally and externally.
11. Make recruiting, hiring, and training a lower priority because we are too busy doing other tasks.
12. Look for the next job assignment, instead of focusing on the current one.
13. Office gossip, rumors, and politics.
14. Rely on dissatisfied customers to be your service monitors.

Readers can share their views about Knology’s unjustified Internet Overcharging schemes and enter to win a 32″ Samsung flat panel TV in the process.  You need not be a customer to participate.  Just complete their survey, and be sure to let them know in the box labeled “other” that you will never do business with an Internet provider that doesn’t provide truly unlimited, full speed, flat rate broadband service.

A Sprint customer in Tulsa, Okla., was recently sold a Blackberry plan that included a data add-on service that allowed him to tether his Sprint wireless connection to his laptop, perfect for wireless broadband on the go.

John signed a two-year contract with the company, which included a copy of his plan choice and the charges associated with his account. There it was, right on his bill — Sprint’s “Phone as Modem” add-on, priced at $15 per month.

A few weeks later, the service stopped working, and after multiple phone calls with Sprint, John was told he should have never been sold that data plan add-on; it was only available to corporate customers, not individuals.

John pointed to his contract with Sprint, which clearly showed he was paying to receive the service, but Sprint didn’t care.  Nor would it permit him to exchange his phone for wireless broadband equipment that would provide him with the broadband service he needed.  Why?  Because he was already into his two year contract.

John was left fuming, wondering why Sprint’s contracts allow them to renege on a deal made fair and square while trapping him with equipment he can no longer use to obtain the service he needs.

“To me, they voided the contract when they took away the service without my knowledge,” John told KJRH-TV’s Problem Solver Pete Knutson. “This is principle, this is sole principle.”

John canceled his contract, but Sprint promptly billed him a $125 early termination fee and sent his account to collections, threatening his credit rating.

John was not alone in his predicament.

Sprint quietly canceled its individual “phone as modem” tethering option for Blackberry owners last April, literally stripping the feature off of any plan set up with a personal Social Security number.  Business accounts configured with a Taxpayer ID Number associated with the business name on the account kept the option.

Sprint was supposed to notify affected customers through bill inserts, but since most Sprint customers are now billed electronically, few customers got the message.

Several customers reported they were “notified” when the service simply stopped working one day last spring.  One Shenandoah Valley customer found out the hard way.

“My wife used her 8330 for internet access, and we purchased the MBR900 to tether the phone so she could have it in the best place for reception,” the customer notes.  “Sprint decided to disable the use of the phone as a modem, I thought the router went kaput until she called Sprint.”

It took five rounds of calls with Sprint customer service before finding a support representative with the real answer.

An even bigger question is why a Sprint salesperson pitched John a plan with an option that has not been sold to individuals for nine months.

As has so often been the case, phone companies seeking to avoid bad publicity nearly always waive fees and credit a customer’s account when the media comes calling.  John’s account balance was brought back from collections and promptly credited to reflect a zero balance.

Sprint refused to provide a specific explanation for how this happened. Channel 2’s Knutson advises customers to always check their cell phone contracts to make sure they are actually getting the services they are paying to receive.

[flv width=”480″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/KJRH Tulsa Cell company drops service still charges cancellation fee 1-13-11.flv[/flv]

KJRH-TV in Tulsa shares the story of John, a former Sprint customer who didn’t get the service his contract promised.  (2 minutes)

While Time Warner Cable trumpets upgraded broadband services in many of the states it provides service, South Carolina and some other southeastern areas are the exception.

Stop the Cap! reader Brett writes Time Warner’s broadband experience in South Carolina is so four years ago.

“Check out the paltry speeds that Time Warner Cable offers in Columbia. As far as I can tell we are the slowest region around.  The very best package they offer, with PowerBoost, is 10Mbps for downloads, 512kbps for uploads,” Brett writes.  “How sad.”

Most Columbia customers get less than that.  The standard Road Runner package has been stuck at 7Mbps down and 384kbps for some time.

While broadband speeds have not changed, the rates have.  Time Warner Cable announced rate increases throughout the Carolinas in December, boosting prices for many services.

Time Warner Cable spokeswoman Rose Dangerfield said needed upgrades were part of the reason for the rate increase.

“The company spent $380 million in the past year to upgrade equipment in South Carolina and North Carolina,” she said.

A review of Time Warner Cable’s speeds in the Carolinas and the states of Virginia and Alabama makes one wonder where the money went, because Brett shares company with other customers across most of the region.

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WOWK Charleston Frontier vs CityNet Pt 1 12-11-10.mp4[/flv]

DecisionMakers: Frontier vs. Citynet, Part One  (10 minutes)

Bray Cary

Bray Cary, who runs a Sunday news-talk-interview show on his network of West Virginia-based television stations, turned his attention back to the mediocre broadband picture across the state.  Once again, the “free market can do no wrong”-host showered attention and praise on Frontier Communications for their promises to improve West Virginia’s bottom-of-the-barrel rankings in broadband adoption, availability, and speed.  Only this time, one of his guests took him to school on why Frontier Communications is not the state’s broadband savior.

In this round, Cary invited Frontier’s senior vice president Dana Waldo and Citynet president and CEO Jim Martin to discuss where the state’s broadband is today and where it is going tomorrow.

The community of French Creek can't get Frontier broadband even after promising the company dozens of new broadband customers.

Cary wears his opinions on his sleeve, and he’s no fan of the Obama Administration’s broadband stimulus program, believing private companies will deliver West Virginia from its broadband doldrums. That’s wishful thinking Cary can afford as he browses the web from well-wired cities like Charleston.  But if you live in a community like French Creek in Upshur County, that talk isn’t going to get you broadband from Frontier or anyone else.  Stop the Cap! has heard from residents in the community who have delivered petitions from dozens of residents ready and willing to sign up for -any- broadband service, but Frontier hasn’t responded.

Martin opines that as long as stimulus money is available, using it to get the best bang for the buck could improve service for residents from the Panhandle to the Virginia border, instead of simply improving Frontier’s bottom line.

Cary did seem concerned that Frontier was ill-equipped to deliver service to all residents, regardless of cost.

Martin argues Frontier’s broadband network will do nothing to stimulate competition and bring better service.  Martin wants funds redirected into a robust middle-mile statewide backbone, preferably fiber-based, that is open to all-comers at reasonable wholesale pricing.  Citynet has been aggressively complaining about broadband stimulus grants in the state which seem to benefit a handful of companies and projects that don’t actually result in service to individual residents.

The reality is, Cary’s “free market” approach will not deliver service to tens of thousands of West Virginians who will never get wired because of “return on investment” requirements for service in the mountainous state.  Martin’s middle-mile mentality won’t bring access to the last mile, critical for wiring individual homes, either.  But one thing Martin does see that Frontier doesn’t — fiber is the future.

There is a third way to get service without waiting from Frontier’s 1-3Mbps service with an Internet Overcharging scheme or Martin’s middle-mile network that goes past your home but never stops there — petition your local government to empower itself and build a community-owned network that answers to residents, not to Frontier’s dividend-obsessed shareholders.

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WOWK Charleston Frontier vs CityNet Pt 2 12-11-10.mp4[/flv]

DecisionMakers: Frontier vs. Citynet, Part Two  (9 minutes)

Just shy of one month after adoption, the Federal Communication Commission’s Net Neutrality rules face a legal challenge by one of the parties that helped write them.

Verizon Communications filed suit Thursday in the same federal court that in April threw out much of the authority the FCC thought it had over online telecommunications.

“We are deeply concerned by the FCC’s assertion of broad authority for sweeping new regulation of broadband networks and the Internet itself,” said Michael E. Glover, Verizon’s senior vice president and deputy general counsel. “We believe this assertion of authority goes well beyond any authority provided by Congress, and creates uncertainty for the communications industry, innovators, investors and consumers.”

Verizon’s lead attorney in the case in Helgi Walker, who will be a familiar face in the court — Walker successfully argued the original case Comcast brought against the Commission for trying to regulate its Internet service.

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski's cowardly cave-in on strong Net Neutrality was rewarded with... a lawsuit from Verizon to overturn the regulations the company helped write.

But Verizon wants an even greater shot at success, asking for the same panel of judges who ruled in the Comcast case to also hear its challenge.

“Verizon has made a blatant attempt to locate its challenge in a favorable appeals court forum,” said Andrew Jay Schwartzman, senior vice president and policy director of the Media Access Project.

Outgunned.  Again.

The earlier decision in the Comcast case not only stripped the FCC’s authority to regulate broadband under a regulatory framework established under the Bush Administration, it derided the logic behind it.  During arguments, the FCC’s general counsel acknowledged he was likely to lose the case, and actually asked the Court for guidance on how to write better rules.

Remarkably, Verizon’s legal challenge comes after the company worked closely with the Commission to moderate Net Neutrality regulations.  The rules issued in December exempted wireless communications and were criticized by consumer groups for not truly representing a free and open Internet.

Rob Pegoraro, a Washington Post columnist, was incredulous the phone company was spending subscribers’ money fighting net policies that nearly mirrored the voluntary agreement it reached with Google last year.

“Okay, so you’re going to spend some of my money to fight a minimal set of regulations written to stop you from tampering with my Internet access? How is that supposed to make me feel comfortable doing business with you?

“(Note to Verizon: You are not only an enormous telecom conglomerate, you are The Phone Company. You don’t get to say “trust me.”)

“Then I got more annoyed.

“The regulations that Verizon regards as an affront to the Constitution match up closely with the proposal that Verizon published with Google in August–a suggested regulatory framework that many people, myself included, criticized for its minimal restrictions on wireless broadband services.

[…] “And not only did Verizon think that its proposed set of rules would be good for business last summer, it did so as recently as 2:25 p.m. Thursday, when a post on its public-policy blog favorably cited those suggestions.”

Nate Anderson at Ars Technica isn’t sure why Verizon is spending time fighting rules it supposedly agrees with either, and he produced a chart proving it:

Excerpted below are the main Verizon/Google provisions, followed by their matching item in the FCC’s “open Internet” order from December. All are exact quotes.

Despite the perceived rush to court, legal challenges against the FCC’s Net Neutrality rules were widely expected.  The FCC continues to tell the press (on background), it believes it has the authority to enact Internet-related regulations and policies.  But many court watchers familiar with the District of Columbia Court of Appeals think it is more likely than not Verizon will prevail on similar legal arguments Comcast used to win its case.

What then?

Pegoraro: “I’d like to think that it would be fitting if the FCC responded by returning to the regulatory strategy it should have adopted in the first place: putting broadband Internet services back under a simplified form of the “Title II” common-carrier regulation that most operated under until 2005.”

“But if the FCC couldn’t find the gumption to choose that more aggressive but more legally grounded option before, why would it now?”