Comcast is dumping a blizzard of cash on Capitol Hill in a late winter storm of lobbying to win approval of its $45 billion buyout of Time Warner Cable.

Politico reports Comcast’s money is bipartisan, with generous checks going into the campaign coffers of Texas Republican Ted Cruz and Illinois Democrat Dick Durbin. In fact, the news site reports Comcast has donated to almost every member of Congress who has a hand in regulating the cable company.

In fact, the only three members of the Senate Judiciary Committee that have not received a contribution from Comcast are Sens. Al Franken (D-Minn.), Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), and Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.)

That Franken did not receive any Comcast cash comes as no surprise after the senator sent his supporters e-mails blistering the merger.

“Comcast reportedly has an army of over 100 lobbyists ready to swarm Capitol Hill and whose goal is to push this through,” Franken wrote. “Their top priority is Comcast’s bottom line — not whether this deal will be good for consumers. There’s also a pretty cozy relationship between Comcast and the regulators that will evaluate this deal, which I find troubling.”

When Politico asked members of Congress whether the generous contributions from the cable giant would influence their thinking about the merger deal, none had any comment.

It’s much the same story in the House of Representatives, according to Politico:

Comcast spreads the cash around.

On the opposite side of the Capitol, the House Judiciary Committee is readying another hearing on Comcast — and many of its members also are familiar with the company’s financial support. Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), for example, has received $15,000 this cycle from Comcast, some for his leadership PAC and the rest for his personal campaign.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee and its Senate counterpart so far haven’t scheduled their own reviews of the new Comcast-Time Warner Cable deal. But both panels do regulate Comcast by way of their broad jurisdiction over Internet, cable and telephone issues, and they have been canvassed almost entirely by Comcast contributions. The company has given to 50 of 54 of the House committee’s Democrats and Republicans, donating either to their reelection campaigns or their leadership PACs, according to a POLITICO analysis of campaign finance data from Jan. 1, 2013 to Jan. 31, 2014. And Comcast has donated in some way to 20 of 24 lawmakers on the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee.

There has been a total of $12,500 in checks for Walden, the leader of the telecom subcommittee, to both his personal coffers and leadership PAC. Comcast also has given $2,500 to Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), a contender to lead Democrats on the full Energy and Commerce panel following the retirement this year of California Rep. Henry Waxman — another recipient of Comcast support.

Albert Foer, president of the American Antitrust Institute, which opposes the merger, says Comcast’s contributions began long before the merger deal, but that is a well-considered strategy.

It’s “proactive giving,” said Miller, “so that when a corporation needs access in a time of trouble, investigation or oversight, they have already built the quote-unquote relationships they need to soften or make their arguments to a sympathetic audience.”

Time Warner Cable telephone customers may find their phone numbers missing from directory assistance records and residential phone books.

This year, the cable company began charging directory publishers for its residential customer listings and some, including Frontier Communications, have refused to pay.

As a result, customers are likely to find their next copy of the White Pages thinner than it used to be.

The usefulness of telephone directories and directory assistance services have both been in decline for years as customers migrate to unlisted cell phones. But the loss of cable phone customers from phone books is a new trend. In the past, cable companies provided the listings for free to most directory publishers as a service to customers who wanted to keep their phone numbers in the directory. But now those listings are a money-maker, only available for sale.

Phil Yawman, Frontier Communications vice president and general manager for the Rochester, N.Y. area — Frontier’s largest urban market — told WXXI News the phone company opted not to buy the listings. 

Time Warner Cable spokesperson Joli Plucknette-Farmen said charging a fee for residential directory listings is accepted by the Federal Communications Commission.

Frontier, like many other phone companies, also no longer provides automatic delivery of residential White Pages listings, although the lucrative Yellow Pages will still appear on customer doorsteps. 

Greenlight announces gigabit service for Wilson, N.C.

Claims from critics that government-owned Internet Service Providers would bring ineptly managed, behind-the-times broadband are belied by the reality on the ground.

Network World highlighted several cities offering consumers and/or businesses gigabit broadband service from publicly owned Internet providers. All of them stand alone with no commercial competitor willing or able to compete on speed. In fact, most of the communities offering their own Internet service do so because incumbent cable and phone companies showed no interest in upgrading or expanding their services or offer them at prohibitive prices. For many of the towns involved, the only way to get 21st century broadband was to build it themselves.

Cable companies like Time Warner Cable scoff at the need for superfast broadband speeds, claiming customers are not interested in gigabit Internet. After the Federal Communications Commission issued a challenge for every state in the U.S. to reach 1Gbps Internet speeds in at least one community by 2015, then chief financial officer Irene Esteves said 1,000Mbps service was unnecessary and the cable company wouldn’t offer it because there was little demand for it.

While Esteves was telling reporters gigabit speeds were irrelevant, Time Warner Cable’s lobbyists were working behind the scenes to make sure none of their community-owned competitors offered it either, cajoling state officials to pass legislation that would effectively ban publicly owned broadband competition. Time Warner, along with other cable and phone companies evidently feel so threatened, they have successfully helped enact such bans into law in 20 states.

The record is clear. The best chance your community has of getting gigabit speeds is to rally your local government or municipal utility to offer the service you are not getting from the local cable/phone duopoly anytime soon.

Chanute, Kansas

The city of Chanute, Kan. is fighting back against incumbent phone and cable companies trying to ban municipal-owned ISPs in the state.

With just 9,000 residents barely served by AT&T and the routinely awful Cable ONE, Chanute knew if it wanted 21st century broadband, it was unlikely to get it from the local phone and cable company. Chanute has owned a municipal fiber network since 1984 and has been in the Internet provider business since 2005. Now the city is working towards a fiber to the home network for residents while AT&T is lobbying Washington regulators to let the company scrap rural landline and DSL service across Kansas and other states.

The city is taking a stand against the latest effort to ban community broadband networks in Kansas. It’s a rough fight because Kansas lobbyists get to write and introduce corporate-written telecom bills in the legislature without even the pretext of the proposed legislation originating from someone actually elected to office. SB 304, temporarily withdrawn for “tweaking,” shreds the concept of home rule — allowing local communities to decide what works best for them. Instead, AT&T, Cable ONE, Comcast, Cox, and other telecom companies will get to make that decision on your behalf if the bill re-emerges in the legislature and passes later this year.

“We’re taking a leadership position to do something about it. I’d hate to sit here and keep bashing AT&T and Cable One. They don’t care. All they care about is paying dividends back to their stockholders,” Chanute’s utility director Larry Gates told Network World. “My feeling – this is mine, it’s probably not the city’s, but it’s mine – is I wouldn’t care if we ever made a dime on this network, as long as it would pay for itself. If it could increase and do the things with education, health, safety, and economic development – man, that’s a win. That’s a huge win.”

Chattanooga, Tennessee

The “headquarters” of the Taxpayers Protection Alliance is in the basement of this building in suburban Washington.

EPB Broadband is the best argument community broadband advocates have to counter Big Telecom propaganda that community-owned broadband is a failure waiting to happen. EPB has received national acclaim by delivering gigabit broadband to consumers and businesses that Chattanoogans can’t get from AT&T and Comcast. EPB is Chattanooga’s municipally owned electric utility and originally laid fiber to power its Smart Meter project to better manage its electric system. With near infinite capacity, why not share that network with the community?

EPB routinely embarrasses its competition by offering highly rated local customer service and support instead of forcing customers to deal with offshore call centers rife with language barriers. Customer ratings of AT&T and Comcast are dismal — rock bottom in fact — but that isn’t the case for EPB, embraced by the local community and now helping to foster the region’s high-tech economic development.

Santa Monica, California

Santa Monica City Net does not serve residential customers, but a lot of locals probably wish it did. Greater Los Angeles has been carved up between bottom-rated Charter Communications and never-loved Time Warner Cable. Time Warner customers in LA will soon get access to 100Mbps broadband. Businesses in downtown Santa Monica can already get broadband from City Net at speeds up to 10Gbps.

Lafayette, Louisiana

LUS Fiber has had a very tough battle just getting service off the ground. Its two competitors are AT&T and Cox, and the fiber to the home provider had to work its way through legal disputes and a special election to launch service. Even to this day, corporate front groups like the Taxpayers Protection Alliance are still taking potshots at LUS and other municipal providers. TPA president David Williams refuses to identify where the money comes from to fund TPA’s operations. It’s a safe bet some of it comes from telecom companies based on the TPA’s preoccupation with broadband issues. The group always aligns itself with the interests of phone and cable companies.

Cable and phone companies that fund sock puppet groups like TPA could have spent that money to upgrade broadband service in communities like Lafayette. Instead, they cut checks to groups like the Taxpayers Protection Alliance, headquartered in a basement rental unit in suburban Washington, D.C.

Burlington, Vermont

Burlington Telecom’s troubled past is a poster child for anti-municipal broadband groups. The provider’s financial problems are often mentioned by groups fighting public broadband. To be sure, there are successes and failures in any industry and inept marketing by BT several years ago hurt its chances for success. Its competition is Comcast and FairPoint Communications, which means usage-capped cable broadband or slow speed DSL. BT sells a gigabit broadband alternative for $149.99 a month for those signing a 12-month contract. Comcast charges $115 a month for 105Mbps service — about ten times slower than BT’s offering.

Tullahoma, Tennessee

The Tennessee Telecommunications Association is appealing to the state government to keep publicly owned broadband competitors out of their territories.

LighTUBe, the telecommunications branch of the Tullahoma Utilities Board (TUB), announced its gigabit Internet offering in May 2013, says Network World. The magazine suspects the provider is interested in commercial, not residential customers.

That no doubt comes as a relief to the Tennessee Telecommunications Association, which represents the state’s independent phone companies. Last month, more than a dozen executives from those companies invaded the state capital to complain that municipal providers were threatening to invade their territories and offer unwanted competition.

“We are particularly concerned about four bills that have been introduced this session,” says Levoy Knowles, TTA’s executive director. “These bills would allow municipalities to expand beyond their current footprint and offer broadband in our service areas. If this were to happen, municipalities could cherry-pick our more populated areas, leaving the more remote, rural consumers to bear the high cost of delivering broadband to these less populated regions.”

Among the companies that want to keep uncomfortable public broadband competition out of their territories: North Central Telephone Cooperative, Loretto Telecom, Twin Lakes Telephone Cooperative, Highland Telephone Cooperative, TDS Telecom, United Communications, Ben Lomand Connect, WK&T Telecommunications, Ritter Communications, Ardmore Telephone Company, and RepCom.

Bristol, Tennessee

Bristol is unique because its city limits are effectively in Tennessee and Virginia. Neither state has gotten much respect from incumbent telephone and cable companies, so BTES — the electric and telecom utility in Bristol — decided to deliver broadband service itself. The network is now being upgraded to expand 1Gbps service, and it represents an island in the broadband backwater of far eastern Tennessee and western Virginia and North Carolina.

Cedar Falls, Iowa

Iowa has never been a hotbed for fast broadband and is the home to the largest number of independent telephone companies in the country. Cedar Falls Utilities is one of them and is trying to change the “behind the rest” image Iowa telecommunications has been stuck with for years. The municipal telecom provider has boosted broadband speeds and announced gigabit broadband last year.

Wilson, N.C.

Greenlight has been providing fiber to the home service for several years, and its presence in the middle of Time Warner Cable territory was apparently the last straw for the cable company, which began fiercely lobbying for a municipal broadband ban in North Carolina. Thanks to a massive cash dump by Koch Brothers’ ally Art Pope, the Republicans took control of the state government between 2010-2012. Many of the new legislators have an ongoing love affair with ALEC — the corporate front group — and treat its database of business-ghostwritten bills like the Library of Congress. What AT&T, CenturyLink, and Time Warner Cable want, they now get.

With a broadband ban in place, Greenlight can’t expand its territory, but it can increase its broadband speeds. Time Warner Cable tops out at 50Mbps for almost $100 a month. For $49.95 more you can get 1,000Mbps from Greenlight. Instead if competing, TWC prefers Greenlight to simply go away, and the North Carolina legislature has shown it is always ready to help.

Across the country, Time Warner Cable subscribers are losing access to RT – Russia Today, just as tensions rise between governments in Moscow and Kiev.

The 24-hour news and information channel funded by the Kremlin’s Federal Agency on Press and Mass Communications of the Russian Federation, provides news and views from across Russia, as well as a full schedule of international affairs and political/opinion programming, some produced in the United States. The network has been the subject of criticism for its coverage, which some believe is biased in favor of the Putin government’s world view.

Some Time Warner Cable systems dropped the network in January, but others are switching the network off this month. Time Warner Cable did not announce the channel drop in upstate New York and has no explanation for the reason the network was discontinued.

Customers still interested in watching the network can find a live stream of RT available free of charge on the network’s website.

The loss of RT will not result in a lower cable bill. Time Warner Cable recently added Al Jazeera America to most of its cable systems and is planning to add a number of new channels this month:

• Liquidation Channel: A 24/7 home shopping and auction channel featuring jewelry and accessories;
• EPIX: A premium movie channel. TWC will add: EPIX1 East, EPIX1 EAST HD, EPIX1 West, EPIX1 WEST HD, EPIX 2, EPIX 2 HD, EPIX 3, EPIX 3 HD and EPIX Drive-In March 18;
• TWC Sportsnet Los Angeles SD & HD arrives at the end of this month;
• TVG: A horse racing and online horse betting network. Coming April 1;
• Vivid TV: A hardcore porn channel featuring titles produced by studio Vivid Entertainment

Klink

Rep. Ron Klink represented the citizens of Pennsylvania’s 4th Congressional District for most of the 1990s, but today he represents the interests of Comcast — but one would never know it from his website’s client list.

Klink was a popular moderate Democrat in his far western-central district north of Pittsburgh. But that was not enough to challenge then-Sen. Rick Santorum in 2000 for a Senate seat. Klink was a virtual unknown in the heavily populated eastern part of the state and lost the race by five points.

Klink did not stay disappointed for long after the election, following many other ex-members of Congress through Washington’s revolving door, coming out on the other side as a professional lobbyist.

Ron Klink & Associates tells its clients, “the key to success… is access.”

“At Ron Klink and Associates, we pride ourselves on having the expertise and experience to navigate our clients through the political and bureaucratic mazes of government at the federal, state and local levels,” says Klink’s website. “It is often the case that organizations involved in issues of the day have the most difficulty reaching the branches of government needed to state their case. Whether on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., at federal agencies, or at any State Capitol, we guide our clients to interact effectively with decision makers in order to advance each client’s agenda.”

Klink specializes in getting clients face time with elected officials — access ordinary citizens are unlikely to have. When members of Congress ponder policy changes, many rely heavily on the advice that reaches them during these meetings. Knowing how to get a personal sit down with a member of Congress or senator can make all the difference. Fact-finding hearings are also critical in the persuasion game, and Klink’s firm makes sure clients win access to the precious few seats at the testimony table:

Ron Klink and Associates provides clients with the opportunity to influence the decisions made in the halls of Congress, federal agencies and the White House. We have extensive experience in issues analysis that can be helpful to a client trying to anticipate policy changes in the government. Ron Klink and Associates will work with the client to develop and then successfully implement a strategy that yields desired results. Our extensive contacts on Capitol Hill and the Executive Branch, allow our clients’ issues, whether legislative or regulatory, to be heard by key decision makers, thus giving a competitive advantage to the client.

Direct lobbying is only part of our government relations service. With more that 2,500 pieces of legislation being considered annually by the Congress, it is difficult for companies to follow legislation important to their industries. Ron Klink and Associates provides daily monitoring of all legislation, committee hearings, proposed rules, media events, news reports and behind the scenes discussions pertinent to the client’s success. Ron Klink and Associates will report daily if necessary on any events of importance to the client.

We also arrange for our clients to testify before Congress or a federal agency hearing when deemed helpful. We draft the testimony for the client, the media advisory and eventual press release explaining the significance of the event. We provide the panel Members with information about the clients and their interests, as well as conduct all follow up that may be needed to obtain a successful result.

We have arranged seminars and briefings for Members of Congress and Executive Branch employees in order to educate them on the importance of client issues. From these seminars, we are able to build strong, bipartisan coalitions of support to assist us in advancing the client’s goals.

With thousands of lobbyists providing services similar to ex-Congressman Klink, it should not be surprising ordinary constituents without a team to go to bat on their behalf have a hard time getting a word in.

Most lobbying firms brag about their client list to attract more business. But not Ron Klink. He likes to keep his biggest clients a secret. Among them is a little cable company called Comcast, based in Philadelphia.

Klink doesn’t mention the company at all and does not admit he works on their behalf.

That rubbed the Tribune-Review the wrong way, and the newspaper slapped a “Loser Label” on the ex-politician:

The former congressman seems reluctant to admit he works for a communications conglomerate known for its constantly rising cable rates and less-than-stellar customer service.

The Murrysville Democrat was one of five former congressional members recently identified by The New York Times as being registered Comcast lobbyists. There likely is considerable work ahead for that group, as Comcast seeks federal approval to swallow competitor Time Warner Cable.

Klink’s website, ronklink.com, doesn’t identify Comcast as one of his lobbying clients. But Klink does own up to working for lesser-known entities such as Beaver County and the Findlay Township Municipal Authority.

For being so secretive about his Comcast connection, Klink gets the loser label.

Klink isn’t even close to being the only ex-member of Congress or public official now on Comcast’s payroll. Our favorite at Stop the Cap! remains the completely shameless and transparent Meredith Attwell-Baker, ex-commissioner at the Federal Communications Commission. Just months after voting in favor of the merger of Comcast and NBC, she hurried her resignation letter to FCC chairman Julius Genachowski and took a lucrative job at Comcast’s “government relations” department — a nice turn of phrase that really means “lobbyist.”

Comcast’s lobbying team includes six former government officials. From left, former Senator Don Nickles, former Representative Robert Walker, former Senator Blanche Lincoln, former Representative Ron Klink, David Cohen of Comcast and former F.C.C. member Meredith Attwell Baker.