Time Warner Cable’s approval of its request to offer regulated “digital phone” service in New York has been quickly followed by an appeal for deregulation to loosen rules covering disconnection for non-payment and reduced service quality standards.

The cable operator now qualifies — as a designated Eligible Telecommunications Carrier (ETC) — for significant federal and state subsidies in return for providing discounted Lifeline telephone service for the state’s poorest residents.

The cable industry has traditionally escaped regulation and oversight with claims “digital phone” Voice over IP (VoIP) products are “unregulated information services.”

In March, the New York Public Service Commission approved a petition filed by subsidiary Time Warner Cable Information Services (NY) LLP (TWCIS-NY), to begin offering regulated telephone service to the company’s 1,235,710 phone customers in New York.

As a result, Time Warner agreed to a range of oversight and service standard requirements. But on May 1 — less than two months later — Time Warner filed a new petition with the PSC requesting deregulation and exemption from several provisions the company initially agreed to follow.

“Now that it is concededly a regulated telephone service provider, Time Warner is acting like other regulated phone companies, in that it immediately is seeking to relax the rules designed to protect customers,” writes Gerry Norlander from the Public Utility Law Project of New York (PULP), a consumer protection group.

Not so, says the cable company.

“In order to offer the best telecommunications service to its customers and expand this customer base, TWCIS-NY respectfully requests that the Commission grant the waivers discussed in this Petition,” the company writes.

The changes Time Warner requests would make it easier for the cable company to disconnect service for late or non-payment, allow Time Warner to avoid distributing unwanted paper telephone directories, and escape oversight of its phone service for all but the most critical “core” customers with special needs.

Your Partial Payment Will Not Necessarily Prevent Us From Cutting Off Your Phone Line

The Telephone Fair Practices Act (TFPA), prohibits regulated phone companies from shutting off phone service for late/non-payment outside of normal business hours, Fridays after 1pm, weekends, and holidays:

(d) Suspension or termination of service–time. A telephone corporation complying with the conditions set forth in this section may suspend or terminate service to a residential customer for nonpayment of bills only between the hours of 8 a.m. and 7:30 p.m., Monday through Thursday, and between 8:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. on Friday, provided such day or the following day is not:
(1) a public holiday, as defined in the General Construction Law;
(2) a day on which the main business office of the telephone corporation is closed for business; or
(3) during the periods of December 23rd through December 26th and December 30th through January 2nd.

Time Warner Cable claims those limitations are too much, and “for its customers’ convenience, TWCIS-NY respectfully requests […] to extend these hours.”

If approved, Time Warner claims it will make your life easier if they can cut you off at their convenience — between the hours of 8:00am and 9:00pm, Monday through Friday, and between 8:00am and 5:00pm on Saturday.

Those times coincidentally match the hours technicians are now dispatched to collect equipment and shut off service for deadbeat customers.

Time Warner says people are often busy or not at home during the day and it would make more sense to coordinate the surrender of service when people are available to hand over equipment. Unfortunately, Time Warner’s preferred hours often fall outside of the calling hours at the Public Service Commission, which maintains a ‘last resort hotline’ for customers about to have their service disconnected.

‘Time Warner Cable Punishes Late Payers With Telephone Service Suspensions and Terminations on a “Massive” Scale’

Unlike cable television and broadband, New York designates telephone service as an essential utility, and regulators take every step to maintain service wherever possible.

Under rules originally adopted when consumers chose both a local and long distance phone company that put all of your charges on a single monthly invoice, regulators sought to protect landline service when customers did not pay the full amount due. Under those rules, partial payments are allocated first to past due charges from the local phone company, then past due charges for regional long distance or local calling, then charges billed by your long distance carrier, and then everything else.

Since your local phone company has the power to cut off your dial tone for late payment, making sure they were first in line to get paid usually kept your phone line working.

“It Appears that Time Warner Has Increased its Reliance Upon Telephone Service Suspensions and Terminations as a Tool to Enforce Customer Payment Obligations.”

According to data provided by Time Warner Cable in response to PULP information requests, during the month of March, 2012 Time Warner Cable sent 68,134 shutoff notices to Time Warner phone customers in New York. The threats worked for the majority of those customers. Only 17,218 were eventually disconnected after the shutoff deadline passed.

Since then, shutoffs and suspensions have soared. By July 2013, Time Warner mailed 146,026 shutoff notices and followed through with 42,777 disconnects, increases of 114% and 148%, respectively.

“As a consequence, interruption of phone service for bill collection purposes has reached massive proportion,” says PULP. “It appears that Time Warner has increased its reliance upon telephone service suspensions and terminations as a tool to enforce customer payment obligations. In the 12 months ending July 2013, Time Warner terminated or suspended telephone service on 592,250 occasions for bill collection purposes. Of that number, telephone service was reinstated after an interruption for collection purposes on 461,268 occasions. Thus, 130,982 or 22% of the customers terminated were not promptly reinstated.”

Those figures concern PULP because it suggests many disconnected customers are now without phone service, swelling the “unacceptably large number of New York households lacking telephone service.”

New York now ranks fourth from the bottom of all states in the most recent FCC Universal Services Monitoring Report of telephone subscribers.

Verizon’s Request to “Streamline” the Payment Process Gives Time Warner Cable the Same Idea

In 2010, Verizon New York successfully petitioned the PSC to streamline that payment allocation system. Few people bother with choosing a long distance carrier these days because most phone companies now offer unlimited long distance as part of a bundled service package. Verizon asked to simplify things so that Verizon New York got paid first and everything else came second.

Time Warner is seeking a variation on that same theme, requesting the PSC allow it to allocate partial payments first to telephone service, with the rest distributed to cover charges for broadband and cable television service.

While that is good news for your Time Warner phone line, it is bad news for your broadband and television service which can still be interrupted for non-payment because your partial payment was applied to phone service above all else.

Customers are unlikely to be aware of this, however. Time Warner Cable bills include a regular notice that if a customer is in arrears for any Time Warner Cable service, telephone service may be shut off.

PULP argues the cable company should let customers decide which services are most important to keep up and running during an emergency.

“For example, a customer might want to jettison cable TV and keep the Internet on to hunt for jobs during a spell of unemployment or other household financial crisis,” writes Norlander. “While the bills include separate items for cable TV, broadband, and telephone services, there is no information given in the bills on how customers can, if they are in arrears, keep the service they pay for with a partial payment.”

Indeed, there is no provision on Time Warner’s website or on its paper bill payment coupon to allocate which services a customer wishes their partial payment to be applied to first.

Time Warner Cable argues it gives late paying customers every opportunity to either make up past due payments or negotiate a payment plan before any service is interrupted.

“Customers have the opportunity to walk into the local [cable] office and make a payment during these extended hours,” Time Warner argues. “They also have the opportunity to pay online and over the phone 24 hours a day, as well as paying cable representatives directly when they arrive at the customer’s premises to disconnect service. TWCIS-NY believes that streamlining of the rules for disconnection of phone and cable services will make the Commission’s rules more consistent across the board and less confusing for customers.”

We Shouldn’t Have to Provide Printed Residential Phone Books We Didn’t Offer Anyway

Time Warner Cable wants to opt out from distributing printed copies of residential telephone directories it doesn’t publish.

When the company provided unregulated telephone service, it never had to offer customers a phone book. But in its new life as a regulated provider, New York requires phone companies to offer, upon request, a printed telephone directory:

Each service provider shall distribute at no charge to its customers within a local exchange area, a copy of the local exchange directory for that area, and one additional copy shall be provided for each working telephone number upon request. A copy shall be filed with the Commission.

Nobody has formally opposed Time Warner Cable’s proposed alternative: distributing residential listings only to customers who specifically request them in print or on CD-ROM.

Most customers don’t realize Time Warner Cable used to outsource most of its telephone service operation to Sprint. In addition to providing VoIP service, Sprint relied on dominant local telephone companies to provide phone books to Time Warner phone customers. In return, Sprint passed along customers’ names, addresses and phone numbers to phone companies like AT&T, Verizon, Frontier, CenturyLink and Windstream to be incorporated into those directories.

In 2010, Time Warner announced a four-year transition project to take its telephone service “in-house.”

Will All of This Competition, Oversight Rules Should Be Relaxed; If Customers Don’t Like Us, They Can Go Somewhere Else

Virtually every telephone company in New York agrees with the assessment Verizon has made for years — if a phone company does not provide excellent service, subscribers will simply switch to a competitor, negating the need for oversight of service quality standards.

Verizon paved the road Time Warner Cable is driving down to offer NY’ers less-regulated phone service.

The PSC agreed, reducing requirements for service outage reporting and other documented service issues. Today, Verizon only reports incidents involving “core” customers — low-income Lifeline subscribers, “special needs” customers including the elderly, those with serious medical conditions, the disabled and the visually impaired. Core customers also include those with no competitive service providers available to them.

Time Warner Cable wants a modified version of the Verizon “core customer” standard applied to its cable phone service — one that defines core customers as those with Lifeline service or special needs.

Time Warner does not want to include those without competitive alternatives and seeks an exemption from any reporting requirements until it signs up at least 5,000 accounts designated as “core customers.” That could take a while. PULP obtained records from Time Warner Cable showing as of Aug. 7 the company has only signed up 149 telephone customers it defines as “core customers.”

The cable company may be thinking of the future. Verizon Communications has made its intentions clear it wants to abandon rural landline service in favor of questionably regulated wireless Voice Link service. The idea that a cable company provides landline service in an area the local phone company no longer does is unprecedented in New York, but perhaps for not much longer.

If Time Warner Cable successfully argues “core customers” need not include those without competing alternatives, the PSC may unintentionally hand the cable operator a rural telephone monopoly without quality of service oversight in some communities.

Alito

Justice Samuel Alito was forced to recuse himself from nearly six dozen cases brought to the Supreme Court in the last 10 months because the Alito family owns stock in many of the corporations involved in litigation.

When Alito’s wife Martha Ann’s father died last year, the Alito family inherited a wealth of stock worth up to $1.25 million in some of America’s largest companies, including AT&T and Verizon Communications.

The Associated Press reports Alito’s tardy financial disclosure for 2012 revealed the justice’s reasons for recusal: his sudden ownership of shares in large telecom, pharmaceutical, oil and gas, and tobacco companies.

Federal law requires justices to step away from cases where there is a financial conflict of interest. Alito’s inherited stock represents just such a conflict.

In one case, however, Alito found himself holding Comcast Corp. stock after hearing arguments in a massive class action antitrust case representing two million customers the plaintiffs argued were being overcharged by an illegitimate cable monopoly.

Alito’s Comcast stock was purchased and sold last December. The Court’s 5-4 decision, written by Justice Antonin Scalia, was announced March 27. Alito’s deciding vote fundamentally raised the bar on future lawsuits, making it much more difficult for class action cases to be brought before the courts.

The Comcast suit, in the courts since 2003, argued that cable subscribers in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware were overcharged at least $875 million because of Comcast’s efforts to monopolize cable service in the Philadelphia area. Comcast amassed its dominant position by buying or swapping cable systems in the region to create a single large cable provider serving the majority of southern New Jersey, Delaware, and southeastern Pennsylvania. By 2002, the lawsuit claimed, Comcast had achieved a 77.8 percent market share.

Comcast argued the lawsuit was too complicated and its proposed method of calculating damages was faulty. The Court’s conservative justices agreed with Comcast, finding the lawsuit fell “far short of establishing that damages are capable of measurement.”

• Voting for Comcast’s position: Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.
• Voting against Comcast: Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.

A study recently published in the Minnesota Law Review found the current Supreme Court is by far the most corporate-friendly of any court in at least 65 years, noting “the Roberts court is indeed highly pro-business — the conservatives extremely so and the liberals only moderately liberal.”

The top two most likely to vote in favor of big business among all justices seated since 1946 are Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr.

“There was a time when being ‘business-friendly’ meant giving corporations a leg-up and a level playing field because doing so creates jobs and bolsters the economy,” wrote Supreme Court reporter Jonathan Valania. “Today, ‘business-friendly’ means letting corporations socialize their costs while privatizing their profits. It means letting corporation literally write the laws that govern them. It means rolling back regulations and de-fanging oversight [….] What we are really talking about is corporatism.”

Triplett

Anthony Triplett used his job as a Comcast subcontractor to hunt for unsuspecting female victims while installing cable service — customers he would later return to rape and strangle.

On Friday, a Cook County judge sentenced the murderer to life in prison.

Judge Kevin Sheehan agreed with prosecutors who called Triplett both a sociopath and a psychopath, treating his victims with all the reverence of a used facial tissue.

Sheehan said Triplett’s defense was ludicrous, calling it a “wicked web of lies.”

“You were dancing like an ant on a sugar cube,” Sheehan said.

Triplett was found guilty of raping and strangling 23-year old Polish immigrant Urszula Sakowska,  whose lifeless body was found in a bathtub inside her Chicago-area home back in 2006.

Triplett is also facing charges in the death of 39-year old Janice Ordidge, a Comcast customer in Hyde Park.

Victims’ families say Comcast has a lot to answer for after subcontracting cable work out to Premier Cable Communications, a third-party company accused of maintaining shoddy hiring practices. Comcast is under scrutiny for doing nothing to stop Triplett after being informed he was being questioned by police in the death of Ordidge.

Both Comcast and Premier are being sued for allowing Triplett to continue working, which lead to his encounter with Sakowska.

Assistant State’s Attorney Brian Sexton said Triplett “obviously could not help himself” from committing the sexual assaults and killings.

“This is the most dangerous individual you will ever see in this courtroom — and that’s saying a lot for 26th Street,” Sexton told the judge, calling Triplett “every woman’s nightmare.”

“This is who you killed!” he shouted at Triplett while holding a photo of Sakowska.

Sakowska’s fiancé, Grzegorz Magiera, said he will never recover from her loss, which would have never happened had she not called Comcast.

“I can still see her in our house, smell her and feel her warm embrace,” Magiera said in a victim impact statement read by prosecutors. “My life will never be the same as it was before. No one will ever be able to replace my Urszula. She was my one and only. She was my angel.”

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WLS Chicago Comcast Killer Sentenced to Life 7-19-13.mp4[/flv]

WLS reports Comcast-contracted cable repairman Anthony Triplett was found guilty of rape and murder and is yet to face murder charges in a second case. Triplett used his “house calls for Comcast” as a hunting ground for female victims. (2 minutes)

Comcast has been a part of life in Muskegon, Mich. for decades, thanks in part to an unusually long 25-year franchise agreement signed when President Reagan was serving his last year in office. In 1988, the Berlin Wall was still in place, Mikhail Gorbachev formally implemented glasnost and perestroika, Snapple appeared on store shelves nationwide, and compact discs finally outsold vinyl records for the first time.

All good things must come to an end and Comcast’s contract to serve will finally expire Aug. 2. City officials want residents to understand that after two plus decades, it is appropriate to take some time to consider all the options. But a 2007 law has cut that time of reflection down to a month, and removed most of the powers Michigan communities used to have to select the best cable operator for their community. It’s a fact of life Comcast is well aware of, and it underlined that point by tossing a carelessly written, pro forma/fait accompli franchise renewal proposal into the mail that left Muskegon’s civic leaders cold. But if they fail to act fast, Comcast will win automatic approval of whatever it proposes to offer the 38,000 residents of the western Michigan city for years to come.

Statewide Video Franchising in Michigan

In December 2006, primarily at the behest of AT&T, the Michigan legislature passed a new statute that would create a uniform, statewide video franchise agreement template that providers could use to apply for or renew their franchises to operate. In theory, establishing a uniform, simplified franchise application would lead AT&T to quickly wire Michigan with U-verse, its competing cable/broadband/phone service, and bring dramatically lower prices for cable service and fewer complaints because of greater competition.

The Uniform Video Services Local Franchise Act was remarkably similar to those passed in more than a dozen other states — no mistake considering it was based largely on an AT&T-written draft distributed and promoted by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), an AT&T-backed third-party group that encourages state legislatures to enact corporate-ghostwritten bills into law.

Under the new law, much of the power reserved by local officials to approve cable franchises and enforce good customer service was stripped away and handed to the state’s Public Service Commission. The deregulation measure tipped the balance of power in providers’ favor, making it possible to do business on their terms, not those sought by community leaders. Among the law’s provisions:

1. Communities are still bound by the terms of their existing franchise agreements, but providers can break the legacy contracts for any reason, forcing a new agreement under the new statewide franchise law. If a provider wants out, they can abandon the community or transfer operations to a new provider with 15 days advance notice and no prior approval.
2. A franchise renewal proposal will be automatically approved if a city does not reject it within 30 days.
3. Communities cannot unreasonably restrict providers from access to public rights-of-way, an important consideration for AT&T’s U-verse, which requires the placement of large, sometimes noisy utility cabinets (a/k/a “lawn refrigerators”) to connect its fiber network with residential copper wiring.
4. Communities are limited to collecting up to 5% of video revenue in franchise fees and up to 2% to support Public, Educational, and Government (PEG) channels. In the past, some communities asked cable operators to wire schools, libraries, and local government offices at no cost, and several negotiated other forms of support for PEG channels, which allow local citizens to view town board meetings and create and distribute locally produced programming. Today, those agreements are only possible on a voluntary basis, without any threat if a provider refuses, they will get their franchise request rejected.
5. Providers are no longer obligated to honor agreements setting timetables to wire communities. Instead, they can handpick areas to be served, except in cases where racial or income discrimination can be proven.

Since the law was clearly designed to help new entrants like AT&T’s U-verse and Verizon FiOS, Michigan’s incumbent cable companies either demanded the same rights, remained neutral, or halfheartedly protested the proposed law suggesting it unfairly benefited new competitors. Cable companies, for example, would not benefit from laws throwing out buildout requirements because their networks are already largely complete.

But once signed into law, cable operators did begin asking cities to voluntarily adopt the new uniform statewide video franchise. Muskegon joined most other Michigan cities in declining the invitation.

AT&T did begin wiring Michigan for U-verse service, although there is no evidence it would not have done so had the Act never been signed into law. But that has not helped Muskegon, because the dominant phone company in the area is Frontier Communications. Frontier has so far shown no interest in building a competing cable TV service, so the only competition residents get are from two satellite companies.

City of Detroit v. State of Michigan and Comcast

Soon after the statewide franchise law was passed, Comcast notified the city of Detroit it could take the proposed renewal of its existing 1985 franchise agreement and go pound salt. The franchise agreement with the city expired in February 2007, just a month after the new law took effect. It was a new day, Comcast told city officials, and the company offered its own proposal for renewal — a 5% take-it-or-leave-it franchise fee and nothing else. Comcast even rejected the city’s counteroffer to include a 2% PEG fee, permitted under the new law.

Franchise negotiations went nowhere, but Comcast had nothing to fear. The city did not properly reject their franchise renewal offer so, as far as the company was concerned, it automatically won a franchise renewal.

The city sued both Comcast and the State of Michigan in the summer of 2010 alleging the statewide law violated the federal Cable Act, usurped local “home rule” authority, and that Comcast was illegally trespassing in the city without a franchise agreement. The Michigan Attorney General took Comcast’s side, defended the state law, and helped the cable company argue its case in court.

Comcast did not want the case heard and asked for its immediate dismissal, which was rejected.

In the summer of 2012, the judge split the decision between the city and Comcast. The judge found that Comcast had probably been operating illegally in Detroit since 2007 and owes the city damages. The judge also found parts of the state law troubling enough to invalidate. In particular, he emphasized cities do have a clear right to reject franchise proposals offered by cable operators and that in many cases those operators must adhere to their existing franchise agreements until they expire. Cities also have the right to protect and manage their rights-of-way, ending the perception cable and phone companies have the right to place hardware almost at-will in public areas.

Comcast wants to avoid paying Detroit damages for potentially operating illegally without a valid franchise.

The judge found nothing inherently faulty with the concept of statewide video franchising, nor did he rule that providers are required to serve everyone in a geographic area or that cities are allowed to enforce local customer service standards.

The impact of the statewide law, even after the judge’s ruling, still erodes local control. As pre-2007 franchise agreements expire, it is highly unlikely cable operators will continue to offer free service to municipal buildings, will not accept requirements to provide “universal service” or even language requiring wiring of every home that meets a “homes per mile” test. Some cable operators are even closing local customer service centers that used to be required in many franchise agreements.

Comcast did not appreciate the court ruling, sought to have it set aside, and failed. Now the Court of Appeals will likely weigh in on the case by the end of this year. Comcast is particularly concerned about the prospect of paying damages to the city of Detroit for illegally operating without a valid franchise. The judge hearing the case considered that a very real possibility and requested submissions from all parties about how much Comcast should pay the city.

Muskegon officials cited the judge’s rulings in the Detroit case in their letter rejecting Comcast’s proposed renewal agreement. The city wants to renegotiate certain terms regarding its PEG channels, still wants complimentary service to public buildings, and requests cable service be extended to the Hartshorn Marina.

Six Years Later, Cable Rates and Complaints Still Rising, the Competition is Fleeting, and Many Believe the Law Has Achieved Nothing

The Michigan Public Service Commission is tasked with reporting annually to the legislature and the public about the impact of the AT&T-sponsored law. The PSC’s broad conclusion is that the new law is working:

Increases in subscribers as well as the emergence of another video/cable provider are positive signs for the video services industry in the state of Michigan. Both franchise entities and providers have continued to report that video/cable competition is continuing to grow. Growth in competition has been observed each year since the Commission began issuing this report. In addition to the increase in competitive providers, companies continued to invest hundreds of millions of dollars into the Michigan video/cable market in 2012.

As the Act enters its seventh year of existence, signs of progress and competition continue to be evident. It appears that both franchise entities and providers perceive that providers are offering more services to customers. In addition, more areas throughout Michigan are beginning to have a choice of video/cable service providers.

But in the same report, the PSC admits the overwhelming consensus among those in individual communities is the law has made little to no difference in competition or pricing. For example, every provider has continued to raise their rates, particularly after promotional new customer packages expire. Much of the savings calculated in Michigan took introductory prices into account, such as when AT&T U-verse entered a market. After 1-2 years, those savings evaporate. AT&T has increased its pricing just as often as dominant cable providers Comcast and Charter.

The PSC touts that 15 new competitors have begun offering service in Michigan since the law was enacted. But besides AT&T’s U-verse., the majority of those new entrants are municipal telephone companies, small/family owned rural cable companies, or providers that specialize in serving only apartment complexes or condos. All but AT&T serve only tiny areas in Michigan and most have customers that number only in the hundreds to low-thousands.

Michigan’s New Competitors

• Ace Telephone Company of Michigan Inc.
• AT&T (U-verse)
• Bloomingdale Communications, Inc.
• Drenthe Telephone
• Martell Cable Service Inc.
• Mediagate Digital
• Michigan Cable Partners (MICOM Cable)
• Packerland Broadband
• Sister Lakes Cable TV
• Southwest Michigan Communications Inc.
• Spectrum Broadband
• Summit Digital
• Sunrise Communications LLC
• Vogtmann Engineering
• Waldron Communication Company

How many new Michigan customers has this competition netted since 2011? 2,116

The overwhelming majority of Michigan communities still have just one cable operator and no competitor. AT&T U-verse accounts for almost all the communities reporting a second provider.

Complaints have also been higher every year the statewide franchise law has been in effect. In 2007, there were 615 formal complaints made to the PSC. Every year thereafter, the number of complaints exceed 2007 levels, ranging from 757 in 2011 to 1,074 in 2010. Comcast is by far the worst offender — 51 percent. AT&T and Charter had a smaller percentage of complaints, 15 and 14 percent respectively. The majority of complaints among all providers deal with billing issues.

Since the new law took effect, many communities have felt so disempowered, they stopped reporting local complaints to the PSC. But among those who have, the story is the same in states without statewide franchise laws:

• System updates not completed as promised. Large numbers (of residents) have gone to satellite;
• Upgrades needed to allow for better reception and channel selection;
• There are two providers in our area, yet little increase in competition;
• Cost to extend service to reach potential customers affects competition;
• Cable provider left when switching from analog to digital, stating not enough customers to afford the changeover. Now only satellite is available;
• No broadband/high-speed Internet service in many townships;
• No phone, cable service available;
• Michigan has totally failed bringing affordable Internet service to this community, and has prevented our township government from providing the needed services.

The perceived impact of the 2007 law isn’t so great either:

• Communities lost in-kind and other services from the incumbent provider;
• Cable rates continue to increase;
• Zero value added and has eroded local control of franchising;
• Customers have a choice now, but rates are still higher;
• Providers simply poach competitor’s customers as evidenced by flat franchise revenue; as one increases the other decreases;
• This statute has proven to accomplish literally nothing for municipalities and only serves to benefit providers;
• The Act did nothing to improve service.

Morin

A former third-party contractor for Charter Communications has been sentenced for illegally obtaining a service restoration work order from the cable company and reconnecting service for the customer, pocketing $160 for himself.

Bay County District Judge Dawn A. Klida this week sentenced Randy A. Morin, 31, of Bay City, Mich. to six months probation, $555 in fines, $160 in restitution, and 50 hours of community service for pretending to be a Charter employee and illegally turning cable service back on for a disconnected customer.

Anthony David called the cable company to reconnect cable service in November, and Morin arrived at his door with work order in hand. What David did not know was Morin had not worked on behalf of the Charter since May 2011.

Morin asked for a total of $160 to reinstate Charter service, which David gave him in two separate installments. At the end of November, David’s Internet service was switched off again after Charter claimed his connection was illegal. David’s next call was to police who began an investigation culminating in Morin’s arrest and felony charges.

William J. Morand, communications director for Charter’s Northeast Region, admitted Morin previously worked for M. Kable, a Charter contractor, and that there was no legitimate way the former contractor could have obtained current customer information.

Except he did.

Court records do not show exactly how that happened.