A “visiting scholar” at the American Enterprise Institute (and a member of Donald Trump’s “landing team” at the Federal Communications Commission) has taken to trash talking writers and publications that reported on a recent municipal broadband study (I haven’t yet – it’s on my to do list). The resemblance to a Comcast-sponsored astroturfing campaign is noteworthy.
Comcast is even more dishonest that previously suspected, Washington’s attorney general told a Seattle court earlier this month. Bob Ferguson is suing Comcast over its habit of cramming service contracts, that don’t necessarily offer much service, onto monthly cable bills.
A sample of recorded calls between [service protection plan (SPP)] subscribers and Comcast representatives obtained by the Attorney General’s Office reveal that Comcast may have signed up more than half of all SPP subscribers without their consent.
Comcast is backing away from an unconditional promise to abide by net neutrality principles, regardless of whether or not federal rules require it to do so. That pledge was made in 2014, while Comcast was in the middle of an unsuccessful attempt to add cable systems owned by Time Warner and Charter Communications to its portfolio.… More
Comcast has joined Verizon in pushing the Federal Communications Commission to override state and local laws that might affect their business. In a required notice filed after a private meeting with FCC chair Ajit Pai’s top staffers, a lawyer for Comcast said they urged the FCC to overturn its 2015 decision to regulate broadband as a common carrier service, and to make sure that state and local governments didn’t try to pick up the slack…
At the meeting, we reiterated Comcast’s support for restoring its prior classification of broadband Internet access service (“BIAS”) as an interstate information service and reversing the 2015 decision to classify BIAS as a [common carrier] telecommunications service…
We also emphasized that the Commission’s order in this proceeding should include a clear, affirmative ruling that expressly confirms the primacy of federal law with respect to BIAS as an interstate information service, and that preempts state and local efforts to regulate BIAS either directly or indirectly.
Internet access in rural California is fantastic, and it’s awful. Those two messages were delivered to the California Public Utilities Commission last week by, respectively, the mayors of Mammoth Lakes and Oroville.
The home automation space is a fragmented mix of apps, platforms, gateways and products, not unlike the video content business. Comcast just purchased Stringify, a meta-platform that talks to dozens of other platforms, aggregates hundreds of products and services, and delivers them to a single smartphone app. Not unlike a cable company.
The game isn’t over when the California Public Utilities Commission votes to impose conditions on big mergers. Telecoms companies will immediately challenge decisions, administratively and in court, and try to wriggle out of obligations by any means possible.
Comcast is doing that now in Vermont, where that state’s public utilities commission required it to build out 550 miles of line extensions into rural areas. According to an article by Jon Brodkin in Ars Technica…
The company’s court complaint says that Vermont is exceeding its authority under the federal Cable Act while also violating state law and Comcast’s constitutional rights…
Comcast’s complaint also objected to several other requirements in the permit, including “unreasonable demands” for upgrades to local public, educational, and governmental (PEG) access channels and the building of “institutional networks (“I-Nets”) to local governmental and educational entities upon request and on non-market based terms”…
Comcast often refuses to extend its network to customers outside its existing service area unless the customers pay for Comcast’s construction costs, which can be tens of thousands of dollars.
A federal judge in San Francisco said that two northern California men have a legitimate case to make against Comcast, as they pursue a class action suit aimed at stopping Comcast from piling fees on subscribers anytime it feels like it. Dan Adkins and Christopher Robertson say they signed up for an advertised deal, and Comcast can’t change it without their consent.
It is plausible to infer from the complaint that, by clicking “Submit Your Order,” Adkins and Robertson agreed to pay Comcast’s advertised price, plus taxes and government-related fees, in exchange for the services Comcast offered them.
Cable companies own the residential wireline broadband market and are increasing their lead over telephone companies, at least where the major players are involved. An analysis piece by Sean Buckley in FierceTelecom breaks out the subscriber numbers for the 15 biggest Internet service providers in the U.S., ranked by total subscriber count as of 30 June 2017. It shows big cable with a 64% to 36% market share advantage and positive net subscriber growth, while big telco is stuck in reverse.… More
In a competitive market, pricing is dynamic – you can’t reliably plan more than one or two moves ahead. But in a de facto monopoly – either a single seller or a duopoly with a weak second banana – you can lay out a long term roadmap and follow it relentlessly.
That’s what one noted financial analyst thinks the two big U.S. cable companies are doing. According to a story in FierceCable, Jonathan Chaplin, an analyst at New Street Research, thinks cable broadband prices will double in the coming years…
“Comcast and Charter have given up on usage-based pricing for now; however, we expect them to continue annual price increases,” Chaplin said.
