Bell has the perfect gift for themselves this holiday season: significant rate increases on phone, broadband and television service that will leave some customers paying at least $120 more a year for service.

Stop the Cap! reader Alex Perrier shared the bad news with us:

“What a great Christmas gift,” Perrier writes. “With few exceptions, all Bell home services get a ‘price update.'”

Home phone customers may be in for some bill shock if they happen to use on-demand calling features or directory assistance. Some of those rates are increasing by more than 500%.

Home phone packages

The monthly fee for all Bell Home phone packages (Home phone Lite, Home phone Basic, Home phone Choice, Home phone Complete) are increasing by $2.03 effective January 1, 2013.

Long distance plans

Features

Effective January 1, 2013, the price of Home phone pay-per-use calling features (Last Call Return, Busy Call Return and Three-Way Calling) will increase by $0.45 to $2.95 per use. The monthly cap on Home phone pay-per-use calling features will also increase to $29.50

Effective January 1, 2013, Directory Assistance will increase by $0.50 to $3.00 per use.

Bell TV

Bell Internet

Note: Bell Internet 5 and Bell Internet 5 Plus are excluded from the price increase.

Customers sitting down to watch the local news in Louisville, Ky. on Time Warner Cable (formerly Insight) now get to see stories about ongoing bankruptcy woes at Eastman Kodak, house fires in Irondequoit, road work in Greece, and Scott Hetsko’s local forecast… for Rochester, N.Y.

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WLKY in Louisville is no longer seen on former Insight cable systems (now owned by Time Warner Cable). In its place, Louisville viewers are watching WROC-TV in Rochester, N.Y.  Here is why. (3 minutes)

No, it is not some weird sunspot reception and nobody transported you from Kentucky to western New York while you were sleeping. It’s simply another epic battle waged in:

RETRANSMISSION CARRIAGE CONSENT WARS: 2012

“Not getting the channels you are paying for does not necessarily entitle you to a refund, but does require you to pay more when a deal is eventually struck.”

WESH-TV in Daytona Beach/Orlando, Fla. is one of the Hearst-owned stations affected in the dispute with Insight/Time Warner Cable/Bright House Networks.

These skirmishes used to be commonplace around the end of the year, when carriage agreements between cable, satellite, and telephone companies with cable networks and local stations came up for renewal. When the programmer passed a figure written on a folded up piece of paper across the table to your pay television provider, the shock and awe of that number, occasionally 100-300 percent more than the year before, was the opening shot in a battle that now increasingly leads to favorite local stations or cable channels being stripped from your lineup.

In Louisville, that is precisely what happened to WLKY-TV, one of 15 stations owned by Hearst Television, taken off the lineup when Time Warner Cable/Insight/Bright House Networks could not successfully negotiate a renewal agreement. Time Warner complained Hearst wanted 300% more for each of the affected stations, an increase sure to be passed along to cable customers already long weary of endless annual rate increases. That was the same story told in other cities affected by what is now a week-long blackout. In Greensboro/Winston-Salem, N.C., Time Warner customers are doing without WXII-TV. Kansas City customers lost two local stations owned by Hearst — KMBC and KCWE. Two stations are also missing from Bright House’s lineup in Orlando: WESH and WKCF.

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Hearst Television’s general manager and president of WLKY has stopped referring to those watching the station simply as “viewers.” Glenn Haygood now calls them “subscribers.” Haygood talks with WHAS Radio about the dispute and what he thinks about Insight/Time Warner Cable. (10 minutes)

Insight/Time Warner Cable customers in Louisville, Ky. are now watching CBS shows on WROC-TV from Rochester, N.Y.

But why are Louisville viewers now watching the boating forecast for Lake Ontario, several hundred miles away? Because Time Warner Cable thinks it has a signed contract with Nexstar Broadcasting Group that lets them turn several Nexstar-owned stations into “superstations,” importing them in cities where contract disputes have knocked the local station off the cable lineup. In Louisville, WLKY, a CBS affiliate, has been replaced by WROC, the CBS affiliate in Rochester. In Greensboro and several other cities, WXII, an NBC affiliate, has been replaced with WBRE in Wilkes Barre, Penn. Some other Time Warner customers are instead watching WTWO out of Terre Haute, Ind., for NBC shows.

It represents a half-measure that Time Warner Cable’s Jeff Simmermon tells Stop the Cap! is “making the best of a tough situation.”

Viewers are naturally outraged.

“I’ve always wanted to know the weather and news in Rochester, Buffalo, Ontario and Caribou,” Kelly Grether teased. “Louisville did make [WROC’s weather] map believe it or not.”

Others are simply confused and engaged in must-flee TV.

“I saw the news coming on,” Greensboro resident Mona Wright told the News & Record. “It didn’t take me but one minute to figure out that these counties were nowhere around us; I changed the channel.”

Some Louisville viewers are even assuming the sales and discounts being advertised on WROC are good in Kentucky as well (often, they are not).

For now, it is difficult for Kentucky viewers to know what WROC is airing because the local on-screen program guide has not been updated to include listings for the Rochester station. Time Warner is pushing a lot of viewers to WROC’s website for program information.

Viewers hoping to practice their Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune skills during the dinner hour lost that opportunity altogether in some cities, while in the Triad of North Carolina, viewers discovered the two shows on two different channels at the same time.

For now, WROC has completely ignored its new Kentucky audience, but WBRE’s morning anchors now regularly acknowledge and welcome their viewers from several states away.

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WFTV in Orlando reports on Bright House Networks’ customers being shut out of WESH-TV in Daytona Beach after the cable operator failed to meet Hearst Television’s demands for an increase in carriage payments.  (2 minutes)

The dispute has since enlarged to bring in side players who are unimpressed with Time Warner’s creative problem-solving:

• Impacted stations now off Time Warner’s lineup think the “new” stations on the lineup are about as honorable as employing scab workers during a union strike;
• Nexstar, for the second time, declares Time Warner is illegally importing their stations to unauthorized places. They are threatening to complain to the FCC and possibly sue to stop the practice. Nexstar earlier complained about a similar dispute in upstate New York which left viewers in northern New York watching WBRE in Wilkes-Barre. But the carriage dispute was settled quickly enough for WBRE to go back to being  viewable only in Pennsylvania, ending the dispute;
• Syndicated program owners sell shows like Wheel of Fortune on a “market exclusive” basis, which means competing local stations already paying for syndicated shows do not want out of area stations also carrying those shows to local audiences, diluting their audience.
• Advertisers on stations now off the lineup paid ad rates based on tens of thousands of cable viewers who are now probably watching another station. Some are demanding “make goods” or outright refunds to get the value for money they were originally promised.

But nobody is more caught in the middle than consumers, especially those paying for channels they are no longer getting.

“I want my money back,” says Orlando Bright House customer Luis Fernandez. “I have lost two stations on my lineup and my bill should be going down to compensate, but Bright House is refusing to credit me.”

Time Warner Cable does not usually give refunds either, arguing that its customers pay for a package of channels and the technology that delivers those networks to customers. Giving a refund for the loss of one or two stations would be tantamount to the industry’s worst nightmare: getting customers used to the idea of paying individually for every channel.

One customer willing to make himself a major nuisance in Wauwatosa, near Milwaukee, Wis., finally wore Time Warner down and secured a $5 a month discount on his bill for the length of the dispute that knocked Milwaukee’s WISN off his lineup.

“[I called] Time Warner to voice my disgust in them putting me (the paying customer) in the middle of their negotiation failures, and after reaching a ‘supervisor,’ I was able to get a discount on my monthly bill,” the reader told the Journal-Sentinel. “It wasn’t easy, but I did it.”

Hearst is encouraging viewers to drop Time Warner like a hot potato and switch to AT&T U-verse or a satellite provider like DirecTV. Negotiations seem to be continuing on a sporadic basis, but one week later, customers heading for the door have already left or are simply watching the local news on another channel.

Satellite Showdown — DirecTV vs. Viacom: Playing Down and Dirty With Everyone

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Viacom turns the tables on DirecTV’s clever ads to lambaste the satellite provider for cutting off more than two dozen cable channels owned by Viacom.  (1 minute)

If a customer took Hearst’s advice, they might find themselves out of the frying pan and into the fire. Newly arriving DirecTV customers can join the Anger Party 20 million satellite customers are now throwing over a much larger, higher profile dispute between the satellite provider and Viacom. Collateral damage: the loss of networks including Palladia, Centric, Tr3s, CMT, Logo, NickToons, VH1 Classic, TeenNick, Nick Jr., Nick@Nite, Spike, BET, VH1, TV Land, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon and MTV.

Some financial analysts are calling the dispute the mother-of-all-program-fee-battles, and as they watch both sides dig in, some warn it could mean DirecTV customers won’t be watching The Daily Show with Jon Stewart until August.

DirecTV says Viacom wants a 30% rate increase to renew its contract to carry the company’s networks. That is comparatively cheap contrasted with the prices Hearst wants Time Warner Cable to now pay. Analysts expect DirecTV and Viacom will eventually settle their dispute by agreeing to a 27% rate increase, but nobody knows how long the two will battle it out before an inevitable agreement is reached.

Regardless of the timing, customers will likely pay the price. Nomura analyst Michael Nathanson informed his Wall Street clients DirecTV will end up paying Viacom $2.85 per subscriber — about 60 cents more per month than it pays today. That’s tough for DirecTV to swallow, and probably even harder to pass along to customers. Satellite TV providers have some of the country’s most-frugal pay television customers who are especially resistant to rate increases.

The dispute is so high profile, both companies are bringing out high-powered executives and show talent to argue their respective cases.

Millions of dollars are at stake, and both Viacom and DirecTV are willing to fight to the death, even leaving customers on the battlefield.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/DirecTV Viacom Dispute 7-12-12.mp4[/flv]

Not so fast, says DirecTV CEO Michael White, seen here presenting DirecTV’s position in the Viacom dispute for the benefit of concerned customers.  (1 minute)

“All we are trying to get is a fair deal for our customers and I’m sorry our customers are being forced into the middle of this,” DirecTV’s Michael White said. “We just think we pay a half a billion dollars a year and a billion dollar increase over five years, over 30 percent, is not justified by the marketplace or fair relative to our largest competitors or by their ratings.”

Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman counters, “In the last seven years since we did the last DirecTV deal, we have successfully and peacefully concluded affiliate agreements with every major distributor in the U.S. We are prepared to move forward. It’s unfortunate consumers for the first time are not able to enjoy our channels,” said Dauman, adding, “I don’t want to negotiate in public.”

DirecTV was telling its customers it can watch many of the missing shows for free online, until Viacom reportedly began removing that direct viewing option last week. That hardball tactic could impact everyone trying to stream Viacom’s shows — DirecTV customer or not.

“We’ve temporarily slimmed down our offerings, as DirecTV markets them as an alternative to having our networks,” a Viacom spokesman told CNNMoney. “The online content is intended to serve as a complimentary marketing tool for our partners.”

“At least they were honest about the reasons why they pulled this,” said Stop the Cap! reader Dick Armlo, a DirecTV customer in Idaho. “But fortunately, you can still find a lot of the shows on Amazon’s video on demand and Hulu.”

Customers threatening to switch providers often discover the new neighborhood they move to is just as bad as the one they left.

Dish Network customers are currently enduring a long-standing dispute with Cablevision-owned AMC Networks. The result is no AMC, IFC, Sundance Channel and WeTV on Dish. AMC is telling Dish customers to turn their dish into a birdbath and head elsewhere… perhaps to AT&T U-verse which just recently averted its own blackout with AMC over the same channels. AT&T customers can expect part of their next rate increase to cover the negotiated rate hike AMC won for itself — the one AT&T agreed to on your behalf. After all, it’s your money at stake, not theirs.

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CNBC talks with Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman to get his views about the dispute with one of his best customers — DirecTV.  (2 minutes)

In the eyes of many entertainment executives, pressing fast forward to skip past commercials recorded by your DVR is a crime, and they want it stopped.

We’ve made progress. In the 1970s and early 1980s, those same executives were arguing recording a television show itself was a crime.

The copyright infringement wars continue, beyond college students facing ruinous lawsuits from the recording industry or movie studios sending a blizzard of subpoenas to Internet Service Providers seeking the names and addresses of those suspected of using file swapping networks.

With the increasing concentration and combination of entertainment conglomerates, the reflexive need to “control” the medium and means of distribution is gaining a receptive audience in Washington and in the courts, threatening to influence what you can and cannot do with the programming you pay to watch.

The impact is also weighing on innovative new technology from small companies like Aereo and much larger ones like Dish Network that have attempted to launch new services that challenge the conventional ways Americans watch entertainment. The result for all concerned: lawsuits designed to stifle anything the media business perceives as an imminent threat.

Dish Network has a new DVR box that can automatically skip past commercials on selected networks. The satellite company’s new “Hopper” DVR automatically records eight days’ of prime time programming from the four major American broadcast networks, analyzes the programming to find commercials, and allows subscribers to watch the recorded shows “ad-free” just hours after the original broadcast.

Major entertainment moguls immediately denounced the feature as criminal theft.

“If there were no advertising revenues, the free broadcast television model in the United States would collapse,” wrote an alarmed News Corp. (owner of FOX Broadcasting) in its complaint filed in Los Angeles federal court. That network also accuses Dish of violating their contract with FOX and copyright infringement.

“Of course, you know this means war.” — Dish’s new AutoHop feature raises the ire of the entertainment industry.

“This service takes existing network content and modifies it in a manner that is unauthorized and illegal,” CBS said in a prepared statement, echoing earlier statements that have historically argued recording, modifying, or re-purposing broadcast content in any way is automatically a violation of federal law, copyright, or the terms and conditions under which the network makes programming available for viewing.

NBC and ABC filed their own complaints against the technology as well.

Technically speaking, subscribers who pay a cable or satellite provider for television programming are already paying extra for the programming they are watching, negating the usual arguments commercial sponsorship covers the cost of watching “free TV” (that isn’t always free) and skipping commercials is the same as stealing.

Commercial television business models in the United States increasingly rely on “retransmission consent” fees — money paid by your satellite, cable, or phone company to the programmer for permission to carry a channel on their lineup. Virtually all of those fees are passed along to consumers as part of their monthly bill.

Some station owner groups are willing to play extreme hardball to get viewers to pay up -and- win the right to put a piece of tape over their fast forward buttons to keep them from skipping commercials on their stations.

Dallas-based Hoak Media is an example. Viewers in Panama City, Fla. were without WMBB-TV, the Hoak-owned ABC affiliate, on Dish Network for a week. Hoak Media pulled the plug on viewers earlier this month after Hoak demanded a 200% increase in retransmission consent payments and the disabling of Dish’s AutoHop commercial-skipping technology. Thirteen other Hoak stations around the country were also pulled off the satellite TV service.

“WMBB and Hoak don’t respect customer control — they are telling customers they must watch commercials,” Dave Shull, senior vice president of programming for Dish, said in a news release. “Channel skipping has been around since the advent of the remote and we think Hoak has taken an incredibly hostile stance toward their viewers.”

WMBB’s station management appeared caught off guard by their owners back in Dallas. WMBB General Manager Terry Cole admitted he didn’t even know about the AutoHop feature Hoak was demanding be disabled. A week later, the dispute appeared settled and the stations were back on Dish.

Entertainment executives are hopeful their deep pockets and industry partnerships with content distributors will ultimately win the day. They have a few things they can count in their corner.

In 2002, some of the same companies protesting Dish filed suit against ReplayTV, which had its own automated commercial skipping technology. The case dragged its way through the courts, with mounting legal expenses eventually forcing ReplayTV out of business. Problem solved.

The use of deep pockets have also intimidated other innovative ventures such as Aereo, which delivers over-the-air New York City stations online to a paying local subscriber base.

Innovation like that is also a concern to the cable industry, which itself has been around since the 1970s. Developing an online alternative to the local cable company puts cable TV executives in the same position entertainment industry executives live to fear: a threat to the business model that has earned billions in profits. In those terms, some cable operators seem willing to support the entertainment industry, even at the expense of their own customers.

That may explain why Time Warner Cable applied for, and won, their own patent for technology that disables fast-forward functionality on digital video recorders.

“Advertisers may not be willing to pay as much to place advertisements if they know that users may fast forward through the advertisement and thus not receive the desired sales message,” the cable company explains in its patent application. “Content providers may not be willing to grant rights in their content, or may want to charge more, if trick modes are permitted.”

The technology would look for digitally embedded cue tones, which are today used mostly to let local stations and cable operators insert their own local advertising messages on a network feed, to block fast forwarding past those ads.

Time Warner Cable is not likely to implement the technology anytime soon, not if they expect customers to continue to pay well over $10 a month for a recording device that won’t allow them to skip commercials.

Comcast is taking a different approach, considering plans to insert billboard advertising messages that automatically appear on-screen whenever a customer hits their fast-forward button. Broadcasters and networks have no love for that feature either, claiming it changes the programming the consumer recorded and represents… yes, copyright infringement.

Courts will once again have to find a balance between consumers’ home recording rights and the rights of large entertainment and cable companies. With more courts increasingly favorable to the notion of corporate rights enjoying equal prominence with those of citizens, who ultimately wins the right to your fast forward button remains a toss-up.

Frontier Communications will not roll out a national IPTV service to compete with cable operators in all of its service areas, but is still exploring its options for providing pay-TV service in larger cities.

That decision, announced by executive vice president and chief financial officer Donald R. Shassian, came at last week’s Global Technology, Media, and Telecom Conference sponsored by Wall Street investment bank J.P. Morgan.

Shassian used the occasion to clarify remarks made during the company’s first-quarter results conference call, which caused some shareholders and analysts concern about the company’s lackluster performance, capital spending plans, and company debt that will come due early next year.

Shassian said Frontier will not deploy U-verse-like IPTV service across its entire national service area, but is considering the future option of delivering the service (and better broadband speeds) theoretically in selected markets.

Shassian also raised the prospect of modifying part of its acquired fiber-to-the-home FiOS network to fiber to the neighborhood technology that companies like AT&T are currently using. But for the foreseeable future, most Frontier customers will have to subscribe to satellite television if they want a video package with their home phone and broadband service.

Stop the Cap! was the first to report Frontier was considering licensing AT&T U-verse to use in selected larger markets where the company has lost considerable ground against cable competitors that deliver consistently faster broadband service.

Wall Street reaction to the proposal has been negative, with concerns Frontier will need to spend hundreds of millions, if not billions, to deploy such a network.

Shassian sought to distance the company from any suggestion they will further increase spending on network improvements. In fact, Shassian says Frontier will end its broadband expansion program, and the extra spending to pay for it, by 2013.

“Our capital expenditure spending will decrease in 2013 as the geographic broadband expansion of our network concludes,” Shassian said. “We expect capital expenditures to drop by approximately $100 million in 2013.”

In lieu of national IPTV service, Frontier remains committed to its resale partnership with satellite TV provider Dish Network. But Shassian did admit U-verse technology is among the options the company is exploring to remain competitive.

Surprisingly, Shassian also said the company was considering partially modifying its acquired FiOS network in Indiana and the Pacific Northwest, because of the cost savings it could deliver.

“We have been evaluating alternative platforms which could generate savings from capital expenditures, video transport and even content costs that can be significant to the FiOS video market business,” Shassian said. “I want to be clear that we have no plans to deploy IPTV across our nationwide network and therefore do not see upward CapEx pressure from any potential changes in our facilities-based video strategy.”

Asked about the potential cost savings afforded by swapping out FiOS technology for IPTV fiber to the neighborhood service, Shassian said it could open the door to expanding service in areas where existing copper-based last mile network facilities can sustain a minimum of 20Mbps broadband service. Frontier claims 1.9 million homes in its service area can receive 20Mbps today, of which 600,000 are currently within a Frontier FiOS service area.

“If we changed, we may have to change out set top boxes on [existing FiOS customers],” Shassian said.

In this clip, Frontier Communications’ executive VP and chief financial officer Don Shassian speaks to a J.P. Morgan investor conference in Boston about the company’s broadband and IPTV plans. (May 15-17, 2012) (4 minutes)
You must remain on this page to hear the clip, or you can download the clip and listen later.

The implication of substantially altering the company’s existing fiber-to-the-home network baffled some analysts.

One, who talked with Stop the Cap! asking not to be attributed, suspects Shassian’s role as a financial officer at Frontier may explain part of the mystery.

“He’s not the chief technology officer, and I suspect he is partly confused about the different technologies,” the analyst explains. “I can’t see Frontier tearing down their current network, but it may make sense for them to switch technology strategies when considering if and where they can expand their network.”

“Frontier’s first quarter results were more than disappointing, and the company is being exceptionally cautious about anything that requires spending right now,” the analyst said. “The next shoe to drop is another dividend cut, which would kill the stock in the market, and if we think Frontier will spend a billion to improve its network, that dividend is going down.”

Our source says he does not have much confidence in Frontier’s current management.

“They talk a nice story, but the numbers never finally add up,” he says. “Rescuing wireline is expensive and companies always promise it will cost incrementally little to expand revenue-enhancing broadband to their rural customers, but if that were true, the companies would have already done it, and without significant spending they have not.”

At first, DISH Network couldn’t care less about Cincinnati-area resident Jeff Demoss’ problems.  The devastating March 2 tornadoes that ripped through Peach Grove and California, Ky., just across the Ohio border, took away Demoss’ home and all of its possessions. All that remained was a post with an electric meter and his DISH Network satellite dish.

Demoss called the satellite TV company to cancel his service. There wasn’t much point continuing to pay for satellite television when your television has blown into the next town over. At first, DISH Network representatives seemed sympathetic, promising the problem would be taken care of immediately.

That was, until DISH found out Demoss’ satellite receiver was also missing and could not be returned.

“We kept getting letters in the mail saying ‘You are going to have to return the receiver, or we will have to charge you $300 for it,'” Demoss told WCPO-TV’s consumer reporter.

And DISH did exactly that, removing $300 from the family checking account.

DISH Network has earned a mediocre C+ rating from the Better Business Bureau, and has racked up more than 13,000 complaints in the past three years, some about lost equipment fees.

Companies can charge early contract termination and lost equipment fees for customers who cancel service before their service contract ends or who do not return equipment. When tragedies like storms, fires, and floods strike, many satellite and cable companies try to bill customers accordingly, at least until they end up shamed on the evening news.

DISH quickly offered to refund the Demoss family their $300 once the Cincinnati television station got involved, and the satellite company apologized for the inconvenience.

Virtually all cable, telephone, and satellite companies will eventually relent on cancellation fees and damaged/lost equipment fees if customers tell the intransigent customer service representative or supervisor their next call will be to local media to share the story, so it pays to stand your ground.

However, as Stop the Cap! has repeatedly recommended in the past, your best protection is a renter or homeowner insurance policy, which typically covers these types of losses. Renters often assume their landlord maintains insurance on their behalf, but in fact they do not. Insurance purchased by the building owner only covers structural losses, never your personal property. Renters insurance is inexpensive and highly recommended.

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WCPO-TV in Cincinnati reports on how a Kentucky man who lost his home and possessions was forced to deal with DISH Network, who withdrew $300 from the family checking account for equipment lost in a March tornado.  (3 minutes)