A denial of service attack often directs compromised computers to join in the attack, bringing an enormous amount of simultaneous traffic to a single, targeted user. The result is usually very slow or no Internet service. (Image courtesy: Cisco)

For nearly a month, Verizon FiOS customers in Westborough and Northborough, Mass. have experienced frequent slowdowns and outages of their Internet and telephone service that Verizon now admits have been traced to a denial-of-service attack on a single residential customer in Westborough.

“Someone deliberately flooded that customer with an overwhelming amount of traffic that rendered their Internet service inoperable,” Verizon spokesman Philip G. Santoro told The Telegram. “When that happened, it caused Internet service to periodically slow down for other customers in Westborough,” he wrote. “We are working to restore service to normal as soon as possible. DOS attacks are all too common today among customers of all Internet providers. It’s important to remind Internet users to keep their firewalls operating and to keep their security software current.”

When the newspaper first reached Santoro for comment, he claimed there wwere no widespread outages reported, but angry customers disagreed on the community’s Facebook page and six filed complaints with the state’s Office of Consumer Affairs and Business Regulation.

The outages have been a problem as far back as Feb. 26, growing more frequent in number since March 3. Business customers were also affected.

“It happened around 3 o’clock, every day,” said Allen Falcon, chief executive officer for Cumulus Global, a cloud computing company in Westborough. “Sometimes it was a few minutes, sometimes 45 minutes to an hour.” A few times, the interruptions occurred in the morning, just after 9 a.m., he said.

When the attacks began, they not only affected the company’s Internet connection, but also its business phone service.

Verizon’s first solution was to replace FiOS routers, which proved ineffective.

Customer Steve Winer from Westborough told the newspaper sending Verizon crews out with new equipment was a waste of time and money.

“I am just wondering how much time and money was wasted on this,” he wrote the newspaper in an email. “I know I spent at least a couple of hours on the phone, and others shared similar stories. But, if you add up all the shipped routers and unnecessary service calls, along with the time both of us customers and (Verizon) personnel, I am sure it really adds up, and could have been avoided if someone had simply put two and two together and posted a chronic outage which began in February.”

Last week, Verizon finally identified the specific customer targeted by the cyber-attack and terminated his FiOS account, which also put an end to the service-disrupting attacks.

Some customers are wondering whether Verizon has an effective plan to deal with future cyber attacks.

“It seems FiOS is very vulnerable to these attacks, which not only affects the target’s service, but that of everyone else in town,” wrote Stop the Cap! reader Steve Read, a Northborough resident. “They need a way to quickly isolate these kinds of attacks and keep them from affecting other customers’ service.”

Customers affected by the outages can contact Verizon FiOS customer service and request credit for the outages.

Southern California Time Warner Cable customers affected by a technical fault that interrupted coverage of the Super Bowl over the cable system are receiving $5 Target gift cards with a letter of apology for the inconvenience:

We strive to achieve the best entertainment experience for our customers, but on Super Bowl Sunday we failed to live up to our standards.

Some of our customers experienced an unfortunate service interruption during the game. There’s no way to undo this inconvenience, but we want you to know how sorry we are.

Please accept this $5 Target GiftCard to thank you for being a valued Time Warner Cable customer. And again, we are sorry.

If you plan to spend the gift card, here is a tip for rational living: When shopping at Target, pay in cash.

Time Warner Cable sends $5 Target gift cards to customers in Southern California.

Time Warner Cable will provide a free pay-per-view movie or a $5 gift card to Los Angeles-area customers after the cable company lost the Standard Definition signal of Fox affiliate KTTV for about an hour during the Super Bowl on Sunday.

KTTV’s signal was lost just before halftime in and around Los Angeles County from Hacienda Heights and Hancock Park all the way to Santa Monica, as well in parts of Ventura County. Blank screens prompted a deluge of complaint calls to Time Warner Cable’s customer service line, many met with repeated busy signals.

“I’d rather have cable in North Korea than Time Warner Cable,” tweeted Paige Graham. “Time Warner Cable: Your customer service is worse than Denver’s defense,” added Alex Stein.

Although analog cable customers were forced to watch a Spanish language channel’s coverage of the game, those viewing KTTV’s HD signal on Time Warner Cable were unaffected by the disruption.

For the frustration, Time Warner Cable is offering what they call “a gift of appreciation.”

“Although most of our customers didn’t experience an interruption, we want to express our sincere apologies to all Time Warner Cable TV customers in the Los Angeles area,” said Deborah Picciolo, senior vice president of operations at Time Warner Cable. “Digital TV customers will receive a credit for the cost of an On Demand movie once purchased, and analog customers will receive a $5 gift card. These will be provided automatically; no customer action is necessary.”

Customers should contact customer service if their free pay-per-view movie credit doesn’t appear on a future bill or if the gift card never arrives.

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/KTLA Los Angeles Time Warner Cable Resolves Service Outage 2-2-14.flv[/flv]

KTLA in Los Angeles covered Super Bowl parties in Southern California and frustrated Time Warner Cable subscribers that lost the game for about an hour. (2:22)

Time Warner Cable’s summer was “horrible,” to quote one analyst, after three percent of customers left over programming disputes and increasing prices for broadband and telephone service, with more likely to follow as price promotions expire and rates increase further.

Cable analysts were shocked Time Warner Cable lost 308,000 customers in the last three months, most leaving over interruptions of CBS and Showtime over a contract dispute. But customers were also ready to leave over increasing modem rental fees, rate increases, and the company’s growing pullback on promotional pricing. Time Warner Cable’s poor results have ironically caused its stock price to increase this morning, but only because investors suspect a shareholder value-boosting merger with Charter Communications could come within months.

“Just horrible,” MoffetNathanson analyst Craig Moffett wrote in a note to investor clients this morning. “The CBS dispute apparently took a much larger toll than anyone would have imagined, and this colored all the results.”

Sources have told Reuters that cable billionaire John Malone has approached Time Warner Cable about a full takeover by Charter Communications, but has been rebuffed by Britt so far. But with Britt exiting and Time Warner Cable’s underperformance, shareholder pressure for a deal with Charter will only increase.

“This enhances Malone’s appeal to Time Warner Cable shareholders that they would be better off with another management team,” Brean Capital analyst Todd Mitchell told Reuters.

When promotional prices end, a growing percentage of TWC customers drop services or take their business elsewhere.

The subscriber losses pushed profits down 34 percent at the cable company, to $532 million. The triple play tragedy saw subscriber losses for all the company’s residential services. At a time when other cable companies cannot process High Speed Internet sign ups fast enough, at least 24,000 Time Warner Cable broadband customers left over rate hikes and equipment fees. Analysts had expected the company to pick up more than 46,000 broadband customers during the last three months, not lose them. The company’s phone service is also in decline. Only rate increases and customers upgrading to higher speed tiers delivered a slight revenue boost.

Outgoing CEO Glenn Britt set the stage for the current forced retreat on its revenue forecast for the year:

• Time Warner Cable executives made the decision at the end of 2012 to stop heavily discounting service and cut back on promotions. Their theory was the company would attract a larger base of stable customers willing to pay non-promotional rates and tolerate rate increases;
• Executives announced as Time Warner’s phone service was brought “in-house,” the company would stop aggressively pricing triple play bundles that included phone service. That turned out to be a bad decision for growth because customers, already prone to landline cord-cutting, downgraded their bundle or left when promotions expired and ditched the phone line;
• A year of broadband price increases and the introduction of a modem rental fee rubbed customers the wrong way. “We have raised prices recently in the form of modem rental fees, but it’s really just broadband price increase,” again admitted Britt this morning. Future rate increases on modem rentals will give broadband customers another push to shop around for a better deal. At least 24,000 did that over the summer and left, mostly for AT&T U-verse in the midwest and Verizon FiOS in the east.

The lengthy dispute between Time Warner and CBS did the most damage and not just to customers directly affected by channel losses. A major increase in call volumes from alienated customers overwhelmed national call centers, creating long hold times for everyone calling in.

Time Warner expects 40 percent of the cable company’s service area will be overlapped by major competitors AT&T U-verse (now 27%) and Verizon FiOS (now 13%). That represents one million more homes than last year.

Bye Bye: Time Warner Cable lost residential customers for all of its services during the third quarter.

Incoming CEO Robert Marcus said he was dissatisfied with subscriber results from current promotions and rates. New Time Warner Cable customers, Marcus noted, are paying higher prices for fewer or less robust services as part of current promotional packages. Although that has driven a “dramatic improvement in recurring revenue” among customers actually signing up, many choose the lower-priced competition instead.

Marcus also noted customers are taking fewer services and are resistant to upgrading to double or triple play packages, reducing the potential average revenue per customer (ARPU).

“To a great extent, these are expected outcomes of our pricing and packaging strategy and the trade-off between ARPU and volume, but I’m confident we can do better on volume without giving up the ARPU benefits we’ve been achieving,” Marcus told analysts on a morning conference call.

Instead of getting more aggressive on pricing, the company plans to trot out free gifts and pitch discounted slow speed Internet to attract price-resistant DSL customers.

“Next week, we’ll launch our holiday offer, which includes a free Samsung tablet loaded with all of our apps, including TWC TV, with the purchase of higher-end packages,” Marcus said. “I think this will generate lots of interest and really highlight TWC TV and the value it adds to our service offerings.”

Marcus called it inconceivable and unacceptable that at least 4.5 million people are still subscribed to telephone company DSL in Time Warner Cable service areas. The company plans an advertising blitz to steal customers away from companies like AT&T, Verizon, Frontier, CenturyLink, Windstream and FairPoint.

At the center of that effort is the recently announced 2/1Mbps Lite package, which will sell at the everyday price of $14.95 a month. Marcus wants at least 500,000 DSL customers switched to Time Warner over the next 18 months.

“Over time, as these customers’ speed and capacity needs increase, we’ll be well positioned to sell them higher-end product,” Marcus said.

Or they will switch back to the phone company if Time Warner increases the price.

(Image: DownDetector)

A major outage caused by a failing fiber optic switch owned by Level 3 Communications left millions of cable subscribers along the eastern seaboard without Internet access Saturday.

The outage affected Cablevision and Time Warner Cable customers from Albany, N.Y. eastward to Long Island and north into Maine.

Some cable operators did a better job dealing with Level 3’s troubled equipment than others.

A Cablevision spokesperson indicated technicians discovered the problem, routed around it, and restored service about an hour later.

Time Warner Cable apparently waited for Level 3 to repair or replace the switch, leaving their broadband customers offline for most of Saturday morning.

The switch failure did not just affect Internet Service Providers. Some content distribution networks and regional servers for major websites including Facebook and Twitter also had problems.

Although the outage was too brief for Cablevision customers to qualify for a service credit, affected Time Warner Cable customers can use the company’s online chat platform or call to request a one day broadband service credit for the interruption.