Time Warner Cable admitted this morning extracting more revenue from existing customers was more important than attracting new ones, and long time subscribers responded by canceling service in above average numbers.

In a conference call largely hosted by incoming CEO Robert Marcus, a number of Wall Street analysts listened to Marcus’ vision for Time Warner under his forthcoming leadership. Marcus offered competing, potentially incompatible visions in his defense of a lackluster quarter: charge existing customers higher prices for service to boost average revenue per subscriber (ARPU) while also improving the customer-company relationship.

For most of 2013, Time Warner has been aggressively moving away from heavily discounted promotional offers to attract customers. Both outgoing CEO Glenn Britt and Marcus have repeatedly stressed heavy discounting of service during the past two years is now over, and the company is looking forward to resetting prices higher when the promotions end later this year.

It is part of the company’s plan to “drive better performance in the residential business.” An unfortunate side effect is that the company continues to lose video and phone customers and its broadband service growth has been so slow, one analyst called it “anemic.” The company’s quarterly results show Time Warner added only 8,000 new broadband customers in the last three months. The company still earned $1.42 billion from broadband sales alone over the last three months, mostly because of rising broadband bills.

Courtesy: Jacobson

Offsetting that growth, TWC lost 191,000 residential video subscribers, leaving it with about 11.9 million video customers. At least 56,000 customers also pulled the plug on Time Warner Cable telephone service.

“As we discussed before, this [new pricing] approach represents a conscious decision to pursue subscribers with higher ARPU, higher profit and lower churn even if that means fewer connects,” said Marcus as he defended the results. “So it’s not a surprise that as in the first quarter of 2013, subscriber net adds were down in the second quarter on a year-over-year basis.”

As customers deal with increasing prices for cable television and broadband service and the irritation of modem rental fees, many are cutting back on their packages to keep their bill stable.

Marcus admitted customer sign ups of triple play — phone, broadband, and cable TV service — were way down in the second quarter and a lot fewer single and double-play customers were convinced to upgrade. The company’s promotional offers have come with a higher price and slower broadband service, often only 3Mbps.

In a number of markets, especially in the midwest, customers are shopping around for other providers. They are finding AT&T U-verse to be a formidable competitor.

“Throughout the quarter, U-verse was pretty aggressive with a beacon price of $79 for their triple play and $49 for their double play,” said Marcus. “I would characterize those as aggressive promotional prices, and they had an impact. I would say that the impact was more pronounced as the quarter wore on. We’ve now responded to that in the market, and I expect that our relative performance should improve there.”

But for much of the rest of the country where competition is less robust, Time Warner intends to continue to hold the line on pricing and resist discounting even if it means subscribers threaten to cancel.

Time Warner Cable has gotten itself ready for an onslaught of unhappy customers, assigning nearly 1,000 employees to staff four national customer retention centers dedicated to trying to persuade customers not to leave. But these specially trained representatives have a dual mission — keep customers with Time Warner Cable, but don’t give away the store doing so.

Stock buybacks and shareholder dividends were a major priority for Time Warner Cable’s cash on hand.

“Not only are our reps saving more customers, they are also preserving more ARPU among the customers they save,” said Marcus. “As promotional roll-offs peak in the second half of 2013, we expect that our new retention capabilities will drive better revenue growth.”

In the broadband market, Time Warner changed little in the second quarter except to raise prices on service and equipment. Marcus could only point to the addition of 3,500 new Wi-Fi hotspots, mostly in New York City, as its signature achievement over the past three months.

On the residential side, broadband revenues were up 12.5%, but most of that growth came from a combination of the modem lease fee, an increase in the number of 30/5 and 50/5Mbps customers and a successful Turbo promotion.

Results for video and voice were considerably worse. Revenues were down about 4%.

But the company managed to report its highest ARPU ever, with customers now paying an average of more than $105 a month for Time Warner service. Most of that increase came from rising broadband prices.

Time Warner Cable has also been preoccupied with spending excess cash on hand to buy back its own stock, which creates shareholder value. Time Warner expects to spend at least $2.5 billion on stock buybacks this year. Shareholders also received $829 million in dividends (113% of Time Warner’s free cash flow).

“We repurchased 6.6 million shares for $638 million, and through July, we have repurchased approximately 83 million shares at an average cost of around $78.50 per share since we began the program in November of 2010,” reported chief financial officer Arthur T. Minson.

Time Warner Cable’s Board of Directors recently approved increasing spending up to $4 billion on stock buybacks.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WRGB Albany TWC Modem Fee 7-31-13.flv[/flv]

WRGB in Albany reports Time Warner Cable customers are angry about another price hike on the company’s modem lease fee effective Aug. 18. WRGB recommends customers buy their own modems to avoid the fee. Time Warner Cable’s Glenn Britt admitted earlier the fee is really just a hidden rate increase. (3 minutes)

Time Warner Cable is increasing the cost of renting your cable modem. In the third increase in ten months, using the company-provided cable modem will now cost subscribers $5.99 a month. But the costs don’t stop there. Last week, Time Warner announced it was raising the price of its broadband service an average of $3 a month. Taken together, the cost of standalone 15/1Mbps broadband with a leased modem will now cost $61 a month.

SB6141 is a DOCSIS 3 modem

Time Warner introduced its $3.95 monthly modem rental fee last fall. In June, the company announced it was raising the price of the modem rental to $4.99 a month for new customers,  and has now decided customers can afford to pay more — $6 a month for equipment that costs the cable company, on average, less than $50 per unit according to Wall Street analysts.

CEO Glenn Britt remarked earlier this year that customers accepted the modem rental fee with few complaints. Britt foreshadowed the modem rental fee increase saying the company had significant room to boost prices, noting Comcast charges $7 a month for its modem.

Customers can escape modem rental fees altogether by purchasing their own equipment. At Time Warner’s new prices, most customers will recoup the cost of the equipment within one year. Unfortunately, as news of the modem rental fee increase made its way to retailers and eBay resellers, prices have soared for equipment on Time Warner Cable’s approved modem list.

The popular Motorola SB6141, which sold for $78 two weeks ago, has now shot up to $99.99 in anticipation of a new wave of buyers. Prices on Newegg have also increased from $78 to $99.99 as of this morning. Best Buy has also boosted prices to $99.99. Amazon still lists this white version of the SB6141 this afternoon for $87, but is expected to quickly sell out.

Based on the last two waves of price increases, if thinking about buying your own modem the time to buy is right now because major retailers are likely to temporarily sell out and eBay resellers will begin a wave of price increases in response to demand.

Stop the Cap! top rates the Motorola SB6141 among the modems on the approved list. It is DOCSIS 3 capable, which means it will support faster Internet speeds. But also be aware that if you upgrade to a DOCSIS 3 modem, Time Warner’s Speedboost technology, which delivers a few seconds of additional speed at the start of a download, will no longer work. Speedboost is gradually being phased out by most cable operators so we still think buying a DOCSIS 3 modem makes the most sense over the long term.

Cablevision will officially boost its broadband speed packages next Monday in a move to stay competitive with Verizon FiOS, which has been highly successful getting people to upgrade to 50/25Mbps service for just $10 more than customers pay for Verizon’s standard tier (15/5Mbps).

Broadband Reports obtained an internal memo outlining the new speeds, confirming the details we had been tipped off about by Cablevision employees last month. Cablevision customers on Long Island tell Stop the Cap! the speed upgrades have already been launched in their area. Customers can find out if they have the upgrade by briefly unplugging their cable modem’s power cord, allowing the modem to reset.

Cablevision speeds are far better than those offered by Time Warner Cable, which serves much of the rest of New York City, especially for uploads. Time Warner tops out at 5Mbps for upstream speeds in the northeast. Customers with older equipment will need a DOCSIS 3 modem to get the Ultra-level speeds.

Legacy Boost/Boost Plus customers will see a massive speed hike to 101/35Mbps at no extra charge if the memo is correct. Newer customers signed up for Boost will be upgraded to 50/25Mbps service. We have yet to confirm whether these upgrades have actually occurred yet.

Time Warner’s “Because We Can” One-Time Charge applies to new customers signing up for certain promotions.

Time Warner Cable has increased the monthly rental fee for its leased cable modem from $3.95 a month to $4.99 a month and has introduced a “one-time charge” of $19.99 applicable to certain Internet service new customer promotions.

CEO Glenn Britt earlier commented that Time Warner Cable had room to grow its modem lease fee:

“It was received with a minimum of push-back and we’re still actually charging less than Comcast ($7/month), so I think there is room to charge more going forward. People can buy their own if they want and a small percentage of customers have chosen to do that which is fine with us.”

For now, the increase only applies to new customers, but Stop the Cap! expects it will also eventually apply to current customers as part of the next round of rate increases. The Internet Modem with Free Home Wi-Fi, available to customers ordering 30/5 or 50/5Mbps service costs $14.99 a month.

Time Warner Cable has pulled back on customer promotions since the beginning of the year and has begun shifting its pricing for its most profitable service — broadband, to capture price-sensitive customers who have been unable to previously afford Internet-only service from the company.

Time Warner has introduced a new “Lite” tier offering 1Mbps service for $20 a month and has made the 3Mbps “Basic” service the staple of many of its bundled promotions.

Stop the Cap! strongly encourages Time Warner Cable customers to buy their own cable modems and avoid the rental fees. Customers can also bypass the rental fee by signing up for Earthlink service through Time Warner Cable.

Our top modem choice remains the Motorola SB6141, which can be found at the “Buy It Now” price on eBay as low as $77.99 with free shipping and no upfront sales tax for most buyers. This model does not include Wi-Fi, but most people don’t need it — a router generally provides Wi-Fi connectivity on its own.

We highly recommend purchasing DOCSIS 3-ready modems to avoid obsolescence issues.

The most recent list of “acceptable” modems that can be activated with your Time Warner Cable broadband service are:

Comcast’s eMTA backup battery. (Image: David Trebacz)

Comcast digital phone customers will no longer receive battery backup and monitoring service free of charge, according to a notification mailed to customers with their bills:

“Effective February 26, 2013, a battery backup and battery monitoring will no longer be provided free of charge. For existing XFINITY Voice customers with backup batteries, Comcast will continue to monitor your current battery at no charge; however, replacement batteries and their monitoring will no longer be provided free of charge. Backup batteries (which include monitoring) will be available for purchase.  Please call 1-888-972-1261 for pricing and details. XFINITY Voice uses the electrical power in your home. If you do not have a battery backup, you will not be able to use this service, including the ability to make emergency 911 calls, during an electrical power outage.”

Comcast customers leasing eMTA modems (which supply the cable company’s phone service) report that before the change batteries were included in the box. But not anymore, even though the packaging and accompanying literature still show the battery is included.

The lithium-ion battery keeps Comcast’s phone service working during power outages, but like other rechargeable batteries, it does eventually wear out. Now customers pay to replace them, even though the modem itself is leased to the customer.

Scott, a Comcast customer in Michigan, told Comcast he was unhappy with what seems like a petty cutback:

“I’m really miffed that they would now suddenly require customers to purchase a battery for a leased device,” Scott said.