TiVo Roamio DVR

The newest entry in the should-be-more-competitive world of Digital Video Recorders (DVRs) might have gotten five stars from reviewers willing to play down the device’s asking price, but the biggest hurdle of all isn’t its cost, it is the complexity of getting it to work properly with your cable provider.

TiVo’s new Roamio was designed to declutter your viewing experience. It’s a DVR that can record shows you missed, an online video device that can stream content from Netflix, Hulu Plus, Amazon Instant Video, Spotify, Pandora and YouTube right on your television, and perhaps most powerful of all — it will soon stream it all to you on any mobile device located anywhere there is an Internet connection.

That puts TiVo’s Roamio well ahead of the behind-the-times set-top boxes and DVRs rented out by the cable company. Customers have clamored for a device that can properly record scheduled programs and allow those recordings to be viewed anywhere the customer wants to watch. Comcast’s box doesn’t work that way. Neither do boxes from Time Warner Cable, Cox, Bright House, and the rest.

Cue the lawyers.

The reason these common sense portability features are not available on the box you rent in perpetuity from the cable company is that programmers won’t allow it and many pay television providers don’t consider it a priority. Time Warner Cable only recently filed a patent to deliver customer-recorded content to portable devices. The patent application is an exercise to placate litigious programmers that cannot sleep nights knowing someone is offering a service they failed to monetize for themselves through licensing agreements. Feel the legal fees piling up:

“Because of the increasing popularity of home networking, there is a growing need for a strategy that enables a user to perform authorized transfer of protected content, e.g., transferring content from an STT [set-top terminal] to a second device in a home network, and at the same time prevents unauthorized distribution of the protected content,” Time Warner writes in its patent application.

While TiVo is selling a device that allows consumers to record programming for private viewing purposes, a cable operator with deep pockets that only rents DVRs cannot do likewise.

The Roamio comes in three versions, none of which are compatible with satellite television services:

• Roamio Pro ($600): Six tuners allow customers to record up to six shows at one time and has storage capacity for 450 hours of HD programming. Includes built-in Wi-Fi. Stream TV to mobile iOS devices coming soon (as is Android support);
• Roamio Plus ($400): Same as above except storage capacity is 150 hours of HD programming;
  Roamio ($200): Four tuner basic version omits built-in streaming to mobile devices but can record four shows at once and store 75 hours of HD programming. A good choice for cord-cutters as it includes an over-the-air broadcast television antenna input.
• All Roamio devices require TiVo service, which costs $15 a month or $500 for a lifetime subscription. All boxes support external hard drives with an eSATA interface to backup or store more recordings. All Roamio devices support 1080p and Dolby Digital 5.1 sound.

This Comcast DVR is only available for rent.

In contrast, cable operator-provided DVR service can often add $20 a month to your cable bill… forever. But is there real value for money paying TiVo $15 a month (or a $500 payment for the life of the device) for “service” on top of hardware that can cost up to $600?

TiVo thinks so: “Once you bring together all your favorite shows, movies and music into one place, you’ll wonder how you ever lived without it.”

Unfortunately, getting there is one heck of a battle according to Bloomberg’s Rich Jaroslovsky, who got his hands on a test unit that simply refused to get along well with Comcast.

“The cable industry is standing in the way,” Jaroslovsky writes.

That may not be surprising, considering the lucrative business of renting DVR equipment to customers eager for time-shifting and commercial-skipping. The cable company’s concept of DVR service includes a set-top box, decoder, and recording unit into one, relatively simple integrated device.

TiVo’s persistent monthly “service fee” as well as a steep purchase price made marketing the cable company’s “no-purchase-required” DVR easy, and the cable industry quickly won the lion’s share of the DVR business. Another strong argument in favor of the cable company’s DVR is the lack of a complicated set up procedure to get competing devices to reliably work with the cable company’s set-top box.

Motorola’s M CableCARD

Thanks to Comcast and other cable companies, setting up Roamio managed to confound even a tech reporter like Jaroslovsky, and Comcast was not much help.

The Roamio requires a CableCARD, a plug-in card-sized version of the cable company’s set-top box, to unlock digital cable channels.

The CableCARD was Congress’ attempt in the 1996 Telecom Act to give consumers an option to avoid costly and unsightly set-top boxes. Originally envisioned as a plug-in device that would offer “cable-ready” service without a set-top box in future generations of televisions, the CableCARD never really took off. The cable industry opposed the devices and dragged its feet, preferring to support its own set-top boxes. The CableCARD that eventually did emerge was initially often difficult to obtain and had huge limitations, such as one-way-only access which meant no electronic program guide, no video-on-demand, and no access to anything that required two-way communications between the card and the cable company. Newer CableCARDs do offer two-way communications and support today’s advanced cable services.

The only place most cable operators mention the availability of the CableCARD in detail is in a federally mandated disclosure of pricing, services, and a consumer’s rights and responsibilities — usually provided in a rice-paper-thin, tiny-print leaflet included with your bill once a year, if you still get one in the mail.

Roamio is likely to frighten technophobes right from the start with this important notification:

CableCARDs are made by one of four manufacturers: Motorola, Scientific Atlanta/Cisco, NDS, or Conax. You need one multi-stream CableCARD (M-card). Single-stream CableCARDs (S-cards) are not compatible.

“That costs an extra $1.50 a month from Comcast, and in my case, required three trips to its nearest office because the first card didn’t work,” Jaroslovsky writes.

On the second trip, Comcast handed him two cards in the hope at least one would work, requiring one last trip to return the card that didn’t.

Time Warner Cable and certain other cable operators use Switched Digital Video, incompatible with the Roamio without a Digital Tuning Adapter, available from the cable company.

The second hurdle was to get Comcast to recognize and authorize that CableCARD. Comcast’s technical customer support staff was lacking. Jaroslovsky found his call bounced from department to department attempting to authorize the card and diagnose why it simply refused to work at first.

After finally overcoming those problems, Jaroslovsky discovered he was out of luck getting Roamio to stream premium movie channels like HBO and Cinemax. The encryption system Comcast supports prohibits streaming the movie networks outside of the home. The Slingbox works around the issue by bypassing the encryption system’s permission settings with extra cables between it and your cable box.

Time Warner Cable subscribers will need still another piece of equipment — a Tuning Adapter compatible with Switched Digital Video (SDV). To conserve bandwidth, cable companies like Time Warner limit certain digital channels being sent to each neighborhood unless someone is actively watching.

Before you can view or record a program on an SDV channel, your box must be able to send channel requests back to the cable headend. Roamio is a one-way device and cannot send the required channel requests. Cable providers who have deployed SDV technology will provide a Tuning Adapter to customers who have HD TiVo boxes. A Tuning Adapter is a set top box that provides two-way capabilities, so your box can request SDV channels. There are two Tuning Adapter brands: Motorola and Cisco. Motorola CableCARDs work with Motorola Tuning Adapters. Scientific Atlanta and NDS CableCARD work with Cisco Tuning Adapters. Without the Tuning Adapter, a Roamio user will find error messages on several digital channels indicating they are “temporarily unavailable.”

Other cable operators offer varying support for Roamio. Cablevision has been learning how to support the device along with customers. Prior customer experiences make it clear front-line service representatives are not going to be very helpful managing the technical process to properly configure, update, and authorize CableCARD technology for the new TiVo device, so prepare to have your call transferred to one or more representatives.

After all this, Jaroslovsky was finally watching his Comcast cable channels, able to access on-demand services, and found TiVo’s interface and program guide more satisfying than the one offered on Comcast’s DVR.

Roamio Plus and Pro have built-in support for video streaming away from home that will be fully enabled this fall.

Jaroslovsky found in-home streaming smooth and satisfying. Programs launched quickly and looked terrific on an iPad with Apple’s high-resolution Retina display, with none of the blockiness or stuttering sometimes associated with streaming video.

His review unit allowed him to test streamed programming outside of the home and video quality on the go was much more variable. The current software prohibits video streaming on AT&T’s 4G LTE network, a problem with a resolution now in the works. Public Wi-Fi hotspots often delivered poor performance, even when they could supply up to 2Mbps. Blurred pictures and pixel blocks often broke up the video on slow Internet connections. A faster connection supporting more than 10Mbps is capable of delivering a better viewing experience, especially if that connection comes without usage caps.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/TiVo Roamio DVR Demo Video 8-19-13.flv[/flv]

An introduction and demo of the TiVo Roamio DVR, produced by TiVo. (3 minutes)

This article was updated with a clarification about Tuning Adapters, required by some cable operators using Switched Digital Video. Thanks to reader Dave Hancock for helping clear things up.

EPB this morning celebrated its fourth anniversary by thanking Chattanooga residents for supporting the utility’s fiber network with a series of price cuts and speed increases.

Beginning today, EPB’s fiber broadband customers are getting the following upgrades and savings:

• 50/50Mbps customers get a free upgrade to 100/100Mbps service with no change in their current price ($57.99/month);
• 100/100 and 250/250Mbps customers get a free upgrade to 1,000/1,000Mbps service;
• 1,000/1,000Mbps customers now paying $349 a month will see their bills slashed to $69.99 a month, a savings of $230 a month;
• EPB’s business broadband customers will be contacted individually to coordinate the speed upgrades.

Customers will see the new speeds provisioned within the next two weeks. At least 3,000 residential customers will be upgraded to gigabit service.

EPB also reported this morning it has 55,000 broadband customers.

EPB is one of the nation’s most successful municipal fiber providers and is proving itself a major challenger to Chattanooga’s cable competitor Comcast and incumbent phone company AT&T.

AT&T’s U-verse is the least capable network in Chattanooga, because its fiber-to-the-neighborhood technology currently limits AT&T’s maximum broadband speed in the city to 24/3Mbps. AT&T says it is working on doubling or tripling speeds, but it still leaves U-verse far behind Comcast and EPB.

Comcast has lost at least 47,000 customers in Chattanooga, estimates EPB CEO Harold DePriest. Comcast originally had 122,000 customers on the EPB grid when EPB launched fiber broadband. This year, Comcast has about 75,000 customers and is expected to see numbers decline further in 2014 to about 60,000 customers.

The best Comcast offers is 505/20Mbps service in select cities, with a price tag of $400 a month.

Neither Comcast or AT&T is competing on price for higher speed broadband in Chattanooga. Comcast charges $114.95 a month for 105/20Mbps service and offers 505/100Mbps service in a handful of other cities, for $399.95 a month. Comcast is also currently testing the reintroduction of usage caps and overlimit fees in several markets.

AT&T charges $65 a month for 24/3Mbps service — its fastest — with a 250GB monthly usage cap, currently not enforced. For $5 more, EPB customers get 1,000/1,000Mbps with no usage limits or overlimit fees.

EPB has been criticized by conservative groups, bloggers, and its competitors that argue municipal utilities have no business being in the broadband business. Most of these groups predicted EPB Fiber would deliver a costly failure for Chattanooga utility ratepayers. The utility has also come under repeated fire from the conservative editorial page in the Chattanooga Times-Free Press, often from ex-editorial writer Drew Johnson, who was fired in August.

DePriest can afford to take the criticism all in stride. He has been with the publicly owned utility for 42 years and has seen Chattanooga transformed from its old manufacturing roots into an increasingly high-tech city, thanks in part to EPB’s robust broadband infrastructure that has exceeded even EPB’s expectations.

EPB’s original business plan called for 28,000 customers to break even, with an estimated ceiling of 43,000 customers that would be willing to sign up. EPB has already passed both estimates with additional growth anticipated. DePriest even predicts EPB could surpass Comcast — the city’s biggest broadband and cable TV player — in market share by the end of next year.

Far from being a financial failure, EPB Fiber is now covering the $19 million debt payment incurred by the utility’s electric business, protecting Chattanooga residents from an electricity rate increase.

EPB is also making money offering advice to other cities who want to launch their own publicly owned fiber networks and avoid making costly mistakes. Consulting services will net EPB more than $1 million over the next three years.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/EPB EPB 4th Anniversary Speed Increases Price Cuts for Gigabit 9-17-13.flv[/flv]

EPB CEO Harold DePriest announces speed increases and price cuts for customers to celebrate the utility’s fourth anniversary in the broadband business. (3 minutes)

Correction: The original story misreported Comcast’s upstream speed for its 505Mbps tier as 20Mbps. It is, as corrected above, 100Mbps.

Coming soon nationwide? Comcast, Time Warner, AT&T and CenturyLink sure hope not.

Verizon is talking to major cable programmers about launching a nationwide version of FiOS TV as an over-the-top video service that works with your existing broadband provider.

The NY Post reports Verizon is looking at launching an online pay television service for customers without installing additional fiber optic lines to deliver it.

The service would likely be an extension of the “TV Everywhere” online video platforms that many national cable and telco-TV providers already offer existing cable TV subscribers. What would make Verizon’s offer radically different is selling the virtual cable TV service in areas where it does not offer FiOS service.

Verizon must carefully negotiate with programmers to distribute networks over an online video service that would likely compete directly with those programmers’ best customers: cable operators and telco IPTV services like U-verse and Prism TV.

The concept was rejected out of hand Wednesday by Time Warner Cable chief operating officer Rob Marcus, who agreed with Comcast executive vice president Steve Burke’s contention that “over the top” video services that offer virtual cable television outside of their respective service areas lacked a compelling business model and would be difficult to monetize.

“At this point we don’t really aspire to delivering an over-the-top service,” Marcus said. “Our value proposition is delivering video via our facilities as opposed to being a retailer of somebody else’s video, which is a somewhat commoditized product.”

Neither cable executive mentioned the fact cable operators have also maintained an informal “wink and nod” agreement to steer clear of head-on competition with each other for decades.

Verizon: The next big supporter of Net Neutrality?

Verizon apparently wants to shake things up and sell online video without incurring the cost of expanding its fiber optic network FiOS to deliver it.

“They’ve had exploratory talks about how to become a virtual [multiple-system operator],” one person close to the conversations told the Post. “It’s a question of how to get there.”

Interestingly, Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam is worried about developing the service without Net Neutrality protection or some other form of government oversight of broadband. Verizon could spend millions to negotiate programming contracts only to find competitors with their own TV packages to protect outmaneuvering the venture. Without Net Neutrality, Verizon could find its service blocked by competitors or made untenable with the implementation of broadband usage caps or consumption billing that would make a subscription too costly to consider.

The company is now trying to figure out exactly which branch of government (or agency) controls broadband policy in the nation.

The FCC’s current Net Neutrality policy depends on a shaky regulatory framework now being challenged in federal court.

Verizon declined to comment.

Incoming Rogers CEO Guy Laurence has a reputation for hating cubicles, desks, meetings, and paper. How many Rogers’ employees will be left to enjoy the changes is unknown.

Rogers Communications has tapped Guy Laurence, the head of one of Great Britain’s largest cell phone operators to lead eastern Canada’s biggest cable and wireless firm after current CEO Nadir Mohamed retires in early December.

The company has spent months on a global search to find its next chief executive and signaled how important its wireless business is by selecting the current CEO of Vodafone UK to run the business.

Shareholders barely registered this morning’s announcement, with little movement in the stock, but analysts at some of Wall Street’s largest investment banks think the choice will help Rogers better position itself against increasing competition from Bell/BCE and Telus, which have stolen away some of Rogers’ cable and wireless customers.

“Its unique mix of wireless, cable and media assets offer a brilliant platform to provide innovative service to Canadians. I intend to build on the strong foundation established under Nadir’s leadership to compete and win in the market,” Laurence said in the statement.

When Laurence relocates to Rogers’ headquarters in Toronto, he will be immediately confronted with a Conservative government that has made wireless competition a hallmark of its political platform. In January, Rogers will be a participant in federal spectrum actions for coveted new 700MHz frequencies that Rogers wants to expand its cellular network. Ottawa wants some of those frequencies to be set aside for new competitors to bolster wireless competition. Rogers, along with the other large incumbents, wants access to bid on all available spectrum.

The company has struggled with declining market share as a growing number of customers finishing their wireless contracts have taken the opportunity to change providers, mostly to Bell and Telus’ benefit.

Rogers Cable has also suffered subscriber losses in Ontario from increasing competition from Bell’s IPTV service Fibe, which continues to run aggressive new customer promotions.

Rogers may be hoping for an image reset in Canada, and Laurence’s unconventional way of doing business may help.

“I don’t believe in offices. They’re a thing of the past. Offices produce things like a conventional company,” Laurence told a British newspaper in 2011.

To underline his point, Laurence abolished offices and personal desks for Vodafone employees and underlined the new policy by ordering cleaning staff to incinerate any items left on desks overnight. Vodafone workers are given a laptop, a Vodafone mobile phone and an employee locker. Where they choose to conduct business is up to them. Meetings are heavily frowned upon.

The incoming Rogers CEO also despises paper, and wants employees to use as little of it as possible.  At Vodafone, workers often had to buy paper themselves for use in the office and hide it from view.

Rogers’ dress code may also radically change. At Vodafone, Laurence insisted employees dress the same way customers do.

“When you remove the barriers of offices, meetings and all the rest of it, people can spend more time doing what they’re supposed to do,” Laurence said. “As a consequence, people start to perform better. It used to take us 90 days to do a pricing change. We do that in four days now.”

Analysts suspect fixing Rogers’ lousy reputation for customer service will be one of his top priorities. Rogers’ executives will also be updating their resumes — Laurence has a reputation for shaking up middle and upper management. But one priority Rogers’ investors expect will not change: protecting the company’s high profit margins and continued efforts to cut costs.

Laurence did not forget everything he learned while getting his MBA. After joining Vodafone, he initiated a brutal workforce reduction that separated 2,350 Vodafone employees from their desks and lockers – permanently, slashing the payroll from 9,500 to 7,150 workers.

Time Warner Cable’s approval of its request to offer regulated “digital phone” service in New York has been quickly followed by an appeal for deregulation to loosen rules covering disconnection for non-payment and reduced service quality standards.

The cable operator now qualifies — as a designated Eligible Telecommunications Carrier (ETC) — for significant federal and state subsidies in return for providing discounted Lifeline telephone service for the state’s poorest residents.

The cable industry has traditionally escaped regulation and oversight with claims “digital phone” Voice over IP (VoIP) products are “unregulated information services.”

In March, the New York Public Service Commission approved a petition filed by subsidiary Time Warner Cable Information Services (NY) LLP (TWCIS-NY), to begin offering regulated telephone service to the company’s 1,235,710 phone customers in New York.

As a result, Time Warner agreed to a range of oversight and service standard requirements. But on May 1 — less than two months later — Time Warner filed a new petition with the PSC requesting deregulation and exemption from several provisions the company initially agreed to follow.

“Now that it is concededly a regulated telephone service provider, Time Warner is acting like other regulated phone companies, in that it immediately is seeking to relax the rules designed to protect customers,” writes Gerry Norlander from the Public Utility Law Project of New York (PULP), a consumer protection group.

Not so, says the cable company.

“In order to offer the best telecommunications service to its customers and expand this customer base, TWCIS-NY respectfully requests that the Commission grant the waivers discussed in this Petition,” the company writes.

The changes Time Warner requests would make it easier for the cable company to disconnect service for late or non-payment, allow Time Warner to avoid distributing unwanted paper telephone directories, and escape oversight of its phone service for all but the most critical “core” customers with special needs.

Your Partial Payment Will Not Necessarily Prevent Us From Cutting Off Your Phone Line

The Telephone Fair Practices Act (TFPA), prohibits regulated phone companies from shutting off phone service for late/non-payment outside of normal business hours, Fridays after 1pm, weekends, and holidays:

(d) Suspension or termination of service–time. A telephone corporation complying with the conditions set forth in this section may suspend or terminate service to a residential customer for nonpayment of bills only between the hours of 8 a.m. and 7:30 p.m., Monday through Thursday, and between 8:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. on Friday, provided such day or the following day is not:
(1) a public holiday, as defined in the General Construction Law;
(2) a day on which the main business office of the telephone corporation is closed for business; or
(3) during the periods of December 23rd through December 26th and December 30th through January 2nd.

Time Warner Cable claims those limitations are too much, and “for its customers’ convenience, TWCIS-NY respectfully requests […] to extend these hours.”

If approved, Time Warner claims it will make your life easier if they can cut you off at their convenience — between the hours of 8:00am and 9:00pm, Monday through Friday, and between 8:00am and 5:00pm on Saturday.

Those times coincidentally match the hours technicians are now dispatched to collect equipment and shut off service for deadbeat customers.

Time Warner says people are often busy or not at home during the day and it would make more sense to coordinate the surrender of service when people are available to hand over equipment. Unfortunately, Time Warner’s preferred hours often fall outside of the calling hours at the Public Service Commission, which maintains a ‘last resort hotline’ for customers about to have their service disconnected.

‘Time Warner Cable Punishes Late Payers With Telephone Service Suspensions and Terminations on a “Massive” Scale’

Unlike cable television and broadband, New York designates telephone service as an essential utility, and regulators take every step to maintain service wherever possible.

Under rules originally adopted when consumers chose both a local and long distance phone company that put all of your charges on a single monthly invoice, regulators sought to protect landline service when customers did not pay the full amount due. Under those rules, partial payments are allocated first to past due charges from the local phone company, then past due charges for regional long distance or local calling, then charges billed by your long distance carrier, and then everything else.

Since your local phone company has the power to cut off your dial tone for late payment, making sure they were first in line to get paid usually kept your phone line working.

“It Appears that Time Warner Has Increased its Reliance Upon Telephone Service Suspensions and Terminations as a Tool to Enforce Customer Payment Obligations.”

According to data provided by Time Warner Cable in response to PULP information requests, during the month of March, 2012 Time Warner Cable sent 68,134 shutoff notices to Time Warner phone customers in New York. The threats worked for the majority of those customers. Only 17,218 were eventually disconnected after the shutoff deadline passed.

Since then, shutoffs and suspensions have soared. By July 2013, Time Warner mailed 146,026 shutoff notices and followed through with 42,777 disconnects, increases of 114% and 148%, respectively.

“As a consequence, interruption of phone service for bill collection purposes has reached massive proportion,” says PULP. “It appears that Time Warner has increased its reliance upon telephone service suspensions and terminations as a tool to enforce customer payment obligations. In the 12 months ending July 2013, Time Warner terminated or suspended telephone service on 592,250 occasions for bill collection purposes. Of that number, telephone service was reinstated after an interruption for collection purposes on 461,268 occasions. Thus, 130,982 or 22% of the customers terminated were not promptly reinstated.”

Those figures concern PULP because it suggests many disconnected customers are now without phone service, swelling the “unacceptably large number of New York households lacking telephone service.”

New York now ranks fourth from the bottom of all states in the most recent FCC Universal Services Monitoring Report of telephone subscribers.

Verizon’s Request to “Streamline” the Payment Process Gives Time Warner Cable the Same Idea

In 2010, Verizon New York successfully petitioned the PSC to streamline that payment allocation system. Few people bother with choosing a long distance carrier these days because most phone companies now offer unlimited long distance as part of a bundled service package. Verizon asked to simplify things so that Verizon New York got paid first and everything else came second.

Time Warner is seeking a variation on that same theme, requesting the PSC allow it to allocate partial payments first to telephone service, with the rest distributed to cover charges for broadband and cable television service.

While that is good news for your Time Warner phone line, it is bad news for your broadband and television service which can still be interrupted for non-payment because your partial payment was applied to phone service above all else.

Customers are unlikely to be aware of this, however. Time Warner Cable bills include a regular notice that if a customer is in arrears for any Time Warner Cable service, telephone service may be shut off.

PULP argues the cable company should let customers decide which services are most important to keep up and running during an emergency.

“For example, a customer might want to jettison cable TV and keep the Internet on to hunt for jobs during a spell of unemployment or other household financial crisis,” writes Norlander. “While the bills include separate items for cable TV, broadband, and telephone services, there is no information given in the bills on how customers can, if they are in arrears, keep the service they pay for with a partial payment.”

Indeed, there is no provision on Time Warner’s website or on its paper bill payment coupon to allocate which services a customer wishes their partial payment to be applied to first.

Time Warner Cable argues it gives late paying customers every opportunity to either make up past due payments or negotiate a payment plan before any service is interrupted.

“Customers have the opportunity to walk into the local [cable] office and make a payment during these extended hours,” Time Warner argues. “They also have the opportunity to pay online and over the phone 24 hours a day, as well as paying cable representatives directly when they arrive at the customer’s premises to disconnect service. TWCIS-NY believes that streamlining of the rules for disconnection of phone and cable services will make the Commission’s rules more consistent across the board and less confusing for customers.”

We Shouldn’t Have to Provide Printed Residential Phone Books We Didn’t Offer Anyway

Time Warner Cable wants to opt out from distributing printed copies of residential telephone directories it doesn’t publish.

When the company provided unregulated telephone service, it never had to offer customers a phone book. But in its new life as a regulated provider, New York requires phone companies to offer, upon request, a printed telephone directory:

Each service provider shall distribute at no charge to its customers within a local exchange area, a copy of the local exchange directory for that area, and one additional copy shall be provided for each working telephone number upon request. A copy shall be filed with the Commission.

Nobody has formally opposed Time Warner Cable’s proposed alternative: distributing residential listings only to customers who specifically request them in print or on CD-ROM.

Most customers don’t realize Time Warner Cable used to outsource most of its telephone service operation to Sprint. In addition to providing VoIP service, Sprint relied on dominant local telephone companies to provide phone books to Time Warner phone customers. In return, Sprint passed along customers’ names, addresses and phone numbers to phone companies like AT&T, Verizon, Frontier, CenturyLink and Windstream to be incorporated into those directories.

In 2010, Time Warner announced a four-year transition project to take its telephone service “in-house.”

Will All of This Competition, Oversight Rules Should Be Relaxed; If Customers Don’t Like Us, They Can Go Somewhere Else

Virtually every telephone company in New York agrees with the assessment Verizon has made for years — if a phone company does not provide excellent service, subscribers will simply switch to a competitor, negating the need for oversight of service quality standards.

Verizon paved the road Time Warner Cable is driving down to offer NY’ers less-regulated phone service.

The PSC agreed, reducing requirements for service outage reporting and other documented service issues. Today, Verizon only reports incidents involving “core” customers — low-income Lifeline subscribers, “special needs” customers including the elderly, those with serious medical conditions, the disabled and the visually impaired. Core customers also include those with no competitive service providers available to them.

Time Warner Cable wants a modified version of the Verizon “core customer” standard applied to its cable phone service — one that defines core customers as those with Lifeline service or special needs.

Time Warner does not want to include those without competitive alternatives and seeks an exemption from any reporting requirements until it signs up at least 5,000 accounts designated as “core customers.” That could take a while. PULP obtained records from Time Warner Cable showing as of Aug. 7 the company has only signed up 149 telephone customers it defines as “core customers.”

The cable company may be thinking of the future. Verizon Communications has made its intentions clear it wants to abandon rural landline service in favor of questionably regulated wireless Voice Link service. The idea that a cable company provides landline service in an area the local phone company no longer does is unprecedented in New York, but perhaps for not much longer.

If Time Warner Cable successfully argues “core customers” need not include those without competing alternatives, the PSC may unintentionally hand the cable operator a rural telephone monopoly without quality of service oversight in some communities.