Charter Communications this afternoon submitted its annual update to the New York Public Service Commission, a condition of its approved merger with Time Warner Cable.

The cable company argues the merger has already delivered substantial pro-consumer benefits, including faster internet speeds, a low-income broadband program, no loss of New York jobs, and more upgrades to come.

Some highlights for customers in New York State:

All-Digital Conversion

• The handful of Charter legacy cable systems in New York have already been converted to all-digital service.
• Former Time Warner Cable systems in New York City, Syracuse, and the Hudson Valley are now all-digital.
• Albany will be converted to all-digital service in late 2017.
• Rochester and Buffalo will be converted to all-digital service in early 2018.

Broadband Speed Upgrades

• As of March 14, 2017 all Charter customers in New York can subscribe to at least 100Mbps service. ($105/mo, $199 setup fee)
• Charter has been actively rebuilding its Chatham system in Columbia and Rensselaer counties to provide broadband service. Project completion dates: In Rensselaer County, Berlin and Petersburgh expected to be done by the end of the third quarter 2017. In Columbia County, construction is scheduled to begin in May 2017, with a target completion date set for the end of first quarter 2018.

Cable Expansion

Since the last build-out update was filed on February 17, 2017, Charter has completed build-out to an additional 5,039 passings and has now completed build-out to a total of 15,164 passings across 56 counties and approximately 1,018 municipalities. Major areas of completed passings include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Albany County for approximately 1,330 passings, including the Village of Menands, Towns of Colonie, Cohoes, Bethlehem, Voorheesville, Selkirk, and New Scotland, and the City of Albany.
• Broome County for approximately 151 passings, including areas such as the Barker, Binghamton, Conklin, Endicott, Lisle, Marathon, Vestal, and Whitney Point.
• Cortland County for approximately 154 passings, including areas such as the Towns of Cincinnatus, Cortland, Cortlandville, Homer, Virgil, and Truxton.
• Erie County for approximately 2,029 passings, including areas such as the Towns of Amherst, Boston, Clarence, Colden, East Concord, Depew, Grand Island, Holland, Orchard Park, Derby, Lancaster, Eden, Springville, Williamsville, West Seneca, and the City of Buffalo.
• Genesee County for approximately 157 passings, including areas such as the Towns of Batavia, Elba, and Alexander.
• Kings County for approximately 390 passings in Brooklyn.
• Livingston County for approximately 196 passings, including areas such as the Towns of Honeoye Falls and Dansville.
• Monroe County for approximately 1,797 passings, including areas such as the City of Rochester, Town of Perinton, Greece, Penfield, North Chili, Webster, Pittsford, Ontario, Spencerport, and Gates.
• New York County for approximately 575 passings in the City of New York.
• Niagara County for approximately 297 passings, including areas such as the Towns of Cambria, Lockport, Lewiston, Niagara Falls, Newfane, North Tonawanda, Sanborn, Pendleton, Youngstown, and Wilson.
• Oneida County for approximately 221 passings, including areas such as the Towns of Utica, Rome, Clinton, Camden, Cassville, and Marcy.
• Onondaga County for approximately 787 passings, including areas such as the City of Syracuse, Village of Camillus, and Towns of Cicero, Baldwinsville, Liverpool, Chittenago, Clay, Homer, Manlius, and Marcellus.
• Ontario County for approximately 442 passings, including areas such as the Towns of Clifton Springs, Canandaigua, Phelps, and Victor.
• Orange County for approximately 429 passings, including areas such as the Towns of New Windsor, Middletown, Salisbury Mills, Montgomery, Goshen and Woodbourne.
• Oswego County for approximately 146 passings, including areas such as the Towns of Pulaski, Fulton, Parish, Albion, Altmar, Camden, and Central Square.
• Rensselaer County for approximately 376 passings, including areas such as the Towns of Castleton on Hudson, Cropseyville, Brunswick, Hoosick Falls, Nassau, Johnsonville, Sand Lake, East Greenbush, and Wyantskill, the City of Rensselaer, and the City of Troy.
• Saratoga County for approximately 1,854 passings, including the Towns of Milton, Stillwater, Clifton Park, Ballston Lake, Ballston Spa, Halfmoon, Round Lake, Mechanicville, Malta, Waterford, and Wilton, and the City of Saratoga Springs.
• Schenectady County for approximately 218 passings, including areas such as the Village of Delanson, Towns of Esperance, Niskayuna, Duanesburg, Glenville, and Rotterdam, and Burnt Hills, and the City of Schenectady.
• Schoharie County for approximately 106 passings, including areas such as the Towns of Middleburgh, Cobleskill, Jefferson, and Schoharie.
• St. Lawrence County for approximately 171 passings, including areas such as the Towns of Canton, Massena, Potsdam, and Gouverneur.
• Sullivan County for approximately 639 passings, including the Towns of Fallsburg, Liberty, Monticello, Victor, Thompson, Loch Sheldrake, Swan Lake, Bethel, and White Lake, and the Villages of Woodridge and Wurtsboro.
• Tompkins County for approximately 303 passings, including areas such as the Towns of Ithaca, Slaterville Springs, Groton, and Newfield, and the City of Ithaca.
• Ulster County for approximately 537 passings, including the Towns of Accord, Hurly, Rochester, Ulster, Kerhonkson, New Paltz, Greenfield Park, Woodstock, and Saugerties, and the City of Kingston.
• Warren County for approximately 107 passings, including areas such as the Towns of Lake George, Warrensburg, Queensbury, and Glens Falls.
• Wayne County for approximately 192 passings, including the Towns of Palmyra, Ontario, Macedon, Walworth, Newark, Sodus, and Williamson.

Ed. Note: Nothing precludes Charter from including new housing developments and similar projects in these numbers where it would have provided service regardless of the Order from the PSC.

The Availability of Time Warner Cable’s Unrestricted $14.99 Everyday Low Price Internet Tier

Charter has continued to offer new subscribers in TWC’s New York territory the TWC standalone Everyday Low Price $14.99 broadband service, at speeds no less than those being offered at the time of the merger order, and will continue to offer this to new subscribers for up to two years after close (until May 17, 2018). Any customer is qualified to subscribe to this service, which provides around 2Mbps of internet speed.

Ed. Note: This service is not advertised or mentioned in any way on Charter/TWC’s marketing website and many Stop the Cap! readers in New York have told us Charter sales representatives have repeatedly told them the service is not available, so this claim is in dispute.

Existing customers with the Everyday Low Price tier at the time of closing will be allowed to retain this product for a minimum of three years, which the Commission has set to “run concurrently with the two-year period in which Charter must continue to offer the service to new customers.” New subscribers will be able to retain the product until at least May 17, 2019.

$14.99 Low Income Broadband Service “Spectrum Internet Assist”

First available in the Plattsburgh area in November, 2016, Spectrum Internet Assist has now expanded to former Time Warner Cable territories in New York.

For $14.99 a month, qualified customers get 30/4Mbps broadband service. Wi-Fi service is available for an extra $5 a month. Customers must qualify for at least one of these low-income benefit programs:

• The National School Lunch Program (NSLP); free or reduced cost lunch
• The Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) of the NSLP
• Supplemental Security Income (SSI) ( ≥ age 65 only)

(Programs that do not qualify include: Social Security Disability (SSD), Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI), and Social Security Retirement and Survivor Benefits are different from Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and do NOT meet eligibility requirements.)

Improved Customer Service

Charter is required to invest a minimum of $50 million in service improvement programs for the specific benefit of New York operations.

A former Time Warner Cable call center.

Much of this money was apparently spent on a new national Spanish language call center based outside of New York.

A large proportion of the rest of Charter’s investment was spent on changing signs on Time Warner Cable stores and rebranding them as Spectrum, deploying new self-service apps and services Charter would have released on its own regardless of this requirement to reduce expensive customer service contacts, and moving towards customer self-install kits instead of sending out a cable technician to cut Charter’s own costs.

Charter has already spent money on rebranding its service trucks and buying more of them to not send to your house if they can avoid it.

Charter also reported it will spend a portion of that mandatory investment on opening a new Charter Cable Store in Washington Heights, in a “culturally diverse neighborhood in the northern portion of the New York City borough of Manhattan.” Almost all the staff will be bi-lingual.

And to deal with the long lines at Charter’s cable stores, an upgraded queuing system will be bought to allow customers to check-in to “a virtual line.”

Next year, it will spend money on a new on-screen cable guide.

Reducing Customer Complaints

Now more than ever, dissatisfied former Time Warner Cable customers can have a major impact on Charter’s ability to achieve a real reduction in the number of complaints filed by New Yorkers with the PSC. Charter is required to show a 17.5% reduction in complaints over 2014 numbers and a 35% reduction by 2020.

All Charter can report for now is that “the company is making major investments in various customer service initiatives which may have a positive impact on these complaint rates in the future.”

If you are unhappy with your service, filing a PSC complaint may get much greater attention than ever before because it threatens Charter’s ability to meet the terms of its agreement with the state, and could get the company fined.

Data Caps

While former FCC Chairman Thomas Wheeler managed to get up to a seven-year commitment from Charter not to impose data caps on residential customers, Charter has deleted that reference in its annual update to New York regulators, perhaps with the assumption current FCC Chairman Ajit Pai can be relied on to eventually eliminate that pro-consumer benefit of the transaction.

For New Yorkers, Charter will only guarantee it will not introduce data caps on its broadband service for the next three years, ending May 17, 2019. In other states, should the FCC eliminate the data cap ban included in Charter’s merger agreement, the company can apply data caps immediately.

Who you voted for in the last presidential election could make all the difference between having data caps and not having data caps in 2020.

A typical crowd at a Charter/Spectrum store still displaying Time Warner Cable signage. (Image: Sherry T.)

Your patience is appreciated as I spent the last two days more offline than online, courtesy of “problems” with Charter Communications and their confusion factory.

The good news: The local employees I have dealt with have been both polite and professional and are trying to be helpful, and I’ve always recognized this as true with both Time Warner Cable and now Charter.

The bad news: Corporate policies, the merger, and confusion over glacially slow integration of Charter and TWC’s separate billing and provisioning systems can leave customers caught in the middle. Also, despite the well-intentioned assistance provided by the offshore call center workers (Sandheep, Moanwalla, and someone I think was named Sunshine), their abilities to navigate Charter’s own service and provisioning systems properly left plenty to be desired. Much of their efforts had to be redone from the beginning stateside.

Phillip Dampier’s Charter/Time Warner Cable Account — Born 2004, Died 2017.

We will be back with regular articles tomorrow, assuming our internet service is functioning properly, and look for a write-up of my experiences navigating around Charter’s new policies towards their adopted TWC and Bright House customers.

To be sure, I was not alone having problems with Charter. I have never seen such crowds at Charter Cable Stores, where 20 people were ahead of me in line at one location, almost 30 at another. Nearly half brought their equipment back with new, higher bill in hand. They had enough after their bill increased $20-80(!) dollars, all thanks to Charter’s “pro-consumer merger benefits.”

Yes, a higher bill and a package of fewer channels.

It was stunning to think Charter had lost several hundred thousand TWC customers in just three months, but not after what I witnessed yesterday. It is entirely believable they will be losing a lot more, all thanks to higher prices and intransigence on giving loyal customers the kind of deals new customers get.

Charter/Spectrum: Same s***, different name.

An email from Charter/Spectrum announcing minor speed upgrades. (Image courtesy: pspfreak)

Former Time Warner Cable customers that never received Maxx upgrades are now getting a minor consolation prize from Charter Communications: a minor broadband speed boost at no additional charge.

Customers eventually receive an email message from Charter/Spectrum advising them of the upgrade. For Standard Internet customers, the email reads:

Dear Valued Customer,

We just made your fast Internet speeds even faster. And the best part is, you don’t have to do a thing.

We know that today there is more to see, learn, play, share and do online than ever before. That means more streaming video, more music and movie downloads, more photo sharing and more gaming. You have more devices in your home than ever before, from laptops to game consoles, e-readers to smartphones, which means you need more speed so everyone can do what they need to, and all at the same time if they want to. That’s why we have increased your Internet speeds from 15Mbps to 20Mbps.

This speed increase for our customers is just our way of saying thanks. Enjoy your faster speeds!

Customers in western New York were upgraded over the past weekend, while some others have quietly been getting upgrades over the last two weeks. At press time, we have confirmed two tiers have been upgraded, but others may have as well. Customers need to disconnect the power cable from their modem for 10 seconds and plug it back in to get the new speeds:

• Time Warner Cable Standard Internet: Was 15Mbps, now 20Mbps. (Speeds are overprovisioned and may report somewhat faster during speed tests).
• Time Warner Cable Ultimate Internet: Was 50Mbps, now 60Mbps. (Speeds are overprovisioned and generally report 70/6Mbps during speed tests).

Stop the Cap! reader Howard in Albany, N.Y. reported his area was upgraded over the weekend, and we can confirm customers in the Rochester/Finger Lakes region in western New York are now also getting the higher speeds.

Legacy Time Warner Cable customers can report their experiences in the comment section. We’d be particularly interested in knowing if these upgrades also happened for Turbo and Extreme customers.

Buh, bye Charter!

Despite happy talk from Charter Communications about a “new day” with Spectrum packages and pricing, some former Time Warner Cable customers are voting with their feet and canceling service when their promotional pricing packages end and rates have nowhere to go but up.

More than 100,000 video customers left Charter during the first quarter of 2017, the majority former TWC customers facing repricing and package changes as their bundle pricing and promotions expired. At that point, rates spike dramatically and customers have to choose a Spectrum package many don’t like or leave.

With only 17% of Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks customers nationwide having switched to Spectrum plans and pricing, Charter has a long way to go and a lot of customers to lose because of the company’s unwillingness to negotiate.

“As we’ve implemented consistent retention policies nationwide, we’re managing through higher churn at TWC in the short term,” noted Charter’s chief financial officer Christopher Winfrey. “As we migrate and replace the legacy base through a disciplined approach, legacy TWC churn will improve.”

In plain English, Charter has dramatically curtailed promotional customer retention offers and has refused to negotiate with customers that have been on promotional packages for years. Hardest hit are Time Warner Cable customers, and Charter is willing to let them walk instead of extending lower prices.

“The TWC churn, somebody was given a $10 unlimited video basic package, where can you move them?” asked Winfrey. “And they have an exploding offer. It was promotional offer. Where can you move them that’s a satisfactory place relative to what they were given before.”

This Dexter, Mich. Charter customer delivers a “thumbs-down” to the company’s “terrible service.”

CEO Thomas Rutledge has been harshly critical of Time Warner Cable’s penchant to reach for promotional pricing to keep customers happy. He has instituted “discipline” to get customers away from the idea they can get a lower cable bill just by asking. Rutledge understands most of his customers don’t have a great alternative and are effectively captive to limited competitive options. For Rutledge, by taking away discounted options, customers can be retrained to accept higher prices as a fact of life.

So far, many former Time Warner Cable customers are not willing to be led to a higher bill and as their legacy promotions expire, families are having conversations about dropping service(s) as a result of price and Charter’s intransigence about lowering it.

First quarter results show the first, and widely expected victim of Charter’s “repricing” is Time Warner Cable’s home phone product, which has been offered in bundles for $9.99 a month over at least the last four years. Charter discontinued Time Warner Cable’s popular international calling feature which offered free calling to the European Union, parts of Latin America and Asia. It also raised the promotional price to $19.99 a month, and now limits free long distance calling to the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Guam, U.S. Virgin Islands, and the Northern Marianas.

As customers transition to Spectrum plans, they are leaving their voice lines largely behind as a result. During the first quarter of 2017, Charter only picked up 37,000 new Spectrum phone customers signing up for a Spectrum package versus 213,000 last year. Price was the only factor mentioned for the decline.

Decisions about cord-cutting are also being made at many former Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks homes when Spectrum’s new cable television offer is presented to customers. Cindy Sims of Apopka, Fla., summed it up this way: “They are raising prices and doing nothing different.”

Customers with limited budgets or fixed incomes are being priced out of Spectrum.

Sims is former Bright House Networks customer who saw her bill jump from $150 to $175 a month after Charter Communications took over. Since she is a “new customer” of Charter Communications, she hoped to get an introductory offer from the company but Charter no longer considers its acquired customers “new customers,” so she was forced into Spectrum’s regular pricing, which is higher than what she paid before. She is not alone. Charter executives admit customer cancellation/retention call center contacts from former Time Warner Cable customers are 50-60% higher than those of legacy Charter customers that have been with the company for several years.

The last straw for many is the fact customers often find they have to upgrade to the most expensive TV package to keep the channels they had before.

“They are kicking the old customers in the butt,” she added, noting that some Charter representatives handling customers threatening to leave have gotten downright nasty and rude on the phone.

Given no good alternative, some customers decide the time is right to cut cable-TV for good, and TWC’s video net loss was 129,000 worse than last year. The company claims over 90% of the losses were from budget-priced, limited-basic TV disconnects. Charter prefers to sell customers large bundles of channels for considerably more, while Time Warner Cable offered local channels and a small selection of cable networks for as little as $10 a month to certain internet-only customers.

The customer losses are expected to continue for up to a year as the other 83% of customers still on a legacy Time Warner Cable or Bright House Networks package see their prices jump as promotions end. For now, Charter won’t force customers to move to a Spectrum package, but by refusing to negotiate lower prices for legacy packages, the rate increases that happen after regular rates return are enough to push many customers to make a decision to switch or cancel service.

How much of a rate jump? Consider one Time Warner Cable triple-play package with Whole House DVR service, phone and 50/5Mbps internet access reset from $129 a month to $180 after the year-long promotion expired. A comparable package from Spectrum is still $30-40 higher than what Time Warner Cable used to charge.

The impact of the transition to Charter’s Spectrum plans and pricing is also dragging down growth of its internet service. Customers signed up for less expensive and slower tiers with Time Warner Cable are being priced out of the market by Charter’s single-advertised offer – 60 or 100Mbps for approximately $65 a month ($45 for new customers), depending on the area. Higher speed tiers are available if customers call in, if only to give them the bad news a $199 upgrade fee typically also applies.

As a result, residential internet growth among customers signing up for a Spectrum plan was 428,000 during the quarter versus 520,000 last year.

Despite the concerning numbers, Rutledge declared victory and claimed Charter would continue full-speed ahead.

“As we near the first anniversary of the close of our transformative transactions in May of last year, the execution of our integration and operating plan remains on track,” Rutledge said in a statement. “We have now launched our Spectrum pricing and packaging to nearly all of the homes we pass in our new footprint. We are already seeing the benefits of our customer-focused strategy in those markets, including greater connect volumes and the sales of higher quality products, all of which will lead to higher customer satisfaction, lower churn, and faster customer and financial growth in future quarters.”

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman achieved victory in his effort to keep a lawsuit accusing Charter Communications and its predecessor Time Warner Cable of engaging in false advertising in a state courtroom.

U.S. District Court Judge Colleen McMahon ruled that Charter’s efforts to transfer the case out of New York County Supreme Court to federal court were improper and not warranted. The case will now head back to its original venue as chosen by Schneiderman — Manhattan Supreme Court.

Charter argued the case belonged in federal court because a federal agency — the FCC — had enforcement powers over Charter’s broadband business. The cable company argued that the Communications Act passed by Congress gave federal courts sole jurisdiction over broadband matters. It also argued Net Neutrality imposed a requirement that states were not allowed to inconsistently regulate broadband providers.

Judge McMahon dismissed both arguments, noting the FCC has not ruled it had pre-emptive power over states to regulate broadband and Congress “did not intend for the federal statute to be the exclusive remedy for redressing false advertising and consumer protection claims.”

Schneiderman’s case alleging Time Warner Cable falsely advertised broadband service at speeds it knew it could not deliver will once again be heard by a New York court.