comcast – Steve Blum's Blog

In the face of “environmental and social justice” obligations, Comcast attempts retreat from rural service

24 September 2020 by Steve Blum
comcast, cpuc, monopoly, ponderosa telephone, rlec

Comcast wants to give up its campaign to compete with a small rural telephone company – a rural local exchange carrier (RLEC) – in a high end, new development outside of Fresno. After the California Public Utilities Commission decided to allow such wireline voice competition if the would be competitor serves the greater community and not just wealthy exurbanites, Comcast asked to withdraw its request for permission to go head to head with Ponderosa Telephone in the Tesoro Viejo development.… More

U.S. house democrats propose $50 monthly broadband subsidy for low income homes, AT&T and Comcast will be happy to take it

14 May 2020 by Steve Blum
att, comcast, covid19, e-rate, lifeline

With covid–19 pandemic lockdowns continuing in most states, albeit with gradual loosening underway, democrats in the house of representatives in Washington, D.C. want to pump $5.5 billion into broadband access subsidies to ensure that people and institutions can remain connected to the online resources they will be depending on, likely for months to come. It’s one of the opening shots in the negotiations over what might be a second stimulus bill in the trillion dollar range to keep the U.S.… More

Charter, Comcast two months free offers are cash bonanzas, not charity

11 May 2020 by Steve Blum
charter, comcast, covid19, cpuc, monopoly

The covid–19 emergency is turning into a windfall for broadband companies, particularly Comcast and Charter Communications. As lockdowns came into effect in mid-March, people turned to broadband to stay connected, and for many that meant subscribing to service for the first time. It also meant running the gauntlet of high pressure sales pitches that steered many away from low cost standalone Internet deals and into expensive video packages that start billing immediately.

In its first quarter financial report, Comcast said it gained 509,000 new broadband subscribers between January and March, including 32,000 who signed up for the $10 per month standalone Internet service that the company offers to low income households, and that currently carries a first two months free promotion.… More

Cable, satellite TV companies build business plans on fear and ignorance

30 April 2020 by Steve Blum
att, charter, comcast, DISH, monopoly

The future, if you want to call it that, of traditional, linear subscription television services will depend on customers who don’t understand, and consequently fear, online video services. Martin Peers, a reporter for The Information, looked at his mother-in-law’s Comcast bill and discovered a stack of add on fees and increasing monthly rates for services that can be had for less money via over-the-top video platforms.

The reason she’s writing unnecessarily high checks each month?… More

CPUC asks ISPs to give Californians a break, but all it can do is ask

27 April 2020 by Steve Blum
att, charter, comcast, covid19, cpuc

Broadband service is too expensive for many families, but it’s a necessity nonetheless, according to a letter sent on Friday to Californian Internet service providers by California Public Utilities Commission president Marybel Batjer. Saying “not every household could or can continue to afford $50 a month for a quality, high-speed Internet connection”, Batjer asked ISPs to…

Provide service sufficient for all family members to work and learn from home: Subscription in the range of $0–15 a month, offering a minimum of 25 Mbps, and eliminate or waive data caps and overage charges.

… More

Cable companies promote free Internet access for locked down Californians, telcos not so much

19 March 2020 by Steve Blum
att, charter, comcast, covid19, cox

Update, 19 March 2020: AT&T announced today that the first two months of its Internet package for low income homes – Access from AT&T – is free to new subscribers.

The four major cable companies in California are offering free Internet access for a limited amount of time to low income households during the corona virus emergency, but not the two big telcos.

Charter, Comcast, Cox and Suddenlink seem to have figured out that what amounts to a one or two month promotional offer is a good way to attract new subscribers.… More

Streaming video hurts cable, but it’s killing AT&T

7 February 2020 by Steve Blum
att, charter, comcast, google fiber, video

The traditional, linear subscription TV business is in a nose dive. In the fourth quarter of 2019, AT&T shed 945,000 subscribers, mostly from DirecTv but also from its legacy Uverse service and its new AT&T TV platform. Add in the 219,000 subscribers who dumped its AT&T TV Now streaming service, and more than million customers walked away from AT&T’s video products.

Comcast and Charter lost TV subscribers, too. But for both companies, they each lost fewer subs over the 12 months of 2019 than AT&T lost in the last three.… More

Penalties, but not prevention, for deceptive ISP billing practices

17 January 2020 by Steve Blum
att, comcast, frontiercommunications, minnesota, monopoly

Cost of Cable Fees in an Average
Monthly Cable Bill (2018). Source: Consumer Reports

It’s common practice for big, monopoly model broadband providers to promise low prices to new subscribers, then tack on arbitrary fees after they’re locked into long term contracts. AT&T was recently slammed for adding a property tax surcharge to some customers’ bills – no one has figured out yet why AT&T thinks it can do that in the first place, let alone why it more than doubled the charge – California property tax rate hikes are tightly restricted.… More

Some people aren’t buying the false data big ISPs sold to the FCC

27 December 2019 by Steve Blum
att, broadband, comcast, fcc, public policy

The Federal Communications Commission’s broadband testing program evolved from a engineering-driven performance assessment when it was launched in 2012 to a marketing tool for monopoly model Internet service providers. That’s partly the result of the FCC republican majority embracing a role as a cheerleader for big telecoms companies, but it also reflects tensions in the program that date back to when it began under a democrat-majority commission.

Jim Warner, who recently retired from a long career as the network engineer for the University of California, Santa Cruz and still chairs the Central Coast Broadband Consortium’s technical expert group, helped design the FCC’s program, along with several others from the academic side of the house as well as industry representatives.… More

FCC allows big ISPs to add performance enhancing juice to speed tests, WSJ says

19 December 2019 by Steve Blum
att, broadband, comcast, fcc, public policy

Syringe

The fast, reliable broadband service claims endorsed by the Federal Communications Commission are based on test data that’s been doctored by California’s monopoly model Internet service providers, according to a Wall Street Journal article Shalini Ramachandran, Lillian Rizzo and Drew FitzGerald (h/t to Jim Warner for sending me the link).

Annual speed measurements taken to evaluate U.S. broadband service are “juiced” by AT&T, Comcast, Charter Communications and others, who know ahead of time where the tests are run and afterwards lobby the FCC to suppress bad results and hype good ones, the story says…

[AT&T] pushed the Federal Communications Commission to omit unflattering data on its DSL internet service…

In the end, the DSL data was left out of the report released late last year, to the chagrin of some agency officials.

… More