Phillip "Not a Time Warner Cable Employee" Dampier

One of the most vociferous critics of the publicly-owned cable system serving the communities of Mooresville, Cornelius and Davidson, N.C. has been exposed as an employee of Time Warner Cable.

MI-Connection, the community-owned cable system, has been subjected to withering criticism since town leaders purchased it from bankrupt Adelphia Cable in 2007.  The efforts to rebuild the system to current standards has proved time-consuming and expensive, and ongoing expenses will require an investment of at least $17 million over the next three years to keep the cable system up and running.  Despite the fact Time Warner Cable has run into larger, more expensive headaches rebuilding similar rundown Adelphia systems they purchased in Ft. Worth, Texas and Los Angeles, critics of community cable have pounced on the costly rebuild to attack public involvement in private enterprise and suggest city officials have not competently run the operation.

Some of the loudest criticism has come in the comment sections of local newspapers and media sites.  Just as Fibrant has faced similar attacks in the comment section of the Salisbury Post, critics of MI-Connection have piled on in newspapers like the Davidson News and Hunterville’s Herald Weekly.  One of the loudest critics of all, Andy Stevens, even started a blog devoted to attacking what he calls “Government Cable.”

David Boraks, editor of the Davidson News, has reported extensively on MI-Connection, and he reads the comments that follow his articles published online, including those written by Stevens.

In a story written today by Boraks, the Davidson News revealed a fact that consumers, the media, and local officials deserved to know — Stevens works for Time Warner Cable.  That revelation comes despite repeated earlier denials from Stevens when asked by reporters and local officials if he worked for the cable company.

Mooresville, North Carolina

How did the newspaper find out about Mr. Stevens’ day job?

MI-Connection board chair John Venzon has gotten fed up reading unrelenting, and often fact-free attacks on the publicly owned cable system he oversees.  Venzon told the Herald Weekly he used to ignore the often anonymous critics of the local cable system, but he’s changing tactics.  Venzon and some other MI-Connection supporters have jumped into the online debate, correcting false information and taking on some of the cable system’s loudest critics, including Stevens.

As part of that effort, Venzon decided to publicly disclose a recent encounter with Stevens at a local shopping center.  Venzon was especially interested to find Stevens wearing a Time Warner Cable uniform, driving a Time Warner Cable truck.

Venzon went public on the Davidson News website Friday:

I would like to point out that today we confirmed that Andy Stevens, a frequent attendee at our board meetings and vocal community critic works for Time Warner Cable. He was greeted by one of our employees while in a TWC uniform and driving one of their logo-ed vehicles. He has been active in using our publicly available information to turn our potential customers against us and to stir up fear, uncertainty and doubt about MI-Connection while hiding his motives. He does not live in our town or service area, so he does not ‘have a dog in the fight’ unless you consider who signs his paycheck. Could I attend competitors’ regular board meetings to see what they are doing?

To make matters worse, he has used the Freedom of Information Act to gain access to every communication between the towns, the board and management. So Time Warner does in fact sit in our meetings … and we are required to provide the meeting notes.

In corporate America, this would constitute espionage. In our situation, it is free and legal. I find it deplorable. I hope you agree.

I believe we should be required to report information just as publicly traded companies do and would adhere to all such requirement. That system promotes transparency to shareholders on a quarterly basis. In addition, we would continue to attend town board meetings and community roundtables to disclose information to citizens.

In another setting, I would be happy to debate the merits of public ownership of a utility that promotes the well being of its citizens and businesses within their community. However, we are in the midst of executing a decision that was made several years ago and are responsible to grow the business.

I do not mind a fair fight, and we must win based on the value of our products and services. However, don’t unfairly give advantage to our competitors and put our citizens at greater risk.

Boraks

Boraks has gotten an admission from Stevens he does, in fact, work for Time Warner Cable, a pertinent detail omitted from Stevens’ anti-MI-Connection blog.  Before deleting about a dozen articles attacking the community cable system, Stevens even noted on the home page of his website, “As I have a full time job, this effort will be accomplished during my free time (evenings and weekends),” without bothering to disclose what that job was.  His “About” section didn’t make mention of his employer either.

The now-defunct blog of secret Time Warner Cable employee Andy Stevens

Now that Time Warner Cable, a regular critic of community-owned broadband, has been put in the embarrassing position of having an employee indirectly do its dirty work, a company spokesman was reduced to telling Boraks they cannot control what their employees do.

But apparently behind closed doors, all is not sweetness and light between Stevens and his employer.  Stevens’ highly active blog suddenly was deprived of all its content after revelations about his employer made the newspaper.  Bing’s cache of Stevens’ site (which Stop the Cap! has captured) shows he had plenty to say about the cable system — none of it good.  That all changed today.

Boraks opined in his piece in the News that Stevens ongoing denials of involvement with Time Warner Cable and his lack of disclosure left him concerned.

Indeed, Stevens’ efforts to hide his employer’s identity and his subsequent decision to bring his blog down after the cat was let out of the bag suggests there is nothing for Stevens or Time Warner Cable to be proud of in their relentless, often sneaky efforts to bring community-owned competition to its knees.  When it comes to protecting duopoly profits of local cable and phone companies in North Carolina, it’s total war on all fronts.

It’s time for every consumer across the country to help our friends in North Carolina, who are now facing the prospect of a Broadband Dark Age with the passage of a cable-industry-written bill designed to protect their monopoly prices and deliver America’s worst broadband experience.

The grand lie that is the Level Playing Field/Local Government Competition Bill (H.129) claims it will protect broadband competition in the state.  It will, if you are Time Warner Cable facing top-rated, super-fast service from community broadband networks that compete with them in communities like Salisbury and Wilson.

The power to protect North Carolina’s broadband future is now in the hands of Gov. Bev Purdue.

The North Carolina Senate abdicated their responsibility to serve the interests of state residents.  On Tuesday, they voted 39-10 for this consumer atrocity:

Yesterday, the House added insult to injury voting 84-32 for the bill custom written by and for Time Warner Cable:

Not a single Republican in the House stood up for you.

Faison

Several legislators that still remember they represent the interests of voters and not out of state big cable and phone companies were appalled.

Rep. Bill Faison (D-Caswell, Orange), who has been a champion of better broadband across North Carolina, reminded the Assembly the bill should have been named the Time Warner Cable Anti-Competition Bill, written by a New York City-based company that will prevent cities from using their collective buying authority to provide themselves (finally) with the broadband service the private sector has steadfastly refused to deliver.

Faison noted Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt made $27 million in compensation last year — the same as the entire cost of Wilson’s GreenLight fiber-to-the-home cable system.

Faison openly pondered what the cable company has been paying to employ the six full time lobbyists who have been trolling the halls of the state legislature for months, and exactly how much next year’s rate increase will be to pay for their services.

Even the former chairman of the state Republican party called H.129 an enormously arrogant piece of legislation.

Luebke

Another hero for consumers, Rep. Paul Luebke (D-Durham), noted the bill’s immediate impact will be to keep rural North Carolina a broadband desert.  Luebke called H.129 a bad bill that denies service even to communities where no broadband service exists.

But Rep. Marilyn Avila (R-Time Warner Cable) wanted to ensure no one could say there was a broadband problem in North Carolina, so she supported an amendment that allows areas to be declared served if even a single home has broadband service in a particular census block.  That provision delivers beneficial protection to CenturyLink, who can spend their time, money, and attention on a merger with Qwest, the last remaining independent Baby Bell.  While they focus on making themselves bigger through mergers and acquisitions, the phone company faces no competitive pressure to expand service in rural North Carolina, and will face no meaningful competition for the indefinite future.

While Gov. Purdue’s office has made noises about vetoing this bad legislation, it is essential that we let the governor know we need an absolute commitment on her part to veto H.129.  We’ve seen how Big Telecom plays their dirty pool, so we cannot afford to sit back and allow their lobbyists to wear the governor down.

Gov. Purdue

When Time Warner Cable tried to slap an Internet Overcharging scheme on consumers in New York, North Carolina, and Texas in 2009, Stop the Cap! made a commitment to join forces with all of the impacted communities to present a united consumer front against provider abuses.  H.129 qualifies.  That’s why we urge everyone to contact Gov. Purdue and let her know she must veto H.129, an anti-consumer, anti-broadband bill.

Please call -and- e-mail her office:

• E-Mail: [email protected]
• Phone: +1 919 733 2391

Minor Correction Made 5/6 – 5pm ET: We made an error referring to a census tract instead of a census block in the original piece.  One of our readers dropped us a note correcting us, which we are happy to do.  A “tract” actually has many “blocks” in it.

For several days now, Time Warner Cable customers in northeast Ohio have endured disruptions to their digital cable, as pixel problems and frozen pictures plague the cable company.  Communities like Cleveland, Mentor, and Elyria are all affected, and the cable company can’t figure out what is causing the trouble.

Time Warner Cable reports more than 100 employees are trying to track down the problem, but the company will not issue general credits to affected customers.  Instead, you must write or call Time Warner requesting credit.  You can send a credit request on Time Warner’s website under the contact section.

[flv width=”360″ height=”290″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WEWS Cleveland Time Warner Pixel Problems 5-3-11.mp4[/flv]

WEWS-TV in Cleveland covers Time Warner’s troubles after problems with the cable company brought many requests from viewers to get to the bottom of it.  (3 minutes)

Charter Cable, one of America’s worst-rated cable companies, wants out of greater Los Angeles.  Its cable system, serving parts of LA, has been rumored for sale for years.  Now the cable company has gotten serious, hiring Goldman Sachs and Citibank to run an auction to sell off the system.

The most logical buyer, Time Warner Cable, has been engaged in on-again, off-again talks with Charter about Los Angeles for sometime, according to several sources in the cable investment community.  Charter proposed a swap, trading its Los Angeles system to Time Warner if they could acquire Time Warner’s subscribers in Wisconsin.

Time Warner Cable currently serves 560,000 subscribers in Green Bay, Milwaukee and Appleton.  Charter serves much of the rest of the state.  Thankfully for many Wisconsin customers, Time Warner Cable told Charter they were not interested.  Time Warner gets significantly higher customer ratings than Charter does.

Now that Goldman Sachs and Citibank will be running an auction, Time Warner Cable could still ultimately acquire the Charter systems in Los Angeles, if they are willing to pony up an estimated $2 billion asking price.  If Time Warner won’t bid that high, speculation is that Comcast, Cox, or Cablevision will.

A surprise bonus for buyers are rumors Charter will throw in its cable system in Fort Worth, Tex.  That move would also seem to benefit a Time Warner Cable takeover, considering the nation’s second largest cable operator already has an enormous presence in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex.  But Multichannel News points out that part of Texas brings bad memories for Time Warner, when it had to effectively commit to an expensive rebuild of the nearby ailing system acquired from bankrupt Adelphia Cable in 2006.

Time Warner Cable is still rumored to be the logical buyer of Insight Cable’s systems, also for sale, in Indiana, Kentucky, and Ohio, although the cable company is still balking at an asking price of up to $4 billion.

Creative Redefinition of Today's Problems Into Tomorrow's Solutions

At around 7:00pm ET, Republicans in the North Carolina State Senate are expected to ram through H.129, Rep. Marilyn Avila’s (R-Time Warner Cable) anti-consumer, anti-community broadband bill.

You can listen to the Evening of Infamy right here: North Carolina Senate Audio.

With the cooperation of most of the state’s Republicans, and a handful of Democrats taking cable’s money, North Carolina intends to solve their state’s broadband availability problems in a novel way: by redefining those without broadband service as having broadband after all.

Through an amendment, H.129 will essentially declare the service as widely available if even a single resident in a particular census block has access to something resembling broadband.  That could be 768kbps DSL from CenturyLink.  If one person has the service, the thinking goes, everyone can get it, even if they can’t.

The Senate intends to deal with North Carolina’s broadband crisis by changing the definition of the word ‘crisis‘ into ‘accomplishment.’ Instead of allowing communities to provide service in unserved areas, simply declare all areas as being served, thereby negating the need for community broadband.  Another victory for the free market, and it was dirt cheap not to provide the service, too!

So when broadband-deprived North Carolina consumers call Time Warner, CenturyLink, or AT&T, they can be told:

“No, it’s not that we don’t have any broadband service to sell you, we’re simply providing it in a unique new way — by delivering it to someone else!  (Can’t you move in with them?)”

Problem solved.

As one legislator said earlier, “[TWC and CenturyLink] are calling all the shots.”