Seymour and Sidell Reiner (Sun-Sentinel)

A Boynton Beach family’s tragic story may give Comcast phone customers second thoughts about whether the cable company’s “digital phone” service is a help or hindrance in an emergency.

Seymour Reiner arrived home last Thanksgiving to find his wife of 62 years dead on the floor from a cut ankle.  But his shock turned to anger when he learned his beloved wife Sidell’s death likely came after Comcast, the company that delivers his phone service, could not quickly manage to provide emergency officials with their home address.

Comcast customers in south Florida who dial “0” from their Comcast phone lines hear a message indicating they should press “0” if the call is a 911 emergency, which Sidell apparently did at least 10 times.

“Help me! Help me, please! Help me! Help me!” Sidell pleaded in disturbing recordings (warning: graphic content) obtained by the Sun Sentinel newspaper.

Sixteen minutes later, when paramedics finally arrived, it was too late.  An hour after that, Seymour arrived home to find the phone laying next to Sidell’s body.

The 81-year old Florida grandmother cut her ankle after dropping some crystal glassware, hitting an artery that caused major bleeding.  She reached for her phone and dialed “0” hoping to reach an operator, but was instead connected with Comcast’s call center.  The cable company eventually transferred the call to Palm Beach County’s 911 emergency services center, but by that time, her anguished pleas for help were barely audible.

The county’s 911 dispatcher asked Comcast’s operator for Reiner’s address, which she could not provide.  Minutes passed as Comcast tried to figure out the address where the call originated from, and an ambulance was eventually dispatched.  Emergency responders arriving at the Sidell’s home left after nobody answered their knocks on the home’s locked front door.  Sidell was unconscious by that time.

Now the Reiner family has filed a lawsuit against Comcast demanding unspecified damages for the cable company’s performance during the tragic events, and also has served notice they may sue the county and fire rescue service for their alleged negligence.

Reiner appeared visibly upset at a press conference held earlier today announcing the lawsuit.  He told several reporters he doesn’t want anyone else to suffer the tragedy he faced when his phone provider couldn’t quickly handle a call for help that ultimately resulted in his wife’s death.

Gary Cohen, the family’s attorney, was livid about Comcast.

“They have her address when it comes to a bill, but when it comes to saving her life, they can’t find her address?” Cohen asked.

The lawsuit led the news across several cities in south Florida, and viewers heard the story first-hand:

“Her phone number, when we put in her phone number, it is showing that there is no information available on that number,” the Comcast operator says.

“Oh, goodness,” the Boynton Beach operator responds.

Cohen accused Comcast of being indifferent about the urgency of Reiner’s desperate pleas for help and said the cable company dropped the ball.

“This was a life-deciding call and there doesn’t seem to be a lot of communication that this is a desperate situation,” Cohen said. “”Nobody took responsibility in saving her — no one went that extra mile and did what they needed to do.”

Cable company and other “Voice Over IP” phone services have been criticized in the past for not passing through important caller-ID information to emergency responders that includes up to date addresses of where the calls originate.  Some traditional phone companies have used past failures by alternative providers to warn consumers not to disconnect landline service because of possible delays in emergency response.  The Reiner family may prove to be a case in point.

Comcast spokeswoman Marta Casas-Celaya said her company does not comment about pending court cases and declined to answer general questions about services provided when a caller dials “0.”  Another statement indicated the company felt “deeply saddened for the Reiner family’s loss.”

[flv width=”640″ height=”500″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Boynton Beach Tragedy 10-27-10.flv[/flv]

Several Florida TV stations gave this story the lead on their evening newscasts. [WPBF-TV & WPTV-TV West Palm Beach, WFOR-TV Miami, WPEC-TV West Palm Beach]  (9 minutes)

Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix, shows off the company's growing reliance on broadband streaming, moving away from its original DVD-by-mail rental business.

Last week, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings was showered with questions from Wall Street during the company’s third quarter-results conference call.  At the top of the agenda — the company’s shifting business model away from DVD rentals-by-mail gradually towards instant on-demand streaming over broadband networks.

At issue is how Netflix can survive a broadband industry that controls the pipeline Netflix increasingly depends on for its continued existence.

Hastings tried to assuage his cable competitors by telling investors the company is hardly a threat to cable-owned movie channels and basic cable.  But he admits ultimately the company will be in a real mess if Internet Overcharging schemes like usage caps and speed throttles limit the amount of content customers can affordably access:

“We have some vulnerability depending on capped usage and what happens. Comcast has a cap, but it’s 250 gigabytes and so most users feel that they have an unlimited experience, and it gives us plenty of room to deliver a high-def stream. On the other hand, AT&T Mobile data on an iPad is now capped at two gigabytes, [and that’s] not enough room to deliver hours and hours of high-def.  We are definitely sensitive [to the issue] in the long term [whether] the industry ends up at 250 gigabytes or two at the other extreme.”

There is some limited evidence Netflix’s success in Canada is already being tempered by usage limits near-universally imposed in the country.  Rogers, a major cable company in eastern Canada, even reduced usage caps for certain tiers of service around the same time Netflix announced its imminent arrival north of the border.

Barry McCarthy, Chief Financial Officer notes fewer Canadians are converting their free trials of Netflix’s streaming service into paid subscriptions.

“We anticipate we are seeing slightly lower conversion rates in Canada than we see in the U.S.,” McCarthy told investors.

As Netflix moves towards higher quality video streams, the amount of data consumed increases as well.  In Canada, that eats into broadband usage allowances, and fast. As soon as customers start receiving warnings they are nearing their monthly usage limit, or receive a broadband bill with overlimit fees, Netflix is likely to lose that customer.

Cable and phone companies in Canada are already warning customers that online video is a major culprit of exhausted usage allowances.  Both are also happy to remind their customers they are happy to sell them access to unlimited video — through cable or telco TV subscriptions.  Rogers owns a major chain of video rental stores as well.

What can Netflix do about usage capped broadband?  Not much, admits Hastings.

“There is a not a lot of improvement in compression techniques. But what we can do is just deliver a lower bit stream, a lower quality video experience. So, for example, not too high-def. So, that’s one possible way to partially mitigate that impact,” Hastings said.

Netflix will soon face increasing competition, especially from the cable industry’s TV Everywhere projects, and they won’t deliver a lower quality video experience.

Time Warner Cable and Comcast this month both formally introduced their respective video on demand services.

Comcast’s Xfinity online service arrives after months of beta testing.   Comcast customers can watch video selections from nearly 90 movie and television partners, including programming from HBO, Viacom, and Paramount.  Ultimately, the online video service is expected to deliver access to dozens of cable channels and individual programs from studios and networks at no charge to those who subscribe to a cable television package.

Time Warner Cable took a more modest approach last week by introducing ESPN Networks to its cable subscribers who register with the cable company’s MyServices website.  The new customer portal allows subscribers to review and pay their cable bill, add new services (but not cancel existing ones), remotely program DVR boxes, and also verifies subscriber status for future cable subscriber-only online video programming.

Netflix may soon find itself at the mercy of the cable and telephone companies which deliver broadband access to the majority of Americans.  Not only is it difficult to convince customers to pay a monthly fee for programming the cable industry may eventually give away for free, it may be downright impossible for Netflix to survive if those providers decide to squeeze the customer’s pipeline to unlimited Netflix content.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Comcast Xfinity Ad Spot 10-2010.flv[/flv]

Comcast Ad Introducing Xfinity Online.  (1 minute)

You can’t blame a guy for trying.  As the Cablevision-Fox dispute continues to drag on — keeping several Fox-owned cable networks and two New York stations off Cablevision screens, Hamilton Mayor John Bencivengo decided it was time to start shopping for some cable competition.

Bencivengo wrote thoughtful letters to executives of Comcast and Time Warner Cable trying to sell the two cable companies on coming to Mercer County.

“I am writing to inquire as to any interest your company may have in entering into Hamilton Township (Mercer County), NJ as a cable television provider,” Bencivengo’s letter reads. “I understand that any business decision would be predicated on the economic feasibility of entering into a new market, either through a franchise agreement with Hamilton Township or through a statewide franchise agreement available from the State of New Jersey through the BPU (Board of Public Utilities),” the letter reads. “It is a vibrant market that seems ripe for picking at this time.”

He’s also reminding both cable companies they are free and clear to deliver service just by signing a franchise agreement — the one Hamilton Township had with Cablevision expired back in 2005.

The New Jersey Times notes the area is not well-served by cable competition.  Verizon FiOS is an option for only about half of the residents of Hamilton, and only a quarter of residents in nearby Robbinsville.  The only other alternative is attaching a satellite dish to the roof.

Hamilton Township is part of Mercer County, N.J.

“Here we are again with stations that are pretty popular off the cable network without any reimbursement to the cable customers, and that’s unfortunate,” Bencivengo told the New Jersey newspaper. “I want to be proactive to try to woo these people to Hamilton Township.”

Unfortunately, the cable industry in the United States resembles an organized crime network (their prices sure are a crime), each with their own respective territories companies have quietly agreed never to cross.  Comcast and Time Warner Cable are the Godfathers of their respective service areas, and neither will compete head-to-head.  Even though many residents affected by the Fox blackout may think of Cablevision as the Fredo of the cable industry, the chances of another cable company arriving in town to compete with them is next to zero.

Verizon offers the most immediate opportunity for cable competition, but consumers will find pricing generally comparable to what Cablevision charges.

The mayor of Hamilton need not tilt at windmills, however.  There is another way.

If Hamilton Township is fed up with Cablevision’s HissyFits and Verizon’s high prices, the alternative is to build support for a community-owned municipal system that can deliver video, phone, and broadband service to residents.  That’s what communities ranging from Wilson and Salisbury, North Carolina to Opelika, Alabama are doing, among many others.

They’ve decided the future of their communities’ telecommunications needs can no longer be entrusted to a handful of bully boys who put customers in the middle of every dispute over the money those customers will ultimately have to pay no matter who wins.

It’s a far better long term solution than replacing one bad cable company with another.

South Florida Comcast customers signed up for the Blast! broadband plan are getting noticeably faster speeds from the cable company this week with a free speed upgrade.

Blast! in southeastern Florida used to deliver 16/1Mbps service, but customers in the region are now reporting speeds are up to 20/2Mbps.  PowerBoost, which delivers a temporary speed boost, has also been upgraded to provide improvements in both downstream and upstream speeds at rates as fast as 25/5Mbps.

Comcast will inform customers with outdated cable modems they’ll need to upgrade them to receive the newest available speeds.  All others only need power cycle their existing modem by briefly unplugging it to obtain the new speeds.

The Washington Post editorial page yesterday published a self-serving piece that openly advocated the approval of a merger between NBC-Universal and Comcast, creating one of America’s largest and most concentrated media companies.  But considering who owns the Post, the editorial might as well have been written by Comcast CEO John Roberts.

Containing only a non-specific disclosure that the newspaper “has interests in broadcast and cable television,” the editorial laments interference from “advocacy groups” that oppose the merger, claiming they are “poor prognosticators of the effects of large media mergers.”  The newspaper found no problems with media concentration in the United States, which itself should be an indictable offense, until one realizes the company that publishes the newspaper is, itself, a concentrated media company.

The Washington Post and Cable One are both owned by the same company.

The newspaper owns Cable One, a particularly nasty, low-rated cable operator that spied on its broadband customers and overcharges them for broadband service through a complicated Internet Overcharging scheme.  In fact, Cable One is the cable company that brought America the “$10/GB overlimit fee,” a low blow for the company’s customers on the so-called “economy tier,” which delivers pathetic 1.5Mbps service with a maximum limit of just 1GB!  This is the kind of cable company that proves sometimes dial-up service -is- better.

As far as the Post is concerned, the FCC will keep America safe from any uncompetitive market-power-enabled-abuses from a Comcast-NBC behemoth, itself a stunning statement from a newspaper that claims to know what is really going on in Washington.

Even our readers know complaining to the FCC about anything is like talking into a black hole.

When it comes to the Washington Post editorial page, profits come first, and Cable One can generate them with its own abusive pricing practices.

For the rest of the country, the irony of a dead-tree-format newspaper finger-pointing at advocacy groups (that don’t own cable companies), accusing them of getting the future wrong is a mighty rich irony.

The reality-based America I live in thinks media is already too-consolidated, too shallow, and increasingly abusive and too expensive.  The Post‘s advocacy of a mega-merger like Comcast-NBC only points to just how out of touch the newspaper is getting these days.  As Americans clamor for more media diversity, more competition, and more choices at lower prices, the Washington Post is just fine with the exact opposite.  But then you’d expect that from a company whose business plan depends on it.