Time Warner Cable has signed exclusive marketing deals with two apartment complexes on Staten Island that will give the cable company the sole right to pitch television, Internet, and phone services to residents. Aside from this, details like those crucial Digital Marketing Elements can also aid Time Warner Cable by increasing brand awareness, enhancing customer engagement, and driving subscriptions through targeted online campaigns.

Markham Gardens on the borough’s northern shore near Port Richmond and Park Lane at Seaview, a senior living community located in the Emerson Hill neighborhood, represent the first ever exclusive marketing deals the cable company has signed on Staten Island, and will probably not be the last.

The deal will not prevent Verizon’s FiOS fiber-to-the-home network from being available to residents in the future, but such marketing agreements can discourage residents from signing up with a competitor. Engaging with seo reseller uk enables you to offer high-quality SEO services without the overhead.

A growing number of apartment complexes in the country are signing exclusive marketing arrangements with cable operators in return for financial incentives. The agreements often bundle the cost of a renter’s cable service into the monthly rent or include it as a mandatory amenities fee. When a cable customer understands they are paying for cable service whether they want it or not, it makes it difficult for competitors to convince renters to pay for both cable service and services from the phone or satellite company.

Other types of marketing deals allow the cable operator to promote itself on an apartment complex website or through exclusive door-hangers or other marketing opportunities denied to competitors.

Rogers Communications, Canada’s largest cable operator, told investors at an investment bank conference it intends to accelerate plans to monetize wireless and broadband data usage this year.

Anthony Staffieri, chief financial officer of Rogers Communications told attendees at Morgan Stanley’s Technology, Media & Telecom Conference that Rogers’ future revenue outlook was going to be data-centric.

“We think data, monetizing data, is going to be a key aspect of that, both on the wireless side, as well as on the cable side of things,” Staffieri said.

Staffieri

Key to Rogers is the development of data plans that maximize revenue potential by exploiting the customer’s discomfort with overlimit fees. Staffieri admits the company has plans that can cost the company revenue if customers downgrade to a usage bucket that brings them very close to their usage limit.

But most customers do not choose those “exact fit” data plans. They typically select more expensive, larger-bucket plans so they can rest easy knowing they will not get slapped with a overlimit fee.

“And so they’re coming into data plans that are probably more than they need,” Staffieri said. “But for most users, what they’re looking for is comfort in usage. And so what we found is there’s a preponderance to buy more than what you need. So there’s no surprise at the end of the month in terms of billing. And so it’s all about that comfort in usage that we’re focused on in the price plans.”

In wireless, Rogers is also counting on the explosive growth of usage that comes after introducing 4G LTE coverage.

“Simply on 3G to LTE, you see an immediate growth in data usage,” Staffieri said. “Same users, but if you were to look at the data set, it’s just within a defined period of time, they can just access more. And so for whatever reason, whatever they’re doing with it, it’s just driving more usage, more efficiency and they’re using it in the business context.”

Staffieri says Rogers is experiencing 30-50% increases in data usage year over year. Rogers introduced new wireless plans in the fall of 2012 that refocus customers on their anticipated data usage, with gradually more expensive wireless plans to match.

“That really gets the customer focused on choosing something that continues to drive data growth,” Staffieri noted.

Rogers Cable broadband customers have also faced data caps and consumption-oriented billing for years. Although Rogers competitively responded to a Bell offer introduced in January that includes unlimited use service for customers who want it, that option comes at an added cost — one that can be priced up or down according to marketplace conditions.

Rogers primary focus is on encouraging its cable broadband customers to move towards higher-speed, more expensive data plans.

MONETIZED: Rogers sells a 25/2Mbps broadband plan for $52 a month that includes only an 80GB monthly usage allowance. A $2/GB overlimit fee applies, up to a maximum of $100 per month. Taxes, a modem rental fee or purchase, a one-time activation fee of $14.95 and up to a $99.99 installation fee also apply.

“On the cable side, making sure we have the best Internet experience was the other piece of it,” Staffieri said. “We ended the year with 90% of our footprint able to get 150Mbps data speed ($122.99/mo with 250GB usage allowance). And so to the extent that we continue to lead on Internet, we think that’s going to be important ingredient for the top line [revenue] growth.”

On the wireless side, Rogers is following the lead of big providers in the United States and gradually shifting the cost of new smartphones away from itself and onto its customers by adjusting its subsidy program.

“As we see data [usage] pulling [revenue] growth, overall, that bodes well for a continuation of the subsidization,” Staffieri said. “For us, it’s really been about making sure that we give the customer choice. And so when we combine that with the introduction of the Flex Plan, which we did in 2012, what we’re seeing is more and more customers opting into new handsets. But more and more, it’s on the customer’s nickel as opposed to our nickel on the Flex Plan programs.”

Rogers Wireless’ Individual plans. Rogers’ customers have to pay extra for long distance calling — most plans only cover local calls. Data plans are stingier and more expensive than what most Americans pay, and steep overlimit fees up to $0.02 per megabyte ($20/GB) apply. Like in the United States, Rogers is moving to bundle unlimited calling and texting into more of their plans. What differentiates more plans today is how much data usage is included.

Staffieri admitted Bell is giving Rogers the most competitive headaches in Ontario because of their aggressively priced promotions.

“Certainly, [Bell’s Fibe IPTV] has been competitive for us. In the short-term, we continue to deal with what I would consider to be aggressive pricing in terms of acquisition and retention offers by our IPTV competitor,” said Staffieri. “We’ve always been competing with their satellite product and so that competition has always been there. But I would describe it as certainly having picked up and continuing to pick up. And it’s largely been through pricing offers as opposed to product.”

Staffieri says Rogers is competing with improved set-top equipment like the NextBox 2.0 — a whole-home DVR with an improved user interface. It also offers customers Anyplace TV, a TV Everywhere service that allows customers to watch the Rogers’ TV lineup on tablets inside the home.

The Toronto Maple Leafs, the National Hockey League’s most valuable sports franchise, is today 75% co-owned by Bell Canada Enterprises (BCE) and Rogers Communications.

As is the case in the United States, Canadian cable companies are also facing dramatically increasing programming costs, particularly for sports programming.

But to a greater degree than in the U.S., Canadian media conglomerates own and control a larger share of cable and broadcast networks, programming producers, would-be competitors like satellite television, and even sports teams and the networks that show their games.

That positions them to negotiate with themselves over content costs, because they own or control the sports franchise, the cable or broadcast network that televises their games, and the cable, satellite, or telephone provider through which most Canadians watch.

“We’ve tried to be disciplined on the extent that content price increases are there because consumers want it, then we want to make sure we’re disciplined in passing on that cost to the customer,” Staffieri said. “And so we strive to make sure that in the TV and video business our gross margins are consistent.”

“So if you were to look at how that’s played out over the last several quarters and several years, it’s been fairly consistent. And so that’s what we strive to do is to make sure that those programming costs ultimately are passed on to the consumer, which is ultimately driving up the cost through their demand.”

Time Warner Cable objects to publicly-owned broadband networks because they represent “unfair” publicly-funded “competition,” despite the fact TWC is also on the public dole.

The next time a cable operator or phone company claims community-owned broadband providers deliver unfair competition because they are government-funded, remind them that quite often that phone or cable company also happens to be on the public dole.

Take Time Warner Cable, which this week won a $5,266,979 grant courtesy of New York State taxpayers to extend their cable system to 4,114 homes in rural parts of upstate New York just outside of the cable company’s current service areas. That equals $1,280.26 in state tax dollars per household. For that public investment, Time Warner will reap private profits for shareholders from selling broadband, cable-TV, phone, and home security services to its newest customers indefinitely.

Now unlike some of my conservative friends, I am not opposed to the state spending money to wire rural New York. It is obvious cable and phone companies will simply never wire these areas on their own so long as Return on Investment conditions fail in these places. What does annoy me are the endless arguments we hear in opposition to public broadband from these same companies, claiming with a straight face that community-owned networks represent “unfair competition” because they are publicly funded. Time Warner Cable is no stranger to public taxpayer benefits itself, having won millions in tax abatements and credits in North Carolina, Ohio and a cool $5 million courtesy of Mr. and Mrs. N.Y. Taxpayer.

Many of the nation’s private telecommunications companies have plenty of love for federal, state, and local officials who have passed favorable tax laws and policies at their behest:

• AT&T not only did not pay any federal taxes in 2011, it actually secured a $420 million taxpayer-subsidized refund;
• Local governments have granted rights-of-way red tape cutting, tax credits and abatements in return for siting important facilities in select areas and hiring an appropriate number of employees to work in them;
• State laws that have made life easy for telecom companies, including statewide video franchising;
• State laws that make life difficult for their would-be competitors, especially public broadband networks.

So let us end the silly rhetoric about public vs. private broadband being a question of fairness. This is really a question about who controls your broadband future,  your community or big telecom corporations.

In states like Georgia, elected politicians like Rep. Mark Hamilton want those decisions made by Comcast (Pennsylvania), Windstream (Arkansas) and AT&T (Texas). His bill would make it next to impossible for a local community to do anything but beg and plead the phone company to deliver something, anything that resembles broadband service. For a good part of rural Georgia (and elsewhere), the answer has always been a resounding “no,” at least until the federal government steps up and kicks in your money to help defray the costs of extending Windstream or AT&T’s sub par DSL service that slows to a crawl once the kids are out of school.

Windstream waited for the federal government to kick in $7.28 million in taxpayer dollars before it would agree to extend its DSL service to rural customers in its own home state of Arkansas.

You have to wonder about the Republicans in Georgia these days who used to fight for local and state control over almost everything. It should be instinctive for any conservative to want out-of-state pointyheads out of their business, but Rep. Mark Hamilton, himself a business owner, seems content forfeiting those rights to companies headquartered hundreds of miles away. If it was the federal government telling Georgia what kind of broadband service it deserves, do you think Mr. Hamilton would be so amenable? Unfortunately, should Hamilton have his way, for the foreseeable future, residents and business owners in Gray, Sparta, or Eatonton to count just a few will have broadband just the way the state’s phone companies want it — super slow DSL, dial-up or satellite fraudband.

New York Governor Andrew M. Cuomo announced this week New York State will award $25 million in funding to expand high-speed Internet access in rural upstate and underserved urban areas of New York through the Connect NY Broadband Grant Program. This award brings the total amount of funding awarded for broadband projects during Governor Cuomo’s administration to more than $56 million, the largest statewide broadband funding commitment in the nation.

Unlike many broadband grant programs, New York is primarily targeting last-mile projects that make all the difference for New Yorkers that cannot get broadband service at any price. The federal government and some states have focused instead on funding institutional or “middle-mile” networks that ordinary consumers and businesses cannot access. The Connect NY Broadband Project specifically sought projects that will get residents broadband service as quickly as possible.

Pat Pryor is chair of the Tompkins County Legislature’s Special Committee on Broadband, which is fighting for better service in the Southern Tier of New York. Pryor says the grant will make a real difference because Verizon and Time Warner Cable have refused to expand service where they consider it unprofitable. She told the Innovation Trail the funding will help a wireless ISP in her county that specializes in serving rural areas bypassed by cable and DSL.  (1 minute)
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“Through the Connect NY program, we are bringing high-speed Internet access to all corners of New York State,” Cuomo said. “The projects receiving these grants represent the very best proposals with the most potential to benefit statewide economic and community development efforts. These funds will strengthen New York’s broadband capacity and encourage sustainable adoption of broadband service in unserved and underserved communities, counties and regions across the state.”

Cuomo

Altogether, about 6,000 square miles of new infrastructure will offer high-speed Internet service to 153,000 New York households, 8,000 businesses, and 400 community anchor institutions – many without any means to access the Internet. The projects will also create 1,400 new jobs.

The funding comes as a relief to New York residents who have gone without service for years, denied access to earlier grants in part because incumbent providers inaccurately claimed, through national broadband maps, they already offered full broadband coverage in many New York counties that actually don’t have service.

Tompkins County is a case in point. Verizon and Time Warner Cable, the dominant providers, volunteered incorrectly that almost the entire county was well-served with broadband. That proved frustrating to county legislator Pat Pryor.

“It matters, because a lot of times [the maps are] what grant funding is predicated on,” Pryor told the Innovation Trail. “[Funders say] If you don’t have any unserved areas, why would you need a grant? We’re almost 100 percent covered, why would we need any money?”

Claire Perez has spent more than a year fighting for broadband for her neighborhood in West Dryden, which is just over 1/2-mile from the nearest Time Warner Cable customer. She talked with the Innovation Trail last March about her plight. Despite endless rounds of petitioning the cable operator to extend service, the company would only quote “go-away” prices ranging from $23,000-54,000 to wire her neighborhood and home. Perez, and others like her, may be among the biggest beneficiaries of the broadband expansion program if they are near a Time Warner Cable service area. (3 minutes)
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The specifics:

$24,010 The Smithville Project
This project with Haefele TV Inc. will serve the Southern Tier region. The Smithville project will build fiber optic cable utilizing existing infrastructure. The network will pass 350 homes and provide broadband service with speeds of 7 Mbps download and 1.5 Mbps upload to approximately 100 new subscribers.

$114,015 Ovid and Romulus Broadband Project
This project with Trumansburg Telephone Company will serve the Finger Lakes region. The Ovid and Romulus Broadband Project will provide broadband to unserved areas in company territory in the towns of Ovid and Romulus. This project will enable 110 customers in this area that have no availability to any type of broadband services to obtain high-speed Internet service. The project will also offer discounts on subscription fees, free training and email addresses.

$200,000 Connect Thurman White Space Project
This project with Warren County Economic Development Corporation will serve the Capital District region. Through a public/private partnership, the Thurman White Space project will provide broadband access to 89 households in the northeast area of the Town of Thurman. The Town of Thurman will also offer economically disadvantaged residents access to public computers and enhanced digital literacy training.

$557,000 Essex County Broadband Service Expansion
This project will serve the North Country region. The Essex County Broadband Service Expansion project will provide high-speed broadband service to households that do not have access within the Towns of Jay and Wilmington, passing 1,900 households. The project will also provide digital video services and potentially a competitive telephone service.

$558,940 Otsego County Wireless Network
This project with the County of Otsego IDA will serve the Mohawk Valley region. The Otsego County Wireless Network will partner with a last-mile provider to leverage a county-wide, open access fiber backbone to deploy last-mile, wireless broadband to 24 towns, 9 villages and 1 city in Otsego County, serving approximately 28,000 households, 4,500 businesses and 300 community anchor institution locations. The wireless network will also be made available to any viable organization or service provider that wishes to use it.

$572,000 Hamilton and Herkimer Counties Broadband
The Broadband 1 project with Newport Telephone Company is a multi-region project serving the North Country and Mohawk Valley regions. The project will leverage existing infrastructure to provide broadband service to 230 residents, businesses and community anchor institutions in Hamilton and Herkimer Counties. The project will also enhance emergency services for both counties.

$672,452 Southern Tier Broadband
This project with the Southern Tier West Development Foundation will serve the Western region. The project will expand access to broadband service and increase broadband speeds through a WiMAX (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access) system to towns and villages in the counties of Chautauqua, Allegany, Cattaraugus, and Erie County, passing more than 41,000 households. The project will also partner with local medical clinics to enhance electronic medical records and upgrade hardware and software at libraries in Chautauqua, Cattaraugus, Allegany, Steuben, and Chemung Counties.

$800,000 Allegany County Broadband
This project with Allegany County will serve the Western New York region. The Allegany County Broadband project will create a county-wide platform for providing access to an existing network, delivering broadband to 28 local communities and 17,440 households in Allegany County that are currently without broadband service.

$976,426 Lyon Mountain Broadband
This project with Slic Network Solutions will serve the North Country region. The Lyon Mountain Broadband Project will provide high-speed, low-cost broadband service in the Community of Lyon Mountain to 527 households, utilizing fiber-to-the-home technology. In addition this network will also deliver telephone service, IPTV service, and advance business services over the fiber.

$1,012,366 Bellmont North Next Generation Broadband
This project with Slic Network Solutions will serve the North Country region. The Bellmont North Next Generation Broadband project will provide high-speed, low-cost broadband service in the Adirondack Park to the northern end of the Town of Bellmont. This service will be delivered utilizing 25.3 miles of fiber to the home and wireless technology to connect 124 households. The network will also allow for the delivery of telephone service, IPTV service, and advance business services over the fiber.

$1,636,346 Connect NYC
This project with the New York City Economic Development Corporation will serve the New York City region. By conducting a competition to fund fiber build out to small and medium businesses and in collaboration with private sector Internet Service Providers, the Connect NYC Project will be used to extend the fiber infrastructure available to commercial and industrial businesses in New York City. Business owners who will need industrial dust control protection may consider contacting experts like WeatherSolve for professional installation services.

$1,800,000 MTC Broadband Buildout
The MARK Project Inc. will serve municipalities in the Capital District, Mohawk Valley and the Southern Tier. The project will deliver telecommunications services, including broadband, voice and video services, to 900 residents, businesses, and anchor institutions within the unserved areas of the towns of Conesville, Gilboa, Halcott, Middletown, and Roxbury. The project will also offer broadband connectivity to community anchor institutions within the service area free of charge.

$1,999,584 Parish Broadband
This project with New Visions Communications will serve the Central New York region. The project will utilize existing infrastructure to provide high-speed internet, VoIP and cable television to the Town of Parish, where 72% of the population does not have access to broadband, VoIP or landline cable television. The project will also create 20 construction jobs and 6 permanent jobs.

$2,042,177 Connecting the Capital Region
Hudson Valley Wireless will provide high-speed fixed wireless broadband access to nearly 40,000 households and 2,000 businesses that currently do not have access in Washington and Rensselaer Counties. In addition, the network will enhance public safety operations in the region by enabling redundancy of public safety communications and by allowing municipalities to use a portion of the bandwidth at no cost.

$2,162,656 Schroon Lake Next Generation Broadband
This project with Slic Network Solutions will serve the North Country region. Slic Networks Solutions will provide high-speed, low-cost broadband service to 457 households in the unserved areas of the Town of Schroon and the Town of North Hudson. This service will be delivered utilizing fiber to the home technology. Slic will also provide wireless hot spots for frequently visited public locations including the public beach in Schroon Lake.

$2,216,000 Tompkins and Cayuga Counties Last Mile Coverage
This project with Clarity Connect Inc. is a multi-region project serving the Central New York and Southern Tier regions. This project leverages existing tower infrastructure to provide broadband services to the unserved portions of the Towns of Ulysses, Enfield, Newfield, Danby, Groton, Lansing, Ledyard, Genoa, Venice, Scipio, Niles, Sempronius, and Summerhill in Cayuga and Tompkins County. The project will also upgrade DSL services increasing existing speeds.

$2,407,049 Yates County Open Access Fiber Network
This project with Yates County will serve the Finger Lakes region. The Open Access Fiber Network will build and operate a fiber-optic ring with spurs to remote areas within the County of Yates. This network will serve as a backbone foundation for the development of community-based broadband initiatives. The open access fiber network will be 68 miles long, passing 10,400 households and available for use within each town it routes through.

$5,266,979 Statewide Broadband Expansion
The Statewide Broadband Expansion Project is a statewide project serving 9 regions. Time Warner Cable will deploy robust high-speed Internet service to 4,114 households in the Capital, Central, Finger Lakes, Mid-Hudson, Mohawk Valley, NYC, North Country, Southern Tier and Western regions of New York State. The project will also provide residents with access to digital TV, telephone services and security services.

The remnants of JJ’s restaurant in Kansas City, Mo. after a gas explosion on Tuesday.

A contractor working for Time Warner Cable is alleged to have pierced a two-inch gas line in Kansas City, Mo., eventually causing a massive explosion that demolished a popular restaurant, leaving one worker dead and 15 injured.

Early Tuesday morning Heartland Midwest LLC, working on behalf of the cable operator, notified local authorities it intended to use a trenchless horizontal boring machine near JJ’s restaurant to install a fiber optic cable to reach a nearby office building.

Mark McDonald, president of North American Gas Workers Association told the Kansas City Star such installations can be dangerous because of nearby gas pipelines.

“You’re basically drilling blind,” McDonald told the newspaper. “You’re taking a lot of risk.”

Authorities now suspect that boring machine pierced the gas line and started a major leak.

There are conflicting reports about when the contractor notified emergency officials about the rupture. Some press accounts suggest it could have been one hour or more before 911 was notified.

Other reports criticize the local gas utility for not treating the gas leak as a more urgent threat.

Evacuations of nearby buildings, including JJ’s, did not begin until at least an hour after authorities were notified. Approximately one hour after that, JJ’s exploded leaving little more than a pile of rubble.

Megan Cramer, a 46-year-old server at JJ’s, was reportedly killed in the blast. More than a dozen others were injured.

At attorney for the contractor said the company was cooperating with local authorities in the investigation.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380”]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/KCTV Kansas City TWC Contractor Responsible for KCMO Blast 2-20-13.mp4[/flv]

KCTV-TV in Kansas City reports they could find no evidence Heartland Midwest filed a permit request before starting work on behalf of Time Warner Cable.  (2 minutes)