On important issues for the online community, there are some substantial differences between the Democratic and Republican parties, particularly regarding Net Neutrality.

A review of the yas and nays in both party platforms (and past history in Congress) shows your vote can make a difference when Washington ultimately deals with privacy, network traffic, piracy, cybersecurity, and broadband expansion.

Net Neutrality – “Preserving the free and open Internet”: Prohibits providers from discriminating against different types of network traffic for profit or control

• Democrats: Yas
• Republicans: Nay

While the Democratic platform specifically states, “President Obama is strongly committed to protecting an open Internet,” one “that fosters investment, innovation, creativity, consumer choice, and free speech,” Republicans have treated Net Neutrality as anathema to the free market. Although virtually every Republican member of Congress has voted against Net Neutrality or publicly opposed the concept, some Democrats have as well, particularly those who have received significant financial contributions from the largest phone and cable companies lobbying against the policy.

Net Neutrality has not proved to be a major issue in Congress this year, with most of the recent battles taking place at the Federal Communications Commission. FCC chairman Julius Genachowski applauded a ‘third way’ for Net Neutrality, staking out a middle-of-the-road policy that pleased few outside of the FCC. It largely leaves the concept a “suggestion” for wireless carriers. Replete with loopholes and enforcement issues, even wired providers like Comcast have run around the policy for their own benefit.

Network Privacy – Full disclosure when websites track your browsing habits, and how online companies protect your private information

• Democrats: Yas, provisionally
• Republicans: Yas, provisionally

Net privacy is a topic many consumers hear about the most when a website gets hacked and private customer information is stolen in the process. But a growing number of consumers are also concerned about what websites are doing with their information and how their web visits are being tracked for advertising purposes. Large online companies like Facebook and Google have a vested interest in keeping this space as unregulated as possible to maintain lucrative revenue earned selling demographic information to advertisers. But consumers may not want advertisers to know the websites they visit, and members of both political parties have expressed growing interest in taming who gets their hands on your private stuff. Republicans are primarily concerned about tracking by government agencies, Democrats are more concerned with for-profit use of customer data.

The Republican platform abhors government intrusion into private liberty — primarily a reference to certain forms of surveillance. But the GOP platform is silent on enhancing privacy rights of consumers. The Obama Administration has been calling for a “Privacy Bill of Rights” that permits consumers to opt out of web tracking cookies and other tracking technology. Democrats separately want companies to do a better job disclosing and explaining how private information is being used. But Congress, under heavy lobbying to avoid the issue, never acted on the administration’s request.

Expanding Broadband: Finding New Wireless Spectrum and Improved Rural Access

• Democrats: Yas on both
• Republicans: Yas on one, vacillating  on the other

While neither party fully embraces their respective platforms while governing, their stated positions often reflect political positioning when new laws are contemplated.

The Democrats tout both their National Broadband Plan and the Obama Administration’s commitment to find Internet access for 98 percent of the country and expand spectrum available to meet the growing demands for wireless data. The Democratic platform touted President Obama’s proposal to promote wireless broadband as a possible rural Internet solution.

A surprise announcement from the U.S. Supreme Court that it will hear an appeal brought by Comcast Corporation in a class action lawsuit brought on behalf of Philadelphia consumers, despite a pending settlement, may mean the Supreme Court is on the verge of issuing another business-friendly ruling that will make class action cases more difficult to file.

Comcast had reached a tentative settlement in June with lawyers who brought a $875 million class-action lawsuit on behalf of Philadelphia area cable subscribers. The antitrust case, originally filed in 2003, accused Comcast of strategically swapping or acquiring cable systems owned by Marcus Cable, Greater Philadelphia Cablevision, Inc., Lenfest Communications, Inc., AT&T, Adelphia Communications Corp., Time Warner, and Patriot Media in and around Philadelphia for the purpose of creating a super-sized Comcast cable system that could deter competitors from entering the market and allow Comcast to charge higher prices for service.

RCN Telecom Services originally intended to compete for cable customers in the Philadelphia region, but found it could not break into the market because Comcast allegedly hired as many available technicians it could find and tied them down with exclusive contracts. RCN also claimed Comcast targeted potential customers with special, allegedly below-cost deals to retain their business. RCN later filed for bankruptcy.

“Stated bluntly, Comcast and other large cable operators have demonstrated both the inclination and the wherewithal to use their market power to crush broadband competition in their local markets whenever it has the audacity to appear,” RCN alleged.

In 2002, RCN went public with a series of allegations:

Comcast intimidates independent construction and installation contractors. Comcast prevented or tried to prevent about 15 Philadelphia-area contractors from doing business with RCN through “non-compete” clauses, RCN alleged. The company provided specific names of contractors and Comcast personnel in sealed documents.

Those practices dated at least to the late 1990s, when Comcast acquired Suburban Cable, RCN said. Both Suburban and Comcast went “to extraordinary lengths to document ‘violations’ and intimidate contractors who were thought to be in contact with, or working for, RCN,” RCN said.

RCN cited instances of Suburban Cable employees, many of whom later worked for Comcast, allegedly following contractors in their trucks and taking photographs to document contractors seen at an RCN office or work site. These photographs then became “evidence,” RCN said, to support contractors’ termination.

As for predatory pricing, RCN claimed that before its entry into Folcroft in 2000, Comcast allegedly established a sales “swat team” instructed to sign up customers for 18-month contracts in exchange for cheaper cable services.

The plaintiffs’ attorneys want subscribers to receive refunds representing the savings they would have enjoyed had a competitor successfully forced prices down.

Comcast and the plaintiffs’ counsel reached a tentative settlement in June after both sides learned the lawsuit would proceed to trial this September. But in a surprise announcement, the U.S. Supreme Court suddenly decided to step in and hear an appeal filed by Comcast. Comcast immediately declared the settlement incomplete and has now declined to proceed with it, believing it has a more favorable outcome waiting at the Supreme Court.

Kenneth A. Jacobson, a professor at Temple University’s law school, told the Philadelphia Inquirer the Supreme Court does not typically decide to hear a case “during the settlement negotiation and approval process.”

Other Supreme Court watchers suspect the Court’s sudden involvement in the case means it is likely to issue a precedent-setting decision, more likely than not in Comcast’s favor, that will be talked about in law journals for the next decade.

Comcast Center in downtown Philadelphia

The specific point of Comcast’s appeal that interests the Supreme Court has to do with how a class action case certifies damages to the court hearing the case. The Supreme Court agreed to hear the case based on, “whether a district court may certify a class action without resolving whether the plaintiff class has introduced admissible evidence, including expert testimony, to show that the case is susceptible to awarding damages on a class-wide basis.

Currently, courts insist that the burden of proof for damages lies with the plaintiff, but they are not necessarily required to demonstrate the actual individual damages suffered by each member of a proposed class action. Many judges accept the concept of fixed group damages based on a composite of an average proposed class member. That amount gets multiplied by the number of members in the certified class action to arrive at the total requested damages. Typically, both sides negotiate a final settlement, deduct attorney fees and costs, and then class members typically get a change in a company’s policies, coupons good for a future purchase or an actual refund in the mail.

The Supreme Court may find that concept inadequate, and insist on a detailed analysis of actual harm done to each proposed class member — a high and potentially expensive hurdle to cross for many class action cases. Legal analysts suggest the intended effect of such a decision would be to further deter class action lawsuits against companies, because the costs and complexities involved would increasingly not be justified.

In the Comcast case, the cable company wanted the court to dismiss the case, and for some very novel reasons:

1. Since Comcast effectively kept competing “overbuilding” cable systems out of Philadelphia, there is no evidence of any theoretical competition benefits such as reduced prices;
2. Since no competitor actually got their service up and running in Philadelphia, Comcast argues there was no competition to eliminate;
3. RCN, in Comcast’s view, was never actually going to start service in Philadelphia because of their own financial woes;
4. Without actual competition in Philadelphia, there is no basis for any expert witness hired by the plaintiff to credibly estimate damages;
5. Even if Comcast was engaged in anti-competitive behavior in Delaware County, that cannot be used by plaintiffs to serve as evidence of class-wide impact for the entire multi-county Philadelphia Comcast cluster.

Over the past few years, the Court has ruled in favor of corporations trying to compel less-costly legal avenues — like mandatory arbitration — for consumers who feel harmed by a company’s actions.

Sprint has launched a new ad series and accompanying web site to warn consumers that choosing Verizon’s new Share Everything data plans can give you a big headache and a higher monthly bill.

“The concept of sharing a monthly data allowance across a family or group of users increases the likelihood for a surprise monthly bill due to data overage charges,” said Caralene Robinson, vice president of brand strategy and marketing communications for Sprint. “Data usage continues to increase and consumers value Truly Unlimited data because it’s simple and straightforward.”

Sprint argues that customers have enough trouble differentiating the usage of the applications they run themselves. When sharing a data plan with other members of a family, it can quickly become impossible to know exactly who is consuming what. That makes it easy to exceed a monthly usage allowance, which results in costly overlimit fees. Tracking usage and the inevitable arguments that will result at the dinner table make Verizon’s new share plans a real headache in Sprint’s view.

Sprint proposes that customers switch to their Truly Unlimited data plan, which has no limits and also costs less than Verizon’s shared data plan. Sprint also continues to sell budget plans that offer a calling allowance in return for a reduced price. Verizon now only sells unlimited voice minutes bundled into their Share Everything plans.

Unlike most carriers who boast customers can send millions of e-mails or visit hundreds of thousands of web pages with a low allowance data plan, Sprint explains what a 1GB limit really means when customers use increasingly popular streaming services and apps. It turns out Verizon’s 1GB allowance plan does not deliver that much.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Sprint Say No to Sharing – Family Meeting.flv[/flv]

Sprint launches its “Say No To Sharing” and “Say Yes To Sprint” campaign with this “Family Meeting” ad, which shows a family debating how to divide up their shared data plan and avoid overlimit fees.  (1 minute)

Deregulation likely means higher phone bills for CenturyLink customers in Arizona.

CenturyLink has convinced Arizona state regulators local phone service is now competitive throughout the state, allowing the company to raise rates with less regulatory oversight. But some consumers are wondering how deregulation benefits them.

“Once again the phone company has sold us another bill of goods in Arizona,” says Tucson ex-CenturyLink customer Miguel Gonzalez. “First Qwest and now CenturyLink told us that deregulation would bring rates down for phone service, yet both companies fought for years to raise, not lower prices.”

Under the plan approved by the Arizona Corporation Commission, CenturyLink will be able to raise its residential rates up to 10 percent per year, so long as the rate increases do not exceed 25 percent over three years.

Arizona residential landline customers have paid roughly $13.18 for standard urban phone service since the 1990s, when Qwest was the local phone company. Now CenturyLink is free to raise those prices $1.30 a month in any of the next three years or up to $3.30 overall, even as customers continue to disconnect service across the state. Business customers face potentially higher rate hikes — 15 percent annually or 25 percent over three years.

Regulators expect the company to file for a rate increase before you finish reading this article.

Oddly, both CenturyLink and some members of the commission called the change a victory for consumers, despite the likely higher rates to follow. The plan won approval in the Republican-controlled body in a 4-1 vote.

“It should be a win-win for the consumer (and the company),” said Democrat commissioner Paul Newman, who represents southern Arizona and voted for the plan with reservations. “That’s yet to be seen, but I hope it will be.”

The Arizona Daily Star reports CenturyLink will not be able to charge different rates in competitive and less-competitive areas, which consumer advocates say will protect ratepayers in areas where wireless coverage is poor and cable companies do not compete.

CenturyLink said it needs “rate flexibility” to compete as people disconnect landlines and head for cell phones and cable company “digital phone” products. Although the company did not elaborate, it argues the right to raise rates will allow it to compete more effectively with dominant cable operators Cox and Comcast.

Prior to deregulation, CenturyLink was allowed a guaranteed rate of return based on the true cost of providing landline phone service. The company also guaranteed to provide phone service to any Arizona resident inside of its service territory who asked. Under the terms of the new agreement, CenturyLink will now enjoy more rate flexibility, but will continue serving as the phone company of last resort.

“I’m still scratching my head about how the pointy-heads in Phoenix believe that raising rates makes you more competitive with cable and cell phone companies and not less,” Gonzalez says. “I guess it’s the same kind of New Phone Math that CenturyLink uses to try and keep the customers that are slipping away from them faster than ever.”

Gonzalez says he pulled the plug on CenturyLink last August.

“They offer nothing compelling to me when I can get a better price and better service with more calling features from the cable company, and now they offer even less.”

Alaska Communications has found a marketing angle to combat Alaska’s dominant cable operator — GCI, which has slapped arbitrary usage caps and overlimit fees (up to $30/GB) on its customers. ACS has made cap-free Internet browsing a hallmark of their marketing campaign:

Alaska Communications vs. the Cable Company

Why Alaska Communications Home Internet is the best choice.

No Nasty Surprises on Your Bill

Tired of nasty surprises on your cable company’s Internet bill from the cable company? With Home Internet Service from Alaska Communications, there are no overage charges. Surf, stream, download, watch, and play – all without worry of “extra fees” for going over your bill. With Alaska Communications Home Internet Service, you won’t go over – it’s unlimited!

No Data Limits

Say you hopped online just a bit more this month – surfing, watching your favorite streaming movies, or maybe the kids were trying to win the online tournament of their favorite game while you were posting to your favorite social media site. We don’t think your Internet should be capped or “throttled.” That means, if you get close to your data limit, the cable company will slow down your Internet to limit your connection. With our Home Internet Service, you’ll get to use the Internet the way you want to – at the speeds you deserve!

ACS recognizes the truth for most broadband customers: They loathe usage caps and throttled broadband speeds, overlimit fees and bill shock. Nobody should have to learn what a gigabyte is and be forced to watch a usage gauge before deciding whether or not to use the Internet as they wish. We congratulate ACS for delivering consumers a better choice in broadband and a worry-free Internet experience. We hope this will send a message to GCI  that Internet Overcharging is unacceptable.

Stop the Cap! recommends our Alaskan readers patronize the state’s largest cap-free ISP: ACS.