$1.99 each per month… every month.

Comcast customers in parts of Minnesota are receiving notification their cable lineup is about to switch to “all-digital,” requiring most to rent Comcast-supplied digital cable set-top boxes that will add at least $1.99 per box, per month to customers’ bills.

Residents in Eagan are so upset, a special meeting has been scheduled tonight by the Eagan City Council to discuss the burgeoning cable fees from the largest cable provider in the state.

“What we’ve decided to do is try to gather more information on behalf of our residents,” Eagan communications director Tom Garrison told the Eagan Patch. “I think people are certainly hearing about it. They’ve got questions, they’ve got mailings, and we hope to get them good and useful information they can act on.”

Comcast is in the process of reclaiming space on its cable systems by switching analog television channels to digital service, which will free up considerable bandwidth for other uses. But customers are inconvenienced if they do not already have Comcast set-top boxes.

Comcast has notified customers they can have a Digital Transport Adapter (DTA) sent to them for $1.99 per month, per adapter. The device makes digital signals available in analog so customers can keep watching. But the equipment no longer is provided for free. Customers will have to either install a DTA, a traditional set-top box, or a CableCARD on every television in the home after the conversion is complete.

Although the city will meet with interested residents, local government officials have very little say over how Comcast chooses to conduct business and cannot force the company to change its plans.

Doubling speeds of many broadband tiers.

Broadband Reports has a reliable source inside Comcast that says faster speeds are on the way for customers across the country, beginning in March.

Last summer, an anonymous tipster shared a preview of Comcast’s “All New Xfinity” broadband offerings. BR is reporting the speeds seem to be mostly spot-on, but will come at a price of around $2 higher than shown in the graphic.

• Comcast’s Blast tier is increasing from 25/4Mbps to 50/10Mbps starting in March;
• Extreme will be going from 50/10Mbps to 105/20Mbps starting in March;
• Performance will essentially double in speed from 12/2Mbps to 25/4Mbps beginning in May.

(Image courtesy: Broadband Reports)

Comcast is likely to gradually roll out speed increases across its service area, but some older systems serving smaller communities may have to wait longer.

BR also notes Comcast seems to be gradually decommissioning its PowerBoost feature, which delivered a temporary speed increase at the start of file downloads and streaming video. When the new, faster speeds arrived in the northeast, PowerBoost was discontinued.

A handful of Georgia state legislators have introduced a bill to ban community-owned broadband anywhere Internet service is available at speeds of at least 1.5Mbps — so slow it does not even meet the FCC’s new definition of “broadband.”

The so-called “Municipal Broadband Investment Act,” introduced Feb. 8 is just the latest in a series of anti-competition, corporate welfare bills designed to protect existing telecom monopolies and duopolies from facing any additional competition.

Introduced and co-sponsored by Reps. Mark Hamilton (R-Cumming), Don Parsons (R-Marietta), Ron Stephens (R-Savannah), Jay Roberts (R-Ocilla), Ben Harbin (R-Evans), and Jon Burns (R-Newington), H.B. 282 would only allow community providers to offer service where broadband is not available within a census block, a requirement that makes virtually all public broadband efforts untenable because of the patchwork of DSL service throughout the state.

Hamilton

Remarkably, the legislation also includes a penalty clause that will leave community providers liable for damages payable to corporate-owned Internet Service Providers if they dare compete with the state’s largest phone and cable companies. Local communities could even be on the hook for attorney fees paid by companies like Comcast, Windstream, and AT&T to make sure publicly owned ISPs never get off the ground.

Phone companies like Windstream are seeking federal funding from the FCC Connect America Fund that will defray up to $775 per home for new broadband hookups delivering at least 4/1Mbps service. But Georgia’s legislation will set a new standard for minimum broadband at a much slower 1.5Mbps, benefiting telephone companies like AT&T, CenturyLink and Windstream. All can claim their existing 1.5Mbps DSL lines are good enough for Georgia to consider an area “served” by broadband. That certification would make it impossible for a publicly owned provider to establish far faster service.

Stop the Cap! strongly urges Georgia residents to contact their state representative and ask that he or she vote no on H.B. 282, which is nothing more than another corporate-written and backed protectionism bill that will guarantee rural Georgia remains mired in a slow speed broadband swamp. The best way corporate ISPs can guarantee no community will rise up to compete is by providing 21st century broadband speeds and service to local residents.

The proposed bill is scheduled for its first hearing tomorrow afternoon at 4pm.

Frontier Communications has admitted in a December regulatory filing it lost a combined 60 percent of its residential and business landline customers in Washington over the last decade, with more than 15,000 more departing during the first nine months of 2012.

The company revealed those numbers as part of an effort to win “minimal regulation” in the state of Washington, claiming its cable, wireless, and Voice Over IP competitors have eaten away its customer base. During the period between 2000 and 2011, the number of access lines served by Frontier in Washington declined from 895,435 to 342,869.

Frontier revealed it lost 15,310 more customers from March-September 2012 in cities like Everett (1,302), Marysville (2,009), and Redmond (2,975). Many of those customers took their business to Comcast. Others rely on wireless service Frontier does not provide.

Frontier claims it faces robust competition in Washington and should be entitled to deregulation.

“These alternative providers have captured a significant share of the market for business and residential telecommunications services and additional features,” Frontier’s filing says. “Frontier is no longer the largest or predominant provider of telecommunications service.”

In Washington, companies like Frontier now just hold 19% of the voice telephone business. Wireless providers are now the predominant voice service provider, serving 6.1 million subscribers in Washington.

Frontier admits the competition has been beating the company’s pants off:

“The alternative service providers have clearly been successful in competing with Frontier as evidenced by the persistent and continuing loss of access lines by Frontier,” Frontier’s filing says. “As noted above, Frontier has experienced a 62% reduction in the number of access lines it serves in Washington from 895,435 as of January 1, 2001 to 342,869 as of September 30, 2012. This loss of access lines has been ubiquitous across Frontier’s exchanges in that all but one of Frontier’s 102 exchanges has experienced line losses since 2009.”

Deregulation would allow Frontier to increase prices or change how its markets and bundles certain products. It would also reduce the amount of oversight the company faces from state regulators.

The Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission temporarily set aside Frontier’s request at a meeting held Jan. 31. The regulator wants further time to investigate Frontier’s petition and will schedule future hearings on the matter in the future.

Thanks to Stop the Cap! reader Steve who first noticed the regulatory filing.

Comcast is introducing a new $1.99/month fee for equipment that allows customers with older televisions to watch the cable television lineup they already pay to receive.

Customers with Digital Transport Adapters, also known as DTAs, will soon find the new fee on their Comcast bill. Comcast formerly offered up to two DTA boxes for free in areas where the company reclaimed space on cable systems by moving analog television channels to digital. Customers needing more than two boxes paid $1.99 for each additional box, but now Comcast will charge everyone for the devices.

Comcast expects to earn more than $550 million in new revenue nationwide from the introduction of the new fee.

Customers are unhappy.

“So after paying more than $60 a month for a television package, we now have to shell out even more for the equipment to watch it,” asks Stop the Cap! reader Deepak in Philadelphia, one of the first cities where Comcast will levy the fee. “Comcast says we cannot buy our own box or buys theirs outright to avoid paying the fee either.”

The devices cost Comcast an estimated $35-50 each, depending on their capabilities, so Comcast will book the additional revenue as profit as early as mid-2014.