Bright House Networks customers now have access to more than 100 channels of online video entertainment thanks to the cable company’s release of Bright House TV, a new free app for the Apple iPad.

Essentially a rebranded version of Time Warner Cable’s TWCable TV app, Bright House TV comes with the exact same restrictions that have peeved more than a few Time Warner customers trying to use it:

• You must have a minimum of Bright House Networks’ Digital-Basic Cable TV service to watch;
• You must use your Bright House-supplied Internet connection to access the service on your home’s Wi-Fi connection;
• The service will not work outside of your home, over alternative Internet connections, or through your smartphone;
• You cannot currently access the service on any device other than an iPad.

For customers who do manage to meet all of these conditions, many report they are satisfied with the performance of the app.

“A great 1.0 version, acts as advertises, and HD looks great on the iPad,” says Bright House customer Chris McGonigal. “I would like to see fullscreen option (even though it cuts image), and the ability to hide the Status bar at the top. Also a favorite channels list, which kind of works with channel history.”

One other thing Bright House customers have in common with Time Warner Cable — they are still waiting for HBO Go, too.

“Here’s to seeing HBO Go on BHN next,” he adds.

Time Warner Cable experienced another challenging quarter, continuing to lose cable TV customers who either drop or pare back their television service, often in favor of broadband.

The company reported losses of an additional 128,000 video subscribers during the third quarter, but is partly winning that revenue back with new broadband customers — 89,000 of them in the last three months.

“Broadband is a powerful service for which there appears to be unquestionable consumer thirst,” Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt said on the investor call. “Over time, we will contribute more of our plant’s capacity to broadband.”

The company is also poised to expand its marketing to win new broadband customers away from their primary competition — telephone company DSL service.  Company officials remain confounded by customers who subscribe to Time Warner’s cable TV service and take broadband from “inferior” phone company-delivered DSL.  Time Warner will continue to target these customers with win-over promotions offering a year of Road Runner Standard Service at the $29.95 promotional price point.

For the company as a whole, this is the tenth consecutive quarter of year-over-year residential broadband revenue improvement, coming from a combination of higher-priced, faster speed tiers, price increases, and subscriber additions.  The company’s DOCSIS 3 upgrade has proven itself a winner for customers and the company, with 18 percent of Time Warner subscribers now choosing 30 or 50Mbps broadband services.

Wall Street expressed some concern about statements from CEO Glenn Britt that the company was going to expand capital spending on broadband to handle increasing demand, especially from online video.  That concern comes despite the fact the company’s “capital intensity” (spending) from January-September was the lowest in the history of the company.  The full year’s capital spending is on track to reach up to $3 billion, which is consistent with what the company spent last year.

Glenn Britt

So despite the plans to spend more on broadband, that spending is actually in line with previous years.

In response to an opening question from Deutsche Bank’s Doug Mitchelson, Britt delivered an extended explanation downplaying the company’s spending plans:

In a way, there’s nothing really new here. I think you’ve seen this trend for a while. Our broadband product is very strong.

As most people know, the usage of broadband is skyrocketing, as it has been for some time. And that means that we will need to spend more money on it. We have been already, both in capital and operating expenses.

The great thing about the Internet is lots of third parties dream up lots of new applications that require more speed and more bandwidth. And we anticipate that we’re going to have to devote more capacity to that over time. We will do that by gradually removing our analog signals from our — analog TV signals from our plan. We’ve been doing that over the last several years by migrating to digital using Switched Digital technology. And over the next several years, we’ll be going all digital in the TV space.

I don’t see this driving a dramatic change in our cap spending, I think, to the core of your questions. The spending has been going on for a while, and I think you’re seeing a change in mix. The video spending is going down over time. The business services is going to go up, although it didn’t this quarter. And you’re going to see the spending on broadband going up. But I don’t think the overall trajectory is mutually different.

This quarter, the company’s conference call seemed to embrace greater broadband usage, and pondering Internet Overcharging schemes like usage caps or usage-based billing never came up.  But Richard Greenfield from BTIG alluded to usage in his questions to Rob Marcus, president and chief operating officer at Time Warner Cable.

“I think we’re somewhere in the 7GB a month [range] of downstream bandwidth on a median basis,” Marcus said. “The average is much higher given the disproportionate usage by our high-end users.”

There were plenty of other facts to be gleaned from this morning’s conference call:

TV

• Whole Home DVR service has been introduced nationwide.  In the coming year, Time Warner will begin deploying “home gateways,” which reduce equipment costs;
• Time Warner is testing improved cloud-based set top boxes with home networking capabilities in parts of Syracuse, Los Angeles and Dallas.  These boxes will expand across the country in 2012.  They offer better search capability and deliver an improved user experience;
• 60% of customers reject “triple-play” offers from Time Warner and choose either “single” or “double-play” service instead;
• Much of Time Warner’s revenue growth is coming from rate increases on programming, services, and equipment;
• TV Essentials, the smaller, less expensive video package, is now available in New York City and Northeast Ohio, as well as upstate New York. It will launch nationwide by year end.  Unsurprisingly, company officials admit the less-than-attractive channel lineup has resulted in the vast majority of customers calling about the offering taking the traditional video package instead;
• Customers continue to drop ancillary services to cut their cable bill.  The increasingly expensive DVR box is a new target for cutting, and premium movie channels, adult pay-per-view, and mini-pay services all continue to suffer significant declines in business;
• The Google-Motorola deal will likely have little impact on Time Warner’s set top boxes, which primarily come from Cisco and Samsung.

Broadband

• By the end of the year, Time Warner plans to offer an Android-based TV Everywhere application similar to the existing iPad application, which will also continue to be upgraded to include on-demand offerings;
• Time Warner will make their TV Everywhere service available on game consoles, smart TVs and PCs in the near future;
• New York City customers will soon be able to select from a range of local broadcast stations on the company’s iPad app.  Other markets will start to see local channels added to this app in 2012;
• Major parts of Time Warner’s capital investments this year are: building data centers in Charlotte and Denver, conversion to all-digital in Maine to make room for enhanced broadband, and the continued rollout of DOCSIS 3.0. The company is also continuing to spend significantly on wiring commercial buildings to sell services to business customers;
• TV Essentials customers will soon be offered a “lite user” slower speed discount broadband plan to accompany their video package;
• In Los Angeles, Wideband 50Mbps customers also get 2 gigabytes of 4G/3G mobile broadband for no additional monthly charge on the company-branded Clearwire service. For Turbo Plus and Wideband 30Mbps customers, they can get the same 4G/3G capability for an additional $10 a month. Standard and Turbo customers can get it for an extra $20.  The company’s mobile broadband add-on product has not enjoyed much success with paying customers, however.  Time Warner hopes the value-added bundling of mobile broadband will attract more interest.

Phone

• Cord-cutting is now impacting Time Warner “digital phone” service, too.  Customers are increasingly reluctant to purchase phone service from any landline provider.  Now Time Warner’s regular pricing is starting to cost them business.  Executives revealed Time Warner’s “digital phone” service costs the company $9.06 to provide.  They charge consumers $30.  With that kind of profit margin, the company admits it will have to get more aggressive in pricing to attract new customers (and potentially keep existing ones);
• Time Warner lost 8,000 residential voice line customers last quarter, cushioned by net additions of 13,000 business line customers;
• The company continues to show little interest in selling cell phone products or services, either owned by themselves or others.  Mobile data remains an exception.

In August, Time Warner Cable’s billing system went haywire for some 15,000 Ohio customers, some of whom found their promotional rates canceled, resulting in a doubling of their monthly bills.

One such Time Warner customer is Linda Sacash, who lives in Russell Township.  She had a three-year deal, in writing, with Time Warner that provided her family with a triple play package of Internet, telephone, and cable service for $89.95 a month.  But when her August bill arrived, Time Warner insisted she owed twice that amount — $179.

Sacash, among others, started calling Time Warner to complain about the inaccurate bills and was told the cable company unilaterally decided to expire promotional packages a year early.  Sacash wasn’t happy with that explanation, and noted a clause in her written agreement that limited rate increases to no more than 10 percent a year.  That didn’t matter much to Time Warner, who looked forward to receiving her new $179 payment by the due date on her bill.

Time Warner’s attitude changed, however, when WEWS-TV consumer troubleshooter Joe Pagonakis turned the camera on himself, and called the cable company looking for answers:

The company responded immediately, admitting some 15,000 bills were processed inaccurately during the summer.

Time Warner quickly corrected Sacash’s bill, and confirmed that her promotional offer will remain in place until November 2012, as stated in the Time Warner service invoice.

If considering a promotional offer, get it in writing and keep the paperwork for the length of the promotion, just in case your provider decides to renege on the deal. If signing up for a promotion over the phone, always get the name, extension/employee ID, and the exact details of the offer and keep those details in your files.  It’s often easier to get a company to stand up to their commitments when you have the name and extension number of the employee who sold it.

[flv width=”480″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WEWS Cleveland Russell Township woman fights wins battle over inaccurate Time Warner digital cable bill 10-24-11.mp4[/flv]

WEWS-TV in Cleveland intervenes on behalf of a local woman who faced a doubling of her cable bill when Time Warner elected to end her promotion a year early.  (2 minutes)

Stop the Cap! reader Wayne A. dropped us a line to let us know Comcast has been getting very aggressive in the Denver area, poaching CenturyLink customers with enormous discounts:

My wife and I just accepted a package from Comcast to leave CenturyLink for a package that includes:

• Digital Premier HD with DVR
• HBO, Cinemax, Showtime, and other premium movie channels
• Broadband service at 25/5Mbps
• Unlimited Long Distance Digital Phone Service

Comcast’s price?  An amazing $109.99/month for the first year, $129.99/month for the second.  Wayne says that’s a savings of $90 a month over ordinary Comcast prices, and compared with what he was paying CenturyLink, he will save $912.12 during the first year and around $600 for the second.

What makes Comcast’s pricing so aggressive is the fact they include much faster broadband speed than many other retention or “capture” customer deals.  They also throw in free premium movie channels.  We’ve seen Time Warner Cable offer triple-play retention deals for less than $90 a month for the first year, but they don’t include movie channels and deliver broadband service at the standard 10/1Mbps speed.

If you are paying Comcast more, it may be time to pick up the phone and threaten to walk unless you can have the same deal.  We’ve found dealing with customer retentions to be a real “your results may vary”-experience.  Don’t be willing to take the first offer.  Don’t be afraid to dismiss weak deals with a non-committal “I’ll think about it” if the price is not right for you.  Then call back.

In the last few weeks, we’ve found Time Warner Cable’s best deals still go to customers who actually schedule a service disconnection. Within hours, Time Warner starts calling, looking to “make an offer you cannot refuse.” The retention specialists at Time Warner who reach out to you generally have the most aggressively priced deals. You qualify if you call, schedule a disconnect a week or two out, and wait by the phone. You can keep your service running while company representatives try to convince you to stick with them.  Just make sure you answer those unfamiliar Caller ID-calls — it’s probably the cable company.  Most will ask why you disconnected.  If you answer “price,” the deals start coming.

Unfortunately, there was no way we could take advantage of any of their latest offers, which literally started two hours after disconnecting my late grandmother’s cable service.

It’s a buyer’s market for telecommunications products, so never settle for the regular price when a substantial discount is a phone call away.

Time Warner Cable has ended the latest round of talks with the National Football League to bring the NFL Network and NFL RedZone to Time Warner cable customers.

Sports Business Daily reports the talks ended with a contentious meeting held last Friday at the cable company’s New York office.  Sources say the talks didn’t end with a dispute over the cost of the network, noted to be among the most expensive sports networks available.  That likely leaves streaming and other ancillary rights issues to be the latest reasons for the talks to end.  Time Warner has gotten aggressive in negotiations for the right to stream cable programming, and also time shift it for subscribers with its “start over” feature.

The NFL has been negotiating with the cable operator more more than seven years without success.