Shaw Communications executives last week announced, to the relief of Wall Street, the cable company is pulling back on great deals for cable TV, Internet and phone service this summer.

In an effort to appease Wall Street analysts like Phillip Huang, a researcher for UBS Investment Bank — who fear lower prices could “spiral into a price war, which obviously would be a lose, lose situation,” Shaw has made it clear it intends to stop some of its most aggressive promotions this summer.

“When you talk about promotions in the market, we’ve been very disciplined in that regard,” Shaw executives told analysts on last week’s quarterly results conference call. “It’s a highly competitive environment and will continue to be that way and we’re going to operate in a certain fashion.”

That “certain fashion” has cost them at least 21,500 subscribers who have already left Shaw this past quarter, most headed to Shaw’s biggest competitor Telus.

But some Wall Street analysts remain unsatisfied, noting there are major differences in telecommunications pricing in Canada. Western Canadians pay substantially less for phone, cable, and broadband service than their counterparts in Ontario and Quebec. Shaw and Telus customers also have much larger usage allowances for broadband service, and Telus so far has not enforced what limits they have.

Analysts peppered Shaw executives about why they are not raising prices to match what Bell, Rogers, and Vidéotron customers further east are paying.

Jay Mehr, Shaw’s senior vice president of operations told investors to hang in there.

“We still believe that we have some good pricing power when discipline really comes back into this market,” Mehr said on the call with investors. That signals Shaw is prepared to raise prices when aggressive deals end.

Wall Street also questioned why the company does not use long-term contracts to lock customers in place:

Mehr

Glen Campbell – BofA Merrill Lynch, Research Division: […] On service contracts: You’ve been pretty firm in not using them. Your competitor clearly does. […] Can you talk about the reasons for not going down the service contract road and whether you might reconsider that position?

Bradley S. Shaw – Shaw Communications: Well, there’s arguments for contracts as you — I guess, it’s really what these contracts do. As you said, we have equipment. Our [indiscernible] space — our Easy Own plan certainly is a very consumer-friendly plan as customers are getting something, and they’re agreeing to pay for it over time. And that creates kind of a natural kind of a relationship. What we don’t want to have happen is having customers, who are feeling confined by a contract, who otherwise would like to do something else. We don’t think that’s consumer-friendly. And so we’re looking at ways that we’d have more consumer-friendly kind of relationships but that still create some kind of a longer-term relationship that you can count on. But we don’t want to have the ball and chain kind of contracts that others have adopted.

[…] From a customer point of view. But also, the nature of contracts is there needs to be an enticement to get the customer sign a contract, and that enticement tends to be what we’re seeing in the market, which is fairly significant giveaways of hardware and other devices to be able to incent that. And so it will have has an impact on your cost of acquisition, and we’re trying to manage that. As Peter said, our Easy Own program is a very customer-friendly way for people to come on and make a commitment to us. And at the end of the period, they own their equipment. They haven’t had to pay upfront, and so it’s a nice way to manage that without being heavy-handed.

Shaw’s Exo Wi-Fi service is coming soon across western Canada.

Some other developments at Shaw, reported during the conference call:

• Spending on upgrades will continue to be on the aggressive side as the company builds out its new Exo Wi-Fi network and converts cable systems to digital service, creating additional space for broadband speed increases and other services;
• Broadband delivers the highest profit margins of all of Shaw’s services, so it remains a very important part of Shaw’s package;
• Customers are gravitating towards higher speed broadband packages, delivering extra revenue;
• The company has re-priced some of its plans and offers to be more friendly to broadband-only customers;
• Shaw is working to gain approval from communities across western Canada to deploy its Wi-Fi network, with plans to begin limited promotion of the new service by late fall or early 2013. Shaw expects its Wi-Fi network to have substantial coverage across the region within three years;
• Shaw plans to work with U.S. cable operators to participate in a Wi-Fi roaming network that will allow its customers access to the Wi-Fi networks being built in the United States;
• Shaw’s “TV Everywhere” project is being designed to protect existing video revenue. Rights are being acquired across the board for broadband, tablets and other mobile devices for a robust on-demand service. But live streaming is secondary.

Recognizable New Yorkers are fed up trying to keep track of new security measures thrown at them by their telecommunications companies.

The New York Times Fashion & Style section (really?) took a dive into the frustrating world of pre-assigned passwords, captcha codes, and user verification questions that confound New York’s more prominent citizens, sometimes with hilarious results.

“It’s a nightmare,” the comedian Tracey Ullman told the newspaper. “These passwords just keep getting longer and longer. I try to think of a startling emotional thing that jogs my memory or something that’s frightening, or my grandmother’s name with 666 at the end. But I really don’t know what to do.”

In an effort to respond to an increasingly security-conscious online world, providers are password protecting subscriber information and equipment to keep prying eyes out. But sometimes those anti-hacking, anti-eavesdropping, anti-identify theft efforts become mind-boggling to confused customers who end up locked out of their own accounts.

Among the latest trends: locking down wireless routers with passwords straight out of the box.

Bernhard

Any long time Wi-Fi user already knows America’s largest open wireless network does not come from AT&T or Verizon Wireless. It comes from a company formerly known as “Linksys” (today Cisco). Customers confounded by wireless security simply plug in their new routers and start using them without setting any Wi-Fi password or enabling security measures.

Time Warner Cable tried to lick that problem by issuing pre-assigned passwords to customers using the company’s wireless router. Unfortunately, comedian Sandra Bernhard, never smart to antagonize, ended up with one that came with a mish-mosh of letters and numbers (they range from 13 to 28 characters) that cannot be changed.

“We have that one written down somewhere, but where it is I’d be hard pressed to tell you,” Bernhard told the newspaper, noting that her relationship with the cable provider is “an S&M experience without the pleasure.”

Verizon and AT&T love their creative security questions, designed to verify you are who you say you are. But New Yorkers who think too deeply about the questions are sure to be tripped up by the experience.

Jeffrey Leeds, a fixture on the New York social scene, tells the Times he hates questions like, ‘What is the name of your first girlfriend,’ because he unsure if that means the first girl he slept with or the first one he liked who never returned his phone calls.

The confusion inevitably leaves hapless customers writing down their password and security questions on sticky notes or in a notebook, which entirely defeats the purpose of private “only you should know” passwords.

Courtney Love thought she could outwit the hackers with her own system, based on mnemonics.

“You use the lyrics to a song,” she said, for example, “ ‘Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds’ — litswd-1 — and that way you can’t forget it.”

But the newspaper reports that worked until Love was tripped up by “Hey Jude.”

“I kept forgetting if it was ‘Hey Jude, don’t make it bad’ or ‘Hey Jude, don’t make it sad,’ ” she said. “So I gave up on that.”

But the most reviled security measure of all is the deadly, incomprehensible “captcha” code — the barely decipherable slanted text and numbers that real humans are supposed to be able to identify but spammers using automated tools cannot.

“Don’t you hate those?” Ullman said. “I always get those wrong because it looks like they were written by someone on LSD. It’s awful.”

AT&T is ingratiating itself with both sides of the political divide, as the Democratic National Convention Committee names the company the “official carrier” of the convention.

While that is likely to bring good will for AT&T among convention delegates, politicians, and their families, Charlotte, N.C. residents are also welcoming the major upgrades that are coming with AT&T’s presence at the event.

The phone company is installing at least 50 micro-tower antennas atop light poles in downtown Charlotte, designed to boost capacity for both AT&T’s Wi-Fi and cellular networks. Another 10 mobile cell towers will be in place during the event to accommodate the anticipated 35,000 visitors attending the convention at Time Warner Cable Arena.

Craig Moffett, a Wall Street analyst working for Sanford Bernstein, just loves Verizon Wireless’ new calling plans, which he believes will help Verizon grow profits when most Americans already have a cell phone.

Verizon’s move “is the most profound change to pricing the telecom industry has seen in twenty years,” Moffett told the Associated Press.

Bernstein believes that cell phone companies can keep boosting the all-important “average revenue per user,” or ARPU, by shifting price hikes for services consumers are now using the most. That means wireless data which Bernstein sees as a growth industry. In contrast, customers are using their phones less than ever for making phone calls and sending text messages.

Verizon Wireless CEO Lowell McAdam agrees, telling an investor conference customers will end up paying more money to Verizon than ever before.

Moffett

“Is it going to cost them more money? Yeah, but it will probably shift their wallet spend from things they do individually into a bucket of gigabytes,” McAdam said. “The relationship will change. This will be something much more ingrained in their life as opposed to something that’s attached to their hip.”

Verizon’s “Share Everything” may become ingrained in customers’ wallets when it launches June 28, eliminating voice minute and text message allowances but increasing pricing for data. The cheapest smartphone plan will now run $90 a month. For customers who already pay for unlimited voice minutes and texting and avoid using too much wireless data, the new price will be lower than current Verizon plans. But for those who traditionally choose a calling minutes allowance and send a limited number of text messages, prices under the new plan will be going up by $10-20 a month.

Verizon also hopes to capture an increasing share of wireless data for portable devices. Consumers have typically avoided 3G/4G-capable add-ons for devices in favor of Wi-Fi-only, to avoid the separate data plans that are usually required. Verizon hopes customers will consider spending more on wireless network-capable tablets and laptops that can be added to their existing Verizon accounts. Adding a tablet will cost an extra $10 a month, $20 for a portable 3G/4G wireless modem for a laptop. Data usage will be shared from their existing data plan.

Moffett expects the new plan from Verizon, and a forthcoming one expected from AT&T, to solidify both companies’ dominance in the wireless market.

“In a household with two or three AT&T or Verizon devices — say, a smartphone and a tablet or two, and one device from T-Mobile or Sprint. Sprint doesn’t stand a chance,” Moffett said.

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/CNBC Verizon Wireless Plans 6-12-12.flv[/flv]

CNBC talks with Public Knowledge’s Michael Weinberg about the “consumer benefits” of Verizon’s new wireless plans, which Weinberg suggests are few and fleeting.  (3 minutes)

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/CNBC Is Wi-Fi Dead 6-12-12.flv[/flv]

CNBC wonders if Wi-Fi is dead as Verizon and AT&T encourage customers to use 3G/4G wireless data instead of more local Wi-Fi networks.  (3 minutes)

Six college towns will benefit from the nation’s first multi-community broadband gigabit deployment, thanks to $200 million in capital funding to get the broadband networks off the ground.

The Gigabit Neighborhood Gateway Program leverages local government, universities, private capital, and the public to jointly support and foster the development of new fiber optic networks.

The new program claims it will offer competitively-priced super-fast broadband through projects that will cover neighborhoods of 5,000-10,000 people and communities up to 100,000 in size.  Selection of the six winning communities will be announced between this fall and next spring.

“Gigabit Squared created the Gigabit Neighborhood Gateway Program to help select Gig.U communities build and test gigabit speed broadband networks with speeds from 100 to 1000 times faster than what Americans have today,” the company said in a statement.

“The United States is behind in the world for Internet speed,” said Mark Ansboury, Gigabit’s president and co-founder. “The goal is to help get us out front for a platform of innovation.”

That platform is certainly not forthcoming from the country’s largest broadband providers, who according to Ansboury have been pulling back on wired infrastructure upgrades in recent years, shifting focus to more profitable wireless networks.

Gigabit Squared defines the next generation of broadband Internet in terms of speed, declaring 2,000Mbps (2Gbps) as the target to achieve.

The winning projects will be sponsored by Gig.U members, which include:

• Arizona State University
• California Institute of Technology
• Case Western Reserve University
• Colorado State University
• Duke University
• Florida State University
• George Mason University
• The Georgia Institute of Technology
• Howard University
• Indiana University
• Michigan State University
• North Carolina State University
• Penn State University
• University of Alaska – Fairbanks
• University of Arizona
• University of Chicago
• University of Colorado – Boulder
• University of Florida
• University of Hawaii
• University of Illinois
• University of Kentucky
• University of Louisville
• University of Maine
• University of Maryland
• University of Michigan
• University of Missouri
• University of Montana
• University of Nebraska – Lincoln
• University of New Mexico
• University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
• University of Oklahoma
• University of South Florida
• University of Virginia
• University of Washington
• Virginia Tech
• Wake Forest University
• West Virginia University

Blair Levin, executive director at Gig.U, believes private American telecom companies will always be constrained from delivering world class broadband comparable to South Korea or Japan because of Wall Street opposition to the investment required to construct them. In the eyes of investors, today’s slower networks, in their estimation, do just fine.

Gig.U believes that they have a solution, at least for towns with a sizable university system that can serve as host of the next generation broadband network:

First, any community that wants its residents to have access to a network that delivers world-leading bandwidth can do so. The barrier is not technology or economics. The barrier is organization; specifically, organizing demand and improved use of underutilized assets, such as rights of way, dark fiber, or in more rural areas, spectrum. The responses identified a multitude of ways local communities can improve the private investment case by lowering investment and risk, and increasing revenues for private players willing to upgrade or build new networks without budget outlays from the local government.

Second, the responses confirmed that university communities have the easiest organizing task and greatest upside. Their density, demographics and demand make the current economics more favorable for an upgrade than other communities. For example, the high percentage of the population in university communities living in multiple dwelling units makes the economics of an upgrade far more favorable than for communities composed largely of single-family homes. With the growing importance of Big Data for the economy and the society, university communities are the natural havens for such enterprises to be born and prosper. Through the Gig.U process, our communities are already exploring more than a half-dozen paths to achieve an upgrade; paths that will be replicable for others and will deliver a major step forward in providing America a strategic broadband advantage.

Outside of a handful of upstart private competitors like California-based Sonic.net, most fiber broadband expansion come from private companies like Google — building an experimental fiber-to-the-home network in Kansas City, community-owned broadband services coordinated by local town or city government, co-op telecommunications companies owned by their subscribers, or municipal utilities.

While those efforts are typically committed to the concept of “universal service” — wiring their entire communities — the Gig.U project targets funding only for networks in and around university campuses.

The New America Foundation builds on Gig.U’s premise in its own recent report, “Universities as Hubs for Next Generation Networks,” which argues affordable expansion of broadband can win community support when the public has the right to also benefit from those networks. While Gig.U’s approach suggests the project will target fiber broadband directly to the homes qualified to receive it, the New America Foundation supports the construction of mesh wireless Wi-Fi networks to keep construction costs low for neighborhoods targeted for service.

An earlier project in Orono and Old Town, Maine may afford a preview of Gig.U’s vision, as that collaboration between the University of Maine and private fiber provider GWI is already in its construction phase. For those lucky enough to live within range of the fiber project, broadband speeds will far exceed what incumbents Time Warner Cable and FairPoint Communications deliver. FairPoint has fought similar projects (and GWI specifically) for years.

Will private providers object to the Gig.U effort to win local governments’ favor in the six cities eventually chosen for service? History suggests the answer will be yes, at least to the extent local cable and phone companies demand the same concessions for easy pole access, reduced pole attachment fees, and easing of zoning restrictions and procedures Gig.U project coordinators expect.

Levin has stressed Gig.U projects are based on university and private funding sources, not taxpayer dollars. That may also limit how much objection commercial providers may be able to raise against the projects.

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WABI Bangor Orono Maine Getting Faster Service 5-16-12.flv[/flv]

WABI in Bangor previews the new gigabit broadband network being constructed in Orono and Old Town, Maine.  (2 minutes)