State regulators have fined Frontier Communications $41,400 for 414 violations of Washington’s law governing the largest amount a company can charge for a returned check.

The Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission gave Frontier 15 days to pay the fine, contest it by requesting a hearing, or seek a reduced penalty settlement.

The state found Frontier guilty of charging customers $20-25 for returned checks from Aug. 1, 2010 – March 31, 2012, despite the fact the maximum penalty Frontier is authorized to levy for a returned check in the state is $15.

Customers who overpaid Frontier for returned check charges should contact Frontier at 1-800-921-8101 to negotiate a partial refund or service credit. The state’s fine will not be used to repay customers.

Frontier’s headquarters in Rochester, N.Y.

Tens of thousands of Frontier Communications customers have dealt with the loss of their broadband and phone service in five states because of cable damage, copper theft, and overselling broadband service with insufficient capacity.

Upstate New York

Officials in Oswego County report Frontier phone and broadband service was disrupted Monday for customers in several central New York communities. At least 3,400 customers were unable to dial outside of their home exchanges in Fairhaven, Hannibal, Cato and Lysander. Frontier said a cable owned and maintained by Verizon was responsible, and they were unaware when Verizon would complete repairs.

Tennessee and Illinois

Frontier Communications acknowledged a “major outage” was affecting customers in both Tennessee and Illinois today. As of late this afternoon, Frontier said it was still attempting to restore service to both states’ customers.

Washington

Frontier Communications has reported copper lines stolen in Snohomish, Skykomish and Granite Falls, causing temporary outages for thousands of customers throughout north King and Snohomish counties. It’s the tenth copper wire theft affecting Frontier so far this year.

West Virginia

Ongoing problems in the Panhandle region of West Virginia have left Frontier broadband customers without service, sometimes for days. Customers have been told copper thefts were responsible for outages in mid-July, but some Frontier technicians have also told customers that slow speeds that persist month after month are a result of too many customers trying to use Frontier broadband at the same time. Other customers in the Shepherdstown area report persistent, ongoing problems with broadband outages as well.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/KCPQ Seattle Frontier Copper Theft 7-25-13.flv[/flv]

KCPQ in Seattle reports Frontier has been a repeated victim of copper thefts in Washington state. At least 10 instances of copper theft have left thousands of customers without service until the company can string new cable.  (3 minutes)

Frontier Communications Northwest, Inc., has won an end to rate regulation, arguing sufficient competition exists between telecom companies in Washington State to make the oversight unnecessary.

The Washington State Utilities and Transportation Commission approved the request this week, adding it would allow more pricing flexibility for Frontier services in the state.

Although the majority of Washington is served by CenturyLink, which acquired the assets of Qwest, Frontier has 321,000 customers in Redmond, Kirkland, Everett, Bothell, Woodinville, and other smaller communities. Most of Frontier’s customers were acquired from Verizon Northwest in 2010 after the company exited the landline business in the state.

Frontier must still adhere to Washington’s consumer protection laws. Customers with unresolved problems with Frontier services, including its adopted FiOS fiber network, can call the Commission’s HelpLine at 1-888-333-9882.

Back in the fall of 2010, British billionaire Alki David fired a salvo against major broadcast networks in the United States and United Kingdom with the introduction of FilmOn, an online cable system offering unlimited viewing of broadcast networks from both countries for around $10 a month. By early 2011, lawsuits from various networks forced the removal of the most-watched channels, and most of the incentive for subscribers to keep paying for the service.

But David has never given up on FilmOn, and borrowing a page from Aereo’s business plan, he has brought back most of the major American networks on his relaunched platform, dubbed AereoKiller.

The company claims it is now using individual over-the-air antennas to receive broadcast stations from the New York or Washington, D.C. area, selling 24/7 streaming access for $9.99 per month or $99 a year. DVR service is sold at prices ranging from $2.95 a month to $190 a year, depending on the number of hours recorded.

Among the stations included:

New York

• WCBS (CBS)
• WNBC (NBC)
• WNYW (FOX)
• WABC (ABC)
• Bounce TV (via WWOR subchannel)
• WPIX (CW)
• WNET (PBS)/WNET-Kids
• WNJU (Telemundo)

Washington, D.C.

• WRC (NBC)
• WTTG (FOX)
• WJLA (ABC)
• WUSA (CBS)

There seem to be no geographic restrictions to prevent out of area viewers from subscribing, and FilmOn offers viewing on the desktop, as well as through iOS and Android apps.

David

FilmOn may have avoided streaming west coast stations because a California court found in favor of broadcasters who sued to shut down the operation three years earlier. But it ultimately will not keep David’s upstart service out of the courts in the east.

Last week, three major television networks and Washington, D.C. station owner Allbritton Communications filed suit against FilmOn for streaming signals from the nation’s capital without permission.

Based on the track record of earlier ventures, customers may want to avoid subscribing at the annual package price. Historically, broadcasters have fought and won temporary restraining orders that block the streaming services until the case makes its way through legal proceedings. Aereo, which streams New York area television stations exclusively to New York City customers has proven the exception and continues to run, at least for now.

Broadcasters consider stopping “dime-sized” antenna farm streaming services like Aereo and AereoKiller a top priority, because networks and local stations earn lucrative retransmission consent rights fees from cable, satellite, and telco-TV providers used by at least 90 percent of the viewing audience. Should these alternative technologies be found legal and not in violation of copyright, pay television providers could potentially license and incorporate similar technology into their respective set-top boxes and avoid paying license fees to station and network owners.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/FilmOn Introduction 5-13.mp4[/flv]

FilmOn’s introductory promotional video features some boastful claims from founder Alki David that are perhaps more wishful thinking than reality, but PlayOn has persisted despite broadcaster lawsuits by creating and distributing original live and recorded programming.  (8 minutes)

Dampier

One of the most frustrating things about covering the public policy issues surrounding broadband is an-often lazy mainstream media that cannot tell the difference between an industry sock puppet and a consumer broadband advocate. One expects that the New York Times will do better than most.

It certainly did not this morning in a sloppy front page piece on Google’s privacy invasion concession.

New York Times reporter David Streitfeld seemed utterly out of his league from the lede paragraph in the story, where he suggested Google “casually scooped up passwords, e-mail and other personal information from unsuspecting computer users.”

That is a bit histrionic considering any “data theft” would have only occurred for the 5-15 seconds Google’s Street View vehicle was in range of an entirely unprotected home Wi-Fi network, and that you were actively using it at the time of Google’s “drive-by.” If you enabled any wireless network security, Google would have captured nothing beyond the name of your Wi-Fi network (assuming you had not hidden it with another setting) — something anyone could capture with a Wi-Fi sniffer.

Even more concerning was the sudden appearance in the piece of paid Google critic Scott Cleland, who runs a suburban Washington, D.C. corporate public strategy lobbying firm called Precursor LLC that has as its chief mission:

Help companies anticipate change to better exploit emerging opportunities and guard against emerging risks.

Attacking Google and broadband advocacy groups is Cleland’s bread and butter.

The New York Times called him a “consumer watchdog.”

At this point I coughed up my peppermint patty.

Cleland, whose rhetoric about Google ranges from alarmist to lugubrious — America must worry about being on the cusp of a Google-run online dystopia — is well-known to those of us who encounter his various paid-for campaigns. Cleland is best known for his anti-Google rhetoric and his reflexive defense of all-things-Big Telecom, hardly surprising considering his client list.

What is disturbing is that I know this and the reporters at the New York Times apparently do not:

“Google puts innovation ahead of everything and resists asking permission,” said Scott Cleland, a consultant for Google’s competitors and a consumer watchdog whose blog maintains a close watch on Google’s privacy issues. “But the states are throwing down a marker that they are watching and there is a line the company shouldn’t cross.”

At least the Times casually disclosed he was a “consultant for Google’s competitors.” But consumer watchdog? That is a line the Times shouldn’t cross because it is reality only in a world where Goldman Sachs is considered a model for altruistic investment banking.