Sean Combs’ Revolt TV will be appearing on your Time Warner Cable lineup whether you want it or not.

The network, projected to launch this fall, is one of four African-American independent cable networks that Comcast pledged to carry as a pre-condition for its merger with NBCUniversal. Time Warner Cable is coming along for the ride, agreeing to launch the channel across all of its cable systems nationwide.

Most of Revolt’s programming is expected to be music programming targeting an urban audience.

Between Comcast and TWC, Revolt will launch in 25 million homes, which is an accomplishment for a network nobody heard of and few asked to receive.

“This is a landmark distribution deal that demonstrates Time Warner Cable’s commitment to bringing a platform for music artists and fans to their subscribers,” said Combs, Revolt’s founder and chairman. “It positions Revolt to come out of the gate strong, and we look forward to igniting the passion of initial audiences across the U.S.”

Discussions with other providers are ongoing, so expect the network to eventually also end on other cable, satellite, and telco-TV systems.

Neither cable company disclosed exactly how much the new network will cost each cable subscriber.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Revolt TV Launch Promo 6-13.flv[/flv]

Sean Combs’ appears in this launch promotional video for Revolt, which will target an African-American audience when it launches this fall. (Warning: Profanity) (1 minute)

An upstart telecom company has thrown the French mobile market into competitive chaos offering customers unlimited voice, messaging, and certain data services for around $26 a month. Now the company is expanding its footprint by offering free femtocells to customers that can be shared by other customers, according to a report by GigaOm‘s Kevin Fitchard.

France’s Free Mobile is everything North American cell phone providers are not. The company offers dirt cheap, often unlimited service (their backup HSPA+ roaming data network has a 3GB limit), crowdsourced public Wi-Fi networks run by its customers, and soon an even more robust network made possible by handing out network extender devices at no charge, improving indoor reception and data speeds.

Free offers more than just mobile services. Its home broadband service offers 40-100Mbps Internet service, offering plenty of bandwidth to accommodate shared connections.

Freebox home Internet gateway, now including a free femtocell.

Back home in the United States and Canada, cell phone companies ask customers to pay up to $300 for network extender devices to manage reception your provider was supposed to deliver in return for paying them nearly $100 a month. The femtocells connect to a customer’s home broadband connection to make and receive calls. Despite the fact customers are using their own broadband service to power the device, cell phone companies still deduct minutes, texts, and data from monthly usage allowances just as if one was using a nearby cell tower.

Free Mobile customers don’t have to deal with any of that. In return for helping improve the company’s cellular network, customers will get the network extender devices, known as femtocells, free after a nominal shipping charge. New customers will have the femtocell technology built right into Free Mobile’s Freebox Revolution gateway.

Parent company Iliad is depending on its generous customers to help extend the network while keeping prices low for everyone. Considering the costs, few object to sharing a negligible part of their broadband connection with other customers, especially with millions of potential connection points sharing the load.

French cell phone users have a lot to thank Iliad for, even if they are not Free Mobile customers. The appearance of Free Mobile on the scene sparked a massive price war that is delivering savings to every French mobile user.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Free Freebox Server 6-13.mp4[/flv]

Introducing the Freebox Server, a home gateway cool enough to put on your desktop. (1 minute)

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Free Designer Starck talks about the Freebox 6-13.mp4[/flv]

Only in France will you find providers spending as much time and attention on the stylish details of a set-top box as they do fretting about its cost. To underline the point, designer Philippe Starck turned up on Free’s website to talk about his design philosophy for the gateway device. (3 minutes, French)

Tom Maguire

Recently, Stop the Cap! published stories about Verizon’s decision to discontinue traditional wired landline service for approximately 500 customers on Fire Island and offer them a wireless alternative called Voice Link. This is an important change for Verizon and our customers, and we wanted to clarify several points about the service and how Verizon is deploying it.

In places like Fire Island, New York and some communities along the Jersey Shore, such as Mantoloking and Seaside Heights, Verizon evaluated the extent of the damage to its facilities – which in many cases were literally washed away by Super Storm Sandy – and conducted extensive research before deciding the best course of action to take in terms of restoration.

Fire Island is a popular beach community with only a few hundred year-round residents, but the population swells each summer. Verizon’s equipment on the eastern side of the island was not too heavily impacted, so repairs were made and services restored.

On the western side of the Island, however, a large percentage of Verizon’s copper facilities were damaged beyond repair.

We studied the voice traffic on and off the island and where it was originating from on both Verizon’s wireline and wireless networks.  The company discovered that 80 percent of the voice traffic was already wireless.  If other wireless providers were factored in, it is likely that the percentage is closer to 90 percent.  This made it clear that people had already made the decision as to what technology works best. They had abandoned copper long before Sandy.

Where Sandy did the most damage on Fire Island.

Another part of Verizon’s analysis looked at the number of permanent residents on Fire Island, which number about 500, and the costs that Verizon would incur to install and connect new landline facilities there.  It would range from $4.8 million to more than $6 million. A multimillion dollar investment with no guarantee that residents of the island will even subscribe to our services makes no economic sense. In fact, that’s probably why Verizon is the sole provider on the island. None of the companies we compete with in other parts of New York offer services on the island.

Verizon’s commitment is to provide our customers with voice service, and Voice Link is another way that Verizon is using technology to reliably deliver on that commitment for customers. And Voice Link does so by using wireless technology that has been proven effective over the last 20 plus years.

Verizon will maintain the copper network where it makes customer service and business sense to do so.  Please keep in mind that the vast majority of our copper customers have no issues at all with their service; we are only considering the universe of customers where the copper network is not supporting their requirements.  Again, the exception is the storm-impacted areas in the western portion of Fire Island and a few New Jersey Barrier communities where copper facilities were damaged beyond repair.  In these locations Voice Link will be the single voice option available to customers. Verizon will offer these customers the opportunity to use our state-of-the-art, tried and tested wireless network at the same rate (or better) that they pay today.

Here is how Verizon Voice Link works with existing home phones.

Some additional points for clarification:

• The service does offer a variety of popular calling features including Call Waiting and Caller ID with Name.  Some articles mistakenly reported to the contrary;
• Another article cited a Communications Daily piece that incorrectly reported 40,000 people participated in a blind test of Voice Link. Actually, that test group consisted of 20 people;
• Current Voice Link models include a rechargeable battery that offers 36 hours of standby and two hours of voice service. Future devices will work with standard AA batteries, giving customers an easy alternative for replacing batteries and maintaining communications in an extended power outage;
• Although the device is not presently data capable, the team is working to change that. Nevertheless we have always said that it was not Verizon’s original intent to use Voice Link for customers with DSL. If a customer had an issue with their copper and they had DSL, we would repair the copper.  Unfortunately Sandy changed these plans for a handful of customers on Fire Island and the New Jersey Barrier where the copper is beyond repair.

What’s the Deal With Copper?

In areas where Verizon’s fiber and copper network ran side-by-side, Verizon began to ask certain copper customers with a history of trouble to move their service to fiber. In some cases the equipment supporting the copper service was so outdated that we could not even find replacement parts because the equipment had been discontinued. The objective was to improve service quality and customer satisfaction using the best communications network, and the result was clear: the program has been very successful. More than 300,000 customers migrated to Verizon’s fiber-optic network.  These customers enjoy super-reliable, faster fiber at the same rates they were paying all along.

In non-fiber areas, Verizon developed Voice Link to take advantage of wireless technology to address voice customers served on the copper network who have had chronic repairs issues.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Verizon Voice Link Keeps Customers Connected After Hurricane Sandy 5-31-13.flv[/flv]

After Sandy hit, Verizon realized that wireless technology also would be an ideal solution for customers in areas the storm destroyed or severely damaged. It has helped us reconnect hundreds of people and businesses. Don’t take our word for it. See what these customers have to say. (3 minutes)

Tom Maguire is Verizon’s senior vice president of network operations support.

We saved the only good part.

The best part of Cablevision’s latest ridiculous advertising campaign is the 12-month introductory price new subscribers will pay for phone, broadband, and television service: $84.95 a month. Not bad. The same cannot be said to the advertising agency that created this mess and the executives who approved it.

Richard Greenfield from BTIG Research, which covers Cablevision for Wall Street, isn’t impressed with Cablevision’s ads either:

We believe it is time for Cablevision to find a new ad agency, bring in some new marketing executives internally and seriously rethink what their consumer proposition is – going back to pitching the triple-play at an ever lower (now $84.95 price point) is not particularly compelling. Cablevision already has very high level of bundling of video, data and voice services across its customer base.  Given that, Cablevision should be devising a marketing approach to upsell existing customers, especially higher speed, higher ARPU broadband services (given their high margin).

Consumers concerned about the high cost of cable may not agree with Greenfield’s assessment. Paying $85 a month for a triple play package is a great deal, at least until it expires.

But we suspect a lot of consumers will never get that far through the ad, particularly when most viewers don’t pay that much attention to advertising in the first place.

Insight is disappearing after Time Warner Cable bought the cable operator. It is in the process of converting subscribers to Time Warner’s own systems.

Some of more than 730,000 former Insight subscribers across Kentucky were without phone service after Time Warner Cable failed to successfully transfer them to a new platform.

Time Warner Cable had similar problems transitioning customers in Indiana, many unable to successfully navigate through a new online service agreement and e-mail address selection process.

Bob Mueller, a Florence-based financial planner, told Cincinnati.com it took nearly two days get his office line working again and his staff was still trying late Tuesday afternoon.

“We had massive problems with Insight before the changeover, and now we had problems with Time Warner,” Mueller told the newspaper. “This is not getting off to a very good start, but there aren’t a lot of other options. We’ve been at this for two days and no luck.”

Time Warner Cable denied there were any serious problems, but admitted call volumes were higher than usual. The company said it registered 40,000 new voice mail accounts throughout the state and migrated 200,000 phone customers since the weekend.

Internet customers will be moved to Time Warner Cable next week.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WDRB Louisville Long Waits at TWC 6-10-13.mp4[/flv]

WDRB in Louisville noted long hold times for new Time Warner Cable customers in excess of 30 minutes. (1 minute)