Posts Tagged Comcast

Did Comcast Hire Public Stand-ins For Neutrality Hearing? – Napping, disinterested attendees mysteriously appear, cheer Comcast – dslreports.com

February 26, 2008 at 8:39 pm · Filed under Broadband, business ethics, cable, consumer, FCC, Internet, Regulation ·Tagged , , , , , , , ,

You’ve heard of a denial-of-service attack – read the following and see if it appears to you as though Comcast might have taken the same principle and applied it to citizen participation. Or, if you’re of my parents’ generation, see if this reminds you at all of the days when union organizers (or opponents) would fill a meeting with a bunch of paid shills:

The Save The Internet Coalition, a coalition of consumer advocates like the Consumers Union authors of Consumer Reports and the Free Press, is claiming that Comcast bussed in a large number of disinterested individuals to yesterday’s public FCC hearing at Harvard on network neutrality and traffic shaping. The group is claiming Comcast paid these individuals so those seats would not be filled with interested, question-asking participants. Many didn’t even know what the meeting was about …..

Full article here:
Did Comcast Hire Public Stand-ins For Neutrality Hearing? – Napping, disinterested attendees mysteriously appear, cheer Comcast – dslreports.com

The real question is, are the FCC Commissioners so isolated from reality that they can’t figure out that this sort of thing might be happening right under their noses? I mean, if we assume that the critics have the right take on this, it would seem to me that once the Commission discovers that Comcast apparently believes their case is so weak that they dare not allow opponents to fairly participate in the process, that would work against them. I might be wrong, but to me this sort of seems like an admission that if the hearings are conducted in a fair and open manner, Comcast doesn’t believe their position will be the one with which the FCC sides.  But then, that (and everything in this article other than the article excerpt and link) is just my personal take on what I’ve read in the linked article. As always, feel free to leave a comment if you disagree.

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IP Democracy: Verizon’s War with Cable over VoIP Customers

February 12, 2008 at 6:02 am · Filed under cable, FCC, litigation, patents, Verizon, VoIP ·Tagged , , , , , , , , , , ,

It appears as though Verizon is resorting to lawsuits, as well as allegedly violating FCC rules, in an attempt to defeat or delay the widespread use of VoIP.  It won’t work, of course, and Verizon should beware the unintended consequences, by which I mean increased scrutiny by three-letter Federal agencies.  The problem for big telco is that no one will be able to kill VoIP – even if it were to die here in the United States (which could only happen if one of the telco brass somehow managed to become absolute dictator), it would still flourish in other countries around the globe.  So, the phone companies are in the unenviable position of playing the role of the buggy whip manufacturers trying to hobble the introduction of the automobile.  As IP Democracy reports:

Top telco Verizon has seemingly had enough with cable operators stealing away its local voice customers. Fresh from its VoIP patent lawsuit victory over independent VoIP provider Vonage, Verizon is now flexing its legal muscles to take on the even more threatening cable industry.

Last week the telco filed its second infringement suit against a cable operator, Charter Communications, accusing Charter of violating its VoIP patents. Verizon seeks an injunction plus monetary damages. The Charter suit follows a similar lawsuit Verizon filed against cable operator Cox Communications last month.

Charter and Cox are not, apparently, alone in feeling Verizon’s jab at their VoIP businesses. Three other cable companies, Comcast, Time Warner and Brighthouse Networks, filed a complaint with the FCC yesterday claiming that Verizon is violating the Commission’s rules by dangling retention incentives to landline customers that have already decided to switch to cable digital voice services.

Read the full story here:
IP Democracy – Verizon’s War with Cable over VoIP Customers

If I were a Verizon shareholder (which I am not – I’ve never played the stock market, and have no intention of doing so), I think I’d be a little worried about Verizon taking on big cable. The lawsuit against Vonage was sort of like an elephant taking on an ant, in terms of available legal resources, but taking on the cable industry is a whole other matter.

It’s interesting to me that so far, Verizon apparently hasn’t sued Comcast, but that doesn’t mean that Comcast has no interest in the outcome of the other lawsuits, and if they get involved that could change the balance of power.  If the cable industry chooses to unite to fight these lawsuits, under the theory that “you pick on one of my brothers, you take all of us on”, Verizon could suddenly find themselves in a clash of relative equals. Granted that at the moment, the Federal Communications Commission seems to show undue favoritism toward the telephone companies, but that may make the cable companies all the more willing to move the contest into the courts, where the FCC has relatively little influence.  And, if this turns into a prolonged fight, it’s quite possible (some would say quite likely) that the makeup of the FCC will change. So, the ultimate outcome of this clash isn’t at all a foregone conclusion. However, in the long run, history never seems to favor the party trying to hold back technology. In the case of a company, even if they don’t cease to exist entirely, they become much less of a force to be reckoned with.

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The Consumerist has trifecta of Comcast items today

January 30, 2008 at 1:09 pm · Filed under cable, consumer, customer service, Regulation, Telephone ·Tagged , , , , ,

I don’t know if someone decided to put Comcast in the spotlight today over at The Consumerist, or if all the Comcast-related items just happened to pour in today, but there are three items that may be of interest to Comcast customers (the last item may apply to you even if you’re not a Comcast customer):

First, there’s now an easy way for customers to opt out of mandatory binding arbitration as a way to settle disputes with Comcast (along with a link to an article that shows why you might want to do that). If you’re already convinced and want to cut to the chase, here’s a link to the opt-out form on Comcast’s site.

Second, The Consumerist also reports that Comcast has been fined $12,000 for having crappy customer service by Montgomery County, Maryland. The quote we like comes from county Councilmember Duchy Trachtenberg: “Fining companies that fail to fulfill their contractual obligations is an important part of good government.” We sometimes wish that certain other government officials felt that way (and we don’t mean that only where Comcast is concerned – there are a lot of other companies out there giving crappy service, and/or charging higher-than-advertised prices through the use of bogus add-on fees, and/or engaging in other practices that should elicit fines).

Third, and this may be the most important, The Consumerist advises that a Comcast insider warns that Comcast doesn’t check to see if 911 is working on your Comcast digital phone – and this article concludes by implying that this may be a problem with other companies as well. As much as a few 911 center operators may hate the idea (most don’t, but there are a few that seem to forget what their role actually is), we think that any time you change phone service providers, it’s a good idea to make a test call to 911 during daytime hours, when there’s not likely to be much real emergency traffic (not in the middle of a major storm, in other words). Some people (including some who have left comments on the article) advise that before doing this, you call the 911 center on their non-emergency number and ask if it’s okay to make such a test call. Note that in a few jurisdictions it may actually be illegal to make such a test call, and/or the 911 folks may yell at you for tying up their lines (particularly if you don’t use common sense about calling when they aren’t busy), so that’s another reason to call the non-emergency number first, if you can find it (this is probably particularly true if you live in a metropolitan area).

When making a test 911 call, the first thing you should say is that there is no emergency, and that you are testing your (new) phone service to see if 911 calls are being completed properly.  Then ask if the call has actually gone to the 911 center that serves your address, and also whether their caller ID display is showing correct information (your name and street address). Some 911 centers (probably all of them) have a way to add notes associated with an address, for example, if there is an invalid living in your home or some other special situation that you think first responders may need to know, and you may want to find out if any such notes are still attached to the account (if you need to add such notes, there may be a page or a form in your local telephone directory that explains how to do that, but you should probably call the center’s non-emergency number to discuss that). And don’t forget, once you start a 911 call, do not just hang up if an interruption occurs – in most jurisdictions they are required to send the police out if you hang up on a 911 call without saying anything, under the theory that you may be ill, or you may be in an emergency situation (home invasion, etc.) where you cannot speak. That doesn’t necessarily mean that the police will actually arrive soon enough to help in a real emergency if you just hang up without speaking, but Murphy’s Law says that if you don’t need them and hang up, that’s when they will be knocking at your door.

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Comcast sending local channels to “Siberia”

December 7, 2007 at 6:38 pm · Filed under cable, Regulation ·Tagged , , ,

This excerpt is from the Muskegon Chronicle:

Comcast Cable Communications surprised public access television operators and its own customers by announcing it will move four channels from the analog basic service lineup to higher channels in the digital cable system. Cable customers will need to rent a digital converter box to see the channels.

The change is slated for Jan. 15.

It’s a move akin to sending these locally produced channels to “Siberia,” potentially eliminating hundreds of viewers, one West Michigan media producer said.

“It’s going to hurt us,” said David Mooney, director of MCC’s television operations. “We are worried that a number of our viewers are not going to go and get a digital converter box. We worry that we will be losing a chunk of our audience.”

Read the complete article here:
Comcast public channels go digital – mlive.com

There are many people who wouldn’t bother to watch a local channel if their life depended on it, and who won’t care at all about this. But there are other who find it useful, or even necessary, to view those locally produced channels.

Back when cable companies were first setting up operations, many communities imposed a requirement that the system carry a certain number of local access channels as a condition of receiving a franchise.   I don’t suppose that the people who drafted those agreements ever anticipated that one day it would be feasible, and in fact, cost effective, to block those channels from those receiving the lowest-cost tiers of service.  I can’t imagine that ten or twenty years ago, anyone ever anticipated that a cable company would attempt to charge extra for viewing the local access channels.

I don’t know this for a fact, but it wouldn’t surprise me if the analog-only viewers will still be able to receive at least one or two home shopping channels, or some other channel that’s a revenue-producer for the cable company.  Anyway, just in my personal opinion, this is more evidence that certain large cable companies are getting too large.  That’s why I have such mixed feelings about FCC chairman Kevin Martin’s efforts to impede their continued growth.  I realize that he’s angering a lot of people and probably overstepping his authority (and the FCC’s authority), but doggone it, if there were some way he could accomplish what he’s trying to do without bending any laws, I don’t think it would bother me too much.  Some cable companies (probably most of them, with a few notable exceptions) deserve to be taken down a peg or two.

Whatever happended to the obligation to serve the public interest in some small way, in return for that lucrative exclusive franchise?  If Comcast loses any customers because they are moving the public access channels to digital-only territory, I’d say it serves them right.  But beyond that, maybe the affected cities ought to keep this action in mind the next time Comcast’s franchise comes up for renewal.

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The Jeff Pulver Blog: VoIP in America: A Tale of Two States:

November 10, 2007 at 2:23 pm · Filed under Blog, Legislation, Regulation, Telephone, VoIP ·Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

Earlier this week, Jeff Pulver  posted an analysis of two vastly opposite approaches to the regulation of VoIP on the state level.  I’m including a few short excerpts below, but you really should go read the full article:

Last week two states – New Jersey and Missouri — took radically different approaches to VoIP regulation that could have far reaching consequences for the future of Internet communication.

New Jersey – helping consumers take advantage of new technologies. On the one hand, New Jersey’s Governor Jon Corzine (D) — joining a number of other forward looking states – signed into law new legislation prohibiting state regulation of many aspects of VoIP.

…..

Missouri – stuffing tomorrow’s technologies into yesterday’s regulatory boxes. But last week the Missouri Public Service Commission (PSC) took a starkly different approach. After a year-long proceeding, the PSC found that Comcast’s fixed VoIP service, unlike Vonage’s service, is offering a telecommunications service in Missouri and therefore it is requiring Comcast to get certified by December 10th, or stop offering their VoIP service. …..

Implications: This decision is likely to set off a chain of reactions including a possible appeal, and if left in place, unleash a number of other state actions similarly adopting state regulation of fixed VoIP. These actions are like to raise rates for consumers and slow innovation as state seek to require Internet technologies to subsidize the 100 year old phone network through the application of state universal service contributions, and the application of state access charges. It would be like having the first automobiles subsidize horse and buggy’s, or e-mail subsidize postal mail, or PCs subsidize mainframes.

I again urge you to read Jeff’s complete post:
The Jeff Pulver Blog: VoIP in America: A Tale of Two States

The strange thing to me about this is that although the big phone companies often have their way with state legislators (because legislators sell their votes like cheap prostitutes, though often in non-obvious ways so they don’t run afoul of the poorly-enforced ethics rules), most of the larger phone companies are smart enough to realize that regulation on VoIP isn’t even in their best interest.  The reason is that the vast majority of customers ditching landlines are going to cell phone service, not VoIP, and the day may come (and for some companies, already has come) when they will want to offer their own VoIP service.

My point is that I don’t think that the Missouri PSC type of regulation is something that the big phone companies have been pushing hard for – even if there might be a slight short-term gain (by making it more costly for the cable competitors to do business), in the long term it will hurt the phone companies as much as the cable companies.  But I may be wrong – nobody ever said the big phone company executives were the brightest bulbs on the tree, and it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that they would go for the short-term gain, and leave it to their successors to deal with the resulting mess.

So far, Michigan has taken a “hands off” approach to VoIP, but that’s consistent with their growing reluctance to regulate any aspect of the telephone industry except for “PBLES” (the “Primary Basic Local Exchange Service” that few customers are aware exists, and that even fewer actually subscribe to).  So the fact that Michigan doesn’t seem to want to regulate much of anything having to do with telephone service anymore probably works in the favor of fixed VoIP providers.

The interesting thing is, the cable companies in Missouri could probably avoid regulation altogether by offering an associated “nomadic” VoIP service (the type where you have a VoIP adapter that you can take with you and use anywhere you have a broadband connection).  If, for example, they were to develop a VoIP adapter and system that incorporates the best of both worlds – the reliability of fixed service combined with the portability of nomadic service, that might put them into the realm of providers that the states are unable to regulate.

(How would such a system work?  Perhaps something like this: Normally, it detects that you are at home, and uses the “reserved” VoIP bandwidth of your local cable company – in other words, it bypasses the public Internet and essentially uses the frequencies reserved for local phone service.  Should you unplug the adapter and take it to another location served by the same cable company – for example, you take it to a neighbor’s home and plug it in there – it will still attempt to use the reserved VoIP bandwidth, if technically feasible.  If for some reason it can’t use the reserved bandwidth, or if you take it to a place served by another provider, it falls back and uses the public Internet to connect you to your cable company’s switch.  Oh, and to make it a true “nomadic” service, the cable company would have to offer the ability to get a number from a ratecenter of the customer’s choice, rather than one dictated by the geographic location of their home.  It seems to me that if that type of system were used, there would then be no functional difference, at least from the customer’s perspective, between the cable company’s service and the “nomadic” VoIP service offered by other VoIP companies).

Somehow, I doubt the cable companies will develop and use an entirely new type of technology just to bypass the backward-thinking regulators in a particular state. It’s probably a lot cheaper for them to lobby the Missouri legislature to get a VoIP-friendly law passed.

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Is it company policy in some corporations to deceive customers?

October 27, 2007 at 3:45 pm · Filed under consumer ·Tagged ,

[Excerpt from The Consumerist, referring to a Comcast employee:]

The insider tells us that employees were told not to say a word outside the pre-ordained script. Management said that anyone who otherwise discussed the issue would be terminated.

Full article here:
Leaks: Comcast’s “We Don’t Throttle BitTorrent” Internal Talking Points Memo

You know, I’ve always really hated it when for some reason I feel the need to call a large corporation, and it becomes obvious to me during the course of the call that the customer service rep is trying to feed me a corporate line that is of, shall we say, dubious truthfulness (I’m trying to say this nicely). Even if they are only stretching the truth and not entirely breaking it, I still tend to come away with a very bad feeling about that company. And should I discover that they are outright lying to me, that’s the point at which I tend to start making calls or writing e-mails to regulatory and/or consumer protection agencies.

It’s one thing when an individual employee takes it upon themselves to spin tales, in a misguided attempt to protect their employer’s interests. It’s quite another matter if a company actually instructs their employees to lie to customers, under penalty of termination of employment if they don’t spew the company line (note that I am not saying that’s what’s happening in this particular case; I’ll leave that to the reader to judge. I’m just observing that it’s a very, very bad thing when a company feels the need to twist the arm of their employees to be less than truthful with customers, and I would hope that Comcast is not doing that – or if they are, I hope they will revise their practices) .

BroadbandReports.com has also been covering this issue, and it’s even starting to gain attention in the mainstream press. Companies that think they can quietly interfere with Internet connectivity (for which customers are paying their hard-earned money) may be learning the hard way that there are no secrets that go unrevealed on the Internet for very long.

The ironic thing is that this whole issue of “traffic shaping” is breathing new life into the Net Neutrality debate, which had been losing momentum. People are even starting to once again talk about the possible need for structural separation (something I’ve been advocating for years), although I’ll be really astonished (but really happy) if that idea takes hold anytime soon, given that the lobbyists for the big phone and cable companies would doubtless make it their #1 priority to sink any serious structural separation legislation.

Now, a disclosure: A very long time ago, I worked at a radio station that had specific policies about the types of music they would or would not play. That’s not unusual, of course – every station has a specific format. The problem was, when a listener called to request a specific song that we were not allowed to play, we were instructed by the station manager to tell the caller we didn’t have it, even when we did. The problem with that was that we’d often play other songs off the same album, so often the caller knew that we had the song, and called us on the lie. I finally got to the point that I simply refused to lie any longer; I would instead tell callers that the song was not available for us to play, and if they asked why, I’d simply explain that it didn’t fit in with the station’s format. Callers may not have been happy that we wouldn’t play the song, but at least I wasn’t getting accused of being a liar. Oh, by the way, did I mention that this was supposedly a “Christian” radio station? They couldn’t very well fire me for refusing to outright lie to callers (it was a different time back then, before the big corporations took over the local stations), but I don’t think they were happy with me when I made it more apparent to callers that it was a management policy that we couldn’t play certain songs (basically anything with a beat to it or drums in it, or that the station manager thought sounded too much like rock and roll), and it was probably one of the least emotionally satisfying jobs I ever had.

So remembering that, I wonder how it affects employees today when they are instructed to be less than truthful to customers? A certain percentage of customers probably detect the deception and resent being misled, and an even smaller percentage (but maybe not an insignificant number) probably become verbally abusive with the customer service reps. An even smaller percentage go a step further, and may do things like smashing company equipment with a hammer out of pure frustration (I certainly don’t recommend this course of action, but can understand why some people may consider Mona Shaw something of a folk hero).

The thing is, this has to take an emotional toll on the employees, at least those who actually believe that their job is to help customers to the best of their ability. So it is my personal opinion that companies ought to think long and hard before going down the dark path of asking employees to deliberately deceive customers. That not only results in angry customers, but also disgruntled employees, and it seems to me that a disgruntled employee can do a lot more damage to a company than any annoyed customer (even one wielding a hammer) ever could.

And in closing I’m going to make one other comment that may upset a few readers, though that’s not my intent, but it fits in with my disclosure above, and may be helpful to some readers. You know how some businesses go out of their way to let you know that they are supposedly “Christian” businesses, or are run using Christian principles? The type that put a small fish symbol or a cross in their advertising, to tip off the “faithful” that this is a company they should do business with? Well, in my personal experience, these are the companies most likely to conduct their business less than honorably. In other words, the “Christian” auto mechanic was the one that tried to overcharge me for repairs I didn’t need (or charge much more than the normal rate for labor). A relative of mine had a home built by a “Christian” builder, and had nothing but trouble with the guy because the builder wanted to do things his way rather than the way the customer (that is, the person paying for the home) wanted them done, and talked constantly when he should have been listening. I’m certainly not saying that non-Christians don’t do such things, but when I’ve made this observation to friends, they’ve all had similar stories. I bring this up only to say that it’s probably not a good idea to rely on someone’s profession of faith as any indication that they will deal with you honestly, or that they will be easy to work with, or that the quality of their work will be better than that of anyone else. I wish that were not the case (it would make it a lot easier to find reliable businesses if you could rely on some symbol in their ad, or their appearance in a “Christian” business listing), but (again in my personal experience) I simply haven’t found that to be a reliable indicator of anything other than an increased probability that I will not have a satisfactory experience with that business.

Edit:  I should clarify that I am only, and specifically, referring to businesses (and some individuals) that in effect “wear their religion on their sleeves” – that is, they go out of their way to let you know about their beliefs, often with the specific intent of getting you to hire them or utilize the services of their business.  I do not mean to tar all “believers” with the same brush – I’ve known people who had very strong beliefs, but didn’t go out of their way to advertise them, and my experience with those types of people has on the whole been very positive. It’s the ones that promote their beliefs. or their religious affiliation in their advertising, or that drop it into the conversation when you first meet them (while you are still considering whether you want to do business with them) that I would personally watch out for.

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