Kinzinger

Republican-sponsored H.R. 2666 — the “No Rate Regulation of Broadband Internet Access Act” — is drawing opposition from House Democrats because the measure, if it becomes law, could grant cable and telephone companies broad permanent exemption from oversight and consumer protection laws.

The bill, introduced last summer by Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), consists of a single sentence:

Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the Federal Communications Commission may not regulate the rates charged for broadband Internet access service (as defined in the rules adopted in the Report and Order on Remand, Declaratory Ruling, and Order that was adopted by the Commission on February 26, 2015 (FCC 15–24)).

Eshoo

Democrats worry despite the brevity of the bill, its language is broad and sweeping, and could be interpreted by the courts to grant deregulation and freedom from oversight to telecommunications providers that already rank at the bottom of customer satisfaction scores. It would also undercut the FCC’s reclassification of broadband from an information service to a telecommunications service, subject to Title II regulations, which gave the FCC increased authority to oversee the broadband industry.

Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) has signaled her likely opposition to the Republican bill, noting the proposed law could “eviscerate the FCC’s authority to protect consumers against truth in billing practices and discriminatory data caps; to ensure broadband availability through [the Universal Service Fund] and E-Rate; to address rate-related issues in merger reviews; to ensure enforcement against paid prioritization; and other essential consumer protections.”

Several Democrats on the House Communications Subcommittee are introducing amendments that would likely keep Republican language prohibiting the FCC from directly regulating broadband prices, but also protect the power of the FCC to regulate billing practices, data caps and usage pricing, Net Neutrality, universal service requirements, merger reviews, and discriminatory and/or unfair business practices.

The Democrats are likely to have an uphill battle in a Republican-controlled House. Constituents may have more influence expressing their opposition to H.R. 2666 by reaching out to Rep. Kinzinger and the 18 Republican co-sponsors of the measure:

• Rep. Latta, Robert E. [R-Ohio]
• Rep. Bilirakis, Gus M. [R-Fla.]
• Rep. Barton, Joe [R-Tex.]
• Rep. Lance, Leonard [R-N.J.]
• Rep. Shimkus, John [R-Ill.]
• Rep. Blackburn, Marsha [R-Tenn.]
• Rep. Olson, Pete [R-Tex.]
• Rep. Pompeo, Mike [R-Kan.]
• Rep. Scalise, Steve [R-La.]
• Rep. Cramer, Kevin [R-N.D.]
• Rep. Collins, Chris [R-N.Y.]
• Rep. Long, Billy [R-Mo.]
• Rep. Guthrie, Brett [R-Ky.]
• Rep. Johnson, Bill [R-Ohio]
• Rep. Ellmers, Renee L. [R-N.C.]
• Rep. Walden, Greg [R-Ore.]
• Rep. Upton, Fred [R-Mich.]
• Rep. Allen, Rick W. [R-Ga.]

Despite claims satellite broadband has improved, our readers respectfully disagree:

“Most people don’t know what data caps really are until they’ve had satellite based Internet service where the bandwidth is shared,” Scott S. reminds Stop the Cap! He’s a subscriber of Exede, a satellite broadband provider powered by the ViaSat satellite platform serving about 687,000 residential customers nationwide.

Online life can be a lot worse when you are stuck with satellite-based Internet access:

• “I am only allowed to have 10GB per month total for everything and have a 12/3Mbps service. Anything over that and they either cap your flow or give you substantially lower bandwidth speed.
• “You can’t go online with more than three devices (including your phones).
• “You can forget Netflix or watching any shows online.
• “You can forget playing ANY video games online.
• “You can forget taking any college courses online without service interruptions (which I am).”

“And they still charge you as much as other ISPs do (at least $60/month) that provide no data caps and a MUCH faster speed,” Scott writes.

Exede offers most customers plans with 10, 18, or 30GB of usage per month. About one-third of the country, typically the most rural regions in the western U.S., can now choose faster plans at speeds nearing 25Mbps because those spot beams are underutilized. But most subscribers get considerably poorer service because about two-thirds of ViaSat’s residential satellite access beams are full. Despite that, Viasat still managed to find capacity to power in-flight Wi-Fi on JetBlue, Virgin America and some United Airlines aircraft.

Customers who have never had DSL or cable broadband tolerate the slow speeds and low caps better than those that move from an area served by a wired provider. Many of those customers call satellite broadband speed marketing claims “fraudulent” and complain low usage caps make it difficult to impossible to use the Internet to use multimedia content.

The Communications Workers of America has told the New York Public Service Commission it should reject Altice’s proposal to buy Cablevision for more than $17 billion, claiming it’s a bad deal for customers and employees alike.

Citing Altice’s massive debt and the company’s documented history of cutting expenses and investment, Dennis Trainor, vice president for the CWA-District One, said approving the deal would load Cablevision down in debt, making any significant investments in Cablevision’s future doubtful.

“This is a bad deal for Cablevision customers and employees,” Trainor said. “Altice overpaid for Cablevision, and is financing that overpayment by loading Cablevision with debt. That will inevitably lead to worse service for customers.”

The CWA also heavily criticized Altice and Cablevision for stalling sharing documentation with the labor union as ordered by a New York Administrative Law Judge. It filed initial comments opposing the transaction with the PSC under protest.

“As late as the morning of Feb. 5, [the Joint Applicants] have continued their grudging and incomplete disgorgement of relevant and probative material to which CWA is entitled,” the CWA wrote. “CWA now possesses documents and data which are contradictory and require reconciliation.”

The CWA considers the deal good for Altice and Cablevision’s owners and investors, but a raw one for customers.

“For example, Cablevision’s top five executives will have almost $160 million in ‘golden parachute’ compensation available to them under certain circumstances if the transaction is approved, of which almost $100 million will become automatically triggered and payable upon consummation of the merger,” the CWA stated. “In sum, after the transaction closes, Cablevision will be the same company, with the same plant and equipment, but with substantially more debt and relatively little cash on hand,” the CWA concluded.

The CWA also cited Stop the Cap!’s own reporting of the consequences of increasing debt and reduced investment at SFR, an Altice-owned telecommunications provider in France:

“We refer the Commission to publicly available reports of a collapse of service quality for customers of SFR, one of France’s largest telecom service providers, owned by Altice. This has caused a doubling of complaints from wired customers between 2014 and 2015 and a corresponding increase in complaints about wireless service of 50%. Altice had two responses: First, it blamed the company it purchased SFR from ‘we pay the price of underinvestment from the previous [owner]’. Second, it disputes whether the level of complaint is unacceptable ‘For now, we are not very good, but we are not bad.'”

New York City’s Office of the Public Advocate is no fan either. In its filing, the OPA also cited Altice’s enormous debt load, which has increased dramatically over the last four years.

“[Altice CEO Patrick] Drahi has already driven away customers and alienated employees in France since his acquisition [of SFR],” writes the OPA. “In SFR’s case, Altice eliminated costs to boost SFR’s profit margins. Among Altice’s practices with SFR were: efforts to stall payments for suppliers, initiating salary and job cuts, and a reduction in spending on meaningful service upgrades.”

The OPA also cites reporting by Stop the Cap! documenting how SFR performed after being acquired by Altice.

Leticia James, Public Advocate for the City of New York

“We know, for example, SFR was forced to completely stop paying suppliers in order to force a renegotiation for cheaper supplies,” writes the OPA. “The French government appointed a mediator to resolve the issues. Moreover, these business practices failed to effectuate Altice’s goals. Just four months ago, Altice reported ‘worse-than-expected’ third quarter results for SFR that drove the company’s shares down 10 percent. In fact, SFR lost one million customers in just one year. Investors correctly attribute customer losses to Altice’s aggressive cost-trimming. As one expert explains, ‘the savings came first immediately and now the churn (or customer defection) goes up.’ Another analyst describes Altice’s ‘dangerous’ actions as not only cutting out the fat, but also the meat and the bones.”

The PSC staff reviewing the transaction also expressed concern that Altice’s willingness to keep data caps at its other acquisition Suddenlink may result in similar data caps being implemented on Cablevision customers after the merger.

Especially notable to the PSC staff was the fact that under Suddenlink’s 1000/50Mbps data-capped plan, “if the connection is utilized at its rated speeds […] a customer could reach the data cap in less than two hours.”

“If Altice were to import Suddenlink’s pricing into Cablevision service territory and impose data caps on its existing plans, some customers would be forced to upgrade not for the increased speed, but for larger data caps,” the PSC staff wrote. “For example, customers on Cablevision’s low-end 5Mbps plan, if limited to a 250GB monthly cap, would technically be able to hit their cap after just five days of constant use. More practically, they would be limited to approximately 83 hours (a little less than three hours a day) of video streaming, if the connection were not used for anything else.”

“Simply put, the introduction of Suddenlink-type data caps in Cablevision’s New York service territory post-transaction would limit the ability of New York consumers to utilize their broadband connections at their own discretion, as they currently enjoy with Cablevision service today, and would lessen the ability of over-the-top voice and video providers to compete with Cablevision’s bundled services,” the PSC staff concluded. “The imposition of Suddenlink-type data caps would be a significant detriment to New York consumers, and should not be allowed as a condition of the transaction.”

Stop the Cap! has filed a motion before California’s Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) to request party status in the Charter-Time Warner Cable merger proceeding, better positioning ourselves to influence the outcome.

As other consumer groups in California continue to formally oppose the merger, we are also filing to ask regulators to consider our request to impose conditions on the deal should the CPUC decide to approve it anyway. As we promised after the New York Public Service Commission approved the deal with significant conditions, we are once again taking a hard look at Charter’s three-year commitment not to impose data caps or usage pricing — a term we find completely inadequate.

It remains our belief three years is far too short a commitment, and it is unlikely consumers will find plentiful alternatives for broadband service should Charter impose caps in 2019 anymore than they can today. As a reminder to consumers and regulators, deal conditions imposed by regulators on the 2011 merger of Comcast and NBC-Universal have already begun to expire, with relatively little change in competition in the marketplace.

Our late filing for party status comes partly in response to inadequate public notice from Charter Communications and new information and suggestions that came as a result of the New York State PSC proceeding that would be directly informative and beneficial for California residents.

In states where public utility regulators have approved the transaction with ‘most-favored state’ provisions, any benefits we can win for consumers in California will also apply in New York and other states as well.

As always, we are extremely grateful to our newest member of the Stop the Cap! team, Matthew Friedman, who has dramatically strengthened our ability to monitor the marketplace on the west coast to broaden our consumer protection efforts.

We remain an all-volunteer organization, so if you’d like to join our team, use the Contact Us button at the top of the page and send a message. We’d love to have more volunteers helping identify and write about pressing broadband issues throughout the U.S. and Canada, and we’re happy to help with the editing.

The full text of our motion appears below:

BEFORE THE PUBLIC UTILITIES COMMISSION OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA
MOTION OF STOP THE CAP! FOR PARTY STATUS

I. Introduction
Pursuant to Rule 1.4 of the California Public Utilities Commission’s (“CPUC” or the “Commission”) Rules of Practice and Procedure, Stop the Cap! respectfully requests to be granted party status in the above captioned proceeding.

II. Background and Interest in this Proceeding
Stop the Cap! is a consumer group founded in 2008 to fight against the introduction of artificial limits on broadband usage (such as data caps, usage based pricing, and speed throttling) and to promote better broadband speeds and service for consumers. Our group does not accept funding from lobbyists, companies, or any individual affiliated with the telecommunications industry. We return all corporate donations.

Stop the Cap! understands that this is a relatively late file for party status. While Stop the Cap! is generally opposed to this transaction, we feel that the Intervenors are strongly making the case that the Commission should deny the application, and we would refrain from contributing in that regard. However, should the Commission approve this transaction, Stop the Cap! has a deep and detailed knowledge of data caps and usage based pricing (DC/UBP) from our past 8 years of work on this very specific issue. This information and experience would definitely aid the Commission’s process of tailoring effective mitigation conditions, and our input would be complementary to the existing Intervenors’. Based on our direct experience at the recent Los Angeles PPH, we now understand that an issue as complicated as DC/UBP can’t be effectively dealt with by us as an informal commenter. We have no lawyers guiding us through this process —we are merely a group of individual consumers who have banded together to address a common concern. We therefore respectfully request that the Commission forgive our late filing, and note that we would still be able to take part in full in the discussion of relevant conditions, should this transaction reach that stage.

As a party, Stop the Cap! would aim to protect and promote the public interest of our members and other Californians on the issue of DC/UBP. We have attached the discussion we submitted at the Los Angeles PPH to this filing. It details how the issue of DC/UBP affects numerous other concerns in this proceeding, and presents significant and numerous harms to consumers, especially to low income ones. The submission lays out how DC/UBP can increase prices, foster anti-competitive behavior, circumvent net neutrality, hinder innovation and investment, slow broadband deployment, threaten network security, remove educational opportunities, and can even completely erase any “lifeline” broadband condition this Commission may design. The document also explains why the CPUC’s approval of this transaction would make DC/UBP much more likely to be imposed on existing Time Warner Cable subscribers. It details TWC’s repeated and public pledge to “NEVER” impose DC/UBP on its customers. It discusses why the Commission should be particularly suspect of New Charter when it comes to DC/UBP. Finally, it shows that Charter’s opening testimony actually supports a mitigation condition that sunsets based on a competition test, as opposed to an arbitrarily short three years. This is the kind of information we can present to aid in the Commission’s decision making process.

III. Notice
Service of notices, orders, and other correspondence in this proceeding should be directed to Stop the Cap! [extraneous information deleted]

IV. Conclusion
Stop the Cap!’s participation in this proceeding will not prejudice any party and will not delay the schedule or broaden the scope of the issues in the proceeding. For the reasons stated above, Stop the Cap! respectfully requests that the CPUC grant this motion for party status filing.

Dated: February 2, 2016
Respectfully submitted,

/s/ Matthew Friedman
Matthew Friedman
Stop the Cap!

Comcast customers in Atlanta, Nashville, Chicago, Detroit, and Miami will be the first to get Comcast’s new DOCSIS 3.1 modems and faster Internet plans likely to accompany the introduction of the latest cable broadband standard.

Multichannel News reports after field trials in Pennsylvania, Northern California and Atlanta, Comcast is ready to deploy the newest cable modem standard for residential and business class customers to deliver gigabit broadband services delivered over the company’s traditional hybrid fiber-coaxial cable network.

The company expects to begin distributing new modems to customers early this year, starting in Atlanta and Nashville. Comcast is still finalizing pricing on its fastest gigabit-range plans, but the cost is expected to be less than Comcast’s Gigabit Pro offering, which is delivered over fiber-to-the-home service. The cable company now charges Gigabit Pro customers $299.95 a month for the gigabit fiber service with a two-year contract. It is likely Comcast will have to price its cable gigabit offering under $100 a month to compete effectively with Google Fiber and AT&T’s U-verse with GigaPower. Google and AT&T are readying gigabit networks in both of Comcast’s first launch markets.

Comcast exempts Gigabit Pro customers from its growing field trial of data caps, but the company had nothing to say about whether its DOCSIS 3.1-powered plans will receive similar treatment. If not, customers can expect a 300GB monthly allowance.

During the second half of this year, Comcast will expand DOCSIS 3.1 to Chicago, Detroit and Miami. Beyond that, Comcast would not say when the rest of its customers across the country would be upgraded to DOCSIS 3.1 service.

Customers who own their own modems and do not plan to upgrade to a faster plan can continue to use that equipment. Customers looking to upgrade will have to lease a modem from Comcast or buy an authorized DOCSIS 3.1 capable modem, which is expected to cost 30-50% more than traditional DOCSIS 3.0 equipment.