Cox Contour TV

Cox Communications is planning to launch a new cloud DVR service targeting the 25% of customers who use the company’s Contour set-top box, which is powered by Comcast/Xfinity’s X1.

The new service will launch later this year, according to Light Reading, but exact pricing and storage options are not yet known.

Assuming Cox follows other licensees of the X1 platform, which include Rogers and Shaw Communications, the new service will likely  bundle a cloud storage option for its current DVR set-top box customers. Comcast offers its current DVR customers 60 hours of free cloud storage, which is less than the 150 hours of local storage usually available on Comcast’s set-top DVR boxes. Rogers’ “Ignite TV” offers 200 hours of HD or 4K storage with a maximum recording storage time of one year, and Shaw’s BlueSky TV will launch its own cloud DVR add-on service later this year under a similar licensing agreement with Comcast.

The biggest benefit of cloud storage is remote access to DVR recordings on portable devices when streaming away from home, a major advantage available to streaming cable TV customers subscribed to DirecTV Now, YouTube TV, Hulu, and others. Because of copyright considerations, cable companies follow a more complicated path to provide subscribers with remote access to their DVR recordings. Comcast customers “check out” recorded shows to downloaded for mobile viewing much the same way Amazon.com allows customers to offer friends the chance to “borrow” a Kindle book. The customer accesses a recorded show, chooses the option to download for remote viewing, and then watches on the go. When finished, a customer “returns” the show, allowing it to be seen on the set-top DVR once again.

Ironically, Charter Spectrum customers are likely to be among the last to see cloud DVR service, despite the fact Charter’s current CEO, Thomas Rutledge, was instrumental in helping clear the way for U.S. cable operators to offer cloud DVR service. In 2006, Cablevision sought to introduce a remote storage DVR and immediately ran into lawsuits, coordinated by Time Warner (Entertainment)’s Turner Broadcasting. Two years later in 2008, Cablevision won a key appeals court victory allowing cloud storage DVRs to be introduced. Charter Spectrum customers may have access to cloud DVR service late this year, or sometime in 2020.

Comzilla

Comcast is increasingly invading the territories of neighboring small cable operators, a rare move that could eventually trigger price wars and threaten the informal “gentlemen’s agreement” that has kept cable companies from directly competing with each other for decades.

In New Hampshire, residents of Laconia and Rochester will have a choice between incumbent Atlantic Broadband or newcomer Comcast. 

Comcast is already the dominant cable operator in the state, providing service in 104 communities. The cable company recently filed its draft franchise proposal with Laconia city officials to extend Comcast service into areas already serviced by Atlantic Broadband, an independent cable operator owned by Montréal based Cogeco.

“We believe Laconia offers attractive opportunities for Xfinity and Comcast business products in an area close to Comcast’s existing footprint and part of the same designated market area we already serve,” said Comcast regional spokesman Marc Goodman. “We offer internet speeds of up to two gigabytes per second and 100 gigabytes for businesses. We have an award-winning video platform with voice remote.”

It is the second time Comcast announced it would directly compete with Atlantic in New Hampshire. Comcast is already overbuilding Atlantic’s service area in Rochester and is scheduled to finish sometime next year.

In response, Atlantic has introduced very competitive service and pricing plans to fend off Comcast.

Atlantic Broadband is trying to lock in their customers with two-year rate guarantees and lower introductory prices.

Consumers are thrilled.

“After years of MetroCast’s dark ages of bad service, Atlantic Broadband bought them up, raised some internet speeds, and raised our bill even more,” said Charlie Saunders. “It is real easy to pay a $200 cable bill around here, so I am glad Comcast is giving us a choice.”

Atlantic Broadband, at least in public, seems unfazed about Comcast’s entry. Ed Merrill, Atlantic Broadband’s regional general manager for New Hampshire and Maine stressed his company’s innovations, such as bringing gigabit internet speed to the region and using TiVo set top boxes. 

“Our plans are based not on what other providers are doing, but by anticipating customer needs and preferences, then developing and delivering the kinds of products and services that will make customer lives better, whether they’re residential customers or business clients with customers of their own,” Merrill said in a statement.

Comcast Invasion: Communities Where Consumers Can Also Choose Comcast as Their Cable Company

• Dec. 2017: Rochester, N.H. (Atlantic Broadband vs. Comcast)
• May 2018: Waterford and New London, Conn. (Atlantic Broadband vs. Comcast)
• Summer 2018: Warwick Township, Warwick Borough, Ephratah Township, Ephratah Borough and Lititz, Penn. (Blue Ridge Communications vs. Comcast)
• Nov. 2018: Laconia, N.H. (Atlantic Broadband vs. Comcast)

Grove

Comcast said it is only responding to the public’s demand for more choice and better service, which explains why it is expanding into territories already served by another operator. But so far, Comcast has only chosen to expand in areas adjacent to its current territory, and only in places served by smaller, independent cable companies. In short, Comcast is in no hurry to run cable lines into areas served by Charter/Spectrum or Cox.

A Multichannel News article on the subject suggests Comcast’s real interest is reaching lucrative commercial/business customers just out of reach of their existing service areas. 

“I can tell you that our primary focus is on business service expansion where from time-to-time we explore new opportunities, based on a case-by-case analysis, to bring our state-of-the-art products and services to more businesses,” Bob Grove, vice president of communications for Comcast told the trade magazine. “Some of our existing customers in the contiguous footprint and shared DMA have operations in this area, which is why it made sense for us to expand our commercial network here. We’re also exploring limited residential opportunities, but that’s in the very preliminary stages as well.”

“My heart and wallet skipped a beat,” Lennart Swenson, Jr., told The Laconia Daily Sun. “When we had Comcast, at our last home, they provided superior service and more options for less money than Atlantic Broadband. Comcast was also easier to contact and provided quicker service than has been our experience with Atlantic.”

Some customers also complain Atlantic lures people with temporary teaser rates that exponentially increase after introductory pricing expires. Others report it is difficult to get a representative on the phone.

Competition is “tiresome” for the cable industry

Comcast’s growing interest in expanding service into already-cabled areas means the company will have to convince customers to switch cable providers, something that runs contrary to traditional cable industry economics, where companies carefully avoid direct competition with each other.

“When I started in this business, we all helped each other,” former Buford Media CEO Ben Hooks told Multichannel News. Buford retired in 2018 after a 50-year career in the cable industry. “You don’t see that, especially with Comcast. As far as they’re concerned, there’s them and there’s the rest of the industry.”

Hooks remembers the 1970s and 1980s when cable companies did attempt to expand into each other’s territory.

“In most cases overbuilds were a disaster,” Hooks said. “Neither party won very much, both were fighting for the same customer, cutting prices and neither company was doing well. It was just a tiresome battle.”

But as costs plummet to less than $500 per home to extend fiber to the home service, and the costs to provide internet service continue to fall, cable companies like Comcast can afford the risk of upsetting smaller operators. 

“A company today like Comcast has so much more margin/size over a small company that if they want to expand into an adjacent territory, it is no contest,” Hooks told the trade publication. “Now, if they were to take on Charter, the competition would be a greater challenge. While Comcast still has the advantage, Charter is large enough that it would be ugly.”

Cable companies continue to dominate the U.S. broadband marketplace, and the gap between cable broadband and telephone company DSL continues to widen.

Leichtman Research Group reports the top seven cable companies together added 728,423 internet customers in the last three months, an increase of 35% over 2017. One of the biggest gainers was Comcast, which grew 363,000 subscribers during the third quarter. At the same time last year Comcast added 213,000 customers. Charter Spectrum grew by 308,000 customers in the third quarter, bolstered by speed upgrades in select areas and more aggressive promotions. At the same time in 2017, Spectrum added 285,000 customers.

Cable’s gains are phone company losses. AT&T, Frontier, CenturyLink, and Consolidated (formerly FairPoint) saw 159,974 customers disconnect service in the last three months. Phone company losses were buffered in part by government-funded rural broadband expansion campaigns, which typically introduce broadband service in rural areas for the first time. Where customers have a choice, they are increasingly choosing cable companies to supply internet service because speed and reliability are often better, especially compared to DSL service still prevalent in a lot of areas.

Sources: The Companies and Leichtman Research Group, Inc.

*LRG estimate
^CenturyLink only reported residential subscribers in 3Q 2018.  LRG estimate including non-residential subscribers
^^Consolidated includes a minor sale of a local exchange carrier
^^^Cincinnati Bell does not include the acquisition of Hawaiian Telecom
Company subscriber counts may not solely represent residential households. Top cable and telephone companies represent approximately 95% of all subscribers.

Charter Spectrum and Frontier Communications are among America’s most-hated telecom companies, especially east of the Mississippi River, according to the latest J.D. Power 2018 Residential Satisfaction Study that measures customer satisfaction scores across four geographic regions of the country.

Among the best for internet access, AT&T/DirecTV took top honors in their wireline service areas in the south, north-central, and parts of the western United States where gigabit fiber upgrades have dramatically improved service over older DSL and U-verse internet products. In the east, Verizon’s FiOS network was by far the best rated ISP.

“It is clear wireline companies are putting the customer experience first, and it is paying off,” said Ian Greenblatt, Technology, Media & Telecom Practice Lead at J.D. Power. “Finding ways to make call centers more efficient and clarifying billing statements and contracts are just a few relatively easy things companies can be doing to improve the customer experience. Additionally, methods in which companies are communicating service and product updates have been evolving with the technology itself and has proven to be a valuable approach to high customer satisfaction.”

Also scoring above average for internet service:

• West: Cable One, Cox Communications, Spectrum, Comcast/XFINITY
• South: Comcast/XFINITY

In the eastern and north-central regions, Spectrum scored second worst for internet access, only avoiding last place because Frontier Communications, which relies primarily on DSL service in these areas of the country, did worse.

In the south, Suddenlink scored poorly, but not as bad as regional phone companies Frontier, CenturyLink, and bottom-rated Windstream, which all offer DSL service.

In the west, customers especially loathed CenturyLink, Mediacom — Consumer Reports’ perennial favorite for worst cable operator, and dead last Frontier.

Comcast appears to have improved its customer satisfaction scores slightly when compared against almost 20 years of earlier satisfaction studies performed annually by J.D. Power. In contrast, Frontier continues its decline in customer satisfaction, predominately in areas where it still only offers DSL service. Charter’s acquisition of Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks appears to have done few favors for consumers, who dislike Charter Spectrum just as much, if not more than its predecessors.

The ratings are based on responses from 27,765 customers that returned surveys evaluating cable/satellite/telco TV, internet access and landline telephone providers. Customers were asked to rank each provider on network performance and reliability, cost of service, billing, communication, and customer service.

Cox Communications sales representatives are accused of creating fake accounts and adding extra services to existing customers’ bills without authorization in hopes of scoring monthly bonuses of $10,000 or more.

WJLA-TV’s I-Team reports two whistleblowers have come forward to tell the Washington, D.C. station Cox employees are still defrauding customers to line their own pockets, despite repeated attempts to alert senior management and company claims the fraud was limited to a few now ex-employees.

“How far they’re going for a commission payout, to affect thousands of people, it’s a heinous, greedy act,” former Cox Communications employee Anna Wilkinson told WJLA. Fraud is allegedly rampant in the Mid-Atlantic region where Wilkinson worked, and it involves hundreds, if not thousands of bogus charges and accounts. Wilkinson reports some customers have had five to seven different accounts opened in their name using multiple addresses. Other customers are discovering services they did not request suddenly added to their bills.

Wilkinson blew the whistle on Cox’s fraud problem.

What motivates sales representatives to get “creative” with customer accounts is Cox’s lucrative bonus system that rewards agents that sign up the most new customers or add services to an existing account. The worst offenders are earning more than $12,000 a month from the fraud, and some have assembled large “black books” filled with valid customer Social Security numbers and other information gleaned from Cox’s customer database.

“Hundreds and hundreds of Social Security numbers, along with people’s first and last names, their address, birthdays” are involved, said Wilkinson. Sources told WJLA a favorite target for the scheme are ex-renters leaving an apartment building. When the disconnect request arrives, the reps use that person’s information to open multiple new accounts around that apartment complex.

“You have sales reps knowing who moves in and out of apartments,” the source said. “So they set up multiple accounts starting with one apartment like ‘Apartment 241.’ Then, another fake account in 540 and Apartment 352. All the fake accounts are then placed under one person’s name that use to live in Apartment 449.”

The representative can return to unsuspecting ex-renter time and time again to make their sales quota and earn bonus commissions.

“Let’s say he sold them cable and internet and added the phone to the service,” the source said. “That’s three sales. Move that person four times that’s 12 sales. If you do that 10 times that’s 120 sales [and] you have over 90 percent of your quota already done.”

Wilkinson said she filed complaints with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Virginia State Attorney General’s Office.

A representative from Cox Communications issued this statement in response to the report:

“We have stringent ethical and privacy standards that all employees are required to abide by. In instances where those standards are not adhered to, we take immediate action that can result in employee terminations. If there is a situation where a customer’s personally identifiable information is believed to have been compromised, we notify the customer and work with them to rectify. Cox has fraud alert measures in place and have taken other steps to help prevent this from happening. Nonetheless, like many companies, we have had isolated instances of employees not living up to our standards of behavior. Recently we learned of a small number of employees in Virginia who violated our policies. A thorough investigation occurred and those employees have since been terminated. An internal audit was also conducted ensuring that no customers’ personally identifiable information was compromised. We take these matters very seriously, and remain committed to protecting the safety of our customers’ information through our business policies and practices.

WJLA in Washington reports Cox’s sales agents are lining their own pockets opening fraudulent accounts. (3:09)