Broadband prices in the United States are far too low and it is long past time to “significantly” boost prices and introduce usage caps/consumption-based billing to put an end to the threat of online video competition once and for all.

Those are the views of Jonathan Chaplin, a research analyst for New Street Research LLP, and he made sure to share them with Robert Marcus, CEO of Time Warner Cable on a morning conference call with investors.

“Our analysis suggests that broadband as a product is underpriced,” Chaplin told Marcus, and it is hardly the first time he has beat the drum for higher Internet pricing.

In June, Chaplin wrote a note to investors that pulled no punches about what usage billing is really all about.

“Our work suggests that cable companies have room to take up broadband pricing significantly and we believe regulators should not oppose the re-pricing (it is good for competition & investment),” Chaplin wrote. “The companies will undoubtedly have to take pay-TV pricing down to help ‘fund’ the price increase for broadband, but this is a good thing for the business. Post re-pricing, [online video] competition would cease to be a threat and the companies would grow revenue and free cash flow at a far faster rate than they would otherwise.”

Chaplin pestered Marcus this morning about why Time Warner Cable has remained steadfast in keeping compulsory usage caps or usage-based pricing away from their broadband customers.

Marcus

“As part of the merger conditions, you made a concession to not moving towards usage-based pricing for a number of years,” Chaplin asked. “I’m wondering if that’s something that you felt the FCC required, or that came up during the course of the Comcast, Time Warner Cable discussions and why you needed to offer that up as a condition.”

Ironically, it was Marcus who schooled Chaplin on the realities of a marketplace where cap-free competitors like Google, Verizon, and AT&T U-verse (their stated cap is not enforced) exist and are more than capable of stealing Time Warner Cable customers if the cable company gets too greedy. Time Warner’s best chance of earning more broadband revenue is to sell faster service, Marcus noted.

“I can’t give you an outlook on where broadband pricing is going, except to say we’re going to continue to deliver more and more utility to customers,” Marcus said. “Generally speaking, where customers get more value out of your products, they’re willing to pay more. But what we actually charge is going to be a function of what the marketplace dictates. It’s a very competitive market out there and we’re going to have to continue to price our products in a way that allows us to acquire and retain them.”

Chaplin’s remarks tying usage pricing to curtailing online video competition are no surprise to consumer advocates, who believe usage-based billing is an obvious weapon cable and phone companies can use to protect their cable-TV revenue. Sling’s CEO considers usage pricing a serious threat to the viability of alternative video providers like Sling TV.

The Don’t Care Bears

Comcast customers running into Comcast’s experimental 300GB usage cap in Atlanta can now buy their way out of overlimit fees, but it will cost you $35 a month — $5 more than what Comcast’s customers in Florida pay for the same reprieve.

Do You Want Unlimited Data?
Now You Can Get It.

We’re trialing a new Unlimited Data option for XFINITY Internet customers in your area. You can now get unlimited data for an additional fee of $35 per month, rather than paying $10 for each 50 GB provided over your current 300 GB monthly data plan. Enrolling in this option goes into effect on the first day of the next calendar month, so as early as November 1, 2015.

If you typically use more than your data plan, you can select our Unlimited Data option and never worry about unexpected data overages again. Take a look at your recent monthly usage with our usage meter, and see if the Unlimited Data option is right for you. Want more information about unlimited data such as how to sign up?
Click here to learn more.

Please note that this is a consumer trial. Comcast may modify or discontinue this trial at any time. However, we will notify you in advance of any such change.

Stop the Cap! reader Paul sent along a copy of the Comcast e-mail noted above.

Of course Comcast customers want unlimited data in return for the very substantial amount of money they pay the cable company each month for the service. But it is unlikely Comcast will find many customers satisfied with the prospect of paying $35 more to get back the same Internet service they used to receive before Comcast unilaterally imposed a usage cap on them.

Comcast is testing different usage caps and price points to determine which are the most palatable to customers, with the likely aim of imposing their caps on every Comcast customer in the country.

Customers can make it clear to Comcast the only acceptable option is NO USAGE CAPS and NO USAGE BILLING:

1. Inform Comcast you are shopping for another provider and will switch companies over the issue of usage caps.
2. Send a complaint to the FCC letting them know you strongly oppose Comcast’s usage caps.
3. File a complaint with the Better Business Bureau, especially if you incurred overlimit fees on your bill.

Canada’s largest wireless carrier and near-largest Internet Service Provider has just become one of Canada’s largest Net Neutrality advocates. How did that happen?

In an ironic move, Alphabeatic reports Rogers Communications today filed a letter with the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission that supports a ban on providers exempting customers from usage caps when accessing content owned by the provider or its preferred partners.

The issue arose after Vidéotron, Quebec’s largest cable operator and significant wireless provider, began offering an Unlimited Music service that keeps the use of eight streaming audio services – Rdio, Stingray, Spotify, Google Play, 8Tracks, Groove, Songza and Deezer – from counting against a customer’s usage allowance.

The practice of exempting certain preferred content from usage billing, known as “zero rating,” is a flagrant violation of Net Neutrality according to consumer groups. Rogers now evidently agrees.

“The Unlimited Music service offered by Vidéotron is fundamentally at odds with the objective of ensuring that there is an open and non-discriminatory marketplace for mobile audio services,” Rogers’ CRTC filing said. “Vidéotron is, in effect, picking winners and losers by adopting a business model that would require an online audio service provider (including Canadian radio stations that stream content online) to accept Vidéotron’s contractual requirements in order to receive the benefit of having its content zero-rated.”

The practice of zero rating can steer users to a provider’s own services or those that agree to partner with the provider, putting others at a competitive disadvantage. That is what bothers the Public Interest Advocacy Centre, which calls the practice incompatible with an Open Internet.

Rogers has an interest in the fight. The company owns a number of commercial radio stations across Canada, many that stream their content over the Internet. None are exempt from Vidéotron’s caps.

Rogers’ advocacy for Net Neutrality is new for the company, and ironic. Rogers partnered with Vidéotron and Bell to offer its own zero-rated online video service for wireless customers until last August, when consumer groups complained to the CRTC about the practice.

Rogers may also be in the best position to judge others for the practice while finding a convenient loophole for itself. Its current promotions include free subscriptions to Shomi, a video streaming service, Next Issue, a magazine app, or Spotify, the well-known music streaming service. While Rogers won’t exempt your use of these services from its usage caps, it will effectively exempt you from having to pay a subscription fee for the service of your choice, which could provide the same amount of savings zero rating content would.

Ricardo Bolán was not happy while reading his latest Comcast bill informing him he was about to be included in Comcast’s creeping trial of usage caps, which has slowly spread across the cable company’s service areas in the south and western U.S.

“Customer service said we were one of the communities ‘opting in’ to Comcast’s data usage plan, which is their way of saying Comcast forced it on us,” said Bolán, who lives in Hialeah, Fla.

Several South Florida customers are writing Stop the Cap! to complain about Comcast’s Oct. 1 imposition of a 300GB usage cap on its broadband service. Customers exceeding their allowance will now pay $10 in overlimit fees for each 50GB increment.

“Comcast’s usage meter hasn’t reliably worked down here for weeks, so you are flying blind over how much data you are using, and we’re talking about Comcast, so who can trust them?,” said Dave — a Stop the Cap! reader in Miami Beach. “I guess it’s back to AT&T.”

When the usage tool does work, some customers claim their reported usage levels suddenly doubled or tripled after Comcast’s usage cap started.

“Since this new data plan trial for Florida went into effect, I decided to check my usage,” Batchman27 wrote on Comcast’s support forum. “I am at 11GB in one day. I looked back at my usage for the past three months (July 1-Sept 30) and my average for those 92 days was 5.86GB per day. I find it very odd and extremely convenient that my usage [nearly doubled] on the day this ‘trial’ began.”

Over the next several days, his usage stayed consistently at or above 11GB a day.

“At this rate, I will exceed the 300GB before the end of the month and will be billed for the additional blocks of data (note: my highest usage during those three months was 202GB in August),” he added.

Another customer has had to banish Netflix, Hulu, and all other subscription video services from his home because they make all the difference whether or not his family of four will face overlimit bill charges and bill shock from Comcast.

“It’s no surprise what they are targeting with these caps,” said Austin Chilson. “If you watch Netflix or Hulu on a regular basis, 300GB is not enough. Netflix alone is responsible for about 17GB of video usage during the first three days of the month, and we were gone most of the day on Saturday the 3rd.”

Another customer echoes Chilson.

“I feel like we’re a pretty average family of four,” GuitarManJonny wrote Oct. 2 on Comcast’s support forum. “Of course we stream Netflix and we do a little downloading although nothing approaching what I’d consider excessive (no torrents, for example) and I have gone over the limit every month since July. I’m already at 13GB for this month, so it’s a pretty safe bet that I will go over again.”

Florida customers have an option other Comcast customers do not — a way back to unlimited usage by paying an extra $30 for an “unlimited use option.”

That seemed to only infuriate customers more.

“It’s amazing that a cap is being turned on and yet I’m asked to pay the same amount that I have been for unlimited and then being asked to pay MORE to continue the same plan I’m on now,” writes Gldoori. “It’s also ironic that I get the ‘We’re sorry. We can’t load your Internet usage meter right now’ [error message] when I try to monitor my usage on the website.”

“I’ll be cancelling my TV and home phone with them in a couple of months when my plan expires and then dropping my Internet speed to fit a “need” rather than a “want,” Gldoori wrote. “I’m not paying $30 more (for unlimited) just to have the same Internet plan I’ve been paying for already.”

A Comcast spokesperson tried to defend the implementation of usage caps in Miami-Dade, Broward and the Florida Keys by suggesting almost none of their customers will be impacted by it.

“To put things in perspective, 300 GB is an extremely large amount of data to use,” Comcast Florida spokeswoman Mindy Kramer told the Miami Herald. “The median data use for our customers is 40GB per month; about 70 percent of our customers use less than 100GB per month. About 92 percent of our customers will see absolutely no impact on their monthly bills.”

Kramer claims the new usage caps are about fairness.

“Our data plan trials are part of our ongoing effort to create a fair, technologically-sound policy in which customers who use more data pay more, and customers who use less pay less,” Kramer said.

Except no customers are paying less. Comcast’s broadband rates have not changed as a result of the market trials, only a usage cap was introduced.

In other cities living under Comcast’s usage caps, the first notice many customers take of the new caps comes in the form of a much higher bill. Clark Howard, a consumer reporter for WSB-TV in Atlanta, has heard from local residents reporting serious bill spikes if they ignored Comcast’s warning or failed to curtail their usage.

Another reader in South Florida reports Comcast does inform Floridians when their usage allowance runs out, including automated phone calls and a browser-injected warning message appearing on all non-https websites when a customer reaches 80 and 100% of their monthly allowance. Once that allowance is exceeded, your Internet will not stop working. Comcast will instead add $10 for each additional 50GB you use until the end of your billing cycle.

“There is no way to opt out of accruing overlimit fees and when the usage tool is down, you have no idea what your bill will look like,” said Bolán. “To keep this in perspective, if you manage to use 500GB in a month, the overlimit fee will add $40 to your bill. If you cut your cable TV and watch Hulu and Netflix, that kind of usage is not surprising.”

Chilson’s parents have been impacted by Comcast’s usage caps in another way — they are having trouble selling their home because Comcast is the only service provider. AT&T isn’t providing U-verse service to several homes on the street, including theirs.

“The realtor reports would-be buyers are shying away because they don’t like the Internet options, which are Comcast, Comcast, or Comcast,” Chilson said. “My parents have offered to split closing costs and even tried lowering the price, but because everyone hates Comcast, they just don’t want to be stuck living in a home with Comcast as their only choice.”

Chilson suggested offering would-be buyers $720 — the cost of two years of Comcast’s $30 a month unlimited add-on plan. Still no takers, and several buyers cited Internet availability and Comcast as reasons for backing away.

Jerome Stokes of Palm Springs, Fla. has managed to collect almost 2,000 signatures on his Change.org petition demanding Comcast remove the usage caps from all of their Internet plans. He calls data caps “barbaric,” and thinks they should be illegal. Other customers are also complaining to the FCC.

Sean Miranda thinks they are just bad for business:

“If this doesn’t affect most people anyway, why bother implementing this change? All it does is make people like myself, less inclined to continue using your service, and instead switch to a different ISP that doesn’t put such silly restrictions on their customers. AT&T is starting to look better and better right about now, but where do I go once they start implementing this too, huh? I want no involvement in this “trial” and hope you discontinue this monopoly scheme immediately, or I will have no choice but to take my business elsewhere or to create new competition.”

Less than three months before announcing it would acquire Time Warner Cable in a $55 billion deal, Charter Communications quietly dropped usage caps, in place on its broadband plans since 2009, without explanation and the FCC wants to know why.

FCC officials have sent a letter to Charter requesting a range of information about the company’s broadband services, including information about Charter’s since-dropped usage cap program. The federal agency reviewing its buyout of Time Warner Cable wants to know when Charter dropped its usage caps and why.

Charter Communications has promoted “no usage caps” as a selling point to convince regulators its purchase of Time Warner Cable is a consumer-friendly transaction. Charter has promised a cap-free Internet experience for Time Warner Cable customers for three years, but has not committed to offer unlimited broadband service beyond that date.

Two months before Time Warner Cable planned a since-dropped 2009 market test of usage caps in New York, North Carolina and Texas, Charter Communications confirmed it was introducing “monthly residential bandwidth consumption thresholds” on its broadband customers ranging from 100GB for customers with speeds of 15Mbps or slower and 250GB for customers subscribed to 15-25Mbps service.

“In order to continue providing the best possible experience for our Internet customers, later this month we will be updating our Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) to establish monthly residential bandwidth consumption thresholds,” Charter’s Eric Ketzer told DSL Reports at the time. “More than 99% of our customers will not be affected by our updated policy, as they consume far less bandwidth than the threshold allows.”

Few customers realized Charter had placed a cap on Internet usage because the cable company treated the limits as “soft caps” — guidelines they could cite if they found a customer using a very large amount of bandwidth. But customers were not charged overlimit fees and few ever heard from Charter about their usage, even if it well-exceeded their allowance.

In front of Time Warner Cable offices in Rochester, N.Y. protesting Time Warner Cable’s proposed usage caps. (April 2009)

Only a handful of companies, including national providers like AT&T (for DSL) and Comcast (in usage cap market trial areas), have followed up usage allowances with stinging overlimit fees for those exceeding them, applied to customer bills. The practice is far more common among smaller and regional cable companies like Alaska’s GCI, which earned 10 percent of its broadband revenue billing customers for excess usage.

In March of this year, Stop the Cap! reported Charter quietly dropped usage caps (or “thresholds”) from their Acceptable Use Policy, ending six years of usage capped service — less than three months before announcing it was acquiring Time Warner Cable.

Time Warner Cable’s own experience with usage caps was short-lived after Stop the Cap! and other consumer advocates and elected officials launched a protest campaign against Time Warner Cable’s plans to expand a test of usage-based billing beyond Beaumont, Tex. to Rochester, N.Y., Greensboro, N.C., and the cities of Austin and San Antonio in Texas.

Time Warner proposed four tiers of usage allowances: 5, 10, 20, and 40 GB priced from $29.95 to $54.90 a month. The overlimit fee was to be $1/GB. Sanford Bernstein, a Wall Street research firm, predicted an average family subscribed to Time Warner’s top 40GB usage plan would pay around $200 a month in overlimit fees if they used Netflix more than 7.25 hours a week.

Within two weeks of launching protests in the four cities where Time Warner was planning to add caps, the plan was shelved permanently. But many Time Warner Cable customers have remained wary of the company’s plans regarding usage caps. Time Warner’s retooled, optional usage capped tiers offered to customers looking for a discount have proved dismal failures since their introduction, with fewer than 1% of Time Warner customers finding usage-limited Internet access compelling.

Rationing Your Internet Experience?

Consumer advocates also fear usage caps could reappear under Charter as quickly as they disappeared. Stop the Cap! is suspicious of Charter’s time-limited commitment to keep customers free of usage caps for three years. We are lobbying state and federal regulators to permanently extend that commitment as a condition of approving any merger between Charter and Time Warner.

“Customers must be assured they can always choose a reasonably priced unlimited use Internet option,” said the group’s founder Phillip Dampier. “If Charter/Time Warner Cable/Bright House wants to offer optional discounts for customers volunteering to limit their personal use, we are not opposed to that. But based on Time Warner’s own record, you can count on only a few thousand customers willing to voluntarily surrender unlimited, flat rate access.”

Stop the Cap! believes there is no credible reason Internet providers should be imposing compulsory usage caps or usage billing on anyone.

“Broadband is a huge money-maker and the costs to offer it continue to drop even as provider profits rise,” said Dampier. “Rationing broadband with a usage allowance is as credible as rationing Niagara Falls or breathing.”

The FCC is also requesting documentation detailing Charter’s proposed expansion of Wi-Fi hotspots in Time Warner Cable areas and company plans to boost standard broadband speeds from 15Mbps to 60Mbps. Charter has until Oct. 13 to respond.