Other than the original “five families” that ruled New York’s underworld from the 1930s on, it is hard to find a level of collusion higher than in today’s telecommunications marketplace.  It’s a veritable No-Fight Club, and the first rule is cable companies don’t fight with other cable companies. (The second is phone companies don’t compete with other phone companies.)  Everyone has their respective territory, and only the bravest interlopers dare to intrude on the cozy duopoly territory most North Americans endure, at least until the boys can drop a dime with the feds and put the kibosh on them with anti-community broadband laws or buying them out and telling them to scram.

But Time Warner Cable does not have to rub it in.  But they do anyway, see.

One reader of the Consumerist was perturbed when Time Warner Cable sent him a letter congratulating him for his decision to move... and welcoming him to consider Comcast Cable as his new provider.

Do you think Ford would ever send you a letter suggesting you give Toyota a try? Or would McDonald’s ever shoot you an e-mail telling you to check out the lovely Burger Kings in your new neighborhood? Of course not. So why would the cable industry not care which company you choose?

Consumerist reader Mike recently moved out of an area where he had no choice for cable TV other than Time Warner Cable to a town where Comcast is the only option.

[…] “What makes me even angrier is that they spent money printing and mailing this letter that only serves to remind me that I don’t have any choice!”

That mailer came courtesy of something called, “The Cable Movers Hotline,” which sounds like a clearinghouse for consumers searching for a moving company.  Indeed, the website for the group even includes video moving tips courtesy of HGTV’s Lisa LaPorta, David Gregg, senior editor, Behindthebuy.com, and interior designer Libby Langdon.

What’s the real story, morning glory? Don’t blow your wig, sister.  It’s coming.

In fact, the “Hotline” is a creature of CTAM – the Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing, a Maryland-based trade group that includes most of the nation’s largest cable operators as members.  CTAM’s “Hotline” is the cable industry’s attempt to make sure that fresh start in your new cave doesn’t include service from the dirty rat phone company or some grifter satellite TV provider with a flim-flam rebate scam.  With none of CTAM’s members willing to compete head-on with other cable operators, trading customers back and forth doesn’t hurt business, keeps the butter and egg man counting up those bills, and helps bleed you dry.

A 21st century clip joint?  You said it!

Don't thank us, it was nothing!

Comcast's shoddy installation work in one Savannah resident's home.

Savannah residents fed up with Comcast Cable’s performance in the Georgia city should see major service improvements soon, the company promised residents and city officials on Thursday.

City officials began investigating Comcast back in January as residents flooded city hall with complaints about the company’s service, billing problems, and treatment of customers.  At least 350 formal complaints led Alderman Tony Thomas to suggest Comcast had failed Savannah.

A series of town hall meetings held across the city brought scores of complaints about incompetent service technicians, endless billing errors, and deteriorating service.  When the city threatened to consider not renewing Comcast’s franchise, which permits it to operate within city limits, the company quickly began resolving complaints.

Last week, Comcast formally introduced an 11-Point Plan for improved service for Savannah, although many of the promised improvements come with some caveats.

Some of the key components gleaned from the Savannah Morning News:

• Re-introduce the Comcast Guarantee, which gives a 30-day, money-back guarantee; a 24-hour service line; a $20 credit for a late or missed appointments; an easily understood bill and a promise to resolve a problem in one visit or offer a complimentary service. However, this nationwide guarantee was already in place in Savannah and other Comcast service areas, and requires consumers both to be aware it exists and specifically request the company deliver on its promises. Comcast does not volunteer service credits or provide money back or free service unless specifically requested;
• Provide 6,000 hours of training to Comcast technicians over the next year. Contractors cannot participate because of federal regulations regarding non-employees, said Andy Macke, a Comcast vice president.  However, many of Comcast’s installers across the country are contractors, and they committed some of the worst offenses for Savannah residents complaining about shoddy installation work. They are exempt from the required training Comcast promises to deliver;
• See whether bus service can be extended to Comcast’s Chatham Parkway office or see whether another local office can be opened. Comcast only operates one walk-in location for the entire city of Savannah.  However, Comcast has no authority to require public transportation officials to extend bus service to their cable office and the company has made no concrete commitment to actually another one;
• Quarterly town hall meetings and a city of Savannah hot line to get feedback. Comcast will hold three meetings over the next year, but will use them to promote new products and initiatives. This alters the original intent of the town hall meetings — to provide an opportunity for residents to air grievances, recreating them as marketing and sales events;
• By mid-year, Comcast will extend broadband services to 111 businesses downtown, which will cost about $150,000.  However, Macke says only those businesses that express “interest” and fall within the company’s “Return On Investment” formula will qualify for service. Unless Comcast loosens its payback formula, most businesses that couldn’t get Comcast to install service before will remain unqualified to receive it going forward.

Despite these caveats, most city officials seem relieved the company is now addressing the complaints which turned Comcast’s performance into a political issue earlier this year.

Mayor Edna Jackson told Comcast she was pleased with the company’s improved level of service.

“It seems as if you heard us and the message went out very well,” Jackson said. “You have worked very hard and very diligently.”

Comcast also promises to expand its low-income Internet Essentials broadband service into more parts of its service area.  The company reported that out of 18.1 million homes that purchase broadband service from the cable operator, just 41,000 qualified for the Internet Essentials program, which sells low speed Internet access for $10 a month.

[flv width=”640″ height=”500″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WTOC Savannah Comcast Resolving Complaints 4-8-12.mp4[/flv]

WTOC in Savannah covered the city council’s reaction to Comcast’s promises of improved performance for the city’s cable subscribers.  (4 minutes)

[flv width=”480″ height=”290″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WJCL Savannah Comcast Promises Improvements 4-8-12.mp4[/flv]

WJCL, which apparently anchors their newscast outdoors, got into the specifics of Comcast’s 11 point plan for better cable service in Savannah  (2 minutes)

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WSAV Savannah City Council and Comcast Reach Solution 4-8-12.flv[/flv]

WSAV, also in Savannah, called the agreement with city officials and Comcast “a compromise.”  (2 minutes)

Comcast has changed its explanation why the company’s XFINITY TV service, streamed over Xbox 360 has been made exempt from the company’s 250GB usage cap.

Last week, the company claimed the service traveled over the company’s “private IP” network, exempting it from usage restrictions.  That created a small furor among public interest groups and Net Neutrality supporters because of the apparent discrimination against streamed video content not partnered with the country’s biggest cable operator.

Stop the Cap! argued what we’ve always argued — usage caps and speed throttles are simply an end run around Net Neutrality — getting one-up on your competition without appearing to openly discriminate.

Now Comcast hopes to make its own end run around the topic by changing the language in its FAQ:

Before:

After:

Although the words have changed, the story stays the same.

The key principle to remember:

Data = Data

Comcast suggests its Xbox XFINITY TV service turns your game console into a set top box, receiving the same type of video stream its conventional cable boxes receive.  The cable company is attempting to conflate traditional video one would watch from an on-demand movie channel as equivalent to XFINITY TV over the Xbox.  Since the video is stored on Comcast’s own IP network, the company originally argued, it creates less of a strain on Comcast’s cable system.

AT&T's U-verse is an example of an IP-based distribution network.

But the cable industry’s inevitable march to IP-based delivery of all of their content may also bring a convenient excuse to proclaim that data does not always equal data.  They have the phone companies to thank for it.

Take AT&T’s U-verse or Bell’s Fibe.  Both use a more advanced form of DSL to deliver a single digital data pipeline to their respective customers.  Although both companies try to make these “advanced networks” sound sexy, in fact they are both just dumb data pipes, divided into segments to support different services.  The largest segment of that pipe is reserved for video cable TV channels, which take up the most bandwidth. A smaller slice is reserved for broadband, and a much smaller segment is set aside for telephone service.

AT&T and Bell’s pipes don’t know the difference between video, audio, or web content because they are all digital data delivered to customers on an IP-based network.  Yet both AT&T and Bell only slap usage caps on their broadband service, claiming it somehow eases congestion, even though video content always uses the most bandwidth. (They have not yet figured out a way to limit your television viewing to “maintain a good experience for all of their customers,” but we wouldn’t put it past them to try one day.)

What last mile congestion problem?

Comcast’s argument for usage limiting one type of data while exempting other data falls into the same logical black hole.  Comcast’s basic argument for usage caps has always been it protects a shared network experience for customers.  Since cable broadband resources are shared within a neighborhood, the company argues, it must impose limits on “heavy users” who might slow down service for others.

We've heard this all before. Former AT&T CEO Dan Somers: "AT&T didn’t spend $56 billion to get into the cable business to have the blood sucked out of (its) veins."

But in a world where DOCSIS 3 technology and a march to digital video distribution is well underway or near completion at many of the nation’s cable operators, the “last mile” bandwidth shortage problem of the early 2000s has largely disappeared.  In fact, Comcast itself recognized that, throwing the usage door wide open distributing bandwidth heavy XFINITY TV over the Xbox console cap-free.

As broadband advocates and industry insiders continue the debate about whether this constitutes a Net Neutrality violation or not, a greater truth should be considered.  Stop the Cap! believes providers have more than one way to exercise their control over broadband.

Naked discrimination against web content from the competition is a messy, ham-handed way to deal with pesky competitors.  Putting up a content wall around Netflix or Amazon is a concept easy to grasp (and get upset about), even by those who may not understand all of the issues.

Internet Overcharging schemes like usage caps and speed throttles can win providers the same level of control without the political backlash.  Careful modification of consumer behavior can draw customers to company-owned or partnered content without using a heavy hammer.

Simply slap a usage limit on customers, but exempt partnered content from the limit.  Now customers have a choice: use up their precious usage allowance with Netflix or watch some of the same content on the cable company’s own unlimited-use service.

Nobody is “blocking” Netflix, but the end result will likely be the same:

• Comcast wins all the advantages for itself and its “preferred partners”;
• Customers find themselves avoiding the competition to save their usage allowance;
• Competitors struggle selling to consumers squeezed by inflexible usage caps.

It is all a matter of control, and that is nothing new for large telecom companies.

Back in 1999, AT&T Broadband owned a substantial amount of what is today Comcast Cable.  Then-CEO Dan Somers made it clear AT&T’s investment would be protected.

“AT&T didn’t spend $56 billion to get into the cable business to have the blood sucked out of [its] veins,” Somers said, referring to streamed video.

Obviously Comcast agrees.

Diana Thibodoux documents Comcast's shoddy work in her rented home.

The city of Savannah, Georgia is at the mercy of Comcast Cable, and city officials and local residents are fed up with high bills, the “don’t care” attitude from customer service, and cable and broadband that fails repeatedly, sometimes extending for weeks.

The fervor came to a head in December when city council had accumulated more than 150 complaints from local residents, deciding public hearings were warranted to deal with the city’s dominant cable company, Comcast.

“Comcast Destroyed My House”

Diana Thibodoux called Comcast to deal with a cable issue in her Ardsley Park home and never expected the service call would turn into an expensive nightmare.

Thibodoux says the Comcast technician who showed up decided on his own to rewire the house for cable and began drilling through brick and expensive plaster, stringing easily visible black coaxial cable along outside walls, inside baseboards and up over doors, all in plain sight.

“My house looks like a frat house,” Thibodoux complained to Comcast officials who were on hand to listen to customer complaints at the first of four public “town hall” meetings.

“I’ve never dealt with a company so incompetent,” another local resident said.

[flv width=”640″ height=”500″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WTOC Savannah Ive never dealt with a company so incompetent 2-6-12.mp4[/flv]

WTOC in Savannah shares the horror story of Diana Thibodoux, who says Comcast destroyed her house thanks to an overzealous, incompetent repairman.  (3 minutes)

At least everyone knows she has cable.

Residents used the public sessions to vent about long hold times which can extend to as much as two hours, poor quality service, and what city officials call the predictable outcome of a company that has “a stranglehold” over Savannah’s cable TV market.

“Comcast has treated Savannah like a third world country for years, delivering the best service to the wealthiest neighborhoods while leaving cable lines dangling on the ground in the areas they don’t care about,” said Stop the Cap! reader Jenny Child, who has kept a folder of papers documenting more than a dozen service calls regarding poor Internet service at her small business.

“If it rains in Savannah, and it does so a lot, our Internet goes out,” Child complains. “We have called and called but the technician shows up when it is bright and sunny and shrugs his shoulders and says there is no problem.”

Child and her two employees now handle their online business activities based on local weather forecasts.

“If the man says we’re getting rain today, we handle our Internet things real quick, because as sure as I’ll be in church on Sunday, we won’t have service after the first drops fall from the sky,” she says.

Child keeps calling Comcast when her Internet service drops out, but long hold times to reach the company’s outsourced-to-India customer service department have cut into her business.

“I can’t be sitting here on hold with Comcast for 45 minutes waiting for some representative’s nails to dry so she can pick up the phone and deal with customers,” Child complains. “It’s the biggest cable company ever, and don’t they own NBC? How many people do they have working there that they can’t answer the phone. Maybe everyone else is calling to complain too.”

Comcast’s Business Broadband Blockade Prompts Whining When Potential Competition Shows Up

Hargray is wiring downtown Savannah with fiber broadband to serve long-neglected area businesses

While fielding complaints from more than 50 local residents at a second meeting held to address complaints, Comcast executives questioned whether the city of Savannah was giving favorable treatment to Hargray, a new entrant pushing to bring 21st century broadband into the city of Savannah for businesses Comcast has refused to serve for years.

Comcast complained they didn’t mind competition, but wanted “a level playing field,” a statement that prompted an immediate and angry response from some members of the city council, who blasted the cable company for its attitude.

Aldermen Tony Thomas, John Hall, and Tom Bordeaux all noted Comcast has steadfastly refused to wire many downtown business buildings for cable broadband service, despite years of requests.  Comcast claimed the relatively low number of customers did not justify the cost to expand the service.

Alderman Tony Thomas has championed the ongoing dispute with Comcast Cable on behalf of local residents.

All three could not understand why Comcast had a sudden urgency to complain about unfair treatment when a competitor sought to provide the service they never did.

“If [Comcast] did not want to offer that service previously and someone else is coming in to provide the service, where is the sticking point?” Thomas said.

Bordeaux was more blunt in his remarks intended for Comcast.

“Tell them to sue us,” he said.

In contrast to service from AT&T and Comcast, which often markets 3-6Mbps broadband in Savannah, Hargray’s fiber broadband project will deliver speeds up to 1Gbps, first to business customers. But the company promises it is considering selling to residential customers as well.

Great Deals, But Only for “Selected Neighborhoods”

As Comcast’s bad press has become fodder for the nightly newscasts on several of the city’s television outlets, Comcast literally took to the streets to try and mitigate their public relations nightmare. In the process, they created a new one.

Councilman Tony Thomas is happy Comcast is approaching upset customers and offering them substantial discounts on their cable bill.  But he’s not happy Comcast is only extending those deals to certain customers, not all.

Thomas wants the deals offered to everyone, something that he says is not happening today.

(Courtesy: Ted Goff/newslettercartoons.com)

Andy Macke, Comcast’s Vice President of Communications counters, “All they have to do is call 1-800-COMCAST and they will hear the same deals that the same people are getting from those reps going from door to door.”

“Comcast’s attitude in Savannah is see no evil, hear no evil,” says Jeff White, a Comcast customer who has watched the scuffle. “They don’t even admit there is a problem until it runs on the evening news and city council waves 150 complaints they are getting at the camera — the ones Comcast ignored.”

Macke himself told WJCL-TV, which has covered the dispute with Comcast repeatedly, he was “unaware of the extent of the concerns that our Savannah customers had with us.”

Despite promises to make things right, Alderman Thomas says many complaints are still unresolved.

“We were told that all of those folks had been contacted and that their problems were being worked on. I have since found a few of these people [who] have had no contact whatsoever with Comcast,” Thomas told the TV station.

“Under no circumstances should City Council let the situation with Comcast get pushed under the rug,” one person wrote in the Vox Populi column in the Savannah Morning News. “We the people need help!”

No Help On the Way

Unfortunately for that reader, and other Savannah residents, an attempt by Savannah city officials to attract competing cable service has met with no success and no interest.  Cable operators almost never compete head to head, each respecting the service areas of fellow providers.  Hargray’s interest in Savannah is primarily serving business customers, and the option for municipal service may not be possible much longer if a bill supported by Comcast, SB 313, ever becomes law.

[flv width=”640″ height=”500″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Comcast in Savannah 2-8-12.flv[/flv]

A compilation of news reports from WJCL, WSAV, and WTOC exploring Comcast’s performance problems in the city of Savannah, Georgia.  (15 minutes)

A group whose national umbrella organization has close connections to the nation’s largest phone companies estimates 5.3% of residents in the state of Tennessee now have access to world-class fiber broadband at speeds up to 1Gbps, but no thanks to AT&T or Comcast.

As part of updated broadband availability estimates, the group noted that only a fraction of the state gets access to the community-0wned Chattanooga-based utility that provides fiber to the home service, EPB.

Key findings from this update include:

• 95.2% of Tennessee households have access to fixed broadband service of at least 768 Kbps downstream and 200 Kbps upstream (excluding mobile and satellite services).
• 93% of Tennessee households have access to fixed broadband service of at least 3 Mbps downstream and 768 Kbps upstream (excluding mobile and satellite services).
• 4.8% of Tennessee households remain unserved by any fixed broadband provider, representing approximately 120,000 unserved households that do not have access to a fixed wireless or wired broadband service offering (excluding mobile and satellite services).
• Across rural areas of Tennessee, the percentage of unserved households by any fixed broadband service is 8.4%, representing approximately 110,000 unserved rural Tennessee households.
• 5.3% of Tennessee households now have access to broadband service of at least 1 Gbps, marking the first time in Tennessee.

Most households receiving the slowest speeds get them from phone-company marketed DSL service and some fixed wireless ISPs operating in the state.

In Chattanooga, consumers have a choice between AT&T U-verse in selected neighborhoods, Comcast Cable, or EPB Fiber.  Recently, Christopher Mitchell at Community Broadband Networks alerted us that The Chattanoogan newspaper shared the difference between Comcast and EPB customer service:

You’ve got to be kidding me, Comcast! Several days ago our On Demand stopped working with a message to contact customer service and report that error seven occurred.

My husband called and after being given the self-help/troubleshoot option over the phone selected and requested a signal to be re-sent to the box. The box had already been unplugged, the appropriate amount of time waited, and the box plugged back in. No luck. The box was sent the refresh signal…it didn’t work; surprise.

So, he called back and spoke with someone who wanted to re-send the signal again and if that didn’t work then a technician would be needed.

[…]

I called Comcast this morning to schedule the technician to be told that it was going to cost me $30 for them to come out regardless of the problem. Let’s see, Comcast’s DVR box that they own and I rent shot trouble and I have to pay them another $30; I asked at least twice – “if Comcast’s equipment is the problem, I still have to pay $30?” “Yes, mam”.

They should bring out a replacement DVR for me, adjust my account for the days we’ve been without the On Demand plus an amount plus or minus $30 for the time we’ve had to take to mess around with this; not counting the time that will have to be arranged to be taken to have their technician come out.

Since I’m going to have to arrange to take more time, maybe we’ll just have someone else come out and put in something other than Comcast and they can have their broken DVR and all their other stupid little additional cable boxes returned to them.

Melanie Henderson
Hixson

EPB provides municipal power, broadband, television, and telephone service for residents in Chattanooga, Tennessee

The community-owned broadband alternative, EPB Fiber

We experienced the same “customer service” issues with Comcast. We finally cancelled our service when the tornado came through our neighborhood and we were forced to move for six months. When we finally moved back home we became EPB customers.

We have had one instance where we needed to contact customer service, and the problem was fixed quickly and easily by the most polite customer service rep I’ve ever dealt with.

Comcast came by recently to offer us a “substantial savings” if we’d make the switch back to them. My question was, why now? I was a customer for years and treated poorly as rates increased exponentially. Now the offer the discount? No thanks.

For the $5 extra per month that we pay for EPB, we receive better features, prompt and polite customer service, and an all around trouble free experience. Thanks EPB!

Leah Crisp
Harrison