Time Warner Cable customers in North Carolina are getting rate hike letters from the cable company that foreshadows what other Time Warner Cable customers around the country can expect in the coming months.

For residents in Charlotte and the Triad region, Time Warner is boosting prices for unbundled customers an average of six percent, which will impact customers not on promotional plans or who are not locked into a “price protection agreement.”

The rate increases particularly target standalone service customers.  Those with the fewest services will pay the biggest increases.  Those who subscribe to cable, phone, and broadband service from the company will suffer the least.

A Time Warner Cable spokesman claimed the company is just passing on the cost of programming.

WXII-TV in Greensboro reported that for many customers already struggling with their bills, they don’t want to hear anything about a price hike.

“I think it’s ridiculous at this time with the economy — it’s hard to make it as it is,” one customer told the station.

“I wish there was a better option out there, but it’s about the only thing you can get,” said another viewer.

Time Warner has been developing pricing models that increasingly push customers towards bundled packages of services.  Standalone broadband service saw dramatic price increases in many areas in 2010, and the company’s most aggressive new customer promotions encourage customers to take all three of its services.

But broadband customers need not expose themselves to inflated broadband prices for standalone service.  Most Time Warner Cable franchises offer Earthlink broadband at comparable speeds at prices as low as $29.95 per month for the first six months.  When the promotion expires, customers can switch back to Road Runner at Time Warner’s promotional price.

Time Warner does face competition in some areas of North Carolina from AT&T U-verse, which offers attractive promotional pricing for new customers.  But the phone company’s broadband speeds come up short after Time Warner boosted speeds across much of the state.  The cable company now delivers Road Runner at speeds of up to 50/5Mbps.  AT&T tops out at 24Mbps, and not in every area.

When a competitor can’t deliver the fastest speeds, they inevitably claim consumers don’t want or care about super-fast broadband.

“We are focused on offering the broadband speeds that our customers need, at a price that they can afford,” said AT&T spokeswoman Gretchen Schultz.

Some North Carolina consumers are watching AT&T’s slower speeds and Time Warner’s price hikes from the sidelines, because they are signed up with municipal competitors.

Residents in Wilson with Greenlight service from the city don’t have to sign a contract to get the best prices and obtain service run and maintained by Wilson-area employees. The provider has embarked on a campaign to remind residents that money spent on the city-owned provider stays in the city.

In Salisbury, Fibrant is making headway against incumbent Time Warner as it works through a waiting list for customers anxious to cut Time Warner’s cable for good.  Fibrant customers are assured they’ll always get the fastest possible service in town on a network capable of delivering up to 1Gbps to businesses -and- residents.

MI-Connection, the rebuilt former Adelphia cable system now owned by a group of local municipalities is managing to keep up with Time Warner with its own top broadband speeds of 20/2Mbps.  The system is comparable to a traditional cable operator and does not provide fiber to the home service.  Its 15,000 customers in Mooresville, Cornelius and Davidson are likely to stay with the system, but it is vulnerable to Time Warner’s bragging rights made possible from DOCSIS 3 upgrades.  Since Time Warner does not provide service in most of MI-Connection’s service area, city officials don’t face an exodus of departing customers.

But that could eventually change.  Some MI-Connection customers have reported to Stop the Cap! they have begun to receive promotional literature from Time Warner Cable for the first time, and there are growing questions whether the cable company may plan to invade some of MI-Connection’s more affluent service areas.  Cable companies generally refuse to compete with each other, but all bets are off when that cable company is owned by a local municipality.

For most North Carolina residents, AT&T will likely be the first wired competitor, with its U-verse system.  To date, U-verse has drawn mixed reviews from North Carolina consumers.  Many appreciate AT&T’s broadband network is currently less congested than Road Runner, and speeds promised are closer to reality on U-verse compared with Road Runner during the early evening.  But some AT&T customers are not thrilled being nickle-and-dimed for HD channels Time Warner bundles with its digital cable service at no additional charge.  And for households with a lot of users, AT&T can run short on bandwidth.

“We have five kids — three now teenagers, and between my husband’s Internet usage and me recording a whole bunch of shows to watch later, we have run into messages on U-verse telling us we are trying to do too much and certain TV sets won’t work until we reduce our usage,” writes Angela.  “AT&T doesn’t tell you that you all share a preset amount of bandwidth which gets divided up and if you use it up, services stop working.”

Angela says when she called AT&T, the company gave her a $15 credit for her inconvenience, and the company claims it is working on ways to eliminate these limits in particularly active households.  For now, the family is sticking with U-verse because the broadband works better in the evenings and she loves the DVR which records more shows at once than Time Warner offers.  Their U-verse new customer promotional offer saves them $35 a month over Time Warner, at least until it expires.

“From reading about Fibrant and Greenlight on your site, my husband still wishes we lived in Salisbury or Wilson because nothing beats fiber, but at least what we have is better than what we used to have,” she adds.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WXII Greensboro TWC Raising Rates 11-16-10.flv[/flv]

WXII-TV in Greensboro reports of Time-Warner Cable’s rate hikes for the Piedmont Triad region of North Carolina.  (2 minutes)

When people in Scranton and Wilkes-Barre noticed their neighbors in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh —  even Allentown were getting super high-tech fiber upgrades from Verizon, they wondered why northeastern Pennsylvania has been bypassed, left to contend with Comcast as the only cable company in town.

The Scranton Times-Tribune went to Verizon to find out why they snubbed the region.

Starting four years ago, Verizon made FiOS available in Philadelphia and surrounding counties, South Central Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh and even Allentown. Now the company wants to cultivate those market, said Verizon spokesman Lee Gierczynski.

“We are focusing on the commitments we have,” he said. “No plans have been outlined for future expansion.”

Smaller local phone carriers don’t have the money involved in providing their own Internet television. Instead, those such as Frontier Communications, re-sell satellite service.

“Offering out television service is expensive, too expensive for most smaller telephone companies,” said telecom industry analyst Jeff Kagan. “So many are reselling satellite service to keep customers who want one bundle and one bill.”

Because of that, satellite television providers, who were never a formidable challenge to conventional cable companies, gained market share, Mr. Kagan said.

Verizon ended their FiOS expansion partly because of ongoing negative reaction from Wall Street.  Now with a change in CEO’s, things don’t look promising for upgrades anytime soon.  It was former CEO Ivan Seidenberg that green-lit the idea of replacing old copper wire networks with new state-of-the-art fiber optics.  Seidenberg got his start in the phone business as a cable splicer’s assistant, working with the copper wires and fiber-optic cables that are the backbone of today’s phone companies.

His successor, Lowell McAdam grew up in the wireless industry, which is increasingly responsible for Verizon’s revenue.

At a telecommunications crossroads, Seidenberg’s vision of fiber optic service replacing antiquated copper phone cables may be at risk from new leadership at the helm of Verizon — leadership that lives and breathes in a wireless world.

For phone companies, the choices are clear: suffer ongoing landline losses and hope wireless profits can cover the difference, sell off your landline customers to a third party that specializes in rural areas where wireless signal penetration is insufficient, or make required upgrades to stay competitive with cable companies that are also eroding your market share.

As far as the cable industry is concerned, they’d prefer Verizon just stay out of the video business altogether.  Dr. John “Darth Vader” Malone, a former cable kingpin that owned Tele-Communications, Inc. (TCI), said there is room for only one player in the wired video business — cable companies.

“I’ve never seen overbuilds work … it always ends up badly,” Malone has said repeatedly about cable competition.

So for northeastern Pennsylvania, and millions of other Verizon customers hoping for something better, prepare for a long wait.  Save for satellite services, your local cable company is likely to remain the only television service provider for the foreseeable future.

The city of Salisbury on Monday “soft-launched” its fiber to the home service Fibrant to the community of 27,000.  Fibrant joins Wilson’s GreenLight system in giving residents a real choice between Time Warner Cable and phone companies like AT&T, Windstream and CenturyLink.

But the launch did not come without controversy.

The system has drawn some complaints from beta testers about set top DVR boxes that are not working as expected, video channels that are not ready for launch, a porn channel controversy, and some negative anonymous comments that suspiciously draw from the well of telecom talking points complaining about Fibrant’s business model.

Yet Fibrant’s eager group of more than 100 beta testers may quickly become the service’s first paying customers, delighted with the exceptionally faster broadband speeds finally available in the community.

Indeed, some of the biggest complaints are that Fibrant didn’t arrive sooner and the speeds are not fast enough.  The city-owned service is still fighting its way to wire fiber optic cable on utility poles where its competitors have engaged in foot-dragging to move their existing cables to make room for Fibrant.  The company’s waiting list for sign-ups now numbers well into the hundreds.

Local media has been buzzing about Fibrant’s published pricing, which undercuts Time Warner Cable’s regular prices but not its promotional deals.  The cable company recently launched a national promotion marketing broadband, cable, and telephone service for $99 for the first year.  That’s about $45 cheaper than a comparable “deluxe” package from Fibrant.

Fibrant marketing director Len Clark told the Salisbury Post they cannot compete with those special deals.

“We can’t afford it,” he said.

But many municipal providers have turned these promotions upside down and told their potential customers their pricing does not come with tricks, traps, or temporary discounts that expire exposing customers to much higher prices down the road.

EPB, the utility provider in Chattanooga, has been successful with everyday pricing that beats Comcast and delivers far better service — faster broadband speeds, better picture quality, and no annoying Internet Overcharging schemes.

Clark hopes Salisbury residents will take notice that their temporarily higher prices include better quality service and faster broadband.

Also important: the money earned by Fibrant stays in Salisbury and could eventually help defray city expenses.

The Post explains the differences between the cable company and Fibrant:

The $99 special includes Road Runner High Speed Online with a download speed of 7 megabits per second and upload speed of .384 Mbps. For a limited time, subscribers can upgrade for free to Road Runner Turbo, boosting their Internet speed to 10 Mbps for downloads and .512 Mbps for uploads.

Fibrant’s standard Internet speed of 15 Mbps for both downloads and uploads is twice as fast as Road Runner High Speed Online and 50 percent faster than Road Runner Turbo. Fibrant customers can go faster — 25 Mbps up and down — for an additional $20 per month.

Both Time Warner’s $99 special and Fibrant’s comparable package offer about 150 TV channels. High definition is free for Time Warner subscribers, while Fibrant customers must pay more.

Time Warner’s package does not include a digital video recorder. Fibrant’s does.

However, people who sign up for the $99 Time Warner special this month get Showtime for free, Dan Ballister, director of communications for Time Warner Cable Charlotte said. Next month, it could be a free DVR, he said.

Time Warner’s phone service offered in the $99 deal has about a dozen features, including the popular caller ID that appears on the TV screen. Fibrant’s phone service offers 17 calling features.

Some area consumers and businesses expressed concern about Fibrant’s broadband speeds topping out at just 25Mbps, which is slow in comparison to many other fiber to the home providers.  They are also concerned the company did not more aggressively price services at launch.

Many municipal providers have learned from the mistakes of others who have tried to engage in all-out pricing wars with large cable companies.  Most cable companies can cross-subsidize rates to ridiculously low, predatory prices to win such pricing wars, making them untenable for municipal providers with bonds to pay back.  But at the same time, municipal providers are in serious danger or obliterating the marketing benefits fiber brings by not showcasing fiber’s capabilities and giving customers the motivation to throw their current provider overboard.  We urge Fibrant officials to consider reducing the price or increasing the speed of Fibrant’s 25Mbps service, which appears too expensive and slow priced at $65 a month.  It needs to be at least $10 less a month to make it an attractive alternative to Time Warner’s inevitable future speed upgrades in the area to 10/1 standard service and 15/2 for “turbo” service, commonly found wherever fiber competes.  Remember, Time Warner also markets “Speedboost” to consumers as though those temporary speeds are delivered consistently.

As EPB quickly learned, the “wow” factor can drive sign-ups, and they doubled their broadband speeds to get more bang for the buck.  Fibrant needs to remember the valuable marketing lesson of driving customers towards “sweet spot” premium tier pricing customers feel they got for a steal.  If 15Mbps service is $45 a month, how many would spring for 20 or 25Mbps for just $5-10 more?  Time Warner learned this selling their “turbo” speed package.  And most importantly of all, Fibrant risks harming their own argument fiber optics brings new businesses and jobs when their current price schedule shows speeds topping out at just 25Mbps.  Admittedly those are residential service offerings, but we encourage them to deliver faster speeds, especially to businesses.

The controversy about Fibrant carrying porn pay per view channels also popped up in the local media and drew complaints from conservative residents upset with their local government accommodating such programming.

Fibrant handily dealt with the controversy, noting tax dollars do not pay for Fibrant, it needs to compete with cable and satellite providers who offer such content, and Fibrant has gone beyond the competition in masking even the names of the channels to those who do not want such pay per view programming in their homes.

Time Warner Cable readily provides not only the names of the adult channels they carry, but also includes program titles that leave absolutely nothing to the imagination.  And who can forget Time Warner accidentally promoted its adult content on a free on-demand children’s channel earlier this year.

Fibrant officials also said the right thing telling residents they absolutely do not want to be in the business of telling people what they can and cannot watch.  It’s a personal decision, and the provider will go out of its way to make sure customers who do not want such material coming into their homes need not see a single bit of evidence it’s there.

That goes a long way to ameliorating a politically sensitive issue.

[flv width=”640″ height=”500″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WBTV Charlotte Fibrant Porn Controversy 10-12-10.flv[/flv]

WBTV-TV covered the controversy of Salisbury’s Fibrant service carrying adult pay per view programming.  (3 minutes)

A vocal minority of comments left on the Post‘s website have also attacked the service with a considerable amount of false information.  Some are upset with a $360 installation fee that actually will only be charged to a customer leaving within the first year of service.  Others invented monthly fees that don’t exist, and one actually wrote:

“The field is already crowded enough with Windstream, Time Warner, AT&T and a slew of decent wireless ops. The existing internet providers offer far better deals. Fibrant which was supposed to have high speed fiber optic, really doesn’t. Fibrant’s download speeds are not as fast as Time Warner and higher end Windstream. Fibrant doesn’t seem to want to compete pricewise or service wise–so why bother?”

Of course, Fibrant’s matched upstream and downstream speeds leave Windstream’s DSL gone with the wind.  Time Warner Cable currently delivers standard speeds half that of Fibrant’s lowest speed service (and as you can see in the video below doesn’t even actually deliver that), and AT&T’s U-verse maxes out under the best conditions at real world speeds below what Fibrant can deliver.  Anyone who has used wireless broadband knows speed is the first thing sacrificed.  Unlimited, unthrottled wireless broadband is second.  Fibrant needs some social networking to put out these kinds of BS brushfires before they become accepted memes.  Stop the Cap! helped, at least for today.

Meanwhile, Time Warner Cable officials used Fibrant’s launch to, once again, draw false connections between local government funds paying for a cable system that duplicates existing services.

Back to the Post:

Time Warner is still surprised by “municipal overbuilds,” or city-owned fiber optic networks like Fibrant in Salisbury and Greenlight in Wilson, Ballister said.

“It’s just interesting that during these economic times, when city and county budgets are being cut back, that they would want to spend millions of dollars providing services that are already out there,” Ballister said.

Salisbury borrowed $33 million to launch Fibrant.

Cities have an unfair advantage in offering communication services, Ballister said.

“We’re all for competition, as long as people are on a level playing field,” he said.

Cities pay no property or income taxes. They can operate the utility at a loss and cross-subsidize from other areas of government, Ballister said.

“They can level taxes on citizens to recover their operating costs,” he said.

Fibrant is expected to operate at a loss for three years and have a positive cash flow by year four. It will take longer to make a profit, Clark said.

Eventually, Fibrant is supposed to generate revenue for the city.

Cities in the fiber optic business also can hike the fees their competitors must pay to get access to their subscribers, Ballister said.

“They are the gatekeepers to rights of way and pole attachments,” he said.

The company has no specific examples of fee hikes to hurt Time Warner, but “these are valid concerns that exist right now,” Ballister said.

It’s ironic Ballister complains about utility pole fees considering Fibrant is currently a victim of Time Warner’s slow progress making space on those poles to accommodate the city’s fiber optics.  No vendetta by city officials is apparent, as they patiently wait for the cable company to handle its responsibilities.

Ballister should not be surprised the city of Salisbury did for itself what Time Warner Cable refused to do in the community.  Just like in Wilson, Salisbury city officials pleaded with the cable company to deliver improved service in the community but it fell on deaf ears.  Many sections of the city center cannot access reliable broadband from the cable company to this day.  But most of them can now get service from Fibrant.  Cable companies like Time Warner have spent millions of subscriber dollars trying to legislatively ban networks like Fibrant, fearful of the competition they can bring.

Salisbury Assistant City Manager Doug Paris notes the enormous amount of money poured into North Carolina’s state legislature trying to ban projects year after year.  That Time Warner money could have made a real difference for residents and small businesses in Salisbury and other parts of North Carolina if used to improve service, not fight competition.

Kirk Knapp of Tastebuds Coffee and Tea doesn’t care what Time Warner does with the money at this point, so long as he can finally be liberated from them.  He told the Post he feels “held hostage by Time Warner.”

“Time Warner has the worst customer service I have ever dealt with,” Knapp said in an e-mail to the Post.

“Fibrant may have these same kind of issues, however I can actually go to the source to deal personally with someone who is vested in the community, not spend two hours on the phone and never solve the problem as I do with TWC,” he said.

“Even if pricing is higher, I would make the change. Price is important, but quality and service is tantamount.”

[flv width=”640″ height=”500″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Fibrant Intro 11-2-10.flv[/flv]

Folks from the Walser Technology Group, Inc. in Salisbury gave an informal introduction of Fibrant on its YouTube channel, including a very revealing speed test comparing broadband service from Fibrant with Time Warner Cable.  (7 minutes)

While ivi enjoys the fruits of the Cablevision-Fox dispute which drew suburban New Yorkers to sign up for service, another “online cable system” with an even more obscure reputation in North America has launched live “HD-quality” streams of British television, most of the major television stations in Los Angeles, and hardcore porn.

FilmOn, the brainchild of British billionaire Alki David, has been in beta for at least a year — until ivi stole a lot of its potential thunder by selling access to network stations from Seattle and New York City for $4.95 a month.  Since ivi’s arrival, FilmOn has taken off the “beta” label and opened their service to all-comers.

We’ve been playing with FilmOn for about a month ourselves here at Stop the Cap!, but have not written about it until now because the service operates like a moving target.  Yesterday’s channel lineup may be quite different the next day, and pricing has changed at least twice for the service in a matter of weeks.  While the service says it’s not in beta, it sure feels like it.  So, with this in mind, we present a brief review of the service as it exists today, the 2nd of November.  Don’t blame us if the channel lineup has changed since.

FilmOn has a bigger reputation in Europe, especially in the United Kingdom where British viewers hunger for access to America’s latest series and specials.  Getting access to FilmOn’s beta test was a badge of honor for many English speaking European beta testers craving direct feeds from CBS, NBC, and ABC stations in the United States.  Now Anglophiles on the other side of the pond looking for direct access to British television can now watch it live.

FilmOn uses its own free HDi player, which incorporates a viewing window, channel lineup, programming guide, and facilities to schedule recording shows for later viewing.  The player also includes authentication to protect the streams from unauthorized viewing, a bit of irony for many of the channels on the lineup which gave no authorization to be there in the first place.

The player software and layout is more advanced than ivi, and FilmOn’s picture quality is far superior to what we saw when viewing ivi’s streamed content.  However, FilmOn’s streams are far more likely to suffer from interruptions and buffering problems, and higher picture quality does not mean much if your favorite show sputters to a halt every 10 seconds or so.  That happened a lot with Los Angeles area signals on the channel lineup, especially in the evening.

The software allows users to increase the video buffer size, presumably to reduce re-buffering video pauses, but we found little difference in video quality regardless of how we configured it.  FilmOn either needs more robust American servers or allow the player to adapt to real world Internet connection quality by temporarily reducing the video encoding rate to deliver a stable signal.

FilmOn’s channel lineup changes regularly — way too regularly.  Since we started testing, entire groups and segments of channels have disappeared, returned, disappeared again, and many are back once more.  This is the biggest flaw FilmOn delivers to its paying subscribers, who simply cannot count on channels sticking around for long.  This is an issue FilmOn must address.  Paying customers don’t mind new channels being added to the service, but sudden removals will alienate them very quickly.

Like ivi, the centerpiece of FilmOn is delivering network broadcast station feeds.  Unlike ivi’s reliance on New York and Seattle-area stations, FilmOn prefers Los Angeles for its lineup.  That’s a definite improvement over Seattle area stations for Pacific time zone viewers.  But keep in mind Los Angeles stations are notorious for breaking away from regular programming to cover tragedies that regularly seem to impact southern California, from crazy car chases with Hollywood celebutards to the region’s various natural disasters.  While that is a plus for news junkies, someone seeking out a network show may find it interrupted by breathless reporters covering the latest wildfire, flood, earthquake, civil disturbance, or… killer bee attacks.

FilmOn Channel Lineup

KCAL-TV Los Angeles: KCAL is an “independent” station in Los Angeles delivering huge blocks of news programming to southern California audiences.  KCAL’s original reputation was its strong news coverage beyond Los Angeles, especially in Ventura County, the Inland Empire, and Orange County.  Although coverage of major breaking Los Angeles news events remains a hallmark of KCAL, the station is today owned by CBS, and is secondary to KCBS-TV.

KTLA-TV Los Angeles: KTLA was Los Angeles’ only true superstation, although it was seen mostly on cable systems in the western half of the country.  It used to be an independent station, but today is affiliated with the CW television network, which almost seems beneath it.  KTLA has an exceptional evening newscast and is well known for its coverage of major breaking news, but with the CW’s youth focus, the station’s news coverage has been dumbed down, especially in the morning.

KCBS-TV Los Angeles: The area’s CBS affiliate, KCBS partners with KCAL-TV in newsgathering.  Since the station is owned outright by the network, unless breaking news occurs you are certain to get all of the CBS lineup from KCBS.  The station has a lot of resources to cover breaking news stories, even after budget cuts reduced the news staff.

KVCR-TV San Bernardino: The Inland Empire’s PBS affiliate.  In large cities like Los Angeles, multiple PBS stations are not uncommon, typically sharing some major programming while different stations specialize in different programming at other times (educational, current affairs, nature, etc.)

KPXN-TV San Bernardino: The area’s Ion-TV affiliate, delivering religious and family-oriented programming.  Ion stations generally do not produce locally originated programming.

KTTV-TV Los Angeles: Fox’s Los Angeles affiliate delivers all of the Fox lineup and classic laid-back Los Angeles-style news coverage, especially in the morning.

KCOP-TV Los Angeles: KCOP used to be an independent station, but today serves as Los Angeles’ MyNetworkTV affiliate.  The station’s strongest years are now well behind it.  Today, it’s a dumping ground for a lot of shows other stations won’t take.  Fox owns the station, which means Fox shows occasionally air on KCOP during breaking news events being covered live on KTTV.

KNBC-TV Los Angeles: The area’s NBC station delivering the full lineup of NBC shows.

KOCE-TV Huntington Beach: Orange County’s local PBS station used to be considered a secondary PBS affiliate for Los Angeles, airing only about a quarter of the PBS lineup.  But on January 1st, KOCE will become LA’s most important PBS station as KCET-TV goes “independent.”

KABC-TV Los Angeles: The ABC station for Los Angeles, which includes a strong local newsgathering operation.

Universal Sports: The digital sub-channel network usually found on NBC stations carries an all sports format.

4 Music: An on-demand music video channel broadcast from the UK.

Scuzz: A British music video channel covering hardcore and metalcore genres.

Flaunt: Originally a dance music video channel targeting a LGBT audience, today the network delivers electronic dance music to all audiences.

Bloomberg: The well-known business news channel comparable to CNBC or Fox Business.

RAI Sport: RAI is Radiotelevisione Italiana, Italy’s public broadcasting network.  RAI Sport delivers Italian-language sports news and live coverage of soccer, motor-racing, and a range of other sports from southern Europe.

Dubai Sports: Emanating from the United Arab Emirates, Dubai Sports carries Arabic language coverage of sports ranging from extensive soccer coverage to camel racing.

Viva: is a music and entertainment channel serving the UK and the Republic of Ireland, owned and operated by MTV Europe.

Russia Today: Russia Today is the video equivalent of the Voice of Russia World Service on shortwave, delivering programming in English, Russian, Arabic and Spanish.  Funded primarily by the Russian government, the channel broadcasts a news-heavy diet of shows that speak to respective target areas.  For example, the network carried an extended interview with Ralph Nader commenting on today’s elections in the United States.  The channel tries to avoid blatant propaganda in their broadcasts, but has no problem celebrating Russia’s accomplishments and its importance in world affairs.

Sky News: The British news channel from the company that brought America Fox News Channel.  Less overtly biased than its American counterpart, its investment in international newsgathering and need to keep up with competition from the BBC has garnered the news channel considerable respect for the depth and breadth of its coverage, especially of live events.  But its political coverage definitely swings to the right.

BBC News 24:  The domestic 24/7 news channel from the BBC.  Similar to CNN, this news channel targets news of interest to domestic British audiences.  Very highly respected for its sober news coverage and unflappable anchors, many of whom are well-known to any BBC viewer.

TVE Spain: Spain’s state-owned public broadcaster delivers current affairs and entertainment programming from Madrid to a global Castilian Spanish-speaking audience.

CNN International: The external service of CNN, targeting global audiences outside of the United States with a heavy diet of international news typically delivered by anchors without American accents.

Clubland TV: A unique British music channel entirely devoted to on demand viewing of video tracks from the Clubland series.  It’s almost entirely dance music oriented and beats the pants off MTV Europe’s dance music channel in the ratings.

E4: This channel is like the British version of the CW, targeting youth audiences with shows aimed at teen viewers.  It airs a heavy diet of shows acquired from American networks, some in current runs (Glee) and others in reruns (Friends, Beverly Hills 90210).

CBBC/BBC Three: The BBC’s children’s programming network delivering shows of interest to viewers 16 and under.  (Also see BBC Three.)

JSC Sport Global: Also known as Al Jazeera Sports, this network delivers Arabic speaking audiences some of the most popular sporting events, having acquired the rights to major soccer league coverage.  Operated from studios near Doha in Qatar, most of the anchors are dressed in traditional thawbs.

Film 4: A British channel devoted to movies — traditional and current, without editing them to pieces or slapping on-air graphics and logos all over the screen.

ITV: FilmOn delivers the three network suite of channels from the commercial ITV network.  ITV1 is the original ITV network delivering the network’s most popular British shows.  ITV2 depends on mostly on series and shows imported from the United States.  ITV3 targets over-35 audiences with repeats of classic ITV series and American reruns like Quincy, M.E.

BBC: FilmOn also carries all four BBC entertainment channels, which include:

• BBC One: The flagship channel of BBC television, bringing the hallmark of BBC produced programming to audiences.
• BBC Two: More edgy than BBC One, new untested British series often turn up first on BBC Two.  Two also more closely represents today’s multicultural Britain, and major segments of airtime are turned over to locally-produced broadcasts from the BBC’s regional TV broadcast centers in Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales.
• BBC Three: Shares time with youth-focused CBBC, BBC Three starts programming in the evening hours targeting audiences from 16-34 years old.  Almost all of its content is produced domestically or from Europe.
• BBC Four: This BBC network targets highly educated viewers with intelligent documentaries, highbrow entertainment, current affairs, art and science programming, and international foreign language imports.  Although respected for the depth of programming, critics occasionally make fun of BBC Four’s interest in obscure or narrowly targeted programming.

Channel Five: Britain’s lowest rated channel delivers lots of American reruns and shows that others have rejected.  The network has garnered about as much respect as MyNetworkTV has in the United States, and is derided as an economic mess.  The network has been sold several times, and is now owned by tabloid newspaper publisher Richard Desmond, who is pouring money into the venture.

One genre of programming FilmOn airs that ivi doesn’t touch is adult entertainment.  FilmOn currently has two hardcore porn channels — Adult XXX and Filthon XXX Latina.

Pricing for FilmOn services runs $9.95 per month (or $99 a year) with adult channels priced $5.00 per month extra.  FilmOn promises to beef up its Spanish language programming shortly with the addition of Los Angeles stations Azteca América (KAZA), Telemundo (KVEA)
 and Univision (KMEX).

A company spokesman said FilmOn is also available through mobile smartphones and will work on 3G networks without an app download.

In the coming weeks, FilmOn plans to add local stations from New York, Chicago, Miami, Dallas, Houston, and Seattle, which may give ivi some serious competition.

Still missing from the lineup are digital mini-networks like Retro TV which air classic TV shows.  Also missing, but perhaps not relevant to FilmOn’s marketing are Canadian networks like the CBC, Radio Canada, Global and CTV.

Something else missing is permission from any of these stations and networks to be included on FilmOn’s lineup, something it shares in common with ivi.

All of the major networks filed suit in September against FilmOn.com in the US District Court for Southern New York demanding a restraining order to stop the streaming as well as demanding damages.

Remarkably, FilmOn’s parent company is publicly traded on the German stock exchange and has been operating in Europe for over a year with few problems.  But running into a brick wall of entertainment conglomerates in the United States may require FilmOn founder Alki David to spend some of his billions to fight his way through a torrent of litigation.  Even if the courts see David’s company clear, the next step will be fighting the inevitable, well-financed lobbying campaign to get Congress to enact legislation to ban such enterprises (unless those doing the lobbying own and control them).

For now, FilmOn’s player provides extensive free previews of their content so feel free to explore.  But don’t get too hooked on any of FilmOn’s channels.  What you see today may not be around tomorrow.

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)