…fiction into “fact.”

Although America’s perennially worst-rated cable company is advertising “always faster Internet,” it is also moving “full speed ahead” to enforce usage limits to make sure customers don’t take too much advantage of those speeds.

Broadband Reports notes Mediacom is preparing notices stating effective Sept. 7 usage limits and overlimit fees that used to only apply to new customers or those changing plans will now be enforced for all customers.

A member of their social media team blamed bandwidth hogs for the caps.

“We have a small subset of customers that are using a very large portion of the available bandwidth, which can have a negative impact on the other Internet users in the surrounding area,” said Mediacom’s Social Media Relations Team. “By curbing this behavior, other customers can benefit with faster speeds.”

Actually, Mediacom will benefit from lower usage and higher revenue it will collect from the $10 overlimit fee for each additional 50GB of usage. Neighborhood congestion issues are largely a thing of the past because of upgrades to DOCSIS 3 technology.

Although the usage caps for higher priced tiers are generous by current standards, the company can adjust the caps up or down at any time. Mediacom traditionally serves rural areas or small cities that lack significant telephone company competition, so customers may have few alternatives. Both CenturyLink and AT&T have their own usage caps, barely enforced. Frontier Communications, another common provider in Mediacom territory, has tested the water with usage caps in the past but does not regularly impose them.

Broadband Reports assembled the pricing and caps for each Mediacom broadband tier:

Comcast’s usage caps are back for customers in three states.

Comcast has decided usage caps are in the future for more of its broadband customers.

Effective Sept. 1 XFINITY Internet Service will be capped to 300GB of monthly usage in central Kentucky, Savannah, Ga., and Jackson, Miss. Comcast says the plan provides “additional choice and flexibility.”

We’re uncertain how it does that, exactly.

Comcast will have the additional choice of slapping a $10 overlimit fee for allowance offenders for every extra 50GB of data consumed.

But the company says it will be initially flexible in how it penalizes those heavy users.

“In order for our customers to get accustomed to the new data usage plan, we will be implementing a program that gives you three courtesy months for exceeding the 300GB in any 12-month period,” writes Comcast in a new FAQ. “That means you will only be subject to overage charges if you exceed the 300GB for a fourth time in a 12-month period. On the fourth (and any subsequent occurrence), you will be notified that you have exceeded your 300GB via an email and in-browser notification, that an additional 50GB has automatically been allocated to your account, and that applicable charges will be applied to your bill.”

Choice and flexibility for the customer or Comcast’s bottom line?

Customers with questions and concerns about Comcast’s expanding Internet Overcharging scheme can call Comcast Customer Security Assurance at 1-877-807-6581. Customers might want to assure Comcast if they are going back to usage caps, they will start shopping for a different provider. Stop the Cap! recommends customers in these areas protest the usage caps firmly and loudly.

“There are no legitimate engineering or economic justifications for these caps,” notes consumer group Free Press. “But Comcast’s new Internet Overcharging scheme and its discriminatory treatment of competitors’ video offerings do pose a grave threat to future video competition.”

And to your wallet.

Analysts have estimated that Comcast’s profit margins on broadband service are at least 80 percent or higher. In 2008, Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. analyst Craig Moffett estimated Comcast’s data margins at 80 percent, and Credit Suisse reported in fall 2010 that Comcast’s gross margins on high-speed data had grown to 93 percent.

Since withdrawing a nationwide cap of 250GB in 2012, Comcast had tested usage caps only in Nashville, Tenn., and Tucson, Ariz.

Stop the Cap! thanks reader “MrPaulAR” for the news tip.

If Time Warner Cable is concerned about the rising cost of cable television, it sure didn’t show it after sources revealed the cable company quickly accepted CBS’ demands for more compensation but is refusing to budge until it wins rights to show CBS programming on mobile platforms.

Sources tell the Daily News Time Warner quickly agreed to a major increase from 50 cents a month per subscriber to $2 a month for CBS content, but is keeping CBS-owned stations and cable networks off the dial until the network agrees to let the cable company distribute on-demand and live programming on cell phones, tablets, and personal computers.

Earlier this week, Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt made an offer CBS couldn’t wait to refuse: the cable company would put CBS programming back on the lineup if it could be sold to customers a-la-carte instead of bundling it with other channels.

That would “allow customers to decide for themselves how much value they ascribe to CBS programming,” Britt said in a letter to CBS CEO Leslie Moonves that was promptly posted online.

CBS called the idea a sham, noting a-la-carte runs contrary to the economic model the cable industry itself regularly and loudly defends. Try telling ESPN, which costs every cable subscriber more than $5 a month, it will now be offered only to customers that want to pay for it.

Phillip “Capitulation Corner” Dampier

In fact, for most cable operators, the concept of selling customers only the channels they want is the nightmare scenario. Average revenue per subscriber would tumble as consumers rid themselves of networks with three digit channel numbers they didn’t even know they had. Goodbye ‘Yarn Creations’ on Generic Home Shopping Channel 694, Bosnian music videos, reruns of Simon and Simon, mysterious networks showing episodes of Law & Order that USA Network already burned into your permanent memory, and that “fine arts” network that shows endless hours of Antiques Roadshow dating back to 1998.

Digital rights is an important issue for both cable companies and programmers. Although both sides deny “cord cutting” is real, the intensity of the fight allowing online viewing says otherwise. If CBS gives away rights to Time Warner Cable to show live and on-demand programming to subscribers, CBS can’t make as much money offering shows on its own website (with its own ads), much less sell programming to customers. Time Warner fears if CBS only offers online programming through its own website, customers might decide they don’t need the cable company to watch those shows any longer.

“At the moment the cable operators have the leverage because the more that CBS is off the cable, the more that they realize the viewers don’t need it,” said media expert Michael Wolf, former Yahoo! board member and president of Viacom-owned MTV Networks.

For now, many viewers are turning to pirate video sites to catch the CBS shows they are missing. TorrentFreak reports huge spikes in illicit download traffic of CBS content over the weekend. Under the Dome was the source of much of the spike, although customers are also downloading pirated copies of Showtime programming. The evidence is clear: take away popular programming and customers will simply download it illegally from third-party websites.

As summer wanes and the fall football season approaches, just about everyone expects the war will quickly end, because football fans are more than willing to drop a provider if they can’t spend several hours in front of the television Sunday afternoon. Considering Time Warner has reportedly already caved in on CBS’ money demands, it is likely CBS will be able to eventually extract even more money from the cable company to secure digital distribution rights. Subscribers will pick up the tab for both during the next round of rate increases beginning this fall in the south and by January in the northeast.

Time Warner Cable’s latest regulatory notice admits current deals with more than 50 networks are due to expire soon, and the company may cease the carriage of one or more of the networks. They include: Lifetime, E!, Style, Turner Classic Movies, and the NHL Network. So just like Law & Order reruns, we will see this episode again in the near future.

The PGA is offering a way for golf fans to watch some of the PGA Championship online, bypassing the CBS-TWC dispute.

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/CNBC PGA Time Warner 8-8-13.mp4[/flv]

Perhaps the biggest loss viewers without CBS will experience this weekend is the PGA Championship. CNBC talks with tournament officials in Rochester, N.Y., about the possibility of viewing alternatives. But golf fans can watch parts of the tournament for free from the PGA’s website. (3 minutes)

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Bloomberg The Future of Cable Post CBS-TWC Battle 8-6-13.flv[/flv]

Bloomberg News reports that while many cable viewers could care less about the loss of CBS and Showtime, broadband customers may care very much when cable operators start charging extra for Netflix or add punitive usage caps to make sure customers don’t cut cable TV’s cord. (3 minutes)

xfinity=5GB

Comcast is introducing a new 5GB optional usage cap for customers subscribing to their Economy Plus ($29.95 – 3Mbps/768kbps) tier willing to limit their Internet usage in return for a $5 discount.

“The Flexible-Data Option is specifically designed for casual or light Internet users who typically use 5GB of data or less a month,” says a new Comcast FAQ on the subject. “It provides a $5 credit if your total monthly data usage is less than or equal to 5GB per month.”

Comcast admits only a tiny percentage of customers subscribe to the Economy Plus tier, and those are the only customers receiving letters offering a discount for keeping Internet usage low.

The company says it will inject a message into subscribers’ web browsers notifying them when they reach 90% of their usage allowance. If customers do happen to exceed 5GB of usage per month, there are repercussions. First, they automatically lose the $5 credit. Instead, they will be charged $1 per gigabyte in overlimit fees.

“We believe this monthly option is fair because it allows our eligible customers who use less data to now pay less,” writes the company.

But unlike Time Warner Cable’s trials of 5 and 30GB usage-capped plans that limit the overlimit fee to $25 a month, Comcast has no disclosed maximum, which means a customer consuming 200GB a month could face a $195 overage usage penalty.

Comcast notes the option is being offered later this month on a trial basis and only in the Fresno area. Customers can drop the usage capped option at any time.

Comcast discontinued its formal 250GB usage cap in May 2012, but it has not abandoned interest in usage limits or consumption-based pricing.

In Tucson, Comcast is testing variable usage caps with an overlimit fee of $10, which includes an extra 50GB of usage. In Nashville, all customers face a hard 300GB usage cap.

Time Warner Cable has repeatedly admitted very few customers have shown any interest in usage capped broadband plans.

In addition to an August broadband rate increase for western New York’s Time Warner Cable customers, those in Rochester will also be among the first to experience a new 30GB usage-capped billing option for broadband service.

The subject of usage-based billing is a major sore spot for customers in the Flower City, who joined forces with customers in Greensboro, N.C., and San Antonio and Austin, Tex. to force the cable company to shelve a mandatory usage billing scheme announced in 2009. Stop the Cap! was in the middle of that fight, although this group was founded after Frontier Communications proposed a 5GB usage cap the summer before.

Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt personally promised Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y) that the cable company would yank its planned experiment with usage caps and consumption-based billing after it became clear Rochester and other cities were being singled out where Verizon FiOS would never offer competition, making it seem Time Warner was taking advantage of a lack of broadband competition to charge dramatically higher prices.

In 2009, Time Warner Cable planned mandatory broadband usage pricing starting in Rochester, N.Y., Greensboro, N.C., and San Antonio and Austin, Tex.

But Britt has never stopped believing in usage pricing, and Time Warner has since switched to a more gradual introduction of the pricing scheme, this time offering discounts to customers that agree to limit their Internet usage.

Time Warner’s current usage billing plan offers a meager $5 discount to those who limit consumption to less than 5GB per month. That plan was originally introduced in Texas and Time Warner Cable employees confidentially tell Stop the Cap! it has attracted almost no interest from customers.

Now Time Warner Cable plans to introduce a second usage limited plan, with a yet to be disclosed discount for subscribers who keep Internet usage under 30GB a month.

“Those who use the Internet for e-mail or to surf the web need not pay the same rates as those who download games and the like,” said company spokesperson Joli Plucknette-Farmen.

As far as we can tell, the 30GB capped plan is new for Time Warner Cable and Rochester will be among the first communities to experience it. Unless the company chooses to more aggressively discount both the 5GB and 30GB plans, we expect few customers will take Time Warner Cable up on their offer.

For now, Time Warner says the usage capped plans are optional and that flat rate Internet service will continue. But company executives have not said for how long or what the company might choose to eventually charge for unlimited broadband usage.

Britt has stressed repeatedly he wants customers to get re-educated to accept “a usage component as part of broadband pricing.” But customers may not accept that, particularly considering the cable company already enjoys a 95% gross margin on flat rate broadband service.