Wireless operator (and cable company) Rogers Communications likes to spend big dollars pushing the message Canada is in the midst of a wireless spectrum crunch — a big reason why it wants “equal treatment”-bidding in upcoming spectrum auctions that may include “set-asides” exclusively for emerging Canadian wireless competitors.

But apparently the spectrum shortage only impacts areas outside of the province of Quebec, because Rogers plans to experiment with a new LTE wireless video on demand service it plans to pitch Quebecers, perhaps as early as next year.

Rogers CEO Nadir Mohamed told the Montreal Gazette the cable company intends to enter the Quebec market with an “over-the-top” on-demand video service, distributed over Rogers’ growing LTE wireless broadband network.  While Mohamed was quick to say this doesn’t mean Rogers intends to launch a full-scale competitive invasion against provincial providers Videotron, Ltd., and Bell Canada Enterprises, it is pre-emptively getting into the business of serving cord-cutters who drop traditional cable packages to watch online video.

The new service is expected to be accessible on phones, tablets, and Internet-enabled televisions and video game consoles, presumably through a wireless Internet adapter.

Mohamed

“Video for wireless has huge potential for growth,” Mohamed told the Gazette. “It’s sort of the mirror image of (how cable evolved), which went from video, to data to voice.”

Nothing eats bandwidth like online video, and Rogers traditionally caps this and other usage on their mobile wireless network, citing spectrum and capacity shortages. But Rogers sees few impediments serving up certain kinds of online video: namely their own.

That’s not a message the company continues to deliver consumers on its “I Want My LTE” website, part of a robust lobbying effort to get its hands on as much new spectrum as possible, even if it means locking out would-be competitors.  In fact, leaving the impression the company has spectrum to spare is so politically dangerous, Mohamed took the wind out of his own announcement by mentioning, as an aside, their networks still don’t have enough capacity to deliver full-motion video to a large number of customers at the same time.

“I think wireless networks in the foreseeable future will not have the capability to deliver full-motion video to a large number of customers at the same time, even with LTE,” he said. “So what you will see is an integration of wired and wireless, where the wireless network will off-load the traffic to a wired network.”

Rogers’ decision to limit the service, both in scope and range, is also designed to protect itself (and other cable operators) from unnecessary competition.  Rogers won’t offer a full menu of video services outside of its traditional cable system areas in Ontario, New Brunswick, and Newfoundland, and only Quebec residents (where Rogers doesn’t sell cable TV) will have the option of signing up for the wireless video-on-demand service.

Pay $160 a month... or $89.99

Time Warner Cable attached their new rate schedule to my November cable bill which arrived in the mail last week.  It’s the second major rate increase in western New York this year, and it means customers who just want to watch standard basic cable television will now pay $80.50 a month to do so.  We’re a long, LONG way from the $20 cable TV package the industry used to advertise as “less expensive than a cup of coffee a day.”  This is Starbucks’ coffee pricing, with no end in sight.

Time Warner Cable’s Triple-Play package of phone, Internet, and television service will now run $160.49 a month here in Rochester.  It wasn’t too long ago that a bill that size was reserved for the gas and electric company, or perhaps for a used car payment.  That’s before taxes, franchise fees, and other pad-ons, too.  Need that extra set top box?  Add another $7 a month each with remote control.  Want to speed up your broadband?  $10 a month for that.  HBO?  Time Warner Cable’s premium channel-pricing completely ignores today’s economic and marketplace (Netflix/Redbox) realities.

The cable company does have competition in the television business. In the same day’s mail was the latest offer from DirecTV, which has nearly as many sneaky extra fees as local phone company Frontier Communications.  That $24.99 a month “amazing deal” starts to snowball as you build a package, and it also means a satellite dish on your roof, which some people just don’t want.

Assuming you stick with the cable company’s triple play package, the sobering truth is that doing business with Time Warner at their everyday-high-pricing will cost you at least $1,920 a year.  But you don’t always have to pay them the asking price.

So with rate increase notice in hand, what can you do?

1. Call them up and tell them the relationship is over unless changes are made.  Good things come to those who wait for the other side of the relationship to start sacrificing for a change.  You’ve coped with rate hikes for years and cable companies keep shoveling more channels you never watch and then raise rates because of “increased programming costs.” This time, let the cable company give a little.  Call and tell them you want to disconnect your service two weeks from today.  A retention specialist will attempt to negotiate with you (starting with efforts to pare down your package, leaving you still paying regular price for fewer services).  Be non-committal,  because better deals will start to arrive by phone as early as a few hours after telling them you’re leaving.  (But you have to answer those unfamiliar Caller-ID calls to hear about them.)  The worst that will happen is you don’t win a significantly better deal. You still have two weeks to rescind the cancel request with no interruption in service and at least get something for your efforts.  Consolation prizes to sweeten a mediocre retention deal: free sample of premium channels, a free Turbo-class upgrade for Road Runner, and/or a break on DVR service.

2. Compare prices.  If you live in an area with telephone company-delivered TV, offer to stay with the cable company if they will match the new customer offers you are probably already getting pelted with in your mailbox.  Most will.  There are customers who literally bounce back and forth between AT&T/Verizon and Comcast/Time Warner Cable year after year just to keep the $89-99 triple-play promotional price that effectively never expires.  Getting your existing provider to match it saves you and your provider the time and hassle of switching.

3. Demand a new customer price.  Do a Google search for “Time Warner Cable deals” (or for your respective cable company) and at least a dozen offers will appear, mostly from third-party, authorized resellers.  Double-play offers for broadband and cable-TV often range between $75-85.  A triple play offer which adds phone service is usually just a few dollars more.  Some resellers pitch combo offers that deliver a discounted rate and a substantial rebate ($150), like the one below:

Ask Time Warner to match the price of these offers (you likely won’t get the rebate, however).  They certainly can come close on retention deals — in fact they will go as low as $85 a month for an annual triple play deal in some areas.

Some customers deal with intransigent retention agents by canceling service and quickly signing up as a new customer soon after.  That is more of a hassle, and some areas require a waiting period before they’ll offer a new customer promotion again, but the usual trick around this is to sign up under a spouse’s name.

It pays to shop around and read the fine print carefully.

For example, in the deal above, I highlighted three important features — the $150 rebate, which is important for reasons I’ll explain in a moment, the free DVR service, and “standard installation.”  In some cases, promotional offers for new customers do not include free installation or equipment, so it is always important to ask exactly what is included.  The $150 rebate will help defray those expenses, but some competing deals omit the rebate and knock $10 off the $99 monthly price for the same bouquet of services and installation is free.

1. Drop services you don’t need.  Still paying for premium channels?  Why?  Also check your bill for extra mini-pay tiers for certain HD channels Time Warner Cable dropped a few years ago.  You may still be paying $5 a month or more for channels like HDNet Time Warner replaced with the hardly-comparable RFD-TV.  Some customers who signed up for a discounted promotional offer for Time Warner phone service are now paying upwards of $30 a month for the company’s regular-priced unlimited long distance plan.  Consider switching to the $20 “local calling only” plan.  You can make those long distance calls on your cell phone or Google Voice and save $120 a year.

Time Warner, like every other cable company, understands the word “cancel” very well.  The best way to put an end to endless rate increases is to refuse to pay them and being willing to cut the cord until they get the message.

Winston-Salem Time Warner Cable customers can expect to pay around 4% more for cable service in 2012.

Time Warner Cable’s annual rate increases have now reached the Carolinas.

The company is mailing letters to customers that announce rate hikes for off-contract clients in the $2-4 a month range, including price increases for Road Runner broadband that will now cost between $49.45-$57.95 a month.

“Our new prices reflect dramatically higher programming costs, additional programming and features, and continued investment in our network and customer service,” said Time Warner spokesman Scott Pryzwansky. “Time Warner Cable invested more than $350 million in capital in the Carolinas over the past year to make our network even more robust and to enable our customers to get the services and features they want.”

The company also invested heavily in lobbying lawmakers to keep community-owned broadband competition at bay, helping pass a measure through the Republican-controlled legislature that makes municipal broadband competition much more unlikely.

The result is another year of unfettered rate increases for customers in cities like Winston-Salem:

• Cable TV increases from $10.23 to $11.49 for broadcast basic, $64.99-$69.49 for standard analog service, $80.99-$85.49 for digital cable;
• Broadband increases from $47.95 to $49.45 for customers who also have digital cable, $52.95 to $55.95 for customers with any other tier of cable TV, $57.95 for standalone broadband service;
• Telephone rates are unchanged.

Customers can avoid some of the price increases through creative bundling, threatening to take your business elsewhere, or by signing up for alternative providers:

1. Customers on discounted promotional packages, retention deals, and term contracts will not face the rate increases until their promotional rates or contract expires;
2. If you are unhappy with the rate increase, consider calling Time Warner and telling them to cancel your service 1-2 weeks from today’s date.  Then wait for them to start calling you with promotional “win-back” offers that deliver at least a year of substantial savings off regular rates;
3. If you are a broadband standalone customer, consider signing up for Earthlink under their six-month promotion for just under $30 a month.  You will continue to be billed by Time Warner Cable and receive the same speeds and service with two exceptions: no PowerBoost (a temporary speed increase during the first few seconds of downloading), and you lose your Road Runner e-mail address (which you are not actually still using, are you?)  Get a Gmail account, don’t worry about speed gimmicks, and save $28 a month.  At the end of six months, sign up for Time Warner’s Road Runner service under their promotional rate, which is around $30 a month for a year.  Total savings over the 18 month combined promotional rate term: $504!

More than two years after Time Warner introduced DOCSIS 3 speed upgrades in New York, Time Warner is finally completing broadband upgrades for their customers in the Carolinas.  The latest cities scheduled to get the company’s Wideband (50/5Mbps) and Road Runner Extreme (30/5Mbps) services are Wilmington, Jacksonville and Morehead City. The new services will be available by early 2012.

Most customers in eastern North Carolina and parts of South Carolina still get Standard service speeds of 10Mbps download, 512kbps upload.  After the upgrade, a boost in upstream speeds to 1Mbps for Standard service customers is expected.

This dollar-a-holler astroturf effort failed to impress Longmont voters, who turned back a Comcast-funded opposition campaign to open up the city's fiber network.

Longmont, Col. residents turned their backs on a Comcast-funded campaign to block the opening of the city’s 17-mile fiber loop to competing broadband providers in a strong vote of approval.

As of early this morning, 60.8% of voters approved Ballot Question 2A.  Just 39.2% opposed the measure.

Longmont’s fiber network, built in 1997 and paid for by the Platte River Power Authority, has heretofore been off-limits to the public.  Colorado’s 2005 corporate welfare laws guarantee that taxpayer or ratepayer-funded broadband networks are kept away from the public that paid for them, for the protection of companies like Comcast and CenturyLink.

This results in the construction of showcase institutional fiber optic networks open to government, public safety, hospitals, and libraries… and practically nobody else.  Once built, institutional networks often go underutilized.  In Longmont, at least two-thirds of the city’s fiber optic network still goes unused 15 years after it was built.

The city government hoped to open the fiber network in time to bolster their application to Google to construct a gigabit network for residential and business customers, but after Google selected Kansas City for its fiber project, Longmont wants to keep its options open.  Passing the ballot question does exactly that.

“I’m glad to see 2A won,” Mayor Bryan Baum told the Times-Call. “I think it shows that money isn’t the determinator.”

Longmont voters were subjected to one of the most expensive pushback campaigns they’ve ever seen, thanks to Comcast, who spent $300,000 and counting to get the public to turn against the fiber network ballot question.

George Merritt, a spokesman for the cable-funded group Look Before We Leap, claims the vote results show “the measure’s narrow margin of victory.”  Merritt’s group relied heavily on a highly-suspect 2006 case study by University of Denver professor Ron Rizzuto that claimed 80 percent of community-owned Wi-Fi broadband networks failed to make money.  But the group didn’t make any distinction between Wi-Fi and fiber optics, and more importantly they left out the fact Rizzuto was inducted into the Cable TV Pioneers in 2004 for service to the cable industry.  Rizutto’s “study” was a classic case of dollar-a-holler research on behalf of the New Millennium Research Council, a creature of the telecommunications industry.

New Millennium Research Council -> Issue Dynamics -> Comcast

In fact, the Council is a “project” of Issue Dynamics, Inc., a for-profit, high powered Washington lobbying firm. Issue Dynamics’ client list includes Verizon, Comcast, AT&T and the United States Telecom Association – the trade association for the telecom industry.  The direct relationship between Rizzuto’s findings, and cable companies like Comcast who paid for the research, never made it into the report (or onto the group’s website).

This is the second time Longmont voters have cast ballots on the issue of the city’s fiber optic network.

In 2009, voters faced another cable industry-funded astroturf effort, with $245,000 spent to successfully defeat a similar measure.  This time, thanks in part to public exposure of the companies pulling the strings behind the astroturf campaign, voters rejected the propaganda onslaught and passed the measure.  Cable bills have also increased several times since the 2009 measure, a reminder to the public why competition can make a real difference.

With the passage of 2A, the city can choose to leave the network exactly as it is today or partner with another provider to offer services to the public.  It’s now their choice, not Comcast’s.

Time Warner Cable intends to implement a series of rate increases for 2012 across many of their service areas, beginning with a 4% rate hike for their cable television service that will take effect in December.

A cable company memo received by Stop the Cap! indicates this isn’t likely to be the only rate increase from the cable operator, with possible rate adjustments for broadband and phone products to be announced at a later date.  The cable television portion of your bill will increase because of what the company calls “dramatically higher programming costs, additional programming and features, and continued investment in the company’s network and customer service operations.”

Some examples of the new rates¹, which will vary slightly in different service areas, includes new pricing for the company’s DVR box in some regions:

• Digital Cable (was $72.99) $77.49
• Talk & Surf (was $86.99) $89.94
• Watch & Surf (was $118.99) $125.49
• Watch & Surf Plus (was $141.99) $148.49
• DVR Service (was $11.95) $12.95 (additional equipment rental charges may apply)

¹Time Warner Cable Maine

Customers currently on price protection agreements, term contracts, or special rate promotions will not be impacted by the rate increases until the expiration of their contract or promotion.  Customers will receive an official notification of the rate adjustment on their next billing statement.