Efforts by local officials to attract more cable competition are paying off in suburban Cleveland, Ohio and Detroit, Mich. where customers will soon be able to choose between two cable companies or AT&T for cable service.

WOW!, a Denver-based cable overbuilder, has announced it will expand service to Lathrup Village, Mich. and Sheffield Lake, Brunswick, and North Ridgeville, Ohio between now and the middle of next year.

North Ridgeville City Council president Kevin Corcoran last week announced WOW! would begin head-to-head competition with Time Warner Cable starting in 2014. Corcoran told The Chronicle Telegram the city began looking for a competing cable provider after hearing complaints from residents about Time Warner Cable’s poor customer service and reliability. He approached WOW!, which has provided competitive service in parts of the greater Cleveland area, about expanding in North Ridgeville.

“My only pitch was that people are dying for some competition,” Corcoran told the newspaper.

Corcoran met informally with WOW! officials to discuss the prospects of expanding into North Ridgeville before more formal meetings were held with city officials including the mayor and the safety-service director.

Making life easier for WOW!’s entry is the presence of existing utility easements, which means WOW! can run cable on existing utility poles without formal approval by the city council. But WOW! will still need certain permits from the Building Department to move forward with wiring. The company will use Ohio’s statewide video franchising law, originally pushed by AT&T for U-verse, to obtain video service permits and a franchise agreement with the Ohio Department of Commerce.

WOW!’s regular prices are much lower than Time Warner Cable’s promotional prices for new customers:

• Standard triple play (15/1Mbps Internet, Cable TV, phone) costs $105.98/month from Time Warner ($118.97 with DVR), $85/month from WOW! ($92 with DVR);
• Standard double play (15/1Mbps Internet, Cable TV) still costs $105.98/month from Time Warner ($118.98 with DCR), $75/month from WOW! ($82 with DVR);
• Internet-only service (15/1Mbps) costs $40.98/month from Time Warner Cable, $30/month from WOW! (promotional pricing expires after 12 months).

Time Warner Cable said it welcomes the competition.

A new research report issued by Time Warner Cable concludes cell phone companies like AT&T and Verizon Wireless cannot meet the future data demands of customers over their 4G LTE wireless networks without punitive usage caps and high fees to deter usage, even with new spectrum becoming available for the wireless industry’s use.

The report, authored by Michael Calabrese of the New America Foundation, finds an answer to this problem in Wi-Fi, which can offload wireless traffic and deliver wireless service customers already prefer:

There is simply not enough exclusively licensed spectrum to meet the rapidly rising demand for wireless data, to sustain a competitive market, and to keep prices at an affordable level.

Major mobile carriers are increasingly coming to grips with this reality. The Wireless Broadband Alliance, a global industry group, reports that Wi-Fi offloading has become an industry standard as “18 of the world’s top 20 largest telcos by revenue have now publicly committed to investing in deploying their own Wi-Fi Hotspot networks.” The industry is shifting steadily toward what it calls heterogeneous networks (HetNets)—i.e., a combination of licensed and unlicensed infrastructure—in order to meet their customers’ insatiable demand for data while keeping costs down.

Alcatel-Lucent forecasts an increase of “87 times [the current] daily traffic on wireless networks” over the next five years, with 50 percent of that traffic on cellular networks “while the remaining 50 percent will be offloaded to Wi-Fi.”

Cisco’s own studies back Calabrese’s findings on consumer preference towards Wi-Fi.

“Given a choice, more than 80 percent of tablet, laptop, and eReader owners would either prefer Wi-Fi to mobile access, or have no preference,” Cisco concluded. “And, just over half of smartphone owners would prefer to use Wi-Fi, or are ambivalent about the two access networks.”

The Cisco surveys found users are choosing Wi-Fi over mobile connectivity for reasons of cost, “because it doesn’t impose data-usage caps or reduce their mobile data plan quotas.” But the primary reason for choosing Wi-Fi “is that respondents find it much faster than mobile networks.” And since Wi-Fi traffic travels over increasingly upgraded wireline networks, that speed differential may only increase as more and more homes, businesses and retail outlets upgrade to fiber optic or other high-speed connections of 100Mbps or more.

America’s largest wireless carriers have fallen far behind offering Wi-Fi services to customers compared to their overseas colleagues:

• AT&T: More than 32,000 Wi-Fi hotspots are available at partnered retail businesses, restaurants, and high-traffic areas like stadiums and major tourist destinations;
• Verizon Wireless: Verizon has an insignificant Wi-Fi presence, with a small number of unadvertised hotspots in selected venues like airports and convention centers;
• Japan’s NTT DOCOMO: Up to 150,000 hotspots, up from only 8,400 in 2o12.
• China Mobile: More than 2 million hotspots are up and running carrying 70 percent of the company’s data traffic.
• France’s Free Mobile: More than 4 million residential hotspots are available through Free’s parent – Iliad.

Comcast could soon be the nation’s largest Wi-Fi hotspot provider.

Calabrese argues it is important for the United States to set aside significant spectrum for unlicensed wireless networks like Wi-Fi to meet future wireless demands. Currently, some Republican members of Congress are opposed to significant spectrum set asides they feel could best be monetized for private use through the spectrum auction process.

It is no coincidence that Calabrese’s findings would be released by Time Warner Cable which itself is growing a Wi-Fi presence in certain cities where it provides cable service.

The wireless carriers’ collective lack of interest in an aggressive nationwide Wi-Fi deployment may have provided a strategic opening for cable operators to fill that gap with Wi-Fi networks of their own. Cable operators consider them a useful tool to retain customer loyalty — access is typically free and unlimited for current customers.

This summer, Comcast announced a “neighborhood hotspot initiative” that will turn millions of customer cable Internet connections into shared Wi-Fi hotspots using a dual-use wireless home gateway. The equipment will offer two separate Wi-Fi signals — one intended for the customer and the other open for use by any Comcast customers in the neighborhood. The cable company will provision extra bandwidth for the open Wi-Fi network to ease concerns that guest users could theoretically slow down a customer’s own Wi-Fi channel. In a relatively short period, Comcast could become the nation’s biggest Wi-Fi network offering more than 20 million hotspots hosted by the company’s own broadband customers.

Calabrese points to the future of seamless transitions between wired, wireless 4G and Wi-Fi network access without dropping calls or data connections. Many customers won’t even know the difference.

The author recommends the FCC think about reserving space for new unlicensed “citizens band” frequencies dedicated for public and private Wi-Fi networks:

• The FCC should reorganize the UHF TV band to ensure the availability of at least 30 to 40MHz of unlicensed spectrum in every media market, perhaps including Channel 37 (now reserved for radio astronomy) and eliminating two dedicated channels reserved for wireless microphones;
• Open the grossly underutilized 3.5–3.7GHz federal band for unlicensed small cell antennas delivering a ‘Citizens Broadband Service.’ This band is now mostly used for offshore naval radar, allowing both services to co-exist without mutual interference;
• Expand unlicensed access to the 5GHz band by allocating the 5.35–5.47 and 5.85–5.925GHz bands providing contiguous, very wide channels useful for the 802.11ac Wi-Fi standard that can support very high-speed wireless services.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/XFINITY Wireless Gateway Powers Connected Home Summer 2013.flv[/flv]

Comcast talks about their new X3 Wireless Gateway which is capable of providing two separate Wi-Fi networks, one for the customer and another for the neighborhood. (2 minutes)

Frontier Communications is interested in buying landlines bigger phone companies like AT&T and Verizon might want to sell.

CEO Maggie Wilderotter sat down with The Wall Street Journal to answer questions about her leadership of the independent telephone company.

Despite ongoing landline disconnects and a challenging business environment that led to a second quarter loss of $38.5 million, Wilderotter says Frontier is “well positioned for success” and is willing to acquire new customers castaway by larger phone companies like AT&T and Verizon.

“I would do acquisitions only if they’re smart,” Wilderotter said. “We would buy assets that drive more scale. We would look at another carve out like the Verizon acquisition or acquiring stand-alone rural telephone companies.”

Frontier’s last acquisition in 2010 nearly tripled its size after picking up landlines sold off by Verizon Communications.

Independent telephone companies like Frontier are not just buyers, however. Wilderotter hinted Frontier has received offers encouraging a sale of the company, perhaps even one from a satellite provider like Dish Network or DirecTV.

“Other players [like] CenturyLink have similar assets,” Wilderotter said. “Some unconventional folks might look. The satellite category [for instance]. We have had conversations in the past. They weren’t the right offers.”

Many shareholders stay loyal to Frontier because the company pays a significant dividend to those holding stock. Anything that threatens the dividend typically drives Frontier’s stock price lower, so Wilderotter was quick to note any other acquisitions will not come at the expense of that dividend.

Wilderotter

“We would do acquisitions in a way that preserves the dividend,” Wilderotter said. “We might take on more debt instead.”

Frontier’s business plan relies heavily on selling service in less competitive rural areas often bypassed by large cable operators. Because of inherent network limitations created by copper telephone lines, Frontier maintains market dominance mostly in communities where cable service is not widely available or is provided over antiquated infrastructure unsuitable for significant broadband upgrades.

In the last two years, Frontier has spent several billion dollars to upgrade its own infrastructure to offer faster and more reliable Internet access, but the upgraded service is still out of reach for many Frontier customers who need it the most. In central West Virginia, Frontier customers in Gilmer (pop. 8693) and Braxton (pop. 14,523) Counties can’t wait to drop satellite Internet access for Frontier DSL. The infrastructure has been reportedly in place for several months, but the service has not yet been switched on.

Additional Frontier broadband expansion depends on company investment and federal broadband improvement funds.

In September, West Virginia’s congressional delegation announced an award of roughly $24.1 million in leftover federal funds to continue construction of broadband infrastructure in rural areas of the state.

“With help from the FCC, so many more of our families and businesses will soon have the transformative and necessary power of high-speed Internet at their fingertips, opening the doors to many new educational and economic opportunities,” said Democratic Sen. Jay Rockefeller.

Frontier also recently applied for an extra $28.9 million from the Connect America Fund to target broadband for another 47,000 homes and business in West Virginia.

Gilmer County, W.V.

If Frontier receives 100% of the requested amount, the Obama Administration’s broadband funding programs will have contributed $63 million towards service improvement in West Virginia.

Frontier Communications manager Daniel Page said the next target areas for broadband improvement are in Pleasants (pop. 7,605) and Ritchie (pop. 10,236) Counties, both in northwest West Virginia.

Wilderotter says 85% of Frontier customers now have broadband access available to them, up from 60% in 2011.

“Our goal is to be able to reach over 90%, probably by the end of this year or first part of next year,” Wilderotter said.

The biggest challenges facing Frontier over the next year?

“Technology disruption—and [industry players’] business models being challenged,” Wilderotter told the newspaper. “Customer expectations on how they utilize the Internet continue to morph as rich applications are made available.”

To manage increased traffic, Frontier can invest in capacity upgrades or start network management measures to limit subscribers’ Internet usage.

Frontier has run a usage limit trial in Kingman, Ariz., Elk Grove and Palo Cedro, Calif., Mound, Minn. as well as Cookeville and Crossville, Tenn. for over a year to measure bandwidth consumption by application type. In those areas, Frontier DSL is usage capped at 100 or 250GB per month. Customers exceeding their allowance are advised to either limit usage or convert to a “high user” service plan starting at $99.99 a month.

[flv width=”640″ height=”332″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Fox Business News Frontier Broadband 8-8-13.flv[/flv]

Frontier CEO Maggie Wilderotter told Fox Business News in August the company was “laser focused” on broadband.  (5 minutes)

Georgia’s first gigabit fiberhood will serve residents of a luxury $600 million development now under construction in an Atlanta suburb.

North American Properties is partnering with Hotwire Communications to install an ultra high-speed fiber to the home broadband network offering gigabit speed to every resident, hotel guest, retail shop, restaurant and office worker at the Avalon development in Alpharetta, located north of Atlanta.

“This is a game-changer for Alpharetta,” said Alpharetta mayor David Belle Isle. “Nowhere else in Georgia can you get gigabit service to your home and nowhere else but Alpharetta can a business take advantage of this cost-effective way to future-proof their operations.”

Avalon is a 2.4 million square foot mixed-use development that will open in October 2014. Phase one will consist of 250 luxury rental homes (average rent $1,400), 101 single-family homes ($400,000-1.7 million), 400,000 square feet of retail and restaurants and 108,000 square feet of loft office space.

The property developer hopes fiber broadband will help it attract around 800 permanent residents as well as be a selling point for commercial tenants.

Hotwire Communications specializes in overbuilding multiple dwelling residences with fiber service. The nearest competitors are Comcast and AT&T, neither which offer speeds at Hotwire’s level.

The “breakthrough” unlimited data deal with AT&T didn’t last long.

When Apple first introduced its AT&T 3G-equipped original iPad, both companies marketed it with an unlimited 3G wireless Internet plan that soon became unavailable for new buyers and left grandfathered customers enduring a speed throttle when AT&T decided you used their network too much.

Burned customers banded together and sued both Apple and AT&T for bait and switch unlimited broadband. The two companies have now decided to settle, and as well as a whopper payout for the attorneys who filed the class action case, original iPad owners are going to share the proceeds:

• Customers purchasing a 3G-ready iPad before June 7, 2010 will receive a $40 check from Apple, even if you still have a grandfathered unlimited data account.
• Customers purchasing a 3G-ready iPad before June 7, 2010 who never activated an AT&T unlimited tablet mobile data plan will get a $20 discount off AT&T’s current $50 a month data add-on for up to one year.

Customers complained the steep price premium they paid for a 3G-equipped iPad wasn’t worth Apple’s asking price once AT&T removed the unlimited data option that Steve Jobs called part of a breakthrough deal.

Customers will not receive any awards until after February of next year, when the settlement is expected to be approved.