Charter Communications will close down Time Warner Cable’s Wi-Fi calling app Phone2Go on July 5, 2018, citing low customer usage.

Originally introduced in 2014, Phone2Go was marketed as a free Wi-Fi calling app alternative to Skype or Vonage. The Android and iOS app linked to Time Warner Cable/Spectrum’s phone service, allowing customers to make free calls, text and video conference over the app when away from home or abroad. Each account supported up to five devices, which allowed distant relatives, friends, or family members to make and receive free calls.

“One of the important advantages of Phone2Go is you can give an ID to a relative or friend who lives abroad. And they can make calls as if they were in the United States. So they can call you say on your cellphone, they may be say in Europe and you are in the U.S. and they would only pay the local rate,” said Time Warner Cable Phone general manager Jeff Lindsay back in 2016.

The app was never popular with customers, however, because call quality was often poor and the app was infrequently updated. It was also cumbersome to change or add devices, and once registered to a device, it was very difficult to re-register those devices for use with another account. After Charter Communications acquired Time Warner Cable, there were frequent and long-lasting service outages affecting the Phone2Go app, which may have driven off what loyal users it had.

Spectrum is contacting customers registered for the app by phone to alert them the Phone2Go service would be discontinued on Thursday.

Time Warner Cable’s unlimited local calling area expands to most of Europe today, which means making and receiving calls from across the pond now costs the same as calling your neighbor next door.

Time Warner Cable customers with Nationwide Calling telephone service ($10/mo) can now place unlimited toll-free calls across the U.S., Canada, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, the Northern Marianas/Guam, American Samoa, Mexico, the People’s Republic of China, Hong Kong, India, and the 28 nations making up the European Union:

Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Republic of Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. (Norway, not an EU member nation, is also now toll-free. Surprisingly, no similar accommodation was made for neutral Switzerland.)

The changes mean no more long distance charges, no calling cards and pin numbers, and no varying rates. The free calling is included in your basic rate for home phone service — there are no add-on plans required. Some customers grandfathered on limited long distance or local-calling only phone plans do not qualify. Those customers are probably now paying more for those older plans than Time Warner today charges for its unlimited calling service.

Just like broadband, the cost to transport phone calls around the world has never been cheaper, and rates continue to fall in most other countries, often below 25 cents a minute. The exceptions are usually high-cost service areas, countries where phone tariffs are set artificially high as a revenue generator or to discourage international calling, or places that have to rely on satellite-delivered telephone service. Some examples:

• Antarctica: It costs $3+ a minute, starting as soon as someone takes their gloves off to pick up the phone;
• Ascension Island: Expect to pay $2.30 a minute to make a call to this isolated island in the South Atlantic Ocean that needs no more than 4-digit phone numbers;
• Cambodia: High tariffs are a decision of the government in Phnom Penh, boosting the price of an international call to about $2.34 a minute.
• Chad: The corrupt one-party administration in N’Djamena uses international calling revenue to line its pockets, costing $2.40 or more a minute in many cases.
• Cook Islands: Like many South Pacific island territories, Cook Islands relies on satellite-based telephone services which are expensive. Calling someone there runs about $3 a minute;
• Equatorial Guinea: A tiny African state with a big appetite for foreign currency, the authoritarian government in Malabo thanks you for paying $2.15+ a minute to call the country;
• North Korea: Yes you can call North Korea and it’s a relative bargain at just $1.30+ a minute. Just assume the conversation won’t be private;
• Laos: Around $2.40 a minute. Laos is one of the five remaining Communist states (the others: North Korea, China, Cuba and Vietnam) Don’t call us, we won’t call you;
• Wallace and Futuna: Like other remote Pacific islands, making and receiving phone calls is dependent on expensive satellite circuits. The bureau responsible for overseeing French territories overseas also takes their cut, which makes calls to these two islands especially expensive at around $4 a minute.

Time Warner Cable telephone customers may find their phone numbers missing from directory assistance records and residential phone books.

This year, the cable company began charging directory publishers for its residential customer listings and some, including Frontier Communications, have refused to pay.

As a result, customers are likely to find their next copy of the White Pages thinner than it used to be.

The usefulness of telephone directories and directory assistance services have both been in decline for years as customers migrate to unlisted cell phones. But the loss of cable phone customers from phone books is a new trend. In the past, cable companies provided the listings for free to most directory publishers as a service to customers who wanted to keep their phone numbers in the directory. But now those listings are a money-maker, only available for sale.

Phil Yawman, Frontier Communications vice president and general manager for the Rochester, N.Y. area — Frontier’s largest urban market — told WXXI News the phone company opted not to buy the listings. 

Time Warner Cable spokesperson Joli Plucknette-Farmen said charging a fee for residential directory listings is accepted by the Federal Communications Commission.

Frontier, like many other phone companies, also no longer provides automatic delivery of residential White Pages listings, although the lucrative Yellow Pages will still appear on customer doorsteps. 

Time Warner Cable phone customers with Unlimited Home Phone calling can now place toll-free calls to Mexico, the company announced today.

Most Time Warner Cable phone customers are already signed up with the Unlimited Home Phone plan, which provides free-calling to the U.S., Canada, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

“The expansion of our most popular Phone plan to include unlimited calls to Mexico will bring huge value to the millions of TWC Home Phone users who have friends and family in Mexico,” said Jeff Lindsay, general manager for Home Phone at TWC. “We’re excited to offer truly unlimited calling to Mexico as part of our main calling plan.”

Customers can make unlimited toll-free calls to both Mexican landline and cellular numbers.

The cable company also gave room in its press release to congratulatory comments from the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) and The National Hispanic Caucus of State Legislators (NHCSL) — two Latino organizations that receive financial support from large cable and phone companies and often appeal to regulators on behalf of the telecom industry.

LULAC counts Time Warner Cable as a member of its Corporate Alliance and partner organization.

The NHCSL receives support and assistance from a variety of cable and phone companies including Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T and regularly appeals to federal regulators advocating the public policy agenda of Big Telecom companies.

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/TWC TWC Free Calls to Mexico 3-3-14.mp4[/flv]

Ray de los Santos, director of LULAC in Dallas delivered this jumbled word salad about Time Warner Cable’s addition of free-calling to Mexico. (0:36)

Efforts by New York’s largest cable operator to deregulate telephone service in New York, potentially cutting off delinquent ratepayers’ phone service at inconvenient times, has run into opposition from an Albany newspaper.

The Times Union published an editorial last week opposing the measure, fearing it could leave some of the millions of Time Warner Cable phone customers without service on nights and weekends without any way to make a payment to prevent the disconnection.

Unlike other services that companies like Time Warner offer — such as TV, Internet, security and remote lighting and heating control — the home telephone holds special status. It has long been regarded as an essential utility, much like residential gas, water and electricity. The PSC regulates how and when a utility can cut a customer off such a critical service for failure to pay a bill on time.

For years, Time Warner maintained it was not a phone company and should not be bound by these rules. That changed earlier this year when it accepted the responsibilities and regulations that come with being a residential phone provider.

Now, though, Time Warner is petitioning the PSC to change the rules governing home phone bills.

Some of the requests appear reasonable, such as updating language about local and long-distance calling charges. But that’s not the case with Time Warner’s request to expand the hours and days when it can disconnect services for customers who have fallen behind in their bills, including their phone service.

Specifically, Time Warner wants to deal with delinquent customers on nights and weekends.

Most other utility providers can cut service for non-payment only during weekdays, when the PSC’s staff is working and available to help broker solutions and protect consumers. The PSC has the authority to make decisions on disputed bills, revise payment plan arrangements and remedy situations where continued service is medically necessary.

Late and unpaid bills are admittedly a chronic problem for cable companies. In the past year, Time Warner sent more than 1.7 million past-due notices to residential customers in the state and shut off or suspended service to nearly 600,000 households for failing to pay bills.

Time Warner calls its proposed change a convenience to its customers. It’s really a convenience for Time Warner, which wants to handle phone bills the same as other services. But this would bypass the special safeguards for phone consumers.

The Public Service Commission is still reviewing the proposal from Time Warner Cable, which is the dominant cable provider in upstate New York and parts of New York City.