Bright House Networks first boosted Internet speeds in January and is now back with a price boost.

The cable provider’s Turbo High Speed Internet increased earlier this year from 20 to 30Mbps for downloads. Its Lightning tier went up even more — from 40 to 60Mbps. Even Business Class customers saw speed increases to 70Mbps. But now prices are up as well — as much as $5 a month more for “upgraded broadband services,” a higher cable modem rental fee, and $3 more for television packages:

• Standard Cable TV service is up $3, from $65 to $68 a month
• Late fees are increasing by an extra $0.50;
• The cable modem rental fee that used to be $2 a month has increased an additional $1.50 — now $3.50 per month.

Price increases will not affect customers on promotional offers or certain bundled service packages combining multiple services.

The fee that bugs many customers the most is the company’s modem rental fee, which applies regardless of the age of your equipment.

“I told the customer service rep that I’ve had this modem for a couple of years and it’s not like altered or improved,” Pete Dooley of Satellite Beach, Fla. told Florida Today. “She said ‘You know the economy is today. They just needed more money.’ I guess you’re just supposed to casually accept it.”

The rest of the rate increases were attributed to the cost of cable television programming.

Jeff Kagan, a cable industry analyst told the online news service cable television rates have roughly doubled over the last decade.

Esteves

Time Warner Cable is spending less to maintain and improve services for residential customers even as broadband usage grew 40-50 percent, redirecting spending on its business services division instead.

Irene Esteves, chief financial officer of Time Warner Cable, told attendees at Morgan Stanley’s Technology, Media & Telecom Conference that the growth in the company’s capital spending is associated with serving business, not residential customers.

Esteves reported that spending on residential services was actually down slightly in the last year. The business services division used its increased capital to wire 100,000 office buildings and provisioned 1,900 cell towers with backhaul service last year.

But despite decreasing costs, Time Warner Cable expects to continue increasing broadband prices, primarily because it can.

“What we have found is […] as customers use it more, value it more, we can then price it more,” said Esteves. “And we think that’s a terrific dynamic for the market for quite a bit of time.”

Powering usage growth more than anything else is online video.

“If we look at peak volume, which is really what drives our capacity planning, 66% of that increase comes from streaming video,” notes Esteves. “Again, the more they use it, the more they love it, the more important we become to them as a service provider. So we’re continuing to watch that usage pattern and cheering them on.”

For traditional television viewing, Time Warner’s march to digital will also carry on, but it will happen slowly.

Time Warner Cable has chosen a gradual transition to IP video for cable television service. Subscribers can expect about a dozen channels per year to be removed from analog service until the cable system offers a completely digital television package. In Maine and New York City, that digital transition is already complete.

“We’re taking a more measured approach over a 5-year time period,” said Esteves. “We’re taking [away] analog channels in the 10 to 12 per year kind of measure, which is less disruptive to our customers and less capital-intensive.”

That kind of transition, coupled with annual rate increases, could potentially alienate customers, but Time Warner has retrained its retention specialists to assuage customers headed for the door.

“With the increasing promotional activity in the marketplace, we have more and more of our customers on promotion and it’s imperative that when the [promotion expires], we’re being very thoughtful about who rolls off to what, when,” said Esteves. “We’re training specialists to talk to customers, listen to them, find out the reasons for potentially leaving and recapturing those.”

But the industry is also under pressure from Wall Street to cut promotional activity and stop discounting service excessively, because it gets customers used to a lower price.

“If you think about the promotional prices in the marketplace, that really drives people to price shop and that just increases the transactions and the turmoil in the industry, which increases everyone’s cost and reduces everyone’s profitability,” Esteves said. “So the real conundrum for the entire industry is how do we each build on our retention rather than build on the promotional side in order to keep our customers and become more profitable.”

Time Warner Cable subscribers in Wisconsin are facing the third rate increase since October 2012.

The cable operator has announced a $3/month rate hike for most television packages — a four percent increase for those with the popular digital variety package.

Time Warner blamed increasing programming costs in a notice attached to this month’s cable bills. The company defended the increase, stating the rate rise was half of what it could have been if the cable company tried to recoup all the programming costs incurred over the last year.

Customers facing higher cable bills and still paying regular prices should consider our advice on winning a lower rate from the company. With just 10 minutes, our readers are saving $20-50 a month on Time Warner Cable services with attractive customer retention deals.

In October, Time Warner announced it was introducing a cable modem rental fee of $3.95 a month. In November, the company raised rates on its converter boxes by $1.05 a month. The latest rate increase for cable television takes effect next month.

 Thanks to Stop the Cap! reader Nkundinshuti in Milwaukee for sending word.

Time Warner Cable customers in the Carolinas will soon pay $90.49 a month for digital cable television, including one set-top cable box. Customers who buy broadband, television, and phone service will see their monthly bill rise to $167.89.

The rate increases will not initially apply to customers on term contracts or promotional pricing until those terms expire. Others will begin to pay higher rates in March.

Almost 70 percent of Time Warner Cable’s eastern North Carolina subscribers have digital cable TV. The rate increase for television-only service amounts to an extra $5 a month or $60 a year. Triple play customers will also pay an extra $5 a month.

Time Warner’s last rate hike, not including the introduction of a $3.95/month cable modem rental fee last fall, was in late 2011.

Although Time Warner claimed increased programming costs were responsible for the bulk of the rate increases, the cable company keeps adding more channels. In 2012, Time Warner added NFL Network and NFL RedZone, both costly sports networks. In the last few months, Time Warner added an additional 30 channels to the cable lineup in the Carolinas, including a number of new HD channels and barely watched networks including Retirement Living Television and Magic Johnson’s Aspire TV.

A rate change notice mailed to customers in the Carolinas will include exact pricing changes applicable in different communities, but customers in Fayetteville and surrounding parts of the eastern Carolinas will see these changes starting in March:

• Broadcast cable: From $16.19 to $17.99
• Cable programming tier: From $53.30 to $54.50
• Basic cable: From $69.49 to $72.49
• Digital tier: From $10.68 to $9.01
• Basic cable, when bundled with standard Internet and/or home phone unlimited nationwide: From $68.99 to $71.99
• Digital cable includes basic cable, digital tier, digital equipment and Navigator interactive guide: From $85.49 to $90.49
• Digital cable when bundled with standard Internet and/or home phone unlimited nationwide: $82.49 to $85.49
• Basic cable, standard Internet and home phone unlimited nationwide: From $162.89 to $167.89
• Cable card: From $2 to $2.50
• Digital equipment primary outlet: From $6.82 to $8.99
• Navigator interactive guide: Not applicable to $2.17

Customers affected should consider reviewing our tips on how to fight for a better deal from Time Warner.

Another ISP Limbo Dance. How low can they go?

Telus, western Canada’s largest phone company, has announced it is slashing usage allowances as much as half and raising prices up to $8 a month on broadband packages, eight months after last summer’s $3 rate hike.

A sample:

• Internet 6 was $37, now $45. Usage cap reduced to 100GB, was 150GB.
• Internet 15 was $42, now $50. Usage cap reduced to 150GB, was 250GB.
• Internet 25 was $52 now $60. Usage cap reduced to 250GB, was 500GB.
• Internet 50 was $75 now $80.

A Telus spokesperson explained the reasons for the rate increases and allowance slashing:

It is only fair for customers to pay for the amount of bandwidth they use and be on a plan that realistically reflects their usage patterns; otherwise, moderate users end up subsidizing heavy users. Even with the change TELUS has some of the most generous usage caps in comparison to many other ISP’s. Most customers use only a fraction of the allotted threshold. Usage limits are put into place so that the small percentage of high usage customers to not impact the internet experience for other users on the network. We currently do not charge for over usage, but the thresholds allow us to ensure that customers are on an appropriate plan for them.

The rate increase is in response to rising costs in providing and maintaining the network. Since 2000, TELUS has invested more than $30 billion in infrastructure across Canada to provide our customers with some of the best communications technology anywhere in the world. These increases affect all clients, from TELUS employees to brand new sign-ups. All the pricing has been adjusted to the higher rate. In terms of price and quality TELUS Internet is very competitive versus our competitors. In most cases, TELUS services will still be less expensive than similar offerings from our competitors.

Most existing clients have already had the benefit of a promotion on sign-up. As with all promotions, including the current new client promotions, they run for a limited time and the discounts they offer expire. We do have loyalty programs in place for existing loyal clients and we do offer existing clients the new promotions in cases where they may not have received anything when they signed up.

Customers are outraged about the changes, particularly because Telus has been raising prices twice a year since 2011. The new rate plans are now comparable to Telus’ largest competitor, Shaw Cable.

Telus has not traditionally enforced usage cap violations on their network, nor have they imposed overlimit fees. But a customer service representative said “Telus can suspend allowance violators for 30 days for repeated violations.”

In North America, virtually every major ISP has watched bandwidth costs decline as connectivity continues to get cheaper. But that does not stop some providers from raising prices and slashing usage limits on a service most Canadians find they cannot live without.