Time Warner Cable customers with deep pockets and a need for speed will find Time Warner Cable’s new Wideband Internet service arriving in certain North Texas neighborhoods on or around March 19th.

Made possible by DOCSIS 3 upgrades, the new service will provide 50/5 Mbps service for as low as $99.99 per month.

As has been the case in other cities getting TWC’s Wideband service, self-install kits are not yet available and a formal service call is required.  You will also need a new DOCSIS 3-capable cable modem.

Interested customers in the Dallas area can call Time Warner Cable after March 19th at (972) 742-5892 to determine if service is available yet in your neighborhood.

Time Warner Cable competes with both AT&T and Verizon across its North Texas division.

AT&T U-verse maxes out at 24 Mbps currently, and although Verizon FiOS can match Time Warner Cable’s speed, the phone company’s current price is $40 higher for the service.

Customers who need this level of speed should call Verizon or Time Warner Cable and inquire about any promotional pricing that could lower your bill for several months.  In New York City, some customers received discounted Time Warner Cable Wideband service for six months.

Eventually, competition should result in lower prices for super fast broadband connections.  DOCSIS 3 upgrades offer a win-win for both customers and the cable company providing the service.  Increased capacity resolves neighborhood congestion issues and also permits higher speed, premium-priced tiers to deliver additional profits to providers.  In return, customers who need ultra-fast speeds get them, and are only to happy to pay for them, as long as they are not usage-capped.  Nothing destroys the value of premium-priced tiers better than unjustified usage limitations.

A column this week in The Post-Standard falls into the trap of believing usage caps on wired broadband service represent “fairness.”

Al Fasoldt, who writes a technology column for the Syracuse, N.Y. newspaper, told readers they should investigate buying and/or using usage measurement tools in order to protect themselves from a surprising bill at the end of the month.

Caps can make their service fairer to all customers by blocking excessive downloads that clog the network, and those who exceed their caps can be charged a great deal extra for service. This amounts to free money for ISPs.

But there is something counterintuitive about promoting new ways to get entertainment on the Internet — by using Hulu, for example, to stream TV shows to your home computer — while telling customers they can’t use more than a certain amount of data.

[…]

What’s needed is a simple way to measure how much data you use per month. Cable providers sometimes provide a Web page that logs each customer’s transfer totals — call your ISP to find out if your plan has such a feature — but you can easily track usage yourself with data-usage software utilities.

Time Warner Cable headquarters in Rochester, N.Y.

Fasoldt assumes facts not in evidence.  Simply put, there is nothing fair about usage caps, particularly on wired broadband service.  Fasoldt can be partly excused for making the assumption because he lives in Syracuse, where Verizon FiOS and Time Warner Cable compete heavily for customers in the Salt City.  Veterans of actual Internet Overcharging experiments, and those who live under usage caps and usage-based billing can testify about the true implications of such schemes.

They are nothing short of rationing broadband service for fatter profits.

In Rochester, where Fasoldt notes customers successfully fought off Time Warner’s experiment, customers do not have the luxury of two closely-matched competitors.  They have the cable company and a telephone company that stubbornly clings to its own 5 GB usage allowance in its terms and conditions, albeit presently unenforced.  Where competition is at bay, higher prices for limited service are in play.

At least Fasoldt admits it’s also about the money.

There is nothing counter-intuitive about promoting online video services and then slapping usage caps on them when you realize it’s really ALL about the money and not about “fairness.”  Limiting video consumption is critical to protecting cable television packages.  If you can watch it all online, why keep paying for cable-TV?  With a usage cap, there are no worries about that ever happening.

As this website has repeatedly documented, consumers do not need to invest in usage measurement tools that are a nuisance to install and monitor.  They just need a broadband provider that can be happy living off the billions in profits already earned from today’s unlimited broadband service without greedily trying to overcharge consumers even higher pricing for limited service in the future.

Fasoldt would do better by his readers telling them to follow the example of communities who have been exposed to such schemes.  They got involved, threatened to cancel service, and created a sufficiently large enough headache for providers who eventually determined, for now, it just wasn’t worth alienating customers with unwanted pricing schemes.

Time Warner Cable is offering mobile phone providers a solution to their clogged wireless networks — clog ours instead!

Business Week notes the cable company has been aggressively pitching its broadband network to cell phone companies in New York City, which can be used to transport cell phone calls and mobile data between cell towers and the providers’ operations centers.  The “backhaul” network cell phone companies rely on to move calls and data between the cell tower nearest you and your provider’s distribution network is often the source of the worst bottlenecks, especially when those networks are connected by standard copper telephone wiring, as many still are.

The more customers sharing a low capacity copper line, the slower your data speeds and greater the chance for dropped calls.  Although some providers have expanded their fiber capacity to reach busy cell towers, many more are still stuck with copper… until now.

Time Warner Cable’s offer to offload clogged cell phone networks onto the cable company’s broadband backbone has become extraordinarily profitable to the nation’s second largest cable operator.

In fact, it has become Time Warner Cable’s fastest-growing business after revenue tripled last year, Craig Collins, senior vice president of business services told Business Week.

We are talking $3.6 billion dollars in revenue in 2012 from wireless carriers alone, according to researcher GeoResults, Inc.

“Backhaul is a growth play that we are pursuing aggressively,” Collins said. “These mobile players want to get the bandwidth they need at a cost-effective price and our structure allows them to get that pretty seamlessly.”

U.S. smartphone use has grown almost 700 percent in four years, according to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission. Mobile-data volume is more than doubling annually as people use devices like the iPhone, BlackBerry and Google Inc.’s new Nexus One to send photos, watch videos and surf the Web. When networks jam, consumers face dropped calls and may find they can’t access Web pages or TV, analysts said.

The coming "exaflood" doesn't seem to worry Time Warner Cable, except when profits from consumers are at stake

Apparently the “exaflood” scare theory that suggests broadband networks are becoming hopelessly clogged does not apply to Time Warner Cable, because the company easily found plenty of free bandwidth in metropolitan New York City to profit from wireless phone traffic.

Not to be outdone, Comcast expects $1 billion from the wireless backhaul gravy train over time, according to its February 3rd conference call with investors.  Comcast is in a unique position to help ease congestion in San Francisco, where the cable operator provides service to some of the same customers who wander the city with Apple iPhones on AT&T’s overclogged Bay Area network.

Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt doesn’t want to limit the potential revenue to just the wireless big boys — he wants to offer service to carriers large and small:

While Time Warner Cable declined to specify if AT&T, the lone U.S. carrier for the iPhone, is a customer, the New York- based cable company says it wants to sign carriers large and small. Chief Executive Officer Glenn Britt alluded to AT&T’s extra iPhone traffic in a December conference call.

“They want to get that into a cable as fast as they can,” Britt said, referring to overloads. His company began leasing backhaul in 2008 and posted $26 million in sales last year, less than 1 percent of the company’s total sales. Collins declined to give a forecast for 2010.

All this, of course, comes ironically to those Time Warner Cable customers who were subjected to Internet Overcharging experiments from Time Warner Cable just about one year ago.  Apparently, the exaflood only applies to consumers who face enormous broadband pricing increases and/or usage limits because of “overburdened” broadband networks.

Not so overburdened that the company can’t make room for billions in new earnings from cell phone companies, of course.

[flv width=”640″ height=”500″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Bloomberg Moffett Says ATT May Need Cable to Ease Network Jams 3-8-10.flv[/flv]

[Video Fixed!] Craig Moffett discusses wireless smartphone data usage trends and Time Warner Cable’s involvement in transporting mobile phone and data across its cable broadband network (5 minutes)

Rep. Eric Massa (D-NY) is expected to resign his seat Monday

Rep. Eric Massa (D-New York), author of the Broadband Internet Fairness Act (HR 2902) — legislation that would ban Internet Overcharging, announced he will resign his office Monday.

In a fast-moving series of events, Massa first announced he would not seek re-election because of health reasons — the congressman faces a renewed battle with cancer, but allegations of ethical violations also surfaced earlier this week which have gotten national news coverage.

Massa is a first term congressman in New York’s 29th Congressional district, which has traditionally elected Republican candidates to office.  But as the national Republican party has trended further to the right, northeastern Republicans have become an endangered species in Congress.  Former Rep. Randy Kuhl only held onto the seat for two terms before being defeated by Massa in 2008.  Kuhl himself replaced retired congressman Amo Houghton, a long-serving moderate Republican whose voting record often split with the national Republican party on major issues.

Massa’s decision not to run for re-election surprised voters in his district, which runs from suburban Rochester to the Pennsylvania border along the southern tier.  Friday’s sudden announcement he’ll also resign his office effective Monday shocked voters and started a scramble for who might assume Massa’s seat upon his resignation.

The loss of Eric Massa to the Stop the Cap! cause is a concern for broadband consumers.  Massa stepped up to protect consumers from an Internet Overcharging experiment proposed last April by Time Warner Cable, which serves most of his district.  Massa immediately blasted the cable company’s plan to test usage-based billing on residential customers in the Rochester area, which is the only major city in New York State not served by Verizon and its expanding fiber to the home FiOS system.

Massa’s proposed legislation would have banned such schemes unless a company could demonstrate a clear financial need to adopt consumption billing and usage limits.

Thankfully, New York senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) remains in office, and is the only senator to protest Time Warner Cable’s experiment, and helped end it, not just for residents of western New York, but for residents of Texas and North Carolina as well.

As to the swirling of allegations surrounding Massa, I have no interest in expanding on them here.  You can get a detailed review of the congressman’s views on these issues by listening to a 90-minute radio show aired today on a WKPQ-FM in Hornell, New York.  Today’s show will probably break news because Massa expands in great detail what’s behind the allegations and the reasons for his retirement.

Eric Massa’s regular Sunday show on WKPQ-FM Hornell, NY today discussed his decision to resign his office in great detail. (90 minutes)
You must remain on this page to hear the clip, or you can download the clip and listen later.

As for his replacement, a number of Democrats from both the southern tier and Monroe County/Rochester are considering entering the race.  Massa’s already-campaigning Republican opponent, former Corning Mayor Tom Reed remains in the race.  The Republican county supervisor for Monroe County, Maggie Brooks, is also considering a run.  But so is the former Congressman Randy Kuhl.  “Randy the Dandy” would be the worst possible option.  His undistinguished record and contempt for his constituents makes my skin crawl.  In his last term, Kuhl refused to hold open town hall meetings, instead shepherding constituents in for ‘five minutes with Randy’ where someone took notes and another escorted you out when your time was up.  Nobody should have bothered to take notes — his ongoing lack of concern about what voters in his district thought helped him lose his seat in the first place.  His lack-of-listening tour would fit perfectly with certain cable companies who don’t listen to their customers.  Hopefully, voters will not contemplate a return of Randy Kuhl.  Four years was more than enough.

We’ll be looking for other members of Congress to take up where Eric Massa left off.  I would like to thank Congressman Massa for his hard work on behalf of our cause, as well as helping make a difference on so many other matters important to the voters in his district.  I wish him good health and best wishes.

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Eric Massa Resigns Monday 3-6-10.flv[/flv]

Several television stations announced Rep. Massa’s decision to resign his office Friday in “breaking news” headlines.  This clip has three reports from WETM-TV Elmira, WHAM-TV Rochester, and WENY-TV Corning. (6 minutes)

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Eric Massa Reactions 3-6-10.flv[/flv]

Residents in the 29th congressional district react to Rep. Massa’s resignation announcement, and local politicians jockey for position to potentially run for Massa’s seat.  Three reports are included from WHAM-TV Rochester, WROC-TV Rochester, and WENY-TV Corning. (6 minutes)

Today’s quote comes courtesy of Landel Hobbs, chief operating officer of Time Warner Cable.

Speaking at an investor conference in San Francisco, Hobbs said broadband has replaced cable TV as its anchor product, meaning subscribers increasingly refuse to part with it, no matter the price.

“Consumers like it so much that we have the ability to increase pricing around high-speed data,” Hobbs was noted saying by the Wall Street Journal.

Hobbs also reports the cable company continues to grow its Road Runner service at the expense of telephone companies and their lackluster DSL product lines.  Much of Time Warner’s broadband growth these days comes from disaffected DSL customers switching providers.  Broadband remains a profit center for the cable industry even as revenue from cable television flatlines in a difficult economy.

So let the Money Party begin… your broadband bill is going up, especially in areas where subscribers don’t have many alternatives.