Time Warner Cable customers in Austin, Tex. excited to learn DOCSIS 3 speed upgrades have finally arrived in the state capital are less than thrilled to learn the rug has been pulled out from under some of the high speeds the company was promising customers just one week earlier.

At issue is Road Runner Extreme, the DOCSIS 3 upgrade that delivers faster speeds at a “sweet spot” price of just $10 more than Road Runner Turbo.  In most Time Warner Cable markets, Road Runner Extreme delivers 30/5Mbps service, and so it was to be for Austin customers as well:

Captured from Time Warner Cable website - July 1, 2011 (click for screenshot of entire web page)

But Broadband Reports reader “SunnysGlimps,” who signed up for Extreme expecting those speeds, discovered “bait and switch” broadband instead, as the resulting speed test (and subsequent advertising) showed a much less impressive 20/2Mbps result.

“I was actually getting faster speeds with the Turbo then I am now with the capped Extreme package,” says Sunnysglimps. “My speed clearly hits a cap when it goes to 20/2Mbps on speedtest.net.”

This reader feels Time Warner Cable is engaged in false advertising in Austin.

“You cannot advertise 30/5Mbps, sell the service, charge more, and then change your advertising a few days later and say it won’t be what you just purchased.”

Captured from Time Warner Cable website - July 5, 2011 (click for screenshot of entire web page)

Bright House Networks, a cable company primarily serving Florida and other southeastern states says it has no plans to implement Internet Overcharging schemes like usage caps or consumption billing.  But a company spokesperson went even farther, telling Tampa Bay Online the cable company was not even considering them.

Bright House, which relies on Time Warner Cable’s programming negotiators and sells broadband under the Road Runner brand, was among the only companies in Florida that was willing to go on record stating they were not considering limiting broadband customers.

Other providers were unwilling to follow Bright House’s lead:

• AT&T: “2 percent of our customers were using 20 percent of our bandwidth,” said an AT&T spokesman, so the company slapped 150GB usage limits on DSL customers, 250GB on U-verse customers.  The overlimit fee is $10 for every 50GB extra.
• Verizon Florida: “At this point, we’ve not implemented any usage controls or broadband caps.  We’ll continue to evaluate what’s best to ensure our customers get the highest quality broadband service for the best value,” the company said.  But it also added: “We’re continuing to evaluate usage-based pricing for our wireline broadband customers.”

“Bandwidth caps stifle consumer choice,” said Parul Desai, public policy counsel for Consumer’s Union.  Desai notes customers do not sign up for pricey high-speed FiOS broadband service from companies like Verizon just to read e-mail.  Customers who are willing to pay premium prices for super high speeds certainly don’t want a usage cap devaluing their broadband package.

Comcast, for example, uniformly limits consumption to 250GB per month, even on high speed plans delivering over 50Mbps service.

“It’s like building a rocket that you blow up after it reaches 250 feet into the air,” says Stop the Cap! reader Will in Tampa, who shared the article with us.  “What is the point of having 50 or 100Mbps service from any provider if they slap a limit on it like that.”

Will thinks customers will abandon higher speed packages in droves once they realize they really can’t use them.

“With some of these companies talking about caps around 40GB per month, you can’t even take your connection for a test drive,” he says.  “You might as well stick with basic speeds, just to remind and discourage you from putting yourself over their stupid limits.”

Desai suspects broadband companies will try limiting their customers, if only because they face few competitors consumers can use instead and they have video services to protect.  But she suspects some consumers will either abandon or seriously downgrade their broadband service and find other ways to trade large files and content.

“It’s not inevitable they’re going to succeed,” she told TBO. “People only find value in broadband because of what they can access with it. If more people feel constrained, they’ll start looking for another way.”

Phillip Dampier

Time Warner Cable has completed their DOCSIS 3 upgrade of the Rochester/Finger Lakes region and their new Road Runner Extreme and Wideband services should now be available throughout the region.  Stop the Cap! HQ will receive its upgrade to Road Runner Extreme late this afternoon, primarily for the 5Mbps upstream speed, which will make uploading content to our servers much easier and more efficient.

The cable company is insistent on their installation fee, which amounts to nearly $68 (unjustified in my personal opinion).  Some details for our local readers:

• Customers in the Rochester & Finger Lakes region almost never own their own cable modems — they are provided with Road Runner at no extra charge;
• Upgrading to Extreme or Wideband will mean either a modem swap or a second piece of equipment if you have Time Warner phone service.  The new equipment includes a built-in wireless router;
• You are not obligated to use the cable company’s equipment as your primary router if you favor using your own existing router;
• As part of the installation fee, you have a right to insist they spend the time to configure service the way you want it, especially if you want to continue using your own router;
• It is also a good time to ask them to check signal levels and clean up any wiring or service issues.  Western New York has endured a record-breaking deluge of rain this spring, and degraded outdoor wiring can create havoc for broadband and cable service.
• If you are currently receiving a promotion such as free or discounted Road Runner Turbo service, you will lose the value of that promotion when you upgrade service and will pay full price going forward.

Beyond the installation fee, Road Runner Extreme (30/5Mbps) costs $20 more than Road Runner Standard (10/1Mbps) service.  Road Runner Wideband (50/5Mbps) is priced at $99 a month, but is a much better value bundled with the cable company’s Signature Home ($199) package, which includes complete packages of digital cable, “digital phone,” and broadband service.  For most in the Rochester/Finger Lakes area, the only alternative is Frontier Communications’ DSL combined with an unlimited calling plan and satellite television or a similar package from Verizon or much smaller Windstream.  Verizon’s fiber to the home service FiOS is not available anywhere in this region.

A Time Warner Cable customer in Whitefield, Maine has filed a complaint with the state’s Attorney General charging the cable company is selling customers a product it cannot deliver in parts of the state, and bills customers for it anyway.

The broadband add-on, Road Runner Turbo, is supposed to provide customers with a faster broadband experience, but in communities up and down Maine, it apparently does not, and has not for nearly three years.

The cable company hotly disputes the accusation, made by Michael Panosian, that the company has been overbilling him $10 a month for three years.

Andrew Russell, a Time Warner Cable spokesman, told the Kennebec Journal that the company does not charge for services it cannot provide.

But the cable company’s argument lost a considerable amount of credibility when evidence emerged Time Warner has admitted the problem, and quietly agreed to reimburse Panosian $328.35 for Road Runner Turbo service all the way back to June 2008.

The admission has also become a point of interest inside the Attorney General’s Consumer Protection Division, which is engaged in discussions with Panosian and the cable company.

Despite Russell’s denials, Time Warner officials admitted there was a problem and told state officials it would be corrected sometime this month.

Panosian thinks the cable company is ripping off Maine residents pitching faster Internet it does not deliver.

Panosian said a Time Warner Cable technician told him Turbo is not available in his area and possibly others in Maine.

“From what the tech told me, it isn’t just Whitefield,” Panosian said. “I went down (to Time Warner’s Augusta office) and talked to them about it, and they’re aware of it.  I said, ‘If you’re aware, why are you taking everybody’s money?’  If they don’t charge for services they don’t provide, why are they reimbursing me?”

Stop the Cap! reader Frederick, who lives in nearby Windsor and shared the story with us, says it is a classic case of Time Warner Cable overselling its service.

“The truth here is actually in the middle; Time Warner actually does deliver a Turbo service in Maine, it’s just that their network is so overcongested, nobody benefits from it during peak usage times,” Frederick reports.  “They have too many customers trying to share the Internet, and Turbo cannot help resolve this problem, only upgrades can.”

Frederick reports he identified the source of the problem running a series of speed tests on his Time Warner Cable connection.  He subscribes to Road Runner Turbo himself.

“The truth is revealed when you examine the upload speed of your connection,” he says. “Even when the network is busy, I can still get nearly 1Mbps upload speeds, a sure sign Turbo is on my account.”

The download speeds are another matter.

“In Windsor during peak usage times, you will easily see even a Turbo connection drop to 5Mbps in download speeds, only returning to normal after people go to bed,” he says.  “That means Time Warner has oversold their network, putting too many people on the same ‘node,’ one inadequate in capacity.”

Frederick suspects the “fix” Time Warner refers to is an upgrade to DOCSIS 3 technology.

“Maine is treated like a backwater by Time Warner Cable,” Frederick charges.  “What other cities got a year ago we just start to receive, so instead of performing periodic upgrades, they are just waiting for DOCSIS 3 to solve all of their problems.”

Frederick thinks customers should be compensated for the poor service, and is considering demanding a refund himself.

“I pay more than $50 a month for my broadband service with Turbo and they deliver what their ads claim only when I’m asleep or at work.”

With Time Warner Cable’s broadband now running as high as $50 a month for standard, stand-alone service, getting the best deal possible can save you as much as $20 a month off those prices.  Time Warner Cable has been repricing their services to deliver the most value to customers who bundle all of the company’s products into a single package.  But if you don’t want television or telephone service from the cable company, you are going to pay a lot more than your service-bundled-neighbors for Road Runner High Speed Internet.

Stop the Cap! presents our strategy to help broadband-only customers get the best possible prices from Time Warner Cable:

Choose Earthlink

Customers paying Time Warner Cable’s regular prices for broadband service are paying too much.  Time Warner currently charges just short of $50 a month for Standard 10/1Mbps service (speeds are slower in some areas).  That’s up from years of charging $40 a month, slightly higher if you were a broadband-only customer.  But with the help of Earthlink, you can cut that broadband bill to $29.99 a month for the first six months.  Earthlink co-exists with Road Runner, Time Warner Cable’s own broadband service.  With just a few mouse clicks and a quick phone call, Time Warner can switch your regular price Road Runner to Earthlink without any equipment changes.  Billing and service will continue to be provided by Time Warner and the change literally takes less than five minutes by phone.

Earthlink’s broadband service is indistinguishable from Road Runner — same speeds, same level of service, with two exceptions:

• Earthlink does not benefit from PowerBoost, which delivers temporary speed increases during file downloads
• You will forfeit your rr.com e-mail address

We recommend you avoid using ISP-provided e-mail addresses when possible, because they help tie you down to an existing provider.  Instead, sign up for a free e-mail account from Google’s Gmail, or Yahoo! Mail, or any of the dozens of other web-based e-mail providers.  Or, purchase your own domain name from GoDaddy or 1and1, which includes e-mail, and either read it on those sites or forward it to a web-based e-mail provider.  Domain names can be had for under $10 a year and deliver maximum flexibility for those who want the freedom to change Internet providers.

After Six Months, Switch Back to Road Runner

When your Earthlink promotion expires at the end of six months, your price will increase to $41.95 per month.  Just before that happens, switch back to Time Warner Cable’s Road Runner service.  You qualify for new customer pricing promotions.  As of this week, Time Warner Cable in western New York is offering one year at $29.99 per month for 10/1Mbps service.  Other areas may have different pricing promotions.

After the year is up, you can start all over again, heading back to Earthlink for another six month promotional term.  Earthlink has offered its promotional plan for more than two years, and it shows no signs of ending anytime soon.

Promotional Half-Truths

Promotions come and go from Time Warner Cable, so it is wise to check with them often if the $29.99 deal is not currently running in your area.  Start by checking Time Warner Cable’s website, and remember if you are using Earthlink, you will want to select pricing for new customers.  If you find a good price on the website, you may be able to complete your order online.  Otherwise, call your local office and ask about currently running promotions.  Some common ones:

• Road Runner Turbo at 50% off for the first year;
• Road Runner Turbo free for six months;
• Road Runner with wireless router/modem free for six months to one year;
• Road Runner with free installation (especially useful if you want Road Runner Extreme/Wideband service, which carries a pricey installation fee);
• Road Runner for $29.99 for six months;
• Bundled promotions — $99 for all three services, $79 for broadband/cable or broadband/phone

Not every promotion delivers the best deal for customers, and some have been slightly deceptive, such as this speed comparison we found on the cable company’s website this morning:

Our View:

1. Time Warner Cable has been spanked before for their claims about running a “fiber network.”  In fact, their “Fiber Rich Network” is a marketing stretch.  All modern cable systems use fiber optics to help distribute their service into various communities, but coaxial copper cable delivers the signal through neighborhoods to your individual home.  Cable companies still cannot match the broadband speeds available on an all-fiber network.
2. “Powertasking” is a meaningless marketing claim.  Any high speed network will allow the entire family to effectively share a broadband connection.
3. We’re glad to know Time Warner Cable has “massive bandwidth” — more than enough to go around.  We’ll remember that if and when the company ever entertains bringing back their experimental Internet Overcharging scheme they claimed was necessary to pay for equipment upgrades to cope with broadband traffic growth.
4. It would be simpler to install Time Warner’s DOCSIS 3 upgrade if we could do it ourselves, but the cable company currently requires a mandatory service call ($67.98 fee) to install it.
5. Time Warner is being cute comparing their broadband speed with Verizon FiOS.  In fact, FiOS is faster because of what isn’t mentioned here — upstream speeds.  Time Warner tops out at 5Mbps, Verizon offers 20Mbps for uploads.  But Time Warner’s pricing is better at that download speed.  Verizon is more aggressively priced when they bundle services together.  For example, Time Warner’s $99 triple play bundle only offers 10/1Mbps service.  Verizon offers up to 25/25Mbps service for the same price.  Both include phone and television service.