Frontier Essentially Accuses Time Warner Cable of Being a Shakedown Artist

Frontier Communications has continued its aggressive campaign to hit back against its cable competition, most notably Time Warner Cable.  In its most recent advertising in the Rochester area, Frontier compared Time Warner Cable’s broadband usage caps and rate hikes “the Cable shakedown.”  Wow.  Even we don’t go that far.

Frontier has gotten aggressive since Time Warner Cable made Rochester, Frontier’s largest service area, a test market for its Cap ‘n Tier program, temporarily shelved.  Frontier doesn’t believe for a second that Time Warner Cable is done with metered billing in this community, and neither do we.  So they are going to spend the summer continuing efforts to poach Time Warner’s customers.

Meanwhile, Frontier CEO and Chairwoman Maggie Wilderotter has penned an e-mail being sent to every Frontier customer commenting on the economy and calling out cable for annual rate increases:

Dear Frontier Customer,

We are in tough economic times. As you look for ways to save money, I want to assure you Frontier is dedicated to providing you with robust, value-added voice, high-speed data and video products.

Now, more than ever, Frontier is committed to the communities we serve. As a significant employer and a major taxpayer, Frontier takes pride in our active role in our markets. Our local managers and front line employees are highly visible and involved in many community organizations and events. They stand ready to suggest ways to use our services and resources wisely.

We provide innovative solutions and products for all types of communications needs. Fast, reliable communications technology, especially broadband, has never been more important. Customers tell me that as their budgets get smaller, the value of using our services in the home increases. Many families rely on Frontier products for their jobs, education and entertainment. Whether it’s Digital Voice, Data, or Video, we are here to help you explore different product and pricing options. Just visit any Frontier location or give us a call at 800-921-8101 and our customer care representatives will help you.

Despite recessionary times, Frontier continues to invest in the technology that gives you the power to connect at home, in the office or on the go with speed and reliability. We are committed to your complete satisfaction. Unlike our Cable Operator competitors, we don’t depend upon an annual rate increase; in fact, Frontier provides price protection plans so you know what to expect during your agreement term. We are proud to offer the best products at the best prices in our markets – with unparalleled service to make the customer experience the best it can be. Frontier is local, financially solid, and optimistic about the future.

Although none of us know when it will happen, I do believe better times are ahead. We have been tested before and emerged stronger. We will get through this, and Frontier is here for you in good times and challenging times.

Thank you again for your business and support. We take it seriously and all of us at Frontier will continue to work hard to provide you with the best communications products and services.

Sincerely,
Maggie Wilderotter
Chairman and CEO
Frontier Communications
[email protected]
I can help you!

Now if only their DSL product could deliver consistent results no matter where their customers might live (and they keep their own 5GB ‘acceptable use’ stuff unmonitored and unenforced.)

Todd Spangler, who we seem to spar with on a semi-regular basis here, has another blog entry up expanding on his views of why Time Warner Cable’s metered pricing experiment failed.  Of course, completely missing from the list is the fact most customers do not want it.  That’s dangerous to say in a cable industry trade publication like Multichannel News, however.

Todd still thinks it’s all about how they did it, not the fact they did it in the first place that created what even he admits was a “category five” storm of backlash.

Clearly, the company’s idea — given that these were trials — was to have the flexibility to tweak pricing, adjust specific cap levels, etc., and not have these things set in stone. But the ad-hoc communications on the usage trials was perhaps the biggest reason this blew up.

The only “trial” here was on the customer, and the jury was stacked with Time Warner Cable executives who already found themselves innocent of extortionist pricing and market abuse.  The “tweak” most customers wanted was none at all.  What was set in stone, until the groundswell finally achieved temporary results, was that the caps were coming no matter what customers had to say.  Just ask people in Beaumont, Texas.

… Continue Reading

It’s back again.  For at least the last decade, the trade press has speculated about whether Cablevision would survive as an independent cable operator in an increasingly concentrated industry, where the big players get bigger, and the smaller operators exit the cable business.

Charles Dolan, Cablevision CEO

The Dolan family, which has owned Cablevision since its founding on Long Island, is routinely said to be cash crunched, looking for a healthy cash bonanza on the way out the door, or dealing with internal family dramas which pit those advocating a sell off against those who wish to keep the business running.  When Cablevision launched its Voom HD satellite service, which turned out to be a disaster and money pit, the intensity of speculation achieved a fever pitch, and that was several years ago.  The Dolan family still runs Cablevision.

The New York Times sports page, of all places, is the latest home of pondering a sell off of Cablevision’s remaining cable systems to Time Warner Cable to raise cash for the Dolan family’s sports ventures, including ownership of the Rangers, Knicks, and Madison Square Garden.  It was all borne from a single line in the latest earnings report from Cablevision, which indicated the company intended to “explore the spinoff of its Madison Square Garden business.”

Cablevision's Service Area in Northeastern US

Cablevision’s bread-and-butter business is supplying cable television, broadband lines and Internet phone service to 3.1 million subscribers in the New York metropolitan area. The company, based in Bethpage, N.Y., has faced stiff competition from Verizon, which has spent heavily to build a fiber-optic network that competes with it and Time Warner Cable.

Industry analysts have speculated that Cablevision may eventually sell the entire company to Time Warner Cable, or sell its sports entertainment group to raise cash to compete in the cable business.

“Cablevision watchers [and we’d put ourselves in that category] have long pondered possible endgames, and the notion that the Dolans would retain ownership of MSG and the New York sports teams long after the rest of the assets had been divested has always been viewed as among the most likely outcomes,” Craig Moffett, a senior analyst at Bernstein Research wrote in a report after Cablevision’s earnings release Thursday morning.

People have grown old pondering questions like this.  Cablevision is positioned to compete just fine with Verizon FiOS after completing an aggressive rollout of DOCSIS 3.  Cablevision does not compete with Time Warner Cable at all.  Industry boosters have traditionally cheered on consolidation efforts, so it’s no surprise even the smallest tidbit will restart the Spec-U-Plex all over again.  Should Cablevision decide to sell, Time Warner Cable would almost certainly be the buyer, because their largest cluster of systems are adjacent to existing Time Warner franchise areas.  But I wouldn’t be in a hurry to shove the Dolan family out the door.

The Time Warner protest in Greensboro attracted a lot of car honking approval, and even with a relatively small group of protestors, got significant coverage on local media.

“The fight for a flat rate.”  WXII reports regularly emphasize Time Warner has delayed, not withdrawn their tiered pricing experiment.  April 18, 2009

Readers of the San Antonio Express-News discovered a blazing headline today on the newspaper website: Time Warner to add Internet meters for San Antonio.

When Bryan Lee wants to see just how much bandwidth his Internet connection gobbles up, he logs on to a Web site that tracks his usage on a daily basis.

The 31-year-old project manager for a Dallas-based software company is one of Time Warner’s proverbial guinea pigs in the cable company’s ongoing test of metered service in Southeast Texas.

Before moving to Lumberton, a small town about 12 miles north of Beaumont, he enjoyed unfettered downloads. Nowadays, his monthly usage is capped at 40 gigs. And there’s an extra incentive in place to make sure he’s keeping downloads and video streams in check: overage fees.

“I look at the meter probably once a week,” he said. “It really changes your mind-set with this whole overages thing. You become fearful of going on the Internet.”

After bowing to backlash from customers and Congress over plans to change pricing for Internet usage, Time Warner Cable is moving forward with plans to outfit customers in San Antonio and three other markets with similar measurement tools.

The cable company is hoping the “gas gauges” will make it easier to eventually try again at implementing a billing structure that charges customers varying rates based on Internet usage.

StoptheCap! readers Jimmy and Sebastian noted the article, and the ranting and raving from outraged subscribers down in San Antonio — more than 65 in just the last few hours alone.  It’s good to see subscribers are just as mad as they were two weeks ago when the cap “experiment” was on before it was off.  And as we have been warning all along, it’s going to be “on” again real soon.

I dropped a comment over there encouraging readers not to simply limit their anger to the comments section on mysanantonio.com, but to also get their butts over here and start getting educated, informed, and prepared to do battle with Time Warner the instant the Time Warner Money Party is back on again.

If you’ve arrived here today because of that comment, welcome to the fight.  We’re ordinary subscribers of broadband service from many different companies and in many different cities.  We share one thing in common – NO CAPS! Many of the folks you will encounter in our own comment section are also victims survivors of the Time Warner experiment in April in Austin, Rochester, San Antonio, and Greensboro/Triad, NC.  We’re all working together to effectively resist money grabs by big cable.

You will find an enormous number of articles, video and audio clips, references, and news here documenting the whole sorry affair.  Please bookmark this site and stay in touch.  We will have calls to action on a regular basis to effectively keep abusive business practices at bay.

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