Time Warner Cable plans to reach 75 percent of its customers with Maxx service upgrades offering broadband speed boosts up to 300/20Mbps for the same price it charges for 50Mbps by the end of 2016, assuming a merger with Comcast does not result in the plans being shelved.

Time Warner Cable customers will also escape Comcast’s ongoing experiments with usage caps and usage-based billing if the company remains independent, as Time Warner Cable executives continue to maintain that usage pricing should only be offered to customers that want it.

Company officials discussed the ongoing investments in Maxx upgrades during a quarterly results conference call with investors held earlier today.

CEO Rob Marcus indicated Time Warner Cable will choose markets for Maxx upgrades based on what kind of competition the cable company faces in each city.

“Our aim is to have 75% of our footprint enabled with Maxx […] by the end of [2016], and my guess is we’re continuing to roll it out beyond that,” said Marcus. “So the only question is prioritization, and obviously as we think about where to go first, competitive dynamics are a factor. So that includes Google, although it’s not explosively dictated by where Google decides to go. In fact I think we announced the Carolinas before Google did their announcement this week. So competitors are certainly relevant obviously.”

Time Warner Cable has targeted its Maxx upgrades in areas where its principal competitors — AT&T, Google, and Verizon — have made or announced service and speed improvements. Maxx upgrades are now complete in New York City and Los Angeles. Much of Austin, Tex., is also finished, where both AT&T GigaPower U-verse and Google Fiber plan to offer gigabit service.

This year, Time Warner will focus on bringing Maxx to Charlotte, Dallas, Hawaii, Kansas City, Raleigh, San Antonio and San Diego. Charlotte, Raleigh, and Kansas City will eventually see high-speed competition from both Google Fiber and AT&T U-verse. Time Warner is facing increasingly aggressive competition from Hawaiian Telcom, San Antonio is on Google’s short list and will also likely see faster U-verse, and San Diego is on AT&T’s list for GigaPower upgrades.

Time Warner spent $4.1 billion on capital expenses in 2014, up nearly $900 million above 2013 spending. Most of the money went to network upgrades in Maxx markets where new set-top boxes and cable modems are being provided to customers. Marcus refused to offer any guidance about how much the company intends to spend on upgrades in 2015, citing its looming merger with Comcast.

Marcus

Not every city will benefit from network upgrades. Although 2/3rds of Time Warner Cable markets will get Maxx over the next two years, several will have to make do with the service they have now. The Time Warner Cable markets most at risk of being left off the upgrade list also have the weakest competition:

• Yuma, Ariz.
• Nebraska
• Wisconsin
• Eastern Ohio & Pennsylvania (except Cleveland)
• Binghamton, Utica, Watertown, Elmira, and Rochester, N.Y.
• Kentucky
• West Virginia
• South Carolina
• Western Massachusetts
• Maine

If the merger with Comcast is approved, the Maxx upgrade effort is likely to be shelved or modified by the new owners as customers are gradually shifted to Comcast’s traditional broadband plans.

Marcus also continued to shoot down compulsory usage-based billing and usage caps questions coming from Wall Street analysts. Marcus reminded the audience Time Warner Cable already offers optional usage-based pricing packages, and they have no intention of forcing customers to accept usage billing or caps.

“I think the ultimate success of usage based pricing will depend on customer uptake and customers’ interest in availing themselves of a usage based tier versus unlimited tier,” said Marcus. In earlier conference calls, Marcus admitted only a tiny fraction of Time Warner customers have shown any interest in usage allowances. The overwhelming majority prefer flat rate service.

In contrast, Comcast’s broadband customers in several southern cities continue to be unwilling participants in that cable company’s ongoing usage billing trials.

Alaska’s largest cable company today unveiled changes to its Internet plans, ditching surprise overlimit fees in favor of a speed throttle.

GCI has been the subject of bad press in the past, with some customers experiencing up to $1,200 in overlimit fees after exceeding GCI’s usage allowances. In an effort to avoid public relations nightmares like that, GCI will stop assessing automatic overlimit fees and instead impose a speed throttle on customers over their limit that will temporarily reduce broadband speeds to less than 1Mbps until the next billing cycle begins. Customers can voluntarily pay for more usage in $10 increments, which buys a reprieve from the speed throttle.

GCI “No Worries” Broadband Plans offer varying usage caps and extra usage allotments:

Customers on lower speed plans continue to face a lower usage allowance and will receive considerably less extra data for their $10 add-on data plan. GCI’s highest speed re:D offering does get a bigger usage allowance: 600GB, up from 500GB. An $11.99/mo surcharge continues for broadband-only customers.

GCI’s largest competitor remains telephone company ACS, which heavily markets its unlimited usage DSL plans. Almost as an afterthought, ACS now markets packages that include landline service with unlimited local calling and 180 minutes of long distance for free.

A price comparison between the two providers is somewhat hampered by the fact GCI does not publicize a broadband+home phone bundle package on their website. GCI Home Phone is priced at $19.99 a month.

A 10Mbps unlimited use package from ACS costs $110/month. A 10Mbps plan from the cable company with a 30 40GB allowance + GCI Home Phone costs $79.98. On price, GCI wins at this speed… if you stay within your allowance. A 50Mbps unlimited use package from ACS runs $180 a month. GCI charges $104.98 with 150GB of included usage. Again, the price winner is GCI if you stay within your allowance. Taxes, surcharges and government fees are extra.

Heavier users may find ACS’ initially higher prices worthwhile if they are forced to buy GCI’s add-on data buckets. Both companies charge considerably more than providers in the lower 48 states.

Last year, nearly 10% of GCI’s revenue was earned from automatically applied overlimit fees. Giving up some of that revenue is a concession, but one that is likely to end bill shock and negative media attention. Still, usage allowances remain arbitrary. GCI’s entry level 10Mbps plan only offers a paltry 30 40GB a month — an allowance largely unheard of among other U.S. cable providers. GCI will also have a difficult time explaining why $10 will only offer one customer 5GB of extra usage while others will get up to 30GB. The costs for the additional data to GCI are the same.

Our thanks to an anonymous reader for sharing the news.

Updated 4:08pm EST 1/15: After going to press, GCI changed their website, adjusting the usage allowance for their 10/1Mbps plan to 40GB (up from 30GB) and deleted references to the $11.99 surcharge for broadband-only customers, which apparently no longer applies.

Beggars can be choosers if you are running Cablevision, the northeast’s largest non-conglomerate cable company, still run by the Dolan family.

In a conference call with Wall Street analysts, company officials noted Cablevision had noticeably tightened its credit standards during the third quarter and has implemented incentives for slow-pay and no-pay customers to take a hike and not come back, even at the risk of subscriber losses.

“Certain of our promotional eligibility policies have put pressure on our net subscriber results,” reported Cablevision CEO James Dolan. “However, we believe that these policies are consistent with our goal of growing long-term shareholder value. For instance, during the third quarter, we tightened certain of our customer credit and payment policies. While these policy changes effectively reduce the number of available sales, they are expected to contribute a stronger base of customers over time.”

For more than a year, Cablevision has restricted promotional pricing and retention offers to keep customers from coming back for better deals when their existing promotion expires. Now it is stripping eligibility for promotional pricing for late-paying customers as well. Subscribers are leaving as a result. Video customers declined by 56,000 during the third quarter, high-speed data customers declined by 23,000, and voice customers declined by 33,000.

“We’re no longer marketing [to] subscribers who have a history of non-pay, so we’re not inviting them back in if they’re not good actors,” said Cablevision’s chief operating officer Kristin Dolan. “We’re requiring full payment in a number of areas where homes have a history of bad debt. And then we’re not doing promotions [for] those customers either. So if you have a history of bad debt with us, you can’t come back in on a promotional offer. [We’re] not letting people back into the bucket that are going to end up being problematic later on in their relationship with us.”

Mr. Dolan was scathingly critical of his biggest competitor, Verizon FiOS, claiming the company will stop at nothing to poach Cablevision’s customers.

“Verizon, in our opinion, continues on a path of pursuing the destruction of their own capital,” said Dolan. “We don’t believe that they’re profitable on any level in our service area. They just rabidly pursue us in an attempt to try and get customers. And I think our strategy is actually working quite well because we’re giving them all the customers that we think are the most expensive customers and the ones that provide the least free cash flow to us.”

Mrs. Dolan told analysts Cablevision is particular about the kinds of customers it wants to win back from competitors.

“I think if it’s a win back that we want to have, that’s a differentiator,” she said. “We’re not going to just chase subscriber numbers. We don’t want to invite people into our store if they’re going to shoplift.”

In the Netherlands, having access to two broadband competitors isn’t enough to guarantee broadband competition, and Dutch telecom regulators are not about to deregulate Internet service in the country until consumers have more choices for broadband access.

The Dutch telecom regulator on Friday announced it will keep wholesale access regulations in place for an extra three years to guarantee KPN – the former state-owned telephone company – plays fair with competitors.

“If ACM were not to step in, there would be too little choice: Dutch telecom company KPN and cable company UPC/Ziggo would then dominate the market,” says the Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) in a written statement. “In ACM’s opinion, having just two providers in these markets cannot be considered healthy competition.”

“Furthermore, KPN and UPC/Ziggo are challenged by their competitors to continue to invest in their networks and to innovate,” said Henk Don, a board member of ACM. “As a result, faster and better connections become available in the Netherlands.”

KPN

The Dutch telephone and mobile provider will be required to continue allowing competitors such as Vodafone and Tele2 access to KPN’s landline and fiber to the home networks to offer competitive broadband service. ACM reports that Dutch consumers are saving at least $312 million a year in lower Internet access pricing just by forcing KPN to allow other companies to compete using its network.

KPN isn’t hampered by the forced openness, because ACM has also given the phone company relaxed operating rules to allow it to invest in DSL upgrades including vectoring and the forthcoming G.Fast standard, which could dramatically boost broadband speeds.

Most Dutch consumers, like those in North America, realistically have a choice between one telephone and one cable company — usually Ziggo (currently merging with UPC), for broadband service. But unlike in the United States, Dutch regulators have remained wholly unconvinced an effective duopoly is subject to enough competitive pressure to protect consumers and nascent competition from upstarts. Therefore, ACM has applied regulatory checks and balances to protect the marketplace and consumers from abusive pricing and service practices.

U.S. telecom companies argue that regulations hamper investment and delay network improvements. In the Netherlands, where broadband speed rankings exceed the United States, prices are also lower.