The pushy door-to-door salesman is back, and he’s working for CenturyLink.

Lake Oswego (Ore.) residents have been the unwelcome recipients of repeated doorbell ringing by a small army of young CenturyLink salespeople.  Described by some residents as “rude,” “pushy,” and intrusive, the salespeople pelted would-be customers with questions about how many televisions and computers were found within their homes, and what kind of telecommunications services they had.

Some residents were so alarmed by the aggressive and suspicious sales tactics, they called police.

“They were persistent, they came to my door four times,” Lake Oswego resident Betty Endress, who lives in a private gated community, told KOIN-TV. “We have a ‘no solicitation’ policy.”

Endress refused to open the door because, in her words, it was CenturyLink — a company nobody had heard of.

In fact, CenturyLink acquired Qwest, the former Baby Bell that predominately serves the mountain west states.

CenturyLink admits the aggressive sales force belongs to them.  They are being sent into neighborhoods where the company recently upgraded its broadband service, trying to lure customers away from the cable competition.  But one South Portland resident was so alarmed when three salespeople showed up on his doorstep all at once, he called 911.

Telecommunications providers have been victimized by some criminals who represent themselves as company employees to force their way into residential homes to commit crimes.  CenturyLink says concerned residents should ask to see CenturyLink branded identification badges, uniforms, and a copy of the license permitting them to pursue door-to-door sales.

[flv width=”480″ height=”290″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/KOIN Portland Door-to-door sales scare in Lake Oswego 11-7-11.mp4[/flv]

Residents in private, gated communities told KOIN-TV in Portland they’d prefer not to be visited by CenturyLink salespeople on their doorsteps, whether the sales force holds a business license or not.  (3 minutes)

Cablevision Systems may be engaged in a long term effort to position itself for a sale, some New York investment firms have come to believe.  The most likely buyer?  Time Warner Cable.

The bulk of Cablevision’s assets are located in several boroughs of New York, Long Island, New Jersey and Connecticut.  Virtually all of their service areas, outside of the acquisition of Bresnan Cable in the mountain west, are adjacent to Time Warner, making an acquisition by the nation’s second largest cable operator a natural fit.

This isn’t the first time rumors of a Cablevision sale have been floated.  The Dolan family has run the cable operator for decades, with family patriarch Charles Dolan still controlling a sizable interest in the company.  Barron’s notes the senior Dolan is currently in his 80s.  Son James, current president and CEO of Cablevision, seems more interested in his leadership role at Madison Square Garden, spun-off from Cablevision last year.

“I think the Dolans have positioned the company for a sale,” Mark Boyar, who heads Boyar Asset Management, told Barron’s.

Boyar points to Cablevision’s ongoing efforts to minimize their involvement in side businesses, such as MSG and cable networks like AMC, spun away from Cablevision on June 30.

Buyers like transactions to be simple and straightforward, and Cablevision’s operations increasingly meet both standards.

On its own, Cablevision’s growth opportunities come mostly from rate increases, which subscribers routinely complain about.  The company already enjoys the highest penetration rate among major cable operators and the highest average monthly revenue per subscriber — $150 a month vs. $113 for Time Warner Cable.  With a depressed economy and fierce competition from Verizon FiOS, growing the business (and the stock price) has become increasingly difficult in a maturing industry unlikely to attract new subscribers.

Among the only prospects for subscriber growth on the horizon comes from satellite TV subscribers.  But that alone may not be enough to keep investors satisfied, much less excited.  A sale could bring shareholders a massive return on their investment, particularly if a bidding war breaks out between likely buyers Time Warner Cable and Comcast.  Shareholders ultimately own the company, and should the Dolan family lose their love affair with cable, Cablevision and their subscribers will likely find themselves on the auction block.

Tiny Ringgold Telephone, which serves 122 square miles of northwestern Georgia, has pulled the plug on the company’s own video IPTV package and is encouraging customers to watch all of their television shows online or through a satellite TV package offered by DISH Network.

Ringgold was in the IPTV business long before AT&T began offering U-verse, having launched video over phone lines back in 2003.  The phone company invested heavily in producing local programming for their customers, including local sports, issues in the news, health and fitness, and educational shows for and about the region.  The hope was that the phone company would give cable subscribers enough reasons to cut the cable cord for good.  They’ve invested heavily to remain on the cutting edge, something uncommon for traditional wireline phone companies.

In 2000, Ringgold announced they would deliver a High Speed Internet connection to every single customer who wanted it throughout their entire service area.  The company has continuously upgraded their facilities, offering traditional copper wire customers bonded DSL service up to 25Mbps and their growing number of fiber customers speeds up to 50/50Mbps.  That’s an enormous difference over other nearby providers, including AT&T, Frontier Communications, and CenturyLink which deliver customers 1-3Mbps DSL with no fiber in sight.  The other alternative is service from Charter Cable, among the worst-rated cable companies in the country.

But that level of innovation isn’t unusual for Ringgold, which has outpaced traditional Bell System phone companies since it was first founded in 1912 with just eight telephone lines.

In 1950, Ringgold was among the first independent companies in Georgia to switch from manual to dial telephones.  By the 1990s, Ringgold realized the future was in fiber optics, and planned to replace a significant amount of copper wiring that had been on phone poles for decades.  The phone company thought it had mastered the ultimate triple-play fiber-optics package of voice, broadband, and television, until their small size got in the way.

Ringgold discovered that “bigger is better” in the pay television business.  The largest cable operators enjoy the best bargaining power for just about everything.  Companies like Comcast and Time Warner Cable can use their enormous customer base to negotiate cut rate pricing on programming and equipment and stand-up to greedy programmers that demand excessive payments for programming.  Ringgold discovered they can’t.

Light Reading highlighted the challenges Phil Erli, executive vice president of Ringgold, spoke about recently:

• Ringgold could not cut a deal with equipment vendors that would deliver DVR and HD functionality at a level above that of the local cable company.  Large set top box manufacturers deal in volume, and smaller players like Ringgold are often left with inferior technology at prices higher than large cable companies pay for the most advanced equipment available.  Erli tried to innovate a new approach using Microsoft’s Mediaroom, but discovered that required a large number of servers too costly for a small phone company to consider;
• Programming costs were completely out of line.  Volume discounting delivers enormous savings, if you are a large-sized national provider.  Large cable companies pay a fraction of the prices independent providers pay for programming, and local broadcast stations held the company hostage on retransmission consent agreements.  Erli noted the local NBC station, presumably in nearby Chattanooga, demanded an incredible $5.25 a month per subscriber.  That rate was so high, it would turn the company’s video venture unprofitable.  Even worse, Erli relates, “these weren’t negotiations, they told me what we would pay.”  Erli realized that just one programmer could make or break Ringgold’s video service profits;
• The company’s video lineup, due to wholesale costs, was inferior to that offered by the local cable company.

Ringgold's broadband network is superior to anything the competition offers in northwestern Georgia.

With these challenges, the phone company decided enough was enough and dropped its video package, redirecting customers to DISH Network for satellite-TV, and more recently to online Internet video as an alternative to pay television.

Something you won't likely see from your cable company.

While most broadband providers treat online video as a parasite, Ringgold sees it as the ultimate business opportunity to reinvent themselves through their broadband service — selling super high speed access to content that someone else provides and has to worry about.

They’re considering a new customer promotion that includes a Roku, Apple TV, or Clearleap-powered set-top box to integrate broadband connections with television sets.  The company is even educating customers about the growing number of programs available for free (or with a low cost subscription) online with an interactive web tool.

Ringgold’s new solution for online video also includes some small revenge on high programming costs, giving subscribers an integrated over-the-air antenna system that can pick up nearly a dozen HD channels, including that NBC station, for free.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Internet TV.flv[/flv]

Here is something you don’t see every day: Ringgold Telephone encourages its customers to get online and watch TV shows for free.  (1 minute)

This dollar-a-holler astroturf effort failed to impress Longmont voters, who turned back a Comcast-funded opposition campaign to open up the city's fiber network.

Longmont, Col. residents turned their backs on a Comcast-funded campaign to block the opening of the city’s 17-mile fiber loop to competing broadband providers in a strong vote of approval.

As of early this morning, 60.8% of voters approved Ballot Question 2A.  Just 39.2% opposed the measure.

Longmont’s fiber network, built in 1997 and paid for by the Platte River Power Authority, has heretofore been off-limits to the public.  Colorado’s 2005 corporate welfare laws guarantee that taxpayer or ratepayer-funded broadband networks are kept away from the public that paid for them, for the protection of companies like Comcast and CenturyLink.

This results in the construction of showcase institutional fiber optic networks open to government, public safety, hospitals, and libraries… and practically nobody else.  Once built, institutional networks often go underutilized.  In Longmont, at least two-thirds of the city’s fiber optic network still goes unused 15 years after it was built.

The city government hoped to open the fiber network in time to bolster their application to Google to construct a gigabit network for residential and business customers, but after Google selected Kansas City for its fiber project, Longmont wants to keep its options open.  Passing the ballot question does exactly that.

“I’m glad to see 2A won,” Mayor Bryan Baum told the Times-Call. “I think it shows that money isn’t the determinator.”

Longmont voters were subjected to one of the most expensive pushback campaigns they’ve ever seen, thanks to Comcast, who spent $300,000 and counting to get the public to turn against the fiber network ballot question.

George Merritt, a spokesman for the cable-funded group Look Before We Leap, claims the vote results show “the measure’s narrow margin of victory.”  Merritt’s group relied heavily on a highly-suspect 2006 case study by University of Denver professor Ron Rizzuto that claimed 80 percent of community-owned Wi-Fi broadband networks failed to make money.  But the group didn’t make any distinction between Wi-Fi and fiber optics, and more importantly they left out the fact Rizzuto was inducted into the Cable TV Pioneers in 2004 for service to the cable industry.  Rizutto’s “study” was a classic case of dollar-a-holler research on behalf of the New Millennium Research Council, a creature of the telecommunications industry.

New Millennium Research Council -> Issue Dynamics -> Comcast

In fact, the Council is a “project” of Issue Dynamics, Inc., a for-profit, high powered Washington lobbying firm. Issue Dynamics’ client list includes Verizon, Comcast, AT&T and the United States Telecom Association – the trade association for the telecom industry.  The direct relationship between Rizzuto’s findings, and cable companies like Comcast who paid for the research, never made it into the report (or onto the group’s website).

This is the second time Longmont voters have cast ballots on the issue of the city’s fiber optic network.

In 2009, voters faced another cable industry-funded astroturf effort, with $245,000 spent to successfully defeat a similar measure.  This time, thanks in part to public exposure of the companies pulling the strings behind the astroturf campaign, voters rejected the propaganda onslaught and passed the measure.  Cable bills have also increased several times since the 2009 measure, a reminder to the public why competition can make a real difference.

With the passage of 2A, the city can choose to leave the network exactly as it is today or partner with another provider to offer services to the public.  It’s now their choice, not Comcast’s.

You can look all over this astroturf group's website and never find the fact it's bought and paid for on behalf of Colorado's largest cable company -- Comcast.

The next time Comcast or CenturyLink wants to increase your rates because of the “increased costs of doing business,” you might want to ask them why they have collectively spent more than $300,000 on an astroturf campaign to stop the city of Longmont, Col. (pop. 86,000) from using excess fiber capacity to provide competition to the phone and cable company without raising taxes a penny.

Longmont voters are headed to the polls today with a simple question to answer: should the city be allowed to open their fiber network to all-comers to provide competitive video, data, and telephone services to city residents.  Longmont’s fiber network was constructed in the 1990s as part of its electrical infrastructure.  Some utility companies buried enormous amounts of fiber intending to use it to electronically collect usage data from ratepayers so meter readers could become a thing of the past.  Like in other cities, Longmont now has a fiber network that is woefully underused, and the city wants to open up the tremendous excess capacity for telecommunications uses.  They are even open to allowing Comcast and CenturyLink to use the network to help service their own respective customers, but the thought a new competitor (including a community-owned provider) might deliver service over that network has created an absurd $300,000 Hissyfit.

Comcast has been caught funding the majority of the opposition, the so-called “No on 2A” and “Look Before We Leap” projects, sponsored primarily by the Colorado Cable Telecommunications Association, which counts Comcast as a member.

But visitors to the campaign’s cheesy website never realize who is running the show because the effort hides its association with Big Telecom.

It’s a classic example of Astroturf Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt.  Scare residents into believing the city will raise taxes or go into financial distress.  Raise uncertainty by claiming important details are being left out.  Encourage doubt by comparing the advanced fiber network with anemic public Wi-Fi failures of the past involving Earthlink (remember them?).

But the No on 2A campaign is also willing to check themselves into a deluxe suite at the Hypocrisy Hotel, accusing city officials of hiding the names of their pro-fiber supporters and backers, including (gasp!) a company based in France!

The No on 2A website breathlessly relates the incriminating documents were unearthed from “previously secret emails just made public thanks to a Colorado Open Records Act.” They suggest a nefarious connection with Alcatel-Lucent because that company, which sells products and services related to fiber networks, communicated with the city in a handful of e-mail messages last summer.  You know those French, always up to something.

When it doubt, blame the French for being in on it.

The rich, buttery irony of a “group” secretly funded by the state’s largest cable company accusing others of keeping secrets is ignored at Kabletown.

But then I’ve received e-mail from Alcatel-Lucent (and Comcast) myself.  And I have a French last name.  Sacrebleu!

The website’s “opponents,” evidently gleaned from the few hundred residents that signed their visitor’s book, includes names like Joanna Crawford, “Garrett County,” and El Cordova, which we think could be the name of a Mexican pro-wrestler, we’re not sure.

City officials are stunned by the sheer amount of money being spent by cable and phone companies to keep competition far, far away.  So apparently is the local media, which has taken to identifying the “grass roots” opposition right down to their job title and name of the lobbying firm they work for.

Take Times-Call, which helpfully discloses “Look Before We Leap” spokesman George Merritt is actually a senior strategist for Onsight Public Affairs of Denver.  That’s a real nice way to say “lobbying firm hired to develop social media strategies to snooker influence public opinion on behalf of corporate clients.”

You know you’re not dealing with a neighborhood group lobbying to reduce road speeds in the neighborhood or sign a petition for improved trash collection when you read Leap’s financial disclosure reports:

• $120,913.64 to mass communications firm SE2 of Denver for a variety of services, including mail pieces, consulting, two television buys and ad production and design.
• $70,500 to Rocky Mountain Voter Outreach of Denver for “canvass, management rent and miscellaneous associates.”
• $37,500 to OnSight Public Affairs for consulting.
• $22,000 to Drake Research and Strategy of Boulder for polling.
• $15,776.84 to Zata3 for phone work.
• $12,260 to Holland and Hart of Denver for legal expenses.
• $8,000 to EIS of Grand Junction for consulting.
• $4,334.65 to Campaign Products of the Rockies, of Denver, for a voter file, mailing lists, stickers and yard signs.
• $2,500 to Mark Stevens of Denver for research.
• $743.75 to Tim Thomas of Boulder for general campaign work.

The whole dog and pony show of Big Telecom money has bemused Longmont mayor Bryan Baum, who supports the 2A measure and believes the distortion campaign has gone way over the top.

“It doesn’t really matter at this stage of the game,” Baum told the newspaper. “It’s going to the electorate. The electorate will vote. And we will know on Tuesday how they voted – if they believe a $300,000 ad campaign, or if they believe the people they’ve entrusted their votes to.”

Some of that $300,000 has also gone into vilifying a real grass-roots effort in support of the Longmont fiber initiative — Longmont’s Future.  Comcast’s front group tried to raise questions about where that pro-fiber group got their backing and money.  The newspaper discovered Longmont’s Future isn’t backed by any French conglomerate or nefarious outside interest.  It’s the work of Jonathan Rice, who operates the website all by himself, spending a grand total of $353 to fight Comcast’s $300,000.

“Every single candidate for office and every incumbent, in every race, supports this measure,” says Rice. “But Comcast and its friends are more interested in profit than progress, and continue to run a smear campaign to spread misinformation and outright lies – they recently posted Mayor Baum’s name as an opponent of 2A when he is actually a vociferous supporter.”

Community Broadband Networks has compiled a series of articles detailing the project and helping to expose the so-called “grassroots” opponents.  We encourage readers to become better acquainted with the underhanded tactics community broadband opponents will use to stop anything that resembles competition.