Phillip "Keeping an Eye on Time Warner's Eye" Dampier

Today’s announcement by Time Warner Cable that it is reintroducing usage based billing, at least optionally for customers in southern Texas, is a concerning development that requires further examination and vigilance.  But before we delve into that, I’d like to thank the company for avoiding the kind of mandatory usage billing/cap system we’ve seen appearing at certain other providers.  We also welcome the company’s admission that they have earned enormous profits from unlimited consumption plans and consider that pricing part of the success story they’ve had selling Internet access.

Stop the Cap! has never opposed optional usage-based billing tiers for customers who feel their light usage justifies a service discount.  However, industry trends so far have made no provisions for truly unlimited usage plans that sit side by side tiered plans without quietly diluting the value of flat rate Internet with tricks and traps in the fine print.  We have serious concerns this “foot in the door” to Internet Overcharging could eventually become mandatory for all customers.  Perhaps Time Warner Cable will be different than all the rest.  We can only hope so.

Let’s break it down:

First, Time Warner Cable’s admission it blew it the first time it experimented with these pricing schemes is most welcome.  Being on the front lines of the battle against the company’s Internet Overcharging experiment in 2009 remains very-well-documented on this website.  We confronted arrogant local management that argued usage billing was “fair” and would barely affect any customer.  In fact, the original plan a later revision would have tripled flat rate Internet access to a ridiculous $150 a month.

The company’s 2009 “listening tour” was also a farce, with a number of e-mailed comments deleted unread (we know, because Time Warner’s comment system sent e-mail to customers telling them exactly that.)  Local media outlets, newspaper editorials, and customers made it quite clear: customers want their unlimited Internet access left alone.  They do not want to learn the mysteries of a gigabyte, they don’t want to watch a gauge to determine how much usage they have left, and they sure don’t want to pay any more for broadband service.

If Jeff Simmermon, Time Warner Cable’s director of digital communications, now represents the prevailing attitude about unlimited Internet access among Time Warner Cable’s executive management, that is a very welcome change indeed.  But we’re not completely convinced.  For nearly two years, Time Warner executives have talked favorably about usage-based billing as the “fairest way” to bill for Internet usage.  Besides Simmermon’s comments, we have seen nothing from CEO Glenn Britt or CFO Irene Esteves that indicates they have changed their original views on that.

Unfortunately, we’ve learned over the last three years today’s promises may not mean a lot a year from now.  We’ve watched too many companies introduce these pricing schemes and then gradually tighten the noose around their customers.  Once broadband usage is monetized, Wall Street looks to the practice of charging for usage as a revenue source, and they pressure companies to keep that money flowing.  What begins as an optional tiered plan can eventually become the only plan when flat rate broadband is “phased out.”

Canadians understand this is not unprecedented.  They’ve been down this broadband road before, and it is loaded with expensive potholes and broken promises to repair them.  Usage allowances have actually dropped at some Canadian providers.  The fixed maximum on overlimit fees has gradually been relaxed or removed altogether, exposing Canadian consumers to broadband bill shock.

Time Warner Cable customers are now paying upwards of $50 a month for broadband after consecutive annual rate increases.  That’s plenty, and usage should remain unlimited for that kind of money.

Still, Stop the Cap! has never been opposed to truly optional usage-based billing plans.  We’re just unconvinced companies will keep the wildly popular flat rate pricing if boatloads of additional revenue can be made dragging customers to tiered usage plans, particularly in the absence of aggressive competition.  Just ask AT&T.

Second, as we’ve seen on the wireless side, “unlimited Internet access” means one thing to consumers and all-too-often something very different to providers.  For example, companies have discovered they can claim to provide unlimited access but then de-prioritize flat rate traffic, or even worse, throttle speeds and give preferential treatment to usage-based billing traffic.  Time Warner Cable needs to commit that unlimited access means exactly that — no traffic prioritization, no speed throttles, and no sneaky fine print.

Third, we don’t expect Time Warner will get too many takers for their Broadband Essentials Internet program.  The discount, just $5 a month, is quite low for broadband service limited to 5GB per month.  Exceeding that limit is quite easy, and after just 5GB of “excess usage,” the discount is eaten away and the penalty rate of $1/GB kicks in.  That could ultimately risk up to $25 a month in extra charges.  I’m uncertain how many customers would want to risk exposing themselves to that for a modest discount.

While we are not issuing a Call to Action over these developments, we will be watching them very closely.  Time Warner Cable should make no mistake: if their usage billing plans begin to eat away at fairly priced unlimited access plans, we will once again picket the company and do whatever is necessary to bring political and consumer pressure to force them to rescind these kinds of pricing schemes yet again.

An aborted takeover attempt of MetroPCS by America’s third largest cell phone company — Sprint Nextel has some on Wall Street calling for the hide of Sprint CEO Dan Hesse.

The proposed multibillion dollar takeover of prepaid provider MetroPCS, which offers mostly urban service in select cities, was vetoed late last week by Sprint’s own board of directors.

The deal would have delivered a 30 percent premium to MetroPCS shareholders, and further consolidate America’s wireless marketplace. It would have also further complicated Sprint’s financial position — already heavily indebted as it commits to a major 4G wireless service upgrade and deals with an even more expensive commitment to Apple to pitch the iPhone on Sprint’s network.

Reuters reports some investors considered the deal a mistake and are glad it was aborted.

A 30 percent premium seemed “irrational” and would have hurt Sprint shareholders, Roe Equity Research Kevin Roe told the news service.

“He’s on a short leash,” Roe said. “The board did the right thing, thank God. It’s remarkable this deal got this far.”

MetroPCS competes with Sprint’s prepaid services in several regions including metropolitan New York City, northeastern Texas, southern California, southern Michigan and central/southern Florida.  MetroPCS operates its own 4G LTE network.

Now that MetroPCS is considered “in play,” it is likely other suitors may consider buying the company out.  Among the most likely — Leap Wireless, which owns Cricket and operates a comparable service.

Craig Moffett of Bernstein Research has told investors the wireless industry continues to be “crying out for consolidation.”  The most important players in that consolidation story are T-Mobile and Sprint, which remain potential partners if the two companies can overcome their technology differences.  T-Mobile operates a GSM network incompatible with Sprint-Nextel.

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/CNBC Sprint Walks Away from MetroPCS Deal 2-24-12.flv[/flv]

CNBC reports Sprint walked away from a takeover attempt of MetroPCS on Friday.  (3 minutes)

Game over. In the championship of cell phone competition, Verizon Wireless and AT&T have won, and it is now too late for Sprint-Nextel or T-Mobile USA to catch up.

That is the conclusion of Moody’s Investors Service, who has determined competition in waning in the U.S. wireless marketplace.

“AT&T Mobility and Verizon Wireless have better network coverage, wider capabilities and wider profit margins which gives them a competitive advantage that smaller rivals just can’t match,” said Mark Stodden, a Moody’s analyst and author of the report. “It is too late for competitors to invest and catch up; Sprint has the willingness but not the ability, while T-Mobile’s parent Deutsche Telekom, is the opposite.”

Sprint’s ambitious plans for a new 4G LTE network have been suppressed by a lack of enthusiasm by Wall Street investors and bankers, who seem to prefer the much-larger AT&T and Verizon who can sustain increased pricing and are better credit risks.  T-Mobile USA has practically been abandoned by its parent owner Deutsche Telekom, which wants to focus its investments in larger markets in Europe.

Moody’s estimates AT&T and Verizon will account for 81 percent of industry earnings in 2011.  Wall Street has pressured Sprint and T-Mobile to seek consolidation to better withstand their larger competitors.  Before AT&T bid for T-Mobile, rumors of an acquisition of the German-owned company by Sprint-Nextel were common, although the two companies operate with different network technology.  Moody’s predicts troubled waters for Sprint if it should actually seek to acquire T-Mobile, because the FCC seems comfortable with a minimum of four national carriers.

Instead, Moody’s predicts Sprint will seek to acquire smaller regional carriers and prepaid providers like Leap Wireless’ Cricket and MetroPCS.  Neither acquisition would significantly improve Sprint’s service footprint, however, as both prepaid providers operate only in larger markets where they already co-exist with Sprint.

While a downturn economy continues to afflict middle and lower income America, it doesn’t seem to be doing much harm to Time Warner Cable’s profits.

America’s second largest cable operator saw profits jump more than $150 million higher to $564 million last quarter, compared to $392 million at the same time the year before.  Time Warner’s revenue grew by 4% to $5 billion in the fourth quarter alone.  In fact, the company is performing so well, executives announced they would return $3.3 billion in earnings to shareholders through share buybacks and dividend payouts, in addition to the forthcoming $4 billion share repurchase program.  Wall Street liked what they saw, boosting shares 7% after the company posted its quarterly and annual results on its website.

Time Warner’s biggest success story remains its broadband service, which consistently delivers the company new subscribers and has helped offset the loss of video subscribers, numbered at an additional 129,000 who “cut the cord” in the fourth quarter of 2011.

Time Warner Cable earned $1.148 billion in revenue from broadband in the last quarter, an increase of 8.6% over last year.  For 2011, the cable operator earned $4.476 billion selling residential Internet access, also representing an 8.6% growth rate over earnings across 2010.

The company attributed this to “growth in high-speed data subscribers and increases in average revenues per subscriber (due to both price increases and a greater percentage of subscribers purchasing higher-priced tiers of service).”

The increased costs incurred by Time Warner Cable to upgrade and expand their network and cable systems were well offset by the aforementioned price increases and subscriber upgrades.  The company increased capital expenditures to $942 million in the last quarter.  Results over the full year show just a 0.2% overall increase in capital investment, now at $2.937 billion.  System upgrades, Time Warner’s plans to move their systems to all-digital cable television, the ongoing rollout of DOCSIS 3.0, new home security and automation services, and investment in online video and data centers are included in these costs. But a more significant reason for the increase comes from the company’s ongoing expansion into business services, which requires wiring more office buildings for cable.

Britt

Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt led off the conference call with investors with an explanation for the increased expenses.

“We plan to continue our aggressive growth in business services by expanding product offerings, growing our sales force, improving productivity and increasing our serviceable footprint. This means continued investment, both in people and in capital,” Britt said. “Projects include expansion of our content delivery network, which powers our IP video capability, our 2 international headends, completion of DOCSIS 3.0 deployment, and conversion to all-digital in more cities. We expect to be able to accomplish this while maintaining the capital spending of the last 2 years — that is, between $2.9 billion and $3 billion, which represents a continued decline in capital intensity.”

Nothing in Time Warner Cable’s financial disclosures provides any evidence to justify significant changes in their pricing model for broadband, which currently delivers flat rate, unlimited service to customers at different speed rates and price points.  In fact, the company’s investments in DOCSIS 3.0 upgrades, which can support faster broadband speeds and a more even customer experience, have already paid off with subscriber upgrades.

Robert D. Marcus, president and chief operating officer, noted subscribers are increasingly considering faster (and more profitable) broadband tiers.

“Once again, high-speed data net adds over-indexed to our higher-speed tiers,” Marcus noted. “Roughly 3/4 of residential broadband net adds were Turbo or higher. And DOCSIS 3.0 net adds accelerated for the eighth consecutive quarter to an all-time high of 54,000.”

Time Warner’s biggest challenges continue to be the current state of the economy, which has made subscribers much more sensitive to pricing and rate increases, and cord cutting traditional cable television service.

“One group is extremely price-conscious, perhaps due in part to the ongoing economic malaise,” Britt said. “The other group is willing and able to pay for more features and service. We’re going to focus more attention on products and services that best meet each group’s needs rather than pursuing traditional one-size-fits-all solutions.”

That is clearly evident in the company’s bundled service options, including increasingly aggressive discounted pricing for new customers and for those threatening to leave and Time Warner’s super-premium Signature Home service, which delivers super-profits.  Average revenue from Signature Home customers averages $230 a month.  Traditional “triple play” customers who buy phone, Internet, and cable service only bring the cable company an average of $150 a month.

The company’s plans for 2012 do not include a specific statement about implementing an Internet Overcharging scheme like usage billing or usage caps.  But it is unlikely such an announcement would be made explicitly at an earnings announcement.  In the last quarter, Stop the Cap! reported comments from chief financial officer Irene Esteves that the company was still very interested in the concept of selling broadband with usage pricing as a “wonderful hedge” against cord-cutting.

Esteves told a UBS conference she believes usage-based pricing for Time Warner Cable broadband will become a reality sooner or later.  Charging “heavy users” more would already be familiar to consumers used to paying higher prices for heavy use of other services, and she claimed light users would have the option of paying less.

But despite favorable reception to the idea of usage pricing by Wall Street, Esteves acknowledged the company’s past experiments in usage pricing didn’t go as planned, and she suggested the company will introduce usage pricing “the right way rather than quickly.”

Other developments and highlights

• 

  Time Warner faces Verizon's $500 rebate offers in NY City

  Time Warner Beats Up DSL: Time Warner Cable’s most lucrative source for new broadband customers comes at the expense of phone companies still relying on DSL to deliver broadband service.  As DSL speeds have failed to stay competitive with cable broadband, the cable operator has successfully lured price-sensitive DSL customers with attractive ongoing price promotions delivering a year of standard 10/1Mbps cable Internet access for $29.99 a month, often less expensive than the total price of DSL service that frequently delivers slower speeds.

• Stalled Verizon FiOS deployment has limited the amount of competition Time Warner faces from fiber optics to just 12% of the company’s service area.  Where competition does exist, especially in New York State, Time Warner has had to stay aggressive to retain customers with deeply-discounted retention deals to keep up with Verizon’s high value rebate gift cards and new customer offers.  AT&T now provides U-verse competition in about 25% of Time Warner’s service area, but like satellite, AT&T U-verse pricing is less heavily discounted.
• Retention pricing and new customer deals deliver lower prices than ever.  In November, Time Warner started selling a triple play offer for $89.99 a month that includes DVR service and now also includes deep discounts or free 90 day trials of premium movie channels. That is $10 less than the same time last year.
• Premium movie channels continue to take a major hit as subscribers try to reduce their bills, especially after Time Warner began increasing rates on those networks.  HBO now sells for as much as $15 a month in many areas.  Time Warner Cable hopes to ‘revitalize’ premium movie channels with online video services like HBO and Max Go and promotional discounts.
• Long-standing customers of Time Warner’s “triple play” package received a “thank-you gift” — free voice-mail in 2011, something that will continue in 2012.
• Customers signing up for Time Warner’s premium-priced Wideband (50/5Mbps) service ($99/month) are being offered free phone service to sweeten the deal.

What to Expect in 2012

• Time Warner is moving forward to create its own Regional Sports Network for southern California;
• Los Angeles will continue to see large-scale expansion of Time Warner’s growing Wi-Fi network, available for free to premium broadband customers, with thousands of new access points on the way;
• The cable company will introduce Wi-Fi service in other, yet-to-be-announced cities in 2012, with up to 10,000 access points planned.
• Time Warner will be making its “digital phone” product more attractive with lower prices and more features, especially in product bundles, as consumers increasingly discard landlines;
• Expect to see the end of analog cable television in a growing number of Time Warner Cable areas, requiring customers to use new equipment (initially provided free) to continue watching on older televisions and those without existing set top boxes.
• Time Warner will continue to expand its “TV Everywhere” project to include live streaming TV on smartphones, video game consoles, computers, and more.  On-demand programming will be available as well sometime this year across all platforms.
• A nationwide channel re-alignment will move subscribers to consistent channel numbers across the country, in part based on grouping them together into “genres.”  Many areas already have digital cable channels arranged this way, but now they will be consistent from coast-to-coast.
• Time Warner will complete DOCSIS 3 deployment in all areas this year.
• The company is moving to introduce 2-hour service call windows almost everywhere, and 1-hour windows and weekend appointments in some markets.  Several cities now allow customers to select specific times for service appointments.
• Self-install kits will become increasingly available for different products, allowing customers to install equipment themselves;
• Time Warner’s IntelligentHome home security, monitoring, and automation product will expand beyond its launch markets (Syracuse and Rochester, N.Y., Charlotte, N.C. and Los Angeles/Southern Calif.).  The product currently has customers in the thousands, considered relatively small.  But Time Warner has learned subscribers are using the service in surprising ways, which will let them adapt their marketing.  Among the most popular features: remotely watching your pets at home.

Most Memorable Quote: “I think, more than anything else, our pricing strategy is dictated by what the marketplace will bear as opposed to what our underlying cost structure is.” — Robert Marcus, president and chief operating officer, Time Warner Cable

Plenty of taxpayer-backed money for this... (Time Warner Cable Arena - Charlotte, N.C.)

Which is more important:

1. Spending hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to finance sports facilities, stadiums, and “incentive packages” to attract and keep major sports franchises calling your city home;
2. Building quality digital infrastructure that will deliver 21st century broadband service at affordable prices for every local citizen that wants the service.

Here in western New York, the city of Buffalo — the third poorest city in the nation with 28 percent of its residents living in poverty and suffering chronically high unemployment — is about to the recipient of a one billion dollar bailout courtesy of the state government (a/k/a taxpayers).  That, even as some in the city are howling that the promised tens-to-hundreds of millions in promised renovation funding for the Ralph Wilson (Buffalo Bills) Stadium is apparently not included.

While hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars are readily available to finance sports stadiums, getting privately financed bonds for public broadband is somehow the real crime in states like North and South Carolina.  North Carolina already has legislation in place that virtually assures broadband service is under the control of the state’s largest phone and cable companies, or it simply is not provided at all. Evidently in a battle over worthwhile public spending, financing a reported $260 million for Charlotte, N.C.’s Time Warner Cable Arena remains a higher priority than making sure the people of North Carolina have decent broadband service.

South Carolina this week is considering extending a similar courtesy to companies like AT&T and Time Warner Cable.  They need better broadband even more than their neighbors to the north.

Happily, broadband advocate Craig Settles has found a way for broadband lovers to have their cake and eat it too.

...but none for this?

Why not construct public, non-profit broadband networks by selling ownership shares to the general public?

All of you who believe in broadband’s impact on economic development (or are a little jealous of stories like this about Chattanooga’s 1 gigabit network), should look to the Green Bay Packers of the NFL for the key to financing your broadband network.

Yeah, they kind of choked in last Sunday’s playoff game against the N.Y. Giants. But the team is a surefire winner when it comes to raising money. The franchise raised $70 million to rehab its football stadium (Lambeau Field) by selling 280,000 stock shares to individuals at $250 a pop. They pulled off this amazing feat in just five weeks!

With apologies to New Orleans Saints fans — “Who Dat” is bringing big bucks into town for a project that will pump up the local economy? The citizens of Green Bay. Literally. The Green Bay Packers are a nonprofit corporation owned by local residents and businesses. Packers pride enabled Green Bay to outdo tech companies that can’t get an initial public offering off the ground, let alone raise $70 million.

If Green Bay can do all this for a football field, can’t your hometown or county convince constituents to raise just a few million for a broadband network?

$250?  That’s the combined price of today’s cable and cell phone service over just a single month.  Should a private non-profit group act as coordinator for the project, they can walk right past existing restrictions on municipal broadband enacted at the behest of big cable and phone companies.  Self-financed fiber to the home service could pay dividends… to customers instead of Wall Street.

Settles lays out the parameters and the challenges, namely fighting that old meme that only giant telecom duopolies know how to run a broadband business.  But as we’ve seen from small scrappy private providers like Sonic.net in California and publicly-owned EPB Fiber, providing superior service at a reasonable price will bring customers to your door.  Even more so if they also happen to own the door.