Professor Rodney Tiffen

The Sydney Morning Herald ran a piece Friday morning that had absolutely nothing nice to say about the former leadership of Telstra, Australia’s “Private Telecom Monopoly.”

Sol Trujillo was the George W. Bush of telecommunications. For both, the American way was the only way. Being the biggest meant you did not have to do diplomacy, and both were better at starting wars than finishing them. Both used patronage and punishment to ensure a like-minded leadership group that made worse decisions more harmoniously.

Australians remain unimpressed with the tumbleweeds that routinely blow across the Land Down Under’s broadband superhighway — the result of a combination of failed government leadership, special-interest dominated public policies which put the interests of private companies ahead of their own citizens, and the predictable emergence of greedy telecommunications providers delivering the least possible service at the highest possible price for millions of Australians.

Rodney Tiffen, professor of government at the University of Sydney, calls out a succession of Australian governments which have repeatedly dropped the broadband ball, and have left the country with comparatively overpriced service with ludicrous Internet Overcharging schemes that punish citizens with usage caps, outrageous reductions in their broadband speeds or, worse, overlimit fees and penalties:

Australian consumers suffered particularly from the stringent caps placed on downloads and the high expense of exceeding the cap. While in nine of the countries no explicit caps were placed on broadband subscriptions, Australia was one of only four countries (with New Zealand, Canada and Belgium) where all survey offers included caps, and among these four was by far the most expensive when the caps were exceeded – an average of 11 cents per megabyte compared with 1 cent for the others.

Tiffen rejects the argument that Australians have to pay more because Australia has low population density.

“It should also be remembered Australia has a higher percentage of people living in large cities (defined as those with more than three-quarters of a million people) than any of the other countries (measured by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development),” Tiffen writes.

The key policy issue Tiffen identifies is: what is a natural monopoly and when does competition produce more dynamism and responsiveness to consumers? Since telecommunications reform came on to the public agenda about two decades ago, there had been a bipartisan failure to address this central question.

Tiffen wants Australia to recognize the mistakes America made dealing with its cable television industry — “replete with cases where a company controlling the delivery platform has favoured its own company’s channels over its competitors.”

“Indeed a private monopoly at a key gate-keeping point often leads to less competition in services than there would be with a publicly owned or regulated infrastructure,” Tiffen argues.

“Comcast isn’t looking to make a $50 billion purchase.”

Stephen Burke, Comcast Chief Operating Officer

Now that Comcast has been freed from that pesky provision of the 1992 Cable Act, authorizing the Federal Communications Commission to set a maximum size for large corporate cable operators, the nation’s largest cable operator is now considering breaking out the checkbook and going on a shopping spree.  That is likely to spark a merger and acquisition frenzy among several players in the industry which could dramatically reduce America’s choices for telecommunications services.

Bloomberg News this evening quotes Stephen Burke, Comcast’s Chief Operating Officer, that it will consider buying other cable operators at a “good price.”

“If there is a way to acquire cable systems for what we consider a good price, ones that are well managed, we would certainly look at whatever is out three,” Burke, 51, said today at a Bank of America Corp. conference in Marina del Rey, California. Still, the company “isn’t waking up every morning” evaluating how it can become bigger, he said.

The Wall Street Journal calls the decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, freeing Comcast from its limits, the start of “the coming cable consolidation.”

Martin Peers, writing for the Journal, said that when the dust settles, phone companies might own satellite TV providers and cable companies might end up consolidating into one or two super-sized providers blanketing the entire country with service.

Consumers would be left with a handful of providers for all of their communications needs, from telephone to broadband to television, if the courts open the door with more decisions favorable to the industry and antitrust reviews aren’t aggressively undertaken.

Starting with Comcast, Burke thinks Comcast’s first priority might be to buy up more programmers.  Comcast already has ownership interests in several cable networks, and Burke feels “content channels are good businesses, and we wouldn’t be doing out job if we didn’t try to figure out a way to get bigger in those businesses.”

With Comcast and Cablevision joining forces to sue their way out of the cable network exclusivity ban, owning and controlling those networks, and what competitors get access to their programming, could be an important asset in an ever-consolidating marketplace.  Imagine if U-verse or FiOS was denied access to ESPN, The Weather Channel, CNN, and other popular cable channels.  Would subscribers be compelled to switch providers if they could no longer get the channels they want to watch?

The Journal ponders the coming consolidation frenzy:

Comcast and other cable companies will probably need to consider more consolidation — if not now, in the next couple of years. They are still losing market share to satellite and phone rivals. Comcast lost nearly 700,000 basic subscribers in the year to June. Time Warner Cable has fallen to No. 4 among TV providers, behind satellite firms DirecTV Group and Dish Network.

Cable operators are more than offsetting video losses by selling phone and Internet-access. Eventually, though, those opportunities will peter out. And phone companies’ competitive threat in video could be enhanced by a combination with satellite TV.

The newspaper speculates about this kind of marketplace in the near future:

Today's pay television marketplace

AT&T DirecTV: The Journal ponders an AT&T buyout of DirecTV resulting in a reduction in AT&T’s investment in U-verse, pushing consumers to its newly-acquired satellite service and redirecting investment into the overburdened AT&T mobile phone network.

VerizonDISH: A Verizon buyout of DISH would allow the phone company to push more rural customers to DISH satellite service, and reduce the expense of wiring all but the nation’s largest cities with fiber optics.

Comcast (formerly Comcast & Time Warner Cable, if not others): A supersized Comcast absorbs Time Warner Cable and becomes an even more dominant cable operator, leveraging its investment in Clearwire to offer a  wireless data option to stay competitive with the mobile phone companies like AT&T and Verizon Wireless.

That would leave most Americans with just three choices for telecommunications services capable of bundling multiple products together.  Wouldn’t such a merger-mania trigger antitrust implications and government review?

The Journal doesn’t think so:

Would such a deal pass antitrust scrutiny, even absent the ownership cap? There is a good chance, say several antitrust lawyers. A major focus of antitrust law is whether a merger reduces competition in a way that could raise prices or otherwise hurt consumers. As cable operators generally don’t compete with one another, merging wouldn’t cut competition.

But what kind of benefits would be found for consumers?  If one resides in a city too small to be judged worthy of fiber optic deployment, consumers could be told to get the satellite television service and live with the copper wiring the phone companies provide today.

Cable operators would be in a fine position to compete, as they traditionally have, against satellite television because of the technical limitations of satellite service, ranging from consumer objections to having a dish on their home, to a limit on the number of sets that can be wired, to the inability to get a clear view of the satellite because of nearby trees or other obstructions.

Who pays for the debt likely incurred from a bidding war during a merger frenzy?  Guess.

AT&T Rate Increases Coming

AT&T is jacking up phone rates for residents of Alabama, one year after state officials deregulated the Alabama telephone service marketplace based on the premise that competition would bring about lower rates for consumers, not higher.

Darrell Baker, director of the Alabama Public Service Commission’s telecommunications division, said telephone companies heavily promoted the price deregulation plan by claiming competition would keep rates down.  An industry-friendly deregulation bill was passed in 2005 over PSC objections, and another bill the Alabama Legislature passed this spring expanded deregulation further.

Alabama residents will now pay for that free-market construct in a state with limited local line competition.

AT&T spokesman Hood Harris said customers with Basic Service, a single-line home phone, will see their bill rise 3 percent, from $16.95 per month to $17.45.  Approximately 15 percent of AT&T’s Alabama customers have basic service.

Customers with AT&T’s deluxe plan, the Residence Complete Choice Package, will see an increase of 9.5 percent, from $21 per month to $23.

Harris blamed the increases on inflationary costs.

Baker was unimpressed with the rate increase announcement.  “It doesn’t sound like the competitive market is having much impact,” he said.  Baker expects other telephone companies in the state to quickly follow suit.

AT&T increased rates in 2008 by 4.1%.

Canada is a victim of Internet Overcharging, with virtually every major provider limiting access to broadband, throttling speeds, and charging overlimit penalties for exceeding arbitrary limits. Now Cogeco, which itself engages in these schemes for its residential broadband service, has made a breakthrough of sorts.

Cogeco One Zone, available only to users of Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch, provides 802.11g WiFi across the One Zone WiFi network for only $5CAD a month. One Zone, acquired last August from Toronto Hydro Telecom, operates within a six kilometre region in the downtown core of Toronto. Users discovering the service report it can achieve speeds of up to 7Mbps, and there are no data consumption limits or contracts.

Any iPhone/iPod Touch user who accesses the network within range will automatically be taken to a special sign-up page to begin service. Cogeco One Zone’s offer represents a major discount off the pricing being charged to other One Zone WiFi users:

1 Hour
60 minutes of continuous access
$4.99 + GST and PST

1 Day
24 hours of continuous access
$9.99 + GST and PST

1 Month
Continuous access to same date in following month
$29.00 + GST and PST

(All prices are in Canadian Dollars)

So why has Cogeco decided to practically give away the service?

“Our expectation is that users won’t be using it for downloading video and huge files … It’s just the nature of the device. It’s not likely they’ll be downloading gigabytes of information standing on the street,” Cogeco Data Services president Ian Collins told itWorldCanada.

One potential use Collins may not realize has been among Toronto residents who live and work within range of the network. For some of them, Cogeco One Zone is being used from work and home, and although it is unlikely to replace residential broadband accounts that connect with home computers, some users will give the network a real workout. Should customers figure out how to tether their iPhone WiFi connection to their home computer, effectively accessing the network from a home PC or laptop, that could become an entirely new challenge.

For Canadian iPhone owners, who already face higher prices for iPhone data plans (no “unlimited” plan exists in Canada as it does in the United States), the biggest savings may come from customers downgrading data plans for “phone-based” data, because they rely on the WiFi network instead. Most iPhone owners currently pay $30 per month for 1GB or $25 for 500MB. With unlimited access through WiFi, there are no worries about exceeding data allowances.

Knowledgeable iPod Touch owners could also turn their players into Voice Over IP telephone lines using Skype or Truphone, and effectively pay just a few dollars per month for unlimited long distance calling.