Fiber optic cable spool

For the most populated provinces in Canada, questions about when fiber-to-the-home service will become a reality are easy to answer:  Never, indefinitely.

Some of Canada’s largest telecommunications providers have their minds made up — fiber isn’t for consumers, it’s for their backbone and business networks.  For citizens of Toronto, Calgary, Montreal, and Vancouver coping with bandwidth shortages, providers have a much better answer: pay more, use less Internet.

Fiber broadband projects in Canada are hard to find, because providers refuse to invest in broadband upgrades to deliver the kinds of speeds and capacity Canadians increasingly demand.  Instead, companies like Bell, Shaw, and Rogers continue to hand out pithy upload speeds, throttled downloads, and often stingy usage caps.  Much of the country still relies on basic DSL service from Bell or Telus, and the most-promoted broadband expansion project in the country — Bell’s Fibe, is phoney baloney because it relies on existing copper telephone wires to deliver the last mile of service to customers.

Much like in the United States, the move to replace outdated copper phone lines and coaxial cable in favor of near-limitless capacity fiber remains stalled in most areas.  The reasons are simple: lack of competition to drive providers to invest in upgrades and the unwillingness to spend $1000 per home to install fiber when a 100GB usage cap and slower speeds will suffice.

The Toronto Globe & Mail reports that while 30-50 percent of homes in South Korea and Japan have fiber broadband, only 18 percent of Americans and less than 2 percent of Canadians have access to the networks that routinely deliver 100Mbps affordable broadband without rationed broadband usage plans.

In fact, the biggest fiber projects underway in Canada are being built in unexpected places that run contrary to the conventional wisdom that suggest fiber installs only make sense in large, population-dense, urban areas.

Manitoba’s MTS plans to spend $125-million over the next five years to launch its fiber to the home service, FiON.  By the end of 2015, MTS expects to deploy fiber to about 120,000 homes in close to 20 Manitoba communities.  In Saskatchewan, SaskTel is investing $199 million in its network in 2011 and approximately $670 million in a seven-year Next Generation Broadband Access Program (2011 – 2017). This program will deploy Fiber to the Premises (FTTP) and upgrade the broadband network in the nine largest urban centers in the province – Saskatoon, Regina, Moose Jaw, Weyburn, Estevan, Swift Current, Yorkton, North Battleford and Prince Albert.

“Saskatchewan continues to be a growing and dynamic place,” Minister responsible for SaskTel Bill Boyd said. “The deployment of FTTP will create the bandwidth capacity to allow SaskTel to deploy exciting new next generation technologies to better serve the people of Saskatchewan.”

But the largest fiber project of all will serve the unlikely provinces of Atlantic Canada, among the most economically challenged in the country.  Bell Aliant is targeting its FibreOP fiber to the home network to over 600,000 homes by the end of next year.  On that network, Bell Aliant plans to sell speeds up to 170/30Mbps to start.

In comparison, residents in larger provinces are making due with 3-10Mbps DSL service from Bell or Telus, or expensive usage-limited, speed-throttled cable broadband service from companies like Rogers, Shaw, and Videotron.

Bell Canada is trying to convince its customers it has the fiber optic network they want.  Its Fibe Internet service sure sounds like fiber, but the product fails truth-in-advertising because it isn’t an all-fiber-network at all. It’s similar to AT&T’s U-verse — relying on fiber to the neighborhood, using existing copper phone wires to finish the job.  Technically, that isn’t much different from today’s cable systems, which also use fiber to reach into individual neighborhoods.  Traditional coaxial cable handles the signal for the rest of the journey into subscriber homes.

A half-fiber network can do better than none at all.  In Ontario, Bell sells Fibe Internet packages at speeds up to 25Mbps, but even those speeds cannot compare to what true fiber networks can deliver.

Globe & Mail readers seemed to understand today’s broadband realities in the barely competitive broadband market. One reader’s take:

“The problem in Canada (and elsewhere) preventing wide scale deployment of FTTH isn’t the technology, nor the cost. It’s a lack of political vision and will, coupled with incumbent service providers doing whatever they can to hold on to a dysfunctional model that serves their interests at the expense of consumers.”

Another:

“The problem with incumbents is they only think in 2-3 year terms. If they can’t make their money back in that period of time, they’re not interested. Thinking 20, heck even 10 years ahead is not in their vocabulary.”

One of the country’s smallest cable operations grew a little bigger this month with the acquisition of 113 US Cable-owned systems in rural Wisconsin and Minnesota.

Approximately 33,000 customers in communities like Brewster, Heron Lake, Okabena, and Round Lake will be transitioned from New Jersey-based US Cable to Midcontinent this fall.

They will join over 275,000 Midcontinent customers in North and South Dakota, Minnesota, and Wisconsin.  US Cable sold the cable systems as the company continues to unwind its partnership with Comcast.

Midcontinent intends to beef up its customer service operations by opening a new call center in West Fargo, N.D.

Eventually, US Cable subscribers will find their Internet services transitioned to Midcontinent, which delivers service over a reasonably advanced hybrid fiber-coaxial network.

TWCable TV: Time Warner Cable's free iPad TV Everywhere app

Time Warner Cable has announced another upgrade to their free iPad TV Everywhere viewing app: TWCable TV.  In addition to ongoing bug fixes, Time Warner Cable’s Jeff Simmermon reports several new features are now included:

1) Basic search function.

With this update, you can search for programs by title or episode name within the iPad app. You do this by using the search bar located on the top right of the screen. To activate the keyboard, you’ll need to tap the search bar. Once the search results display, you’ll also have the ability to filter your results based on matching genres like News, Cooking, Travel, Sports, etc. We are working on advanced search (keyword, cast, crew) which should roll out sometime around the end of Q4/ beginning of Q1.

 2) You can now view closed captioned content.

To do this, look within the Settings menu of the TWCable TV iPad app and turn the closed captioning switch on. Some programs do not have closed captioning available. Those programs will not display captioning even when the closed captioning is turned on. Look for the closed captioning icon within the program description to determine if captioning is available on any given program.

3) You can now block specific live TV channels from viewing on the app.

Once a channel is blocked it will no longer be displayed in the live TV mini-guide. Please note that you will need to visit MyServices to activate parental controls, and you must exit and re-enter the app for the changes to take effect.

To activate/manage Parental Controls for the app, follow these steps:

• Visit myservices.timewarnercable.com and log into your MyServices account
• Click on either the MyAccount or MyTV tab within MyServices, scroll to the “TWCable TV for Devices” module
• Click on the “Edit blocked channels” link
• On the Edit TWCable TV Channel Blocking for Devices page, scroll down to the channel(s) you wish to block
• Click on the lock icon (it will turn red)
• To complete the parental control activation process, restart the TWCable TV iPad app by pressing the home button or signing out

These settings apply to the TWCable TV iPad app only. To manage parental control settings for your television, you still have to modify the settings on your video set top box using your remote control.

Miscellaneous bug fixes:
I’ve seen a lot of complaints about audio issues in the iPad app – many are saying that there’s no sound. This update should fix that.

Some users were not seeing HD channels in the lineup like they should have – that should also be fixed.

We also have made some minor design tweaks.

HBO GO: Finally available for Time Warner Cable premium customers?

The biggest problem we’ve experienced with the app at Stop the Cap! HQ is the highly-irritating paused/re-buffering playback, which has gotten progressively better over time.  Now, most paused playback occurs only within the first minute after changing channels, and usually does not repeat.  We maintain a 30/5Mbps Internet connection, so there is plenty of broadband speed available, but we suspect as more customers found the application, the cable company’s server capacity could not keep up.

The application’s annoying limitations also remain:

1. You must be a Time Warner Cable television subscriber to watch, with Time Warner Cable Internet service. (We haven’t tried to see if Earthlink from Time Warner works with TWCable TV).
2. Playback is limited to the range of your home broadband network’s Wi-Fi connection.  You cannot watch on other networks, and we’ve been unsuccessful trying to watch from another Time Warner Cable customer’s home.
3. Channel lineups vary market to market.  If your local Time Warner system does not carry a specific network, don’t expect to see it on TWCable TV, even if others elsewhere can watch.
4. No local channels are included.

In a related development, Bloomberg reports Time Warner Cable is close to a deal with HBO and sister network Cinemax to finally allow Time Warner Cable customers access to HBO GO and Cinemax GO, assuming you have a subscription to one or both premium channels.

The app allows access to past and current programs on smartphones, iPads and personal computers for no additional monthly charge.

Just over one year ago, Stop the Cap! introduced readers to Sezmi, a cable-TV alternative that delivered a package of selected cable networks, on-demand movies, video podcasts, YouTube content and local broadcast stations with a 1TB DVR set top box for $19.99 a month. Subscribers that decided to forgo the cable networks paid even less — $4.99 a month for service.

But no more.

As of this morning, Sezmi has discontinued its service, leaving customers with a nearly-worthless set top DVR box they spent $149.99 to acquire, and a number of questions about the company’s sudden change of direction.

The company issued a statement telling customers it has ceased monthly billing and giving customers until later this year to use some of the features Sezmi operates in-house:

We regret to inform you that Sezmi is discontinuing its consumer service. As of Monday, September 26, 2011, you will no longer be able to view or record broadcast TV programming through your Sezmi System. However, you will still be able to view movies and shows you have already saved to your Sezmi media recorder. To help ease the transition, you may also rent movies and shows if available at no charge from Sezmi’s On Demand catalog through November 1, 2011.

Why do you have to discontinue your consumer service?
Sezmi has changed its business focus to providing our product and technology platform to service providers, internationally and in the U.S., who are interested in providing broadband video services to their customers. As a result, we are no longer supporting our direct-to-consumer service.

What does this mean for me?
You will no longer be billed for Sezmi service. As of September 26th, you will no longer be able to utilize the programming guide and your digital media recorder will no longer operate as a recorder. You will be able to view movies and shows you have already saved to your recorder and YouTube access will not be affected. Between now and November 1st, you may rent any movies or shows at no charge to you. After November 1, Sezmi’s On Demand catalog will no longer be available but you will be able to use your Sezmi system to view all programming you have saved to the media recorder.

No Service After Sept. 26, 2011 didn't make the list.

What it also means is customers are stuck with a proprietary DVR box that won’t work with other services.

Sezmi’s business model was most operational in the Los Angeles market, where it leased unused spectrum from several LA-area television stations to carry its lightweight cable package.  In other markets, Sezmi simply wedded over the air digital free television stations with its online lineup of on-demand programming and charged $4.99 a month to watch.  It was never a compelling offer outside of Los Angeles, and even in that city, trouble brewed when Sezmi discontinued the cable package in December.

Among the difficulties Sezmi encountered:

1. Finding cooperative local broadcasters willing to lease unused digital spectrum to Sezmi proved to be a difficult proposition.  Broadcasters are zealously guarding the frequencies they control now and do not want to get into long-term contracts with third parties.  Network owned stations in major cities may have already committed significant spectrum to their own sub-channels and other projects, or want to hold them in reserve for future use.  Besides, why lease spectrum to a company for a cable package large networks could theoretically build themselves.
2. Sezmi lacked access to many popular cable channels, notably ESPN and HBO.  It’s difficult to get consumers to drop a cable or telco-TV subscription in favor of one that is limited to two dozen cable channels, some of which were hardly deal-sealers.  Efforts to move cable channel programming to online distribution were met with difficulty because content owners increasingly want a piece of the action.  Deep pockets are required to sustain video streaming businesses.
3. Consumers never really understood the product and were not convinced to choose it over better known alternatives that included satellite TV.

Sezmi’s new focus on working with larger players could meet with some success, but Sezmi’s best chances of all could be developing the technology for ethnic audiences or other narrowcast opportunities where the lack of a hundred plus channel cable package would not be a factor.

Richmond's public access channels operate from offices like these in city hall. (Courtesy: WTVR)

City officials in Richmond, Va. are facing questions about where the tens of thousands of dollars in fees collected every year from cable TV customers in the city ultimately go.

WTVR-TV in Richmond received an anonymous tip suggesting most of the money collected isn’t being spent according to plan.

Ordinance 2007-32-44 requires that part of the city’s franchise fee collected from providers like Verizon and Comcast “will be used to support public, educational and government (PEG) programming.”

But a WTVR investigation found that most of the money collected since 2007 — nearly $1.2 million — was instead parked in a Richmond city bank account.

The city has only spent around $70,000 dollars of franchise funds on a new camera, microphones, some lighting and a video editing system; but only for government channel 17, the one showing the mayor and city council at work, according to the station.

That means local politicians look fine on government access channels even as public access and educational programming languishes.  In fact, nothing tells that story better than a look at the makeshift offices in place to support Public Access programming — one the size of a broom closet located inside City Hall.

[flv width=”480″ height=”290″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WTVR Richmond Cable TV money and the city of Richmond 9-14-11.mp4[/flv]

WTVR in Richmond investigates where cable franchise fees collected by the city of Richmond are being spent.  (3 minutes)