Tribune-owned WCCT was seen on certain Cablevision systems in Connecticut.

Tribune Broadcasting Corporation’s WPIX-New York, KWGN-Denver, WPHL-Philadelphia, and WCCT-Waterbury/Hartford, Conn. were all dropped from Cablevision’s lineup late last week in the latest fee dispute between TV station owners and cable systems.

Tribune says the stations were taken off Cablevision as the two sides were in a negotiating session, even after offering the cable company an extension of their current agreement to avoid upsetting viewers.

“Cablevison took this action despite our offer of an unconditional extension of the current carriage agreement with no change in terms while negotiations continued,” Tribune said in a statement. “To be clear, Tribune was willing to provide Cablevision subscribers access to the valuable programming on these stations while working toward a new agreement. Tribune never made any threat to withdraw these stations or any demand that Cablevision remove them.”

Cablevision’s decision to discontinue the New York/Philadelphia stations affects subscribers in suburban Connecticut and New Jersey, Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Long Island. KWGN is a common superstation seen on Cablevision/Optimum West systems in Colorado, Montana, Wyoming and Utah.

Cablevision accused Tribune’s owners of anti-consumer behavior over their demands for higher retransmission fees.

“The bankrupt Tribune Co. and the hedge funds and banks that own it, including Oaktree Capital Management, Angelo Gordon & Co. and others, are trying to solve Tribune’s financial problems on the backs of Cablevision customers,” Cablevision said. “Tribune and their hedge fund owners are demanding tens of millions in new fees for WPIX and other stations they own. They should stop their anti-consumer demands and work productively to reach an agreement.”

WPIX management counters the station is asking for less than a penny extra per day per subscriber.

Both sides are appealing to the public, but city comptroller John C. Liu is fed up.

“These blackouts are happening all too often,” Liu said.  “Cablevision, as a city franchisee and service provider, should do all it can to ensure that this blackout is resolved swiftly because New Yorkers deserve to get what they pay for, not be unfairly punished because of battling corporate interests.  If a swift resolution cannot be achieved, the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications must step up to hold the provider accountable to the subscribers, who feel the brunt of this irresponsible disagreement.”

Liu adds that New Yorkers are effectively paying Cablevision for channels they no longer receive, and the cable operator is not offering any refunds.

Eventually, both sides will come to an agreement for higher payments, which will be passed along to subscribers with the next rate increase.

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Bloomberg News talks with Matthew Harrigan from Wunderlich Securities about the impact of the Tribune-Cablevision dispute. Does WPIX and Tribune have enough clout to get Cablevision to cave?  (2 minutes)

A TV news crew from Salt Lake City that sent undercover reporters into an AT&T store, successfully reactivating a smartphone reported lost or stolen, returned Tuesday with cameras running looking for answers.

KTVX News found AT&T stores maintain activation policies that are exceptionally friendly to smartphone thieves, who can reactivate lost or stolen phones with no questions asked.

Stop the Cap! shared video from the station earlier this week showing AT&T employees making life difficult for victims of cell phone theft, but enthusiastically willing to collect money from new customers who received or purchased the stolen property.

A California class action lawsuit has been filed against AT&T over how it handles stolen cell phones.

According to the suit AT&T is, “forcing legitimate customers…to buy new cell phones, and buy new cell phone plans, while the criminals who stole the phone are able to simply walk into AT&T store and re-activate the devices using different, cheap, readily available SIM cards.”

KTVX originally sought to check whether AT&T had the same thief-friendly policies in place in Utah.  It turned out the answer was yes — AT&T will turn back on any phone as long as you “put money on it.”

Text from a California class action lawsuit against AT&T

“All you would have to do is pay for the plan,” said an unnamed AT&T store employee. “We’ll set up your account with your ID, and then put the new SIM card in there and put money on it.”

A day after the undercover operation, the TV station confronted the manager at the AT&T store just outside Valley Fair Mall, in West Valley City. He refused to answer questions.

“You can’t tell us anything about whether you know employees are doing that here?” asked reporter Brian Carlson.

“I’m not going to give you any comment on that,” he said.

The store manager referred questions to a regional AT&T representative, but the station could only reach his voicemail.

AT&T’s reactivation policies are not shared by Verizon Wireless, which claims it will not reactivate a phone reported lost or stolen on its network for any reason, except if the request comes from the original phone owner.  AT&T’s policies, according to the lawsuit, help fuel cell phone theft by making it easy for thieves to sell stolen equipment to buyers confident they can reactivate and use the equipment immediately after purchase.

AT&T says they’re working on a new plan with the Federal Communications Commission and other cell phone providers to create a centralized database of stolen phones that would keep them from being activated by any wireless carrier.  That plan could be in place by the end of this year.

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ABC4 reporters return, with cameras running, to the same AT&T store that a day earlier helpfully reactivated a phone that could have been lost or stolen, no questions asked.  (2 minutes)

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Salt Lake City’s local ABC affiliate never runs out of wonderful things to say about Comcast, the area’s dominant cable company. KTVX devoted more than four minutes of airtime last week to a puff piece promoting Comcast’s cable products.

It’s just the latest example of the blurring of the line between journalism and ingratiating sponsors by lending the station’s news talent out to shill for advertisers.

Included in the ‘Good Things Utah’ segment, an extended interview with Comcast’s Ray Child, who was encouraged to rattle on about all of the wonderful things Comcast/Xfinity offers local residents.  The two cheerleaders hosts presiding over the affair offered nothing but extended praise, although one host may have touched the third rail when she mentioned “monopoly.”  (4 minutes)

Recently, the FCC issued a report claiming Americans are often only getting half the broadband speeds they are promised by providers.  KTVX-TV, the ABC station in Salt Lake City, recently investigated whether that held true for local residents.

The results?  Most Salt Lake City Internet users don’t always get a good deal from providers that often deliver inconsistent speeds, even on premium priced plans that can cost up to $130.

Ookla, which has been compiling speed test data as well, reports the United States was in 11th place globally when it comes to being honest about what broadband speeds providers actually deliver.  Don’t get too excited — we score 30th on the download speed index.  More than two dozen nations deliver faster service.

Which nation scores at the very top of the honesty chart?  The Republic of Moldova, a largely-Romanian speaking former Soviet Republic.  In fact, ISPs in Chişinău, the capital city, are too modest, claiming speeds lower than they actually provide customers.  The rest of the top-10 honesty ranking contains a number of countries in eastern Europe — countries that blow the United States out of the water when it comes to telling the truth about broadband speed:

1. Republic of Moldova, 109.21%
2. Russia, 98.65%
3. Slovakia, 98.64%
4. Lithuania, 97.97%
5. Ukraine, 97.58%
6. Hungary, 96.80%
7. Switzerland, 96.72%
8. Bulgaria, 95.96%
9. Latvia, 94.83%
10. Norway, 93.97%

Five states manage to score high marks on the honesty chart, most of which are served by Verizon.  We suspect FiOS may be a major factor in why these states lead the others:

1. Delaware, 100.85%
2. Massachusetts, 100.07%
3. Maryland, 99.56%
4. Rhode Island, 98.83 %
5. Virginia, 98.36 %

KTVX found that the area’s incumbent cable company Comcast did manage to deliver promised broadband speeds, often when most customers are not using the service.  Speeds were far lower in the evening — prime-time usage hours — sometimes as low as 3Mbps.

“Qwest’s DSL is best forgotten,” says Stop the Cap! reader Sangi, who writes from the city of Roy.  “It’s so bad a lot of us think of it as dial-up on caffeine.”

Sangi used to receive DSL service from the phone company, which is planning to merge with CenturyLink.

“When we moved closer to town, cable was an option and that made Qwest something we could live without,” Sangi says.  “They never came close to the speeds they marketed and when we complained, they claimed we wouldn’t notice the difference when browsing web pages and checking e-mail.”

“Apparently Qwest considers the Internet good for little else, at least how they deliver it,” he added.

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KTVX-TV in Salt Lake City investigates broadband speed claims and finds residents don’t always get what they pay for.  (3 minutes)

The Free UTOPIA website reports that a provider-backed front group is once again trying to pack meetings with their members to oppose UTOPIA – Utah’s municipal broadband network.

Several UTOPIA member cities are gearing up to start taking votes on the new Utah Infrastructure Agency designed to help fund new construction of the network. The Utah Taxpayers Association is trying to get people to show up at these meetings to protest the UIA and try and kill it. In their effort to do so, they continue to distort, twist, and outright lie in their efforts to rile people up.

First off, the UIA bonds are not an unconditional loan. They are funds that will be secured by payments from subscribers. If there aren’t enough subscribers to secure repayment, the money doesn’t get touched. You would think that such an arrangement would be acceptable to an organization that purports to represent taxpayers as it clearly shifts the burden from the taxpayers as a whole to the subscribers. Attempting to characterize the UIA as a big grab-bag is a big lie.

UTA claims UTOPIA is currently running a $20 million deficit, but Free UTOPIA points out part of that “deficit” may include the original seed money required to construct the network, which came in the form of bonds.  Like any start-up venture, UTOPIA’s initial infrastructure costs create operating losses until those costs are paid back.  A financial feasibility study prepared by Design Nine and released last week projects UTOPIA could report positive net income by 2018, with revenue increasing dramatically going forward.

UTA receives financial support from both Comcast and Qwest.

As fiber advocates have noted, start-up costs and the time it takes to pay them off are one reason why so few commercial providers want to invest in fiber.  Commercial providers often demand a return on investment within five years, while many municipal projects consider fiber a longer-term investment that can pay additional dividends for communities that may not always appear on a balance sheet.  Dividends like high technology start-ups, better paying jobs, better health care and education, and eventually additional revenue for the community that stays in the community.

The UTA has repeatedly claimed the UTOPIA project is veiled in secrecy, yet the project’s feasibility study is published on UTA’s own website.  What is secret is exactly how much money Comcast and Qwest pay UTA and its president Howard Stephenson.  Neither company will disclose exactly how much they have spent on UTA beyond contributions directed to Stephenson himself, documented here.

Provider-backed front groups like UTA routinely misinform their members about the benefits of municipal broadband, often to the point of demagoguery not supported by the facts.  Free UTOPIA reports broadband evangelism can make dramatic inroads among opponents of such public works projects:

The Utah “Taxpayers” Association thought it would get an upper hand with a BBQ in Orem just before the city council voted on a new construction bond. Unfortunately for them, the plan backfired when UTOPIA made a surprise appearance at the event with their “mobile command center” and started actually talking directly with the meeting attendees, many of whom had no opinion of UTOPIA yet and came to get more information. According to my sources, about half of the 250 or so attendees ended up registering their interest in UTOPIA services, a major coup for the network that upstaged their most vocal opponent.

Apparently what convinced a lot of the undecideds was the UTA’s refusal to disclose who pays their bills. That lack of transparency translated directly into looking like they have something to hide (hint: it’s Qwest and Comcast dollars) and left many looking at their fantastic claims skeptically. I’d like to say that there were some talking points to address, but an eyewitness account called it so much kool-aid drinking, a series of incomprehensible rants filled with insinuation, innuendo, insults, and no concrete addressable facts. In contrast, UTOPIA discussed their new business plan with individual residents and offered demonstrations of how well the service can work. Truth has power and it wasn’t on the UTA’s side.

Judging from comments left on UTOPIA’s website, the most controversy seems to be why it takes so long to extend service to more neighborhoods:

“Please finish laying fiber in Orem! We live virtually a quarter mile from the cutoff. We are stuck with Comcast’s horrible routing, and inconsistent speeds, Qwest’s DSL which doesn’t work due to damaged lines they are unwilling to repair, or wireless that never works. Please save us. I have been waiting for years.”

Utah fiber advocates are strongly encouraged by Free UTOPIA to repeat earlier successes and attend upcoming town meetings to present a more informed view about the benefits of fiber networks.

Centerville meets tonight (October 19) at 7PM, Orem is October 26 at 6PM, and Payson is October 27 at 6PM.

All meetings are at the city halls of each respective community.