Altice, which operates Cablevision’s Optimum brand cable service in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, has informed regulators of a broad-based “rate event” that will take effect on June 1, 2018. Unless a customer is currently enrolled in a price-locked promotion, these new rates generally affect all customers, except as noted.

Altice told Connecticut regulators the rate changes “reflect the rising cost of programming and our significant investment in the customer experience. Optimum pricing is competitive when compared with other providers, and the Company continues to offer a wide array of products to meet all consumer needs and budgets.”

Altice has told Wall Street a different story, noting it is prioritizing a reduction of the company’s massive debts that came from aggressive acquisitions of other cable systems. Altice also told investors in February Altice USA will distribute a special cash dividend to shareholders of $1.5 billion to celebrate Altice USA’s split from its Netherlands-based parent company Altice NV. The company also told shareholders it was happy with its latest profitable results, showing Altice’s residential business growing to just over 80% of total revenue, up 2.9% in 2017 and 1.8% in the fourth quarter of 2017. Business services is growing in mid single digits.

Altice also plans to continue increasing marketing on its advanced all-in-one-box solution — Altice One, which costs $25 a month.

Changes effective June 1, 2018:

• Set-Top Box: For customers who elect to receive a traditional set-top box from Optimum, the monthly rate will increase from $10.00 to $11.00. Does not apply to existing commercial customers.

• CableCARD: For customers who request a CableCARD from Optimum, the monthly rate will increase from $2.00 to $2.50.

• Sports Surcharge: To partially cover the continually increasing costs that programmers charge Altice to carry sports, the Sports Surcharge will increase from $6.97 to $7.97, for customers subscribing to the Optimum Core or higher tiers. (Broadcast Basic & Economy customers are not charged the Sports Surcharge.)

• Broadcast TV Surcharge: New residential Broadcast Basic and above customers currently pay a $3.99 monthly “Broadcast TV Surcharge” to partially offset the high costs that broadcasters charge. This fee will increase to $4.99 a month and will also be applied to existing Broadcast Basic residential customers and new commercial customers.

• Broadcast Basic Tier: New residential customers currently pay $19.99 per month for Broadcast Basic. To align basic tier rates, this same rate will apply to existing residential Broadcast Basic customers currently paying a monthly rate over $13.95. As an accommodation to existing Basic Tier customers currently paying $13.95/month, the new monthly Basic rate will be $14.95.

• Sports and Entertainment Package: This a la carte subscription will increase from $8.95 to $10.00.

• Residential Service Protection Plan: In addition to the free 24/7 technical support that Optimum offers all customers, the optional Service Protection plan covers any fees assessed for service visits. To align our rates, existing customers who currently pay $4.99/month will pay the same $6.99 fee currently applicable to new customers.

• Restoration Fee: Optimum customers who do not pay their bill within 30 days of the due date, despite multiple reminder notices, are currently subject to a $4.99 per service fee to restore their service. Effective June 1, the minimum service restoration fee will be $10.00 for single and double product customers and $15.00 for triple product customers.

• Installation Fee: Starting June 1, the prices paid by customers for standard and premium installations will increase from $69.00 to $99.00 and $99.00 to $129.00, respectively. Customers are being notified 30 days in advance for each of these changes through bill messages or inserts. In addition, rate information will be available on our website at www.optimum.net.

A utility pole with Charter Communications wiring in upstate New York.

Charter Communications has been caught counting upstate New York homes and businesses as newly served when, in fact, many have had cable service for years.

New York’s largest cable operator is once again under fire over questions about whether it is misled state officials in its claims to be expanding rural broadband service to 145,000 unserved homes and businesses. In many instances, New York regulators found evidence the company was counting residents as “newly passed” by Spectrum cable lines when regulator on-site audits found those customers were already served by Spectrum or another broadband provider.

The Buffalo News reports staff members of the New York Public Service Commission visited multiple properties and took photos and notes finding simple overhead cable replacements or non-existent addresses were counted by Charter as new expansion areas to be counted towards its agreement to expand rural broadband in return for approval of its 2016 acquisition of Time Warner Cable.

The PSC has already repeatedly admonished Charter Communications for failing to keep to its broadband expansion agreements. The regulator has also warned the company faced at least $1 million in fines and franchise revocation proceedings in parts of New York City for allegedly miscounting 12,467 addresses in dense urban areas of New York City that either already had access to Spectrum cable service or should have under New York City’s franchise agreement.

Based on the latest list of invalid addresses rejected by the PSC, thousands are located in rural upstate New York. Charter is the biggest cable operator in every part of New York State except Long Island, and a few New York City boroughs where Altice’s Cablevision is the dominant provider. Some parts of rural New York are served by independent cable operators or co-ops, and 1,726 addresses Charter listed as “newly passed” were declared invalid after the PSC discovered they were already served by Charter/Spectrum or another provider. The agreement required Charter not to count areas where New York State paid taxpayer dollars to subsidize rural broadband expansion from other providers like telephone companies.

If Charter is unable to provide evidence refuting the PSC’s findings by May 9, 2018, the PSC will fine Charter $1 million. The company was required to maintain a $12 million line of credit after its earlier lapses that can be drawn upon by New York State to efficiently collect fines and penalties.

Stop the Cap! filed a recommendation with the PSC in April that it impose new sanctions against Charter if it is once again found deficient in meeting its commitments. Specifically, the group recommended the PSC impose a requirement that Charter further expand its network to reach as many New York homes and businesses reasonably within reach that have recently been assigned to receive satellite internet access. More than 70,000 rural New Yorkers were disappointed to learn they would not receive promised broadband service from a wired broadband provider because no companies bid to serve these potential customers.

“Compelling Charter to broaden its reach by as few as three miles beyond where it stands today could bring a number of upstate New York residents their only practical chance of getting true broadband service,” said Phillip Dampier, Stop the Cap!’s founder and president. “Fines punish bad behavior but don’t bring anyone broadband service. We’d prefer they be required to spend that money and more on helping erase New York’s urban-rural digital divide once and for all. Satellite internet is an unacceptable solution for all but a small number of these broadband-stranded New Yorkers.”

Cuomo

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo chimed in on Wednesday through his press secretary, criticizing Charter’s alleged bad behavior.

“The State approved Spectrum’s acquisition and its ability to operate in New York based on the fulfillment of certain obligations, including providing broadband access to underserved parts of the state and preserving a qualified workforce,” said Dani Lever, press secretary to Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo. “The governor believes it is essential that corporations doing business with the state uphold their commitments, and we will not tolerate abusive corporate practices or a failure to deliver service to the people. Large and powerful companies will be held to the same standard as all other businesses in New York. The Spectrum franchise is not a matter of right, but is a license with legal obligations and if those are not fulfilled, that license should be revoked.”

In response, Charter strongly denies the allegations and claims it not only isn’t guilty of overcounting new rural passings, it is actually delivering rural broadband expansion ahead of schedule.

“Charter is bringing more broadband to more people across New York state,” the company said in a statement. “We exceeded our last build-out commitment by thousands of homes and businesses.  We’ve also raised our speeds to deliver faster broadband statewide. We are in full compliance with our merger order and the New York City franchise.”

The original 2016 merger approval agreement called on Charter to expand its Spectrum cable service (formerly known as Time Warner Cable) to an additional 145,000 New York locations over four years. Charter’s standing with the PSC was quickly called into question when the company broke its commitment to reach the first 36,250 properties no later than May, 2017.

“It should have been clear to Charter its buildout schedule and commitment was in serious trouble by Thanksgiving of 2016 — just months after completing its $56 billion buyout of Time Warner Cable, when it reported it had achieved only 7,265 new service passings so far,” said Dampier. “By the deadline, Charter only managed to reach 15,164 newly served properties, less than half what it promised. Now the company claims it is overachieving its commitments, but is it fudging the numbers?”

John Rhodes, chairman of the PSC, seems to think so.

When the department’s staff went out on road trips to audit some of Charter’s claimed “new passings,” it discovered troubling evidence that “many of these claimed newly completed passings actually consisted of cable and equipment upgrades to existing cable plant. In other words, Charter replaced older cabling and equipment on a pole with newer cabling and equipment, but the location had already been passed by the cable network, oftentimes having been originally passed with cable [service] for years,” according to Rhodes.

The PSC did not surprise Charter with the results of its audits at the last minute either. New York’s PSC notified it had started actively auditing Charter’s claimed passings as early as January, 2017. Each month, staff members sent the results of those audits to Charter, showing exactly what properties appeared not to be in compliance with the approval agreement.

Rhodes

The audit was comprehensive, according to Rhodes:

DPS Staff’s audit process involved field inspections of targeted address locations identified by Charter as completed. Department Staff used GPS and other mapping tools to identify addresses, cross roads, and landmarks in the periphery of the target inspection addresses. When an address was positively identified, DPS Staff made observations at the claimed completed location to determine if cable network (either aerial or underground) was present, and if so, was the cable newer or older vintage, and whether or not cable was already present and passing the location prior to January 2016. Amongst other things, Field Inspectors made visual observations of cabling, electronics, power supplies, connectors, cable shrink tubing and related attachments for overall condition, including signs of wear, corrosion, and discoloration that would associate weathering and age of the outside plant facilities. Department Staff also looked for noticeable recent additions of cable tags, subscriber drops, as well as the attachment conditions of other pole attachers to help determine if there had been any recent physical moves or changes to the facilities. Further, DPS Staff made visual observations of the foliage and vegetation in the periphery of the communications space, looking for signs of recent trimming or other activity that might indicate outside plant work activity.

The final straw may have been Charter’s December, 2017 buildout list, which included 42,889 claimed new passings. PSC staffers audited 6,389 addresses in upstate New York, revealing disturbingly low verified compliance with the expansion agreement. Of those upstate addresses, Rhodes’ report claims 465 audits were unverifiable or undetermined, 1,726 were recommended for disqualification because there was pre-existing cable service at those locations, and another 1,597 addresses were apparently duplicates from previous quarterly Charter buildout lists the company may have attempted to count twice.

Charter’s most recent settlement agreement set a schedule for rural broadband expansion, with deadlines, benchmarks, and substantial fines for missing either:

• 36,771 properties by Dec. 16, 2017;
• 58,417 by May 18, 2018;
• 80,063 by Dec. 16, 2018;
• 101,708 by May 18, 2019;
• 123,354 by Nov. 16, 2019;
• 145,000 by May 18, 2020.

Charter Communications today launched gigabit broadband upgrades across dozens of U.S. cities, including almost all of upstate New York (excluding Buffalo) and large parts of Texas, Ohio, California, and Virginia.

With the latest upgrades, customers in these cities are also getting speed bumps for Spectrum’s Internet Ultra package, which will now offer speeds of 400/20 Mbps. Customers can visit Spectrum.com to review their local speed options. Upgrades to the Ultra tier usually carry no service charges, but moving to gigabit speed will come at a cost — a mandatory $199 installation fee, with a service call required.

Some customers may need to swap out or replace their existing cable modems to take full advantage of 400+ Mbps speeds. A list of modems authorized for use on Spectrum’s network along with the speeds they support can be found here.

In other cities where Charter has already launched gigabit service, customers with Standard 100 Mbps internet plans also received a free upgrade to 200/10 Mbps, but readers report that speed upgrade has not yet taken place in areas launching gigabit service today:

• Arizona: Yuma
• California: Los Angeles, Palm Springs, San Diego, El Centro
• Kentucky: Louisville, Bowling Green, and Paducah
• Massachusetts: Boston (Suburbs)
• Nebraska: Lincoln, Omaha
• New York: Binghamton, Albany, Syracuse, Rochester, Elmira/Corning, Utica, and Watertown
• North Carolina: Greensboro, Wilmington, and Greenville
• Ohio: Dayton, Cincinnati, Youngstown, Lima
• Pennsylvania: Wilkes-Barre and Pittsburgh
• Tennessee: Tri-Cities, Chattanooga, and Knoxville
• Texas: Dallas/Fort Worth, Waco, El Paso, Beaumont/Port Arthur, and Wichita Falls
• Virginia: Roanoke/Lynchburg, Norfolk (Suburbs) and Tri-Cities
• Wisconsin: Milwaukee, Green Bay/Appleton

For most customers, here is Spectrum’s current broadband pricing (new customer promotions may offer significantly lower rates and bundled pricing may differ):

• $64.99 Spectrum Internet Standard 100/10 Mbps (will eventually be upgraded to 200/10 Mbps)
• $54.99 Spectrum Internet Standard 100/10 Mbps with Spectrum TV (will eventually be upgraded to 200/10 Mbps)

• $89.99 Spectrum Internet Ultra (400/20 Mbps)
• $79.99 Spectrum Internet Ultra (400/20 Mbps)

• $124.99 Spectrum Internet Gig (940/35 Mbps)
• $114.99 Spectrum Internet Gig (940/35 Mbps) with Spectrum TV

Golisano

Rochester billionaire and philanthropist Thomas Golisano is seeking expedited regulatory approval from New York’s Public Service Commission to acquire Rochester-based Greenlight Networks, LLC, a fiber to the home network provider for an undisclosed sum.

Greenlight Networks has been slowly overbuilding Charter/Spectrum and Frontier Communications’ service areas in eastern Monroe County since 2012, offering subscribers gigabit internet access. But time may be running short for Greenlight’s competitive broadband speed advantage. Charter Communications is reportedly planning to introduce gigabit service as early as April 25th throughout upstate New York, except for Buffalo.

The urgency of the transaction’s approval is clear in the companies’ filing with state officials requesting an expedited review and approval of the transaction.

“Greenlight’s […] need for working capital and the optimization of capital structure required for long-term success in the competitive telecommunications industry are matters for urgent consideration,” the application states. “Greenlight seeks Commission approval in order to avoid unnecessary delays in the completion of its network expansion projects and in order to secure valuable, committed, outside investors who share Greenlight’s vision and believe in its ability to execute on its plan.”

Greenlight’s success is likely dependent on its ability to rapidly expand its fiber optic network before its biggest competitor, Charter’s Spectrum, capitalizes on its forthcoming ability to match Greenlight’s download speeds. Greenlight receives praise from subscribers lucky enough to live in a neighborhood reached by its network. But residents also report frustration over the slow pace of the company’s fiber network expansion, particularly in suburbs west of the Genesee River that bisects the city of Rochester.

Golisano’s Grand Oaks LLC of Pittsford, N.Y. promises customers the acquisition will not result in any changes in Greenlight’s rates or its terms and conditions.

The petition claims the acquisition is in the public interest because it will offer Greenlight much-needed additional capital to accelerate deployment of its fiber network inside Rochester and beyond. Greenlight’s website suggests the company is considering expansion into the New York State cities of Albany, Binghamton, Buffalo, Ithaca, Syracuse, and the Finger Lakes Region. In Connecticut, the company is considering serving Bridgeport, Danbury, Hartford, New Haven, and Stamford (the corporate home of Frontier Communications). Grand Oak also promises to grow jobs at Greenlight and increase operational efficiency at the company.

Golisano is well-known in Rochester as an entrepreneur, philanthropist, and civic leader. Golisano founded Paychex, a leading national payroll service provider in 1971. After his retirement in 2004, Golisano has been actively involved in local civic causes and advocates for policies promoting improvement in the economy of western New York State.

The application is likely to be approved, but not soon enough to combat Charter Communications’ accelerated broadband upgrades across New York State. By early summer, Spectrum customers across New York State will receive 200 Mbps Standard service, 400 Mbps Ultra service, or 940 Mbps (nearly gigabit) Gigabit service from the cable operator at prices ranging from $65-125 a month. In contrast, Greenlight currently offers customers 100 Mbps for $50, 500 Mbps for $75, or 1,000 Mbps for $100 a month.

Gamiño (Image: Mayoral Photography Office)

New York City’s chief technology officer is fed up with a FCC broadband advisory board that is intentionally stacked with cable and phone company interests and has quit the panel after claiming his recommendations were ignored.

Miguel Gamiño Jr. wrote in his March 29 resignation letter that any further participation on the Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee (BDAC) that doesn’t accept anything except the telecom industry’s agenda was a waste of his time.

“It is clear that despite good faith efforts by both the staff and members involved, the membership structure and meeting format of the BDAC has skewed the drafting of the proposed recommendations towards industry priorities without regard for a true public-private partnership.” Gamiño wrote. “These circumstances give me no choice but to step away from this committee in order to direct the City’s energy and resources to alternative forums that provide more productive opportunities for achieving the kind of cooperative progress in advancing broadband deployment in the public interest.”

He is the second major public official to call it quits on FCC Chairman Ajit Pai’s Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee. In January, San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo stormed off the board claiming it only paid “lip service” to the concept of broadband expansion in the public interest. Liccardo accused the BDAC of being little more than an industry lobbying group being put in charge of shaping America’s future broadband policies.

“I have expressed concerns with other municipal colleagues in multiple meetings and documents that the makeup of the BDAC, with roughly 75 percent of members representing large telecommunications and cable companies or interests aligned with those companies, would result in recommendations unfavorable to localities looking to responsibly manage public rights-of-way to promote public safety, quality of life, and other priorities,” Gamiño added. “This has resulted in the BDAC producing pre-packaged one-size-fits all proposals that industry lobbyists have pushed nationwide rather than working in a cooperative fashion to find creative solutions to dynamic local issues.”

Gamiño noted that his working group of public officials had been effectively sidelined, and there has been no effort to replace Mayor Liccardo after he resigned three months ago. The final recommendations of the BDAC are likely to run contrary to the public interest, warned Gamiño.

“I am concerned that the current draft of the code could lead to municipalities entering into agreements with wireless providers that are counter to the interests of their constituents,” wrote Gamiño. “Most importantly, we do not believe that the recommendations will help close the digital divide. Therefore, we are not able to recommend that a municipality adopt the code without significant legal and financial analysis or for it to be referenced as a ‘model’ for legislatures, the FCC, or other regulatory bodies.”

The suggestion by two public officials that the BDAC effectively used them as ‘window dressing’ to legitimize the wireless industry’s agenda to ease restrictions on antennas and tower siting threatens the legitimacy of the Committee itself.

In Liccardo’s comments regarding his resignation, he also dismissed the BDAC as an industry-stacked, de facto wireless company lobbying group.

The BDAC already threatens to become a political football. In late January, Democratic FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn warned BDAC’s single standard for broadband expansion was unlikely to work in every community.

“As I have said many, many times before, one size does not fit all, and private industry infrastructure investments do not always flow to communities that are most in need,” Clyburn said.