Ex-CEO Jim Shaw earns even more not working for the cable company his father founded.

The ex-CEO of Shaw Communications is a charter member of the 1% Club, raking in more than $25 million from a golden parachute retirement package cable customers are paying as part of their ever-increasing monthly cable bills.

Jim Shaw earned $1.2 million in 2011 from his duties as chief executive.  But when the 53-year old decided early retirement was right for him, the company that shares his name provided a generous $25.5 million parting gift.  That’s a golden parachute package equivalent to what more than 2,000 lower-middle class Canadians earn each year.

What makes Jim Shaw worth that much?  Company officials claim the departing CEO helped the company earn new revenue.  But Shaw subscribers know the recipe for higher revenue is easy to make — annual rate increases and overpriced products and services.

Shaw didn’t have much of a fight justifying his departing pay package.  Not with his father J.R. Shaw holding 79 percent of the cable company’s Class A voting stock.  The Shaw family has been especially generous with themselves in 2011.  Brother Brad pocketed $15.8 million this year for himself.

The Shaw Executive Money Party has grown so large, the company’s top six paid officers collectively walked away with compensation of $82.2 million in 2011, $1.5 million more than Shaw Communications earned in the entire fourth quarter of 2010.  Imagine one-quarter of your company’s earnings headed straight into the pockets of a half-dozen employees, often immediate family members of the CEO or company founder.

Even those sums are dwarfed by the $330 million the company has now set aside to guarantee executive pensions, even as Shaw’s lower level employees (and most of their customers) see their incomes continue to stagnate, if not outright decline.

That three Shaw family members collectively grabbed $58.6 million from the company accounts is not welcome news for shareholders.  Jim Shaw’s exit package in particular proved galling for some, particularly because he effectively sabotaged his own standing with image-damaging public comments and an abrasive management style.

“There was a lot of institutional backlash over the pension given to Jim on his departure because it was rather monstrous,” one pension fund adviser was reported as saying in the Edmonton Journal. “This is just another piece that will get everybody upset.”

Shareholders are also unimpressed with the value of their Class B Shaw stock, which has remained lackluster since 2006.

While top management earned big, Shaw has alienated customers with legendary call holding times that can extend for hours, annual rate increases for cable service, and less-than-impressive customer satisfaction scores.

Shaw is western Canada’s dominant cable operator.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Broadband Blindness.flv[/flv]

Toast Sacramento produced this 28-minute documentary which succinctly tells the story of North American broadband, and how commercial providers have set us up for long-term failure, especially in rural and suburban areas.  Whether you live in the United States or Canada, phone and cable companies dominate the telecommunications landscape.  Unlike other modern-day necessities, broadband is almost entirely in the hands of an unregulated free market that fails millions.  Where competition exists, customers can get reasonably fast service, but it costs more than it should.  Where competition is hard to find: slow speeds, spotty access, and out-of-sight prices predominate.

The documentary explores:

• the neglect of suburban and rural DSL from large phone companies like AT&T;
• how phony, industry-influenced broadband availability maps convince public officials there isn’t a big broadband problem;
• why the country’s broadband demands may be too great for providers to handle without major new investments, leading to usage limits and slowdowns to delay needed upgrades;
• and how the latest broadband technologies being installed overseas fall victim to Wall Street temper tantrums back home.

Bell Canada is misleading potential customers when mailing them invitations to sign up for Fibe TV, which the company calls “a new TV service delivered through our new state-of-the-art fibre optic network.”

Only it isn’t “state of the art” or fiber to the home.

Bell characterizes its Fibe service as Canada’s “most advanced” telecommunications network, even better than traditional cable television.  But in fact, it’s a marriage between fiber optics and the decades-old copper wire phone network Bell continues to rely on to provide a triple-play package of phone, broadband, and television, all without investing in superior fiber to the home technology.

Only it's not a true fiber network.

That the company claims it is running the most advanced network in the country must come as quite a surprise to Bell Aliant, the dominant provider in Atlantic Canada.  Aliant is busily building a true fiber-to-the-home network for at least 600,000 customers in the most eastern part of the country.

While Fibe is an evolutionary move for Bell Canada, it is hardly revolutionary because of its dependence on traditional copper phone lines.  Canada remains behind the United States in deploying fiber technology of all kinds, including Fibe‘s fiber-to-the-neighborhood system.  Bell’s closest cousin AT&T has been running its own comparable U-verse system for a few years now.

Providers like the benefits of fiber-to-the-neighborhood technology and the fact it costs considerably less than rewiring every home for fiber optic connections.  Fibe can deliver speedier broadband than traditional DSL, but cable operators like Rogers and Videotron are already positioned to beat Fibe speeds, and a true fiber to the home network can beat anything on offer.

Phone and cable companies in the United States who have pitched older technology as a “state of the art fiber network” without actually providing one have been challenged by true fiber to the home competitors like Verizon, and forced to retreat.  But with so few Canadian providers in a position to challenge Bell’s fiber claims, it will be up to regulators to declare the advertising and marketing materials misleading.

Rogers Communications has mailed letters to rural Canadians announcing it will cease operation of its Portable Internet wireless broadband service effective March 1, 2012.

The service, which uses the Inukshuk Wireless network, delivers Internet access to over 150 communities across mostly rural-northern Canada, where DSL and cable broadband is simply unavailable.  Customers were paying $45 a month for up to 3Mbps service with a 30GB usage cap.

Rogers’ decision will now force most of those customers to use the company’s far more expensive 3G wireless network, which runs far slower and has substantially lower usage allowances.  How much more expensive?  Rogers’ 3G customers choosing the company’s 3G Flex data plan will pay between $94-104 a month (depending on speed), for a plan with a 15GB usage allowance.  Overlimit fees run $10/GB. Customers using 20GB on Rogers’ 3G Flex will pay the company $144-154 a month for slower service.

“The price disparity is absolutely enormous,” says Stop the Cap! reader Ted who uses Rogers Portable Internet service in Val Caron, Ont., located north of Sudbury.  “You might as well not bother using the Internet at all at these prices.”

Ted says Rogers Portable Internet was never a perfect solution, but it was priced similarly to what larger city residents pay for broadband.

“It’s not really WiMax, which came after Rogers introduced the service, and the speeds and ping times can be appalling if you don’t have good reception, but it was affordable,” Ted says.  “Using 3G service means even slower speeds and lower caps at double the price, which is typical for Rogers.”

Ted points out the 30GB one receives on the Portable Internet service for $45 would correspond to a bill for $25o on 3G — five times the price for worse service.

“I am talking to my wife about buying the Rocket Hub [Roger’s device for mobile broadband] so we have something, because Bell has told us not to expect DSL anytime soon,” Ted notes. “Rural Canada cannot catch a break.”

The other option rural Canadians have is satellite Internet access, but providers like Xplornet have faced withering criticism from customers for poor speeds, network speed throttling, and usage caps.

RIM has a new PR problem.

Research in Motion, already reeling from a year of bad news about its beleaguered BlackBerry, is now red-faced over reports that two of its employees got drunk and engaged in raucous mayhem on an Air Canada flight to Beijing that grew so out of control, the pilots were forced to land the plane in Vancouver.

Now, the CBC has garnered an official transcript from a sentencing hearing which has further tarnished the image of RIM over its employees’ behavior, which a B.C. Provincial Court Judge called “disgusting.”

Pre-boarding, some fellow passengers noticed the pair of corporate executives appeared highly inebriated.

CBC News quoted from the court transcript: “…When the males boarded the flight they seemed quite intoxicated, they drank more, passed out, one would wake up and lean over the little cubicle, slap the other guy on the head because he wanted somebody to drink with, and then they would yell and abuse each other, then they’d pass out, then they’d wake up and start kicking again.”

When other passengers tried to intervene, they were threatened.  One was told “I know who you are,” while others were warned by one of the executives he would “off people when they left the plane.”

Eventually, both men were wrestled kicking and screaming to the floor, assaulting one flight attendant in the process.  Even a combination of plastic restraints and heavy tape were not enough.  Police reports indicate both men literally chewed through the plastic cuffs and ripped the tape off with their teeth.

At that point, pilots declared a security emergency and diverted the plane first to Anchorage, but quickly settled on much-closer Vancouver, where authorities met the aircraft and took both men into custody.

Air Canada eventually pegged its losses (assuming nobody files a civil case against the airline for the ‘air show’) at $193,900, which includes putting up passengers in Vancouver hotels overnight, extra fuel, navigation charges, and flying in a new crew for the resumption of the flight the following morning.

The B.C. Court Judge swiftly fined the two executives $70,000 to cover the costs of the hotel and meal vouchers for the passengers.  The judge wouldn’t hear defense attorney objections.

“I am somewhat sympathetic to your position but I am, quite frankly, absolutely disgusted with the actions of these two individuals who know better and acted like absolutely — well, I can’t say it. But that is the punishment that they should suffer,” the judge ruled.

Both men were quickly fired from the company when they returned to their Waterloo, Ont. homes.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/CBC News RIM Executives Launch Mayhem 12-12-11.flv[/flv]

CBC News has this exclusive report about the chaos caused by Research in Motion executives on Air Canada’s Flight 31.  (4 minutes)