After losing another 90,000 residential cable television customers during the second quarter, Charter Communications is beefing up its customer promotions to win back customers and respond to competing offers.

Starting this month, Spectrum is pitching a double play bundle for new customers using its familiar formula of $29.99 for each service, only this time they actually came close to meaning it.

Customers who want a 60Mbps (100Mbps in some markets) broadband package with Spectrum Select TV package can now get each service for around $30 a month, but will still have to pay around $6 for a ‘required’ cable box and another $7.50 a month for Spectrum’s Broadcast TV surcharge. To sweeten the deal, Spectrum is including a free year of Showtime.

Prior to this promotion, Spectrum’s double play promotion charged $59.99 for the TV bundle and $29.99 for internet access, one penny more a month than its triple play bundle which also includes a phone line.

The newest double play promotion offers about $24 in savings a month over the old one, which usually included one set-top box for free.

The double play promotion, which omits a phone line, is likely to continue a decline of Charter’s residential home phone customers, many canceling landline service as their aggressively priced Time Warner Cable phone promotion expires. Charter’s broadband growth has slowed as well. The company added 231,000 customers during the quarter compared with 308,000 during the same quarter last year. Charter’s pricing and promotions proved not as attractive as some of their competitors.

Regular speed test results from a network of volunteers using FCC-supplied equipment are showing some problems with Charter Communications’ ability to meet its advertising claims for fast broadband speeds.

After Charter acquired Time Warner Cable in May 2016, it formally suspended Time Warner Cable’s Maxx upgrade program, designed to increase broadband speed and capacity across the cable company’s footprint. Charter committed to completing Maxx upgrades already underway at the time the merger was concluded, but future upgrade activity would have to wait for up to three years before being completed.

As a result, newly available speed test results are showing that in some areas where Charter delayed upgrades, some customers are seeing their speeds gradually drop as capacity no longer adequately meets demand.

One sign of trouble is when broadband speeds begin to slow or become unstable during peak usage times, typically in the evening hours. This is usually a sign customers have saturated the shared neighborhood connection serving their area. When customers head for bed, speeds usually return to normal. But customers are also complaining that in some instances they never get the speeds advertised by Charter’s Spectrum. Sometimes this is a result of a local line problem, but in some neighborhoods, a large number of customers sharing an inadequate or faulty connection can cause speed slowdowns that persist day and night.

A closer examination of daily speed test results over the last year show that while ordinary speed tests using Charter-hosted speed test servers or websites don’t always show a problem, independent tests of network traffic performance in areas bypassed for upgrades are showing signs of traffic jams.

During the last quarter of daily periodic testing, a customer that used to subscribe to Time Warner Cable’s 50/5Mbps service and routinely got those speeds no longer does after switching to Charter/Spectrum’s 60Mbps plan. Customers question where the bottleneck is, because when they test broadband speeds using the company’s own test tools, they usually find their broadband speeds are above what is advertised. But independent, regularly conducted speed tests by third-party organizations reveal problems. One customer noted for the month of July, he received a minimum of 27.3Mbps, a maximum of 70.1Mbps, but an average of only 47.6Mbps from Spectrum’s basic 60Mbps plan — less than what he was able to get from Time Warner Cable’s 50Mbps Ultimate Internet.

A review of traffic graphs show most of the problems are showing up in the evening starting by 5pm weekdays. Tests show uneven performance until around midnight.

The New York State Department of Public Service today announced it had reached a potential settlement with Charter Communications after the company failed to meet its rural broadband expansion obligation outlined in last year’s approval of its acquisition of Time Warner Cable.

“The [Public Service] Commission conditioned its approval of the merger on Charter’s agreement to undertake several types of investments and other activities,” said Department interim CEO Gregg C. Sayre. “While Charter is delivering on many of them, it failed to expand the reach of its network to un-served and under-served communities and commercial customers in the time allotted.”

While Charter’s merger with Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks won rubber-stamp approval in almost every state where it operates, New York regulators required the merger to directly benefit the state’s consumers. The company must upgrade customers to 100Mbps service by the end of 2018 and offer at least 300Mbps statewide by the end of 2019. But it must also expand its cable network to reach 145,000 unserved and underserved homes and businesses within the next four years. The merger approval agreement set a schedule to begin network expansion as quickly as possible.

Charter failed to achieve its obligations, only reaching 15,164 of the 36,250 customers it was required to reach one year after the merger deal was approved.

As a result, regulators have penalized Charter, requiring it to pay an extra $1 million in grants for computer equipment and internet access targeting low-income New York residents and set aside $12 million in escrow as a security pledge to meet all of its network expansion commitments going forward. The company now agrees it will complete its build out obligation in six increments of 21,646 customers through May 18, 2020. Charter will forfeit a portion of the $12 million each time it misses a deadline. The amount lost will depend on the percentage of the target missed and whether the company demonstrates it has completed necessary tasks to expand service. If the company manages to meet its deadlines going forward, it has the right to earn back some or all of its security pledge.

Charter has also agreed to develop a communications plan within 60 days of the settlement’s execution to inform New Yorkers whether they are part of the build-out plan.

The settlement offer will issued for public comment, and will require final Commission approval to take effect.

Lexington, Ky. officials are mad as hell about some of the sales and customer service tactics heaped on the local citizenry courtesy of Charter Communications, better loathed as “Spectrum.”

In a letter released yesterday, Lexington’s chief administrative officer Sally Hamilton told the cable company her office mail is running hot and a lot of it is from local residents furious about Charter’s business practices and pricing.

The city now wants Charter officials to turn over company records detailing customer complaints and attend a public hearing to discuss the cable company’s performance since taking over for Time Warner Cable.

Lexington officials are also unhappy that Charter recently laid off 56 customer service employees in its local office.

“The city is left wondering what abuse will be heaped upon it next by Charter-Spectrum,” the letter said. “Because of the public urgency regarding Charter’s actions regarding its Spectrum service, we insist on a swift response to this letter,” Hamilton added.

The Herald-Leader obtained copies of earlier correspondence between the city and the cable company detailing its response to accusations of “shoddy customer service.”

Local residents are unhappy that Charter has dramatically raised rates, shows an unwillingness to negotiate over its pricing, and has removed a number of channels from Spectrum’s basic cable lineup.

The cable company has also been accused of aggressive sales techniques, including using door-to-door agents to browbeat mentally and developmentally impaired people into signing up for cable service, even though they are legally not able to sign contracts. The city is demanding to know how many times that has happened.

Charter is also accused of preventing customers from talking to supervisors, lowering advertised broadband speeds, and no longer accepting returned cable equipment through the mail.

Charter’s June 5 letter assured the city that “quality customer service is of the utmost importance to Charter,” and claimed the company was in the process of spending $3.1 million on local improvements, including 860 new outdoor Wi-Fi hotspots, and low-cost internet access for the poor.