Some Time Warner customers think there is more up the cable company's sleeve than "subscriber convenience."

Time Warner Cable customers across the country have been coping with some dramatic channel realignments over the past year, in some cases finding as many as a half-dozen channels gone missing from their analog basic cable lineup when it’s all said and done.

Communities in South Carolina, Ohio, and Nebraska are the latest to find dozens of channels assuming new positions on the dial, some now requiring a $7-10 digital set top box rental to keep watching.

The reasons for the changes?  To make room for an increasing number of HD channels, upgrade to DOCSIS 3 technology to support faster broadband, and to simplify finding networks on a lineup with hundreds of choices.

In Lincoln, Neb., Time Warner Cable will be aligning all of their analog and digital standard definition channel numbers with their HD counterparts.  So if CNN occupies channel 120 on the standard definition cable lineup, CNN HD will be found on channel 1120.  Customers simply have to add a “1” in front of the three digit channel number to get the same network, when available, in HD.

Lincoln residents may appreciate the fact some channels will be easier to find, but many analog customers without a cable box are not happy several of those channels will be gone from their lineup altogether.  The “victims” of the analog to digital switcheroo are familiar to those who have already been through channel realignments — C-SPAN 2, ShopNBC, TruTV, Travel Channel, and Oxygen will be available only to those who have a digital cable box or CableCARD.

In the Myrtle Beach, S.C., area, Time Warner Cable also moved the Speed channel to a new digital-only home.  Brett Phillips who lives in Georgetown called that a hidden price increase, telling The Sun News Time Warner was effectively taking away a channel while not reducing his cable bill.

In Nebraska and Ohio, Time Warner is handing out “free” digital boxes for 12 months, but only to those who do not have one now.  Those with existing digital boxes cannot obtain a second one or get their existing box for free.  Some critics, including our Lincoln reader Marta says that is a ripoff.

“As a good customer who already pays for two digital boxes and spends almost $200 a month on my cable service, why am I paying for my digital boxes when those who want the lowest priced analog service get one for free,” Marta asks.  “Clearly this is a way to get those boxes into peoples’ homes so at the end of the year they will reluctantly pay for the $7 a month to keep renting it.”

Marta was turned down when she asked if she could get a free extra box for her kitchen television.

“No, Time Warner only gives these free boxes to people who never had them before,” she said.  “I understand the company needs to make room for new things, but they have got to get these box prices down — they could turn the whole system digital as far as I care -if- the boxes were free, or at least much cheaper.”

Some other subscribers have their own conspiracy theories about the channel realignments.

One Nebraska resident noted Time Warner Cable was moving Fox News Channel to channel 44 — an ominous turn of events for this individual:

“It seems that the liberal unionized TWC is putting Fox News on channel 44. Obama is the 44th President. [George] Soros is behind this I just know it.”

[flv width=”480″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WEWS KSHB Time Warner Channel Changes 4-6-11.flv[/flv]

WEWS-TV in Cleveland and KSHB-TV in Kansas City tell their respective viewers about the grand shuffle in their channel lineups.  (3 minutes)

Du Quoin, Ill.

Remember when your cable system delivered 60 basic cable channels with a handful of premium services, none in High Definition?  The people of Du Quoin, Ill. do — to this day.

They, along with several other small southern Illinois communities served by Comcast, are living a wired life free from HD programming, cable networks many take for granted, and a quality of service that has diminished as an aging cable system outlives its useful life.

Now the commissioner of Du Quoin has put Comcast’s franchise “on hold” until the cable company updates service for the town’s 6,500 residents.

Commissioner Rex Duncan told the city council last week he’s fed up with Comcast’s lack of interest in delivering even a handful of HD channels to subscribers, even as the company moves channels that used to be part of the basic cable lineup to a new tier that requires the rental of a digital converter box.

Until Comcast decides to invest in upgrades in the area, De Quoin joins the cities of Pinckneyville, Benton and Christopher and the villages of Tamaroa and Buckner in refusing franchise renewal requests from the cable operator.

Reviewing the lineup in Du Quoin shows subscribers confined to receiving the same number of channels most cities had more than 15 years ago.  Not a single HD channel is included.  Broadband customers can choose from two promoted packages, one promising “up to” 15Mbps and the other claiming 20Mbps with the PowerBoost feature.  But few residents actually see those speeds according to one of our readers.

Sid, a lifelong resident of De Quoin, says speeds approaching 7Mbps are more typical, except at night when they drop.

“I don’t think Comcast has changed a thing in southern Illnois in over a decade,” Sid shares.  “The company’s cable TV lineup still thinks it’s 1992 — we are lucky we even have broadband.”

Residents have complained regularly to local officials about Comcast’s performance in the region, especially when they compare the service they receive with what residents in nearby Carbondale, the self-styled “capital of southern Illinois” receive.

“I realize southern Illinois is between nothing and nowhere, with large cities like St. Louis and Evansville whole states away, but considering how many people depend on Comcast to get reasonable reception of local stations pretty far out, they do a good business here,” Sid says.

Sid does not expect many upgrades in the near future, either to his cable or broadband service.

“DOCSIS 3?  What is that?”

Two years ago, when Time Warner proposed to limit consumption of consumer broadband accounts with an Internet Overcharging experiment, Stop the Cap! suggested they should instead upgrade their networks to meet the demands of their Internet-hungry customer base.

With thanks, they have taken our advice.  As DOCSIS 3 upgrades continue to roll across the cable company’s service areas, it is bringing immediate benefits to every Road Runner customer, and the company itself.

Several weeks ago, we shared the story of Time Warner customers in Webster, N.Y.  Time Warner had hopelessly oversold its broadband service in the growing town just northeast of Rochester.  Speeds plummeted to as low as 900kbps most evenings and weekends, and did not return to normal until most customers were back at their day jobs.

As a shared network, cable broadband delivers a limited amount of bandwidth into individual neighborhoods, shared by every customer.  When too many people pile on, speeds plummet.  When this happens, cable companies are supposed to either increase capacity, or more commonly divide a congested area into two or more parts, each served with their own broadband pipe.  In less densely populated towns, or where less net-savvy consumers tend to reside, capacity upgrades may come only once or twice over several years, and speeds are consistently fast day and night.  But where college students predominate, or where new housing developments deliver plenty of new upper-income homeowners more likely to leverage their broadband connections, the tell-tale evening and weekend slowdowns create problems.

A speedtest performed before the upgrade

“A good clue of overcongestion is when download speeds suffer, but upload speeds remain fairly consistent,” shares Prakash Patel, who consults with cable companies on HFC “cable” broadband deployment.  “Typically, if both speeds falter at different times of the day, that is usually a sign of a technical fault on one’s cable connection — not network congestion.”

For Stop the Cap! readers in Webster, the ongoing congestion made Road Runner virtually unusable during the evening and weekends, particularly for higher bandwidth applications like video or downloads.

Several of our readers filed complaints with the cable company and one took his case to the Better Business Bureau, who obtained a sympathetic response from Time Warner — but no immediate solution.  The Bureau accepted that explanation and “administratively closed” the complaint.

As we recommended, customers remained very vocal about the ongoing congestion problems in the town.  We’ve found the old adage, “the squeaky wheel gets the grease,” effective in moving upgrades higher up the list of priorities cable engineers deal with in maintaining their networks.

Original plans to deal with the problem were scheduled for late March, but Time Warner bumped the upgrade forward to this past weekend.  Instead of simply dividing up the town, Time Warner installed DOCSIS 3 technology, which greatly increases the size of the broadband pipeline available to customers.  The upgrade did the trick.

Our reader Tim shares the good news:

“I ran some speed tests Tuesday night and the improvement was very noticeable,” he writes.  “We were able to achieve speeds in the early evening that were previously only possible in the very early morning hours.”

Patel believes cable companies will continue to win a majority in the broadband marketplace using DOCSIS 3, which he considers an affordable and easy-to-deploy upgrade.

The results after the upgrade was completed.

“Not only is DOCSIS 3 relatively inexpensive, it provides plenty of new revenue opportunities for the companies that deploy it,” Patel says.  “It also fits well from an engineering standpoint, because it is an evolutionary update to a successful technology.”

Patel believes DOCSIS 3 and future versions of the cable broadband standard will allow operators to successfully compete, at least in download speeds, with virtually any provider.

“Cable companies can simply bond several channels together and accelerate download speeds,” Patel says.  “Upload speeds are proving to be a bigger issue, as most companies limit them to around 5Mbps.”

At least for now, customers in Webster are happy they are once again getting the service they paid to receive.  The upgrade solved the congestion issue for Time Warner, and the cable company plans to sell higher speed service to interested customers later this spring, earning new revenue to pay for the upgrades.

That’s a win-win everyone can appreciate — all done without an Internet Overcharging scheme.

Time Warner Cable is finally getting around to announcing its DOCSIS 3 “wideband” broadband upgrades in the Triad region of North Carolina.  Already available in Charlotte, Time Warner will offer 30/5Mbps service for $10 more than its Turbo service, and 50/5Mbps will also be available for $99.95 a month.

Customers in High Point will be the first to get access to the service in the spring, while other Triad cities will get the service later this year, according to a news release from the cable company.

The Triad region was part of Time Warner Cable’s 2009 Internet Overcharging experiment, which would have tripled pricing for unlimited broadband service to $150.  An outcry from residents forced the company to shelve its plans.

Triad residents are not impressed by Time Warner’s foot-dragging ever since.

Stop the Cap! reader Gene in Greensboro hasn’t forgotten the cable company promised speed upgrades in 2009 as part of its usage cap experiment.

“Other cities in North Carolina that were not on the list for their ripoff pricing got the upgrades while Greensboro drags at the same speeds we’ve had for several years now,” Gene says. “I think this announcement has more to do with the imminent arrival of AT&T’s U-verse in some areas of the Triad.”

AT&T is slowly expanding its U-verse footprint in central North Carolina.

The state is currently embroiled in a political debate over Time Warner-sponsored legislation that would largely eliminate community-owned broadband competition across North Carolina.

“I would trade Time Warner and AT&T for Wilson’s GreenLight fiber in a second,” Gene says. “Both AT&T and Time Warner are playing a snail’s game of incremental upgrades in this state that makes us also-ran when compared to New York, New Jersey, or Connecticut.”

Time Warner Cable Broadband Pricing, North Carolina