Time Warner Cable broadband customers in Los Angeles still using older cable modems are being offered replacement modems from the cable company for free, avoiding Time Warner Cable’s $6 monthly modem rental fee.

The Los Angeles Times notes some customers are receiving letters offering a free modem upgrade, but the company won’t say exactly how many subscribers have been offered a way out of the company’s modem rental fee.

A survey of Los Angeles residents suggests Time Warner is primarily targeting customers still using older DOCSIS 2 or basic DOCSIS 3 modems that are not capable of getting the full benefit of Time Warner Cable’s Maxx speed upgrades, which provides up to 300Mbps service for the same price the rest of the country pays for 50Mbps.

Customers taking advantage of the offer are expected to swap out their existing modem themselves, using an “Easy Install Kit” mailed by Time Warner. They will need to contact the cable company to activate their replacement modem.

The replacement is a basic, yet fully capable DOCSIS 3 modem without built-in Wi-Fi. Customers who don’t use a router with built-in Wi-Fi can upgrade to Time Warner’s Wi-Fi capable modem, but it will cost around $11 a month for the service. Stop the Cap! recommends customers buy their own router with built-in Wi-Fi, which is almost always a better deal than renting equipment from Time Warner.

There is no word if a similar offer will be made to customers in other Maxx cities, New York and Austin.

Earthlink customers in New York, Los Angeles and Austin are receiving letters from Time Warner Cable advising them they qualify for the same speeds Time Warner Cable broadband customers are receiving as part of the TWC Maxx upgrade program.

Standard Earthlink customers in these cities will get speed upgrades from 15/1Mbps to 50/5Mbps at no extra charge. Turbo speed customers will see speeds rise from 20/2Mbps to 100/10Mbps, also at no additional cost.

Stop the Cap! reader Iris was immediately suspicious about the tone of Time Warner’s letter, which has the potential of confusing customers that own their own cable modems. The letter suggests customer-owned equipment might not be compatible with the speed upgrades. Customers are given a phone number to verify their eligibility, and some who have contacted Time Warner Cable report back they have been given a brief sales pitch to ditch their own modem in favor of one from Time Warner Cable, which costs $5.99 a month forever.

Time Warner could have simply enclosed its list of approved modems, which would answer customer concerns without having to make a phone call. But that wouldn’t give the company a chance to score extra revenue convincing customers to toss their old equipment in the trash while paying an unnecessary monthly modem fee for the rest of their lives.

For the record, your old modem probably will continue to work even if it isn’t capable of delivering the fastest speeds. If 50/5Mbps is fast enough for current Earthlink Turbo customers, they might want to consider downgrading service until they can budget to buy a new modem capable of taking full advantage of the faster 100/10Mbps speeds now on offer.

For your convenience, here is the latest Time Warner Cable Approved Modem List for TWC Maxx upgrade areas:

Zoom Telephonics, a major manufacturer of cable modems, has asked the FCC to deny the sale of certain customers to Charter Communications as a result of the merger of Comcast and Time Warner Cable because Charter enforces an unfair customer-owned cable modem policy.

For the last two years, Charter has not allowed customers switching to New Package Pricing to use their own cable modem. They must get one from Charter. But three days before the FCC closed the comment window on the Time Warner Cable-Comcast-Charter transaction, Charter suddenly reversed course and invited customers to attach their own cable modems to the network, as long as the modem was approved by Charter.

As one might expect, no modem from Zoom appears on Charter’s approved modem list.

Instead, Charter has approved 17 modems that are not available from conventional retailers and lack 802.11ac wireless capability.

Charter has still not adopted certification standards that are open to Zoom and other cable modem producers, complains Zoom, nor has Charter yet made a commitment for timely certifications under this program.

“We support the customer-owned cable modem programs available from Comcast and Time Warner Cable,” said Frank Manning, Zoom’s president and CEO. “We have urged Charter to adopt a similar program, but so far Charter has declined. Our request is timely because Charter will significantly increase its number of customers if the transaction involving Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and Charter goes through. In that event Charter will go from fourth to second place on the list of largest U.S. cable Internet providers.”

Zoom also complains that Charter still does not separately list the cost of its leased modems on customer bills, and Charter does not offer a corresponding savings to all customers who buy a qualified cable modem and attach it to the Charter network.

Charter Approved Modems for All Internet Tiers

Modems Approved for Speeds Up to 60Mbps

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WZZM Grand Rapids Over 50 seniors displaced by fire at Battle Creek apartment complex 6-20-14.flv[/flv]

WZZM in Grand Rapids covers the fire in an independent living complex that left at least 50 seniors homeless and facing big bills from Comcast. (1:53)

At least 50 seniors residing in an independent living complex in Battle Creek, Mich., were burned out of their apartments after a devastating fire in late June. Some of the fixed income seniors lost everything they owned.

Despite the understanding and patience of credit card companies, banks, insurance companies, AT&T, and the local power utility — all willing to wait for payments or waive billing for those affected, one company stood out for its plan to collect damages from the fire victims: Comcast.

The Area Agency on Aging, working to help the victims, reached out to local Battle Creek media to report Comcast’s local agents were aggressively seeking compensation from the displaced seniors after learning about the fire.

“They want $120 for each cable box, despite the fact these seniors just lost their homes and many are low-income,” Carla Fales, CEO of the agency told WWMT-TV.

Comcast’s response: “Everything destroyed must be paid for.”

As is often the case, once Comcast’s disagreeable behavior becomes a headline on the 6 o’clock local news, public relations damage control begins.

When WWMT called Comcast’s corporate offices, the cable company assured the newsroom Comcast would probably waive the fees, but provided no guarantees.

“I can assure everyone there is a process in place; we are working individually with customers to help them in this difficult time,” offered a Comcast spokesperson.

Monday night, Battle Creek Mayor Dave Walters told WWMT that fire victims will not be held responsible for the cost of the lost equipment.

But some may be mired in paperwork to avoid the lost/damaged equipment fees.

Affected residents who were insured at the time of the fire still have to reimburse Comcast through a damage claim filed with their insurance company. Those uninsured will be asked to submit a fire report which must be requested from the local fire department. In some cases, customers may also asked to offer a notarized statement indicating they were not insured to avoid the $120 charge.

But before any of that happens, Comcast also traditionally requires customers to pay any past due balances on their account before equipment credits can be provided.

Comcast’s zeal for charging penalties for lost or damaged equipment is not limited to Michigan.

In January, a Tennessee woman’s home went up in flames and was quickly declared a total loss. The only company to give the family a hard time was Comcast, who billed them $550 for four used cable boxes and a rented cable modem melted in the fire.

“I thought, ‘What are they trying to do to me?'” Emma Hilton said. “I’ve done went through a fire. I tried to salvage what I can.”

Hilton was unsure what exactly Comcast expected the fire department to do about the cable company’s equipment.

“(Firefighters) couldn’t get the TV’s. They were burning,” she told WJHL-TV.

Despite the fact her landlord leveled the rest of the uninhabitable home, Comcast still wanted to get paid if she could not recover the equipment from the ashes.

“You mean they’re actually going to charge me for those cable boxes and after I told you I had a fire?'” Hilton said of one of her phone conversations with the cable provider.

Comcast told her to read the contract, which leaves responsibility for the cable equipment entirely up to the customer. Comcast includes a strong recommendation to keep up a renter’s or homeowner’s insurance policy. Now customers know why.

In the past six years of covering these stories, Stop the Cap! has found many renters who simply don’t bother with renter’s insurance, mistakenly assuming the landlord’s own insurance policy covers their damages. But it does not. A renter’s insurance policy typically costs about $100 a year and covers the renter’s personal belongings (and cable boxes). Some policies also cover displaced living expenses — food, a hotel room, etc. They also cover liability in the event a guest is injured inside your rental property. Some cable companies demand up to $500 for each lost or damaged piece of equipment — an unnecessary point of stress and expense right after a major negative event. Get insurance. It’s a bargain.

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WWMT Grand Rapids Seniors Asked to Pay Comcast for Damaged Boxes 6-20-14.flv[/flv]

WWMT in Grand Rapids covers Comcast’s initial resistance to giving seniors a break on fire-damaged cable equipment after their senior living complex was heavily damaged in a fire. (1:38)

For the benefit of new visitors, text items in bold are clickable links. A complete video from this event will be posted as soon as possible.

Good evening. My name is Phillip Dampier from Stop the Cap!, a Rochester-based all-volunteer consumer group fighting for better broadband service and against Internet usage caps.

This is a critical moment for New York. The Internet has become a necessity for most of us and the future is largely in the hands of one company capable of delivering 21st century broadband to the majority of upstate New York. That company isn’t Verizon, which has ended FiOS fiber expansion while abandoning most of its upstate customers with slow speed DSL. Indeed, as their market share will attest, our broadband future is held in the hands of Time Warner Cable.

Comcast could have become a big player in New York had it chosen to compete head to head with Time Warner. But large cable operators avoid that kind of competition, preferring comfortable fiefdoms that only change hands at the whim of the companies involved. As local officials from across New York have already discovered, no major cable operator will compete for an expiring franchise currently held by another major cable operator.

Ironically, Comcast is using that fact in its favor, noting that since neither company competes directly with the other, making Comcast larger has no impact on competition. But that should hardly be the only test.

At issue is whether this merger is in the public interest. This year, for the first time in a long time, the rules have changed in New York. In the past, the Commission had to prove the merger was not in the best interests of New Yorkers. Now the onus is on Comcast to prove it is. It has fallen far short of meeting that burden.

Let’s start with Comcast’s dysfunctional relationship with its customers. With more than 75 citizen comments filed with the Commission so far. Comcast’s reputation clearly precedes it. The consensus view is perhaps best represented by one exasperated Clinton-area resident who wrote, I quote, “No. No no no. HELL no.”

That kind of reaction is unsurprising considering Consumer Reports ranked Comcast 15th out of 17 large cable companies and called their Internet service and customer relations mediocre. Every year since 2007, Comcast’s CEO acknowledges the problems with customer service and promises to do better. Seven years later, the American Customer Satisfaction Index reports absolutely no measurable improvement. In fact, ACSI has concluded Comcast had the worst customer satisfaction rating of any company or government agency in the country, including the IRS.

In order to sell this $45 billion boondoggle to a skeptical public, Comcast has hired 76 lobbyists from 24 different firms and will reportedly spend millions trying to convince regulators and our elected leaders this deal is good for New York. If the deal gets done, Comcast’s biggest spending spree won’t be on behalf of its customers. Instead, Comcast has announced a $17 billion share buyback to benefit their shareholders. Imagine if this money was instead spent on improving customer service and selling a better product at a lower price.

The only suitable response to this merger deal is its outright rejection. Some may recommend imposing a handful of temporary conditions in return for approval – like the kind Sen. Al Franken accused Comcast of reneging on after its earlier merger with NBCUniversal. But this is one of those cases where you just can’t fit a round peg into a square deal for consumers, no matter how hard you try.

With respect to television, volume discounts have a huge impact on cable programming costs and competition. The biggest players get the best discounts, smaller ones are stunned by programming rate hikes and new competitors think twice about getting into the business.

AT&T said last week its 5.7 million customer U-verse television service was too small to get the kind of discounts its cable and satellite competitors receive. AT&T’s solution is to buy DirecTV, which might be good for AT&T but is bad for competition.

Frontier Communications has also felt the volume discount sting after adopting several Verizon FiOS franchises. When it lost Verizon’s volume discounts, Frontier began a relentless marketing effort to convince its customers to abandon FiOS TV and switch to technically inferior satellite TV.

Combining Comcast and Time Warner Cable will indeed help Comcast secure better deals from major programmers (including Comcast itself). But Comcast is already on record warning those savings won’t be shared with customers.

Comcast’s executive vice president David Cohen summed it up best: “We are certainly not promising that customer bills will go down or increase less rapidly.”

Is that in the public interest?

Comcast suggests this merger will make its cable television market share no larger than it had in 2002 when it bought the assets of AT&T Cable. But this is 2014 and cable television is increasingly no longer the industry’s biggest breadwinner. Broadband is, and post-merger Comcast will control 40-50 percent of the Internet access market nationwide.

So what do Time Warner Cable customers get if Comcast takes over? A higher bill and worse service.

Several months before Comcast sought this merger, Time Warner announced a series of major upgrades under an initiative called TWC Maxx. Over the next two years, Time Warner Cable plans to more than triple the Internet speeds customers get now at no additional charge. Those upgrades are already available in parts of New York City, Los Angeles, and Austin.

A Time Warner Cable customer in Queens used to pay $57.99 for 15 megabit broadband. As of last month, for the same price, they get 50 megabits.

In contrast, Comcast’s Internet Plus plan delivers just 25 megabits and costs $69.95 a month – nearly $12 more for half the speed. Who has the better broadband at a better price? Time Warner Cable.

New York State’s digital economy depends on Internet innovation, which means some customers need faster speeds than others. Time Warner Cable’s Maxx initiative already delivers far superior speeds than what Comcast offers, despite claims from Comcast this merger would deliver New York a broadband upgrade.

Time Warner’s new top of the line Internet service, Ultimate 300 (formerly Ultimate 50), delivers 300 megabit service for $74.99 a month. Comcast’s top cable broadband offer listed on their website is Extreme 105, offering 105 megabit speeds at prices ranging from $99.95 to $114.95.

Is the public interest better served with 300 megabits for $74.99 from Time Warner Cable or paying almost $40 more for one-third of that speed from Comcast? Again, Time Warner Cable has the better deal for customers.

But the charges keep coming.

At least 90 percent of cable customers lease their cable modem from the cable company, and Comcast charges one of the highest lease rates in the industry – $8 a month. Time Warner Cable charges just under $6.

So I ask again, is this merger really in the public interest when broadband customers will be expected to pay more for less service?

Then there is the issue of usage caps, a creative way to put a toll on innovation. Usage caps make high bandwidth applications of the future untenable while also protecting cable television revenue.

If the PSC approves this transaction, the vast majority of New York will live under Comcast’s returning usage cap regime. There is simply no justification for usage limits on residential broadband service, particularly from a company as profitable as Comcast. Verizon FiOS does not have caps. Neither does Cablevision. But the majority of upstate New Yorkers won’t have the option of choosing either.

In 2009, Time Warner Cable lived through a two week public relations nightmare when they attempted an experiment with compulsory usage caps on customers in Rochester. After Stop the Cap! pushed back, then CEO Glenn Britt shelved the idea. Britt would later emphasize he now believed Time Warner should always have an unlimited use tier available for customers who want it.

Whether intended or not, Time Warner actually proved that was the right idea. In early 2012, the company introduced optional usage caps in return for discounts. They quickly discovered customers have no interest in having their Internet usage measured and limited, even for a discount. Out of 11 million Time Warner Cable broadband customers, only a few thousand have been convinced to enroll.

Comcast doesn’t give customers a choice. In 2008, a strict 250GB usage cap was imposed on all residential customers with disconnect threats for violators. Since announcing it would re-evaluate that cap in May 2012, it now appears Comcast has settled on a new residential 300GB usage allowance gradually being reintroduced in Comcast service areas starting in southern U.S. markets.

Comcast executive vice president David Cohen cutely calls them “usage thresholds.” At Stop the Cap! we call it Internet Overcharging.

Cohen predicts Comcast will have broadband usage thresholds imposed on every city they serve within five years. Whether you call it a cap or a threshold, it is in fact a limit on how much Internet service you can consume without risking overlimit fees of $10 for each 50GB increment over your allowance.

Unlike Time Warner Cable, Comcast isn’t offering a discount with its usage cap, so those who use less will still pay the same they always have, proving again that usage caps don’t save customers money. (See below for clarification)

At the end of May I watched CNBC interview Comcast CEO Brian Roberts who implied during a discussion about Comcast’s usage caps that usage growth was impinging on the viability of its broadband business. Moments later, Time Warner Cable ran an ad emphasizing its broadband service has no usage caps. Both companies are making plenty of money from broadband.

This merger is bad news for customers faced with Comcast’s legendary bad service, its forthcoming usage caps, or the higher prices it charges. Even promised innovations like their much touted X1 set top platform comes with a gotcha Comcast routinely forgets to mention. Customers have to pay a $99 installation fee.

Stop the Cap! will submit a more comprehensive filing with the PSC outlining all of our objections to this merger, and there are several more. We invite anyone in the audience to visit stopthecap.com for this and other matters related to cable television and broadband. We appreciate being invited to share our views with the Commission and hope to bring a consumer perspective to this important development in our shared telecommunications future. I’d be happy to answer any questions you might have.

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/TWC News Hearing on Comcast 6-16-14.mp4[/flv]

Time Warner Cable News covered the Public Service Commission hearing in Buffalo, which included testimony from Stop the Cap!’s Phillip Dampier. Also appearing was a representative from the National Black Chamber of Commerce advocating that telecom companies merge as fast as possible. The Chamber has received significant support from Comcast for several years now and representatives routinely testify in favor of Comcast’s business initiatives. (2:30)

Clarification: Comcast has different trials in different cities:

Nashville, Tennessee: 300 GB per month with $10/50GB overlimit fee;

Tucson, Arizona: Economy Plus through Performance XFINITY Internet tiers: 300 GB. Blast! Internet tier: 350 GB; Extreme 50 customers: 450 GB; Extreme 105: 600 GB. $10/50GB overlimit fee;

Huntsville and Mobile, Alabama; Atlanta, Augusta and Savannah, Georgia; Central Kentucky; Maine; Jackson, Mississippi; Knoxville and Memphis, Tennessee and Charleston, South Carolina: 300 GB per month with $10/50GB; XFINITY Internet Economy Plus customers can choose to enroll in the Flexible-Data Option to receive a $5.00 credit on their monthly bill and reduce their data usage plan from 300 GB to 5 GB. If customers choose this option and use more than 5 GB of data in any given month, they will not receive the $5.00 credit and will be charged an additional $1.00 for each gigabyte of data used over the 5 GB included in the Flexible-Data Option;

Fresno, California, Economy Plus customers also have the option of enrolling in the Flexible-Data Option.

Comcast suggested customers can enroll in a cheaper usage plan in some of these markets. Yes they can, but only if they downgrade to Economy Plus service which offers speeds only up to 3Mbps. Their $5 discount is not available on any other plan.