Following Comcast’s lead, Time Warner Cable will begin shrinking western New York analog customers’ channel lineups to accommodate additional HD channels.  While in most cases customers with set top boxes or digital-ready televisions will be able to continue watching (the latter by rescanning the channels on their televisions), those with older televisions without a box are out of luck.

Customers will not receive a corresponding rate decrease based on the lost channels from their lineups.  Here is a rundown of those networks and customers affected:

Buffalo, New York Channel Lineup Changes (effective April 15)

Western New York Suburban-areas

• Style from Broadcast Basic Ch 98 to Digital Basic Ch 176 (digital equipment and a subscription to Digital Basic Cable will be required to view Style)
• TruTV Ch 35 to Ch 70 (digital box required)
• Oxygen Ch 68 to Ch 66 (digital box required)
• YES Ch 70 to Ch 65
• Versus Ch 71 to Ch 35
• Hallmark Ch 69 to Ch 63

City of Buffalo

• Style from Standard Cable Ch 65 to Digital Basic Ch 176 (digital equipment and a subscription to Digital Basic Cable will be required to view Style)
• TruTV Ch 48 to Ch 70 (digital box required)
• Oxygen will remain on Ch 66 (digital box required)
• YES Ch 70 to Ch 65
• Versus from Ch 71 to Ch 48

Dunkirk

• Style from Standard Cable Ch 96 to Digital Basic Ch 176 (digital equipment and a subscription to Digital Basic Cable will be required to view Style)
• TruTV Ch 31 to Ch 70 (digital box required)
• Oxygen Ch 62 to Ch 71 (digital box required)
• Versus Ch 71 to Ch 62
• Shop NBC from Ch 27 to Ch 73 (digital box required)
• SyFy Ch 69 to Ch 31

Westfield

• Style from Broadcast Basic Cable Ch 98 to  Digital Basic Ch 176 (digital equipment and a subscription to Digital Basic Cable will be required to view Style)
• TruTV Ch 35 to Ch 70 (digital box required)
• Oxygen Ch 66 to Ch 71 (digital box required)
• Shop NBC Ch 70 to Ch 73 (digital box required)
• MSG Ch 67 to Ch 35

Olean/Olean North/Wellsville

• Style from Standard Cable Ch 71 to Digital Basic Ch 176 (digital equipment and a subscription to Digital Basic Cable will be required to view Style)
• TruTV Ch 64 to Ch 70 (digital box required)
• Oxygen Ch 57 to Ch 66 (digital box required)
• YES Ch 70 to Ch 64
• Versus Ch 66 to Ch 57
• Shop NBC Ch 31 to Ch 73 (digital box required)
• Fox News Channel Ch 68 to Ch 31

Rochester, New York Channel Lineup Changes (unless otherwise noted, effective April 15)

Metropolitan Rochester Area

• National Geographic Wild will replace FOX Reality on Ch 453 and National Geographic Wild HD launches on Ch 1051 (Effective March 29)
• Speed Channel, Ch 210 will be moved from Digital Basic to CPST (standard cable). Speed will remain available in digital format only (Effective April 1)
• Speed Channel HD, Ch 1065, be moved from Digital Basic to CPST (standard cable). Speed will remain available in digital format only (Effective April 1)
• Oxygen will move from Ch 70 to Ch 75 (digital format only)
• Photoshow TV located on Chs 821 and 822 will no longer be available.
• Vutopia will be added to Ch 968
• Vutopia HD will be added to Ch 1149

Livingston/Southern Monroe County

• All of the above changes, plus:
• Versus will move from Channel 75 to Channel 51
• Shop NBC will be removed from Channel 7 and will remain on Channel 66

Genesee/Wyoming and Orleans/Niagara Counties

• All of the above changes, plus:
• Versus will move from Channel 75 to Channel 51

Erie County

• All of the above changes, plus:
• Versus will move from Channel 75 to Channel 51
• Shop NBC will be removed from Channel 20 and will remain on Channel 66

Wayne, Ontario, Seneca and Cayuga Counties

• All of the above changes, plus:
• Versus will move from Channel 75 to Channel 55

Yates/ Ontario and Steuben/Schuyler Counties

• All of the above changes, excluding Vutopia, plus:
• Versus will move from Channel 75 to Channel 55

The Federal Communications Commission is catching on to a long-known telecommunications industry secret — always provide top quality, showcase service in areas where the movers and shakers of power and politics can make your life easy or hard.  Early results from the Broadband.gov national speed test project confirm this is still the case.  After a few weeks of testing, the FCC reports America’s best broadband speeds are available in and near two cities – Washington, DC and New York, NY.

In Virginia and Maryland, where most of DC’s workers-by-day commute home to at night, average download speeds topped out at 11-13Mbps.  Upstream speeds were, on average, best in the nation at around 3.6-4.3Mbps.  In New York and Massachusetts, where Verizon, Comcast, and Time Warner Cable predominate, average downstream speed was 11.6-13.6Mbps, but upstream speed in the northeast suffered more thanks to upstate New York and western Massachusetts dragging the numbers down.

Several critics have joined Stop the Cap!‘s concern that the two speed tests, provided by Ookla and M-Lab, are providing widely different results.  The FCC plans to expand the available speed test options shortly to attempt to get a wider sampling of broadband speeds.

Despite this, Jordan Usdan, an attorney-advisor to the Broadband Task Force, claims the group is happy with the results:

87% of test takers are home users, which is the FCC’s target audience with this application. Additionally, a clear trend is visible across business sizes, high bandwidth connectivity for community institutions, and lower bandwidth for mobile connections. Again, these results are non-scientific extrapolations from the Beta version of the Consumer Broadband test. Additionally, about 98% of user submitted addresses are geo-coding correctly, which is a very good rate.

Thus far, Californians have taken the most speed tests, but their results are less impressive than those enjoyed on the Atlantic seaboard — average downstream speeds in the state are 10.1 to 11.5Mbps; upstream speeds are 2.1 to 2.6Mbps.

Where are the worst speeds?  In the Northern Plains states, where rural populations predominate.  Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana delivered the worst combined upload/download speed results.  But speeds are only marginally better in the midwest and southeast — with lots of low scores in the Carolinas, Tennessee, and Mississippi.  Customers in northern New England stuck with FairPoint Communications also have little to celebrate.

American Salt Company's salt pile in Hampton Corners, just south of Rochester, N.Y.

Faithful Stop the Cap! reader Lance dropped us a note this afternoon alerting us that Syracuse is the latest Time Warner Cable city getting the benefits of increased speed from Time Warner Cable’s DOCSIS 3 Wideband upgrade.

While those in the Salt City can now sign up for 50Mbps broadband service, Time Warner Cable tells residents of the Flower City to go pound salt — there are no upgrades for you!

Why?

Thank Frontier Communications anemic (read that barely-existent) competition against Time Warner Cable in Rochester.  While the rest of upstate New York is being wired for fiber-to-the-home service from Verizon, Frontier Communications is relying on decade-old DSL service… indefinitely.  For residents like myself, that topped out at a whopping 3.1Mbps. That fails the FCC’s newly-proposed minimum speed to even be considered “broadband.”

Buffalo has been Wideband ready since early this month, and New York City launched service last year.

The Rochester Democrat & Chronicle must have noticed nearby cities were getting speed increases, but Rochester was not, so they contacted Time Warner Cable to find out why:

While those DOCSIS 3.0 products — called Wideband and Road Runner Extreme — are being made available in Buffalo and Syracuse, the company “has just begun its national launch of this product across its entire footprint, but with no additional locations determined at this time,” said spokesman Jeff Unaitis.

The company, however, does plan to roll out a wireless broadband product for the Rochester market before the end of 2010, he said.

(*) - As long as you don't live in Rochester, N.Y.

That’s the nice way of saying Rochester isn’t getting the speed increases because there is no competitive reason to provide it.  With Rochester left off the upgrade list, and no real incentive to run to Frontier (which can’t beat Road Runner’s existing speeds), this community falls behind the rest of the state in broadband speed.

To think last April Time Warner Cable was promising dramatically upgraded service, if the community agreed to accept their Internet Overcharging usage-based billing scheme.  Apparently no other upstate city was required to commit to ripoff pricing, and speed upgrades came anyway.  The fact Rochester is bypassed this year proves our contention their pricing experiment came to Rochester only because they faced no real competitive threat from Frontier then, and they still do not today.

As for the wireless product coming to Rochester, that will come courtesy of rebranded Clearwire service, which has had very mixed reviews.  Time Warner Cable and Comcast are both major investors in Clearwire, and are using their service to provide a wireless add-on.  It won’t come cheap, however, if North Carolina’s pricing also applies here:

• Road Runner Mobile 4G National Elite gives unlimited access to both Time Warner Cable’s 4G Mobile Network and a national 3G network (Sprint, presumably), for use when traveling.
  o $79.95 per month for Road Runner Standard or Turbo customers.
• Road Runner Mobile 4G Elite gives customers unlimited access to the Time Warner Cable 4G Mobile Network.
  o $49.95 per month for Road Runner Standard or Turbo customers.
• Road Runner Mobile 4G Choice gives light users 2GB of service on the Time Warner Cable 4G network each month.
  o Available for $39.95 per month to customers of at least one other Time Warner Cable service.  Additional $5 off if you have a  bundled service package.

As for Wideband pricing, Syracuse residents should expect to pay:

• 30/5Mbps: $25 more than standard Road Runner service;
• 50/5Mbps: $99 per month, but ask about promotional pricing, which may be available.

In Syracuse, Road Runner speed now matches Verizon FiOS on the downstream side, although Verizon can deliver better upload speed at 20Mbps.  Formerly, Road Runner maxed out at 15Mbps in central New York.

About 30 percent of the central New York division of Time Warner Cable is now Wideband-ready, including the entire city of Syracuse.  By October, the company expects to have the faster service available in 70 percent of the central New York area.

Although residents of Rochester will have to wait, other cities in upstate and downstate New York are now getting Time Warner Cable’s Wideband broadband service, which provides faster upstream and downstream speeds thanks to DOCSIS 3 service upgrades.

Time Warner in Buffalo yesterday signed its first Wideband customer, according to Broadband Reports.

The Hudson Valley will be the next:

• Walden Available March 30, 2010
• Wurstsboro Available March 30, 2010
• Rhinebeck/Saugerties Available March 30, 2010
• Poughkeepsie Available March 30, 2010
• Port Ewen/Kingston Available March 30, 2010
• Liberty/Monticello Available March 30, 2010

Time Warner Cable is deploying Wideband first in communities where they face competition from Verizon FiOS or AT&T U-verse.  Communities like Rochester, which face only token competition from slower-speed DSL service, are pushed way back on the upgrade list.

Customers in Albany, Buffalo and Syracuse who live near, but not in a FiOS-upgraded community, will also benefit from the DOCSIS 3 upgraded-Wideband service.

Two types of Wideband service are commonly available according to BR:

• 30 Mbps downstream 5 Mbps upstream tier that costs $25 over Time Warner Cable’s standard Road Runner plan (which can vary in price and speed by market depending on competition).
• 50 Mbps downstream 5 Mbps upstream tier for $99 a month.

A major service outage impacting Road Runner and Digital Phone service from Time Warner Cable began early this morning is ongoing.  Customers contacting Time Warner Cable in Maine, New York, and western Massachusetts are being told there is a service outage ongoing with both services, resulting in no dial tone and slow/no Internet service.

Presumably, there is a problem at the Regional Operations Center in Syracuse.

There is no estimated time for service restoration.

Cable television service is not affected.

[Update 2:00pm EST — Time Warner Cable blamed the outage on a defective router, which we heard was in the Binghamton area.  Service was “restored” at 9:45am although we’ve noticed that meant they shifted traffic onto other regional networks and that was still causing some page loading problems until late in the morning.

The outage was acknowledged on Time Warner Cable’s customer service lines in New York, Massachusetts, and Maine.  Rochester had the first recorded message up very early this morning, with the others coming by 8:45am.]

[Update 4:36pm EST — Customers impacted by the outage can obtain one day of Road Runner service credit, but only if you call or write to ask.  You can use the online customer form on Time Warner Cable’s website for your area or call your local customer service number.  The outage began around 5:20am this morning.]