Disgusted With Charter Spectrum Merger, Lexington To Build Entirely New Fiber Network
from the busting-the-duopoly-logjam dept
When Charter Spectrum acquired Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks in a blockbuster $69 billion merger last year, the company promised the deal would result in all manner of “synergies” and consumer benefits. But as is the case with most telecom megamergers, most of these acquired users say the deal only resulted in significantly higher prices — and somehow even worse customer service than the historically awful service the company was already known for. In many areas, users say they’ve been socked with price hikes up to 40% for the exact same service.
Charter CEO Tom Rutledge, the highest paid executive in America last year, stated that customers were “mispriced” and were simply being shoved in the “right direction.”
Things got so bad, that Lexington was forced to hold a town hearing last summer to address overwhelmingly negative public sentiment toward Charter’s dysfunction. Like many American cities, consumers in Lexington often only have the choice of one cable broadband provider, since the local phone companies have failed to seriously upgrade their fiber networks. Also like in many American cities, locals tell a tale of a company that faces so little competition in its market, it simply doesn’t have to give much of a damn:
“Following a brief presentation where provider representatives highlighted the company’s expanding network, workforce, and investments in infrastructure, customers stood up one by one to tell a different story. Among the themes: unpredictable bills, questionable internet speeds, and poor customer service. One customer, Christian Torp, complained that the company repeatedly charged him for his own equipment.
“I’ve probably over the years spent 30 or 40 hours on it,” he told WUKY. “I’m a father and an attorney. I don’t have the time to spend dealing with their fraud.”
It should be noted that Kentucky is one of 23 states that have let incumbent ISPs quite literally write state telecom law protecting towns and cities from building their own networks or striking public/private partnerships for better broadband. Fortunately for Lexington residents, city leaders were able to convince private operator MetroNet to come to town and build a $70 to $100 million network to try and ease the local duopoly logjam. Construction of the network will begin in January, and should start offering some real, gigabit-capable fiber competition by next summer:
“Just in time for Christmas, Santa Claus is coming to town,” (Lexington Mayor Jim) Gray said at a news conference officially announcing that Indiana-based MetroNet plans to spend as much as $100 million building a fiber-optic network that covers the city?s entire urban service area.
MetroNet pledged Tuesday to spend at least $70 million to build the network over the next three to four years if it receives a cable franchise from the city. Gigabit speed is equivalent to moving data at 1,000 megabits per second. Lexington?s average internet speed is 16.2 megabits per second, according to some studies.
Lexington was fortunate to be attractive enough to private companies to strike such a deal. But in countless less developed cities and rural American markets, private ISPs simply don’t think the slower return on their investment is worth their time. As a result, many towns and cities have struggled for years with substandard service and sky-high prices. In turn, many have considered building their own networks or striking partnerships with companies like Google Fiber, only to discover that ISPs like Charter have quite literally purchased laws making that impossible.
So while Lexington was lucky enough to attract a private investor, there’s countless U.S. broadband markets that don’t get to see this kind of happy ending.
Filed Under: competition, fiber network, lexington, muni broadband
Companies: charter spectrum
Comments on “Disgusted With Charter Spectrum Merger, Lexington To Build Entirely New Fiber Network”
Internet is infrastructure
Until communities realize that internet is just as important as water or electricity, ISPs will continue to screw them over. My children have internet required homework and they are less than 8 years old. Being treated as a commodity instead of a paying customer is frustrating yet the state actor status that the government has effectively provided the ISPs in return for access to the records is sickening.
Re: Internet is infrastructure
It’s not just infrastructure, it’s critical infrastructure. Every aspect of society increasingly depends on it, and it’s much too important to be left in the hands of companies that will mess with it any time they want to increase profits.
We have spectrum...but
We have a new Allo doing directional boring all over town. Everyone I talked to the last year says they just can’t wait for Allo to turn on the gig service so they can jump the spectrum ship. Heard stories of Allow guys being at the house installing and spectrum calling the customer getting the new gig service and spectrum talking shit about allow, then putting the allo guy on the phone and getting hung up on immediately. I can’t wait to join them as well. I can’t help but think that spectrum will lose such a huge chunk of their customers they will be forced to do something. One guy told me that he thinks they will offer half the speed of Allow but at a contract lol. I just feel it’s the death rattle for spectrum around here.
Merger "synergies"
I can’t hear that myth anymore. At the company sizes we are talking about, there are no synergies. All significant costs including customer support and networking capacities scale up with customer counts. If there was significant potential for infrastructure synergies (like sharing underused backbones), cross-usage deals would already have been struck.
So when they say $x billions can be “saved”, this rather means that they can decrease value to the customer without repercussion or bill more without providing more value.
The one thing where it may help is to have fewer bidders for limited resources like mobile frequencies which does _nothing_ to increase the resources, namely the available bandwidth. It just means that the taxpayer will have to pay more taxes to offset the cheaper auctions instead of being able to pick a provider matching his price-per-congestion ideas. Which would be competition. Instead we’ll get net neutrality removed and a single provider will pretend to have “competing” offerings where they are free to reduce your level of service until the pain makes you pay more.
Re: Merger "synergies"
Exactly. It’s easy to see why customer service usually gets worse – execs see two customer service departments as overlap that can be eliminated. The problem is that the customer service department is often understaffed for the number of customers they have already, and getting rid of one of them just doubles (or more) the workload. Add onto that the fact that “customer service” very often is required to do sales as well, and right after a merger the execs want a sales blitz to scoop up more customers based on all that non-existent synergy.
So what does it say...
… when government can do a better job providing a service than the business designed to provide that service?
Isn’t that called “Failure” ??? A government granted monopoly can be revoked for cause. *if* anyone in the government wasn’t owned, that is.
Re: So what does it say...
The government isn’t going to provide the network or service. Metronet is a private company.
“according to some studies” should be banned from all forms of communication.
Re: Re:
I live in a dense upscale suburb of Atlanta and I have a choice of expensive and slow Comcast with a data cap or less expensive very slow 12M AT&T DSL with a smaller data cap. I am looking to move and this is one of the reasons why, and will not even consider moving to another area where there is not community broadband or broadband competition. To me, poor internet choices like I have now is about as undesirable as a high crime rate. If everyone were like me, property values would soon reflect the “internet standard of living” and politicians and community leaders would more quickly remedy the problem of broadband monopolies.
So, let’s do the math:
100 million dollars
318,000 people living there, average residence per address is 2.47. So, they are going to create service for at most 130,000 potential customers.
Answer is, almost $770 per potential customer – just to build it – and that is in what is essentially a small area without too many “rural” customers, and that assumes they run it for everyone everywhere.
Re: Re:
And your point is…?
Re: Re: Re:
When you consider that maybe 25% will take the service, so there is a “nut” of over $3000 per household to get run off in the bills. So you have $10 a month or so just to pay down the original installation.
Will they ever really make their money back?
My point is only that it’s not free, and it would cost (at that level) almost 100 billion to wire the US.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Considering we have given the telco’s over 300 billion in subsidies and tax breaks, that means every house in the US should have access to three different fiber options.
So we all have three high speed fiber internet options to choose from, right?
No? Me either, I don’t even have one, but I know my telco has received more than their share of subsidies and yet still no fiber network…
At least spectrum was prevented from capping and charging overage fees due to their merger (which will probably expire in a year or so and their rates will triple, from the current $69.99 internet only plan they offer)…
Re: Re: Re:2 Re:
Nice try.
300 Billion has been given over how long, exactly? Most of it was given to get from zero to where we are now, many, many, many years ago. Much of that money was given to wire places that otherwise would have no such service as all, such as places like Montana.
Remember this too:
341 people per square mile
The 2016 Lexington-Fayette Metro Area, Kentucky, population is 500,535. There are 341 people per square mile (population density). Family in Lexington-Fayette Metro Area, Kentucky.
The median age is 35.5.
The US national population density is less than a third of that. It’s therefore very likely that the costs to wire up all of the US would be significantly higher.
Oh, and if Spectrum triples their prices, then they will have opened the door for competition. You should be happy if they do.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Pretty sure just about anyone in a similar situation would be tripping over themselves to sign up for an upgrade like they stand to get for $10 extra a month in their taxes.
As has been noted before, towns and cities aren’t building this stuff, or in this case opening up the field for someone else because they think it’s fun, but because the current service they’re getting is so completely abysmal that they are willing to spend the extra money to get a connection that’s actually decent.
As far as $100 billion to wire up the US at decent speed, while the number is a sizable one it’s worth considering that the USG budget for 2016 was $3.9 trillion.
Wiring up everywhere all at once is clearly not feasible, but build up in stages, perhaps over the course of a decade, would leave you with $10 billion each year, practically a drop in the bucket when it comes to overall government spending, with the end result that the country would be in a position where we could have a good connection speed across the US, and don’t have to hope that this tax break, this subsidy to Comcast or Verizon will actually end up being used on what they promise, rather than just added to the year-end exec bonus.
Re: Re: Re:2 Re:
“Wiring up everywhere all at once is clearly not feasible, but build up in stages, perhaps over the course of a decade,”
The US doesn’t work that way. The old “no extremely rural dust farmer left behind” type things that the government loves gets in the way. If you want to divide it up over 10 years, you need to tell 90% of the people to wait 1 to 9 years longer than someone else. Imagine the lawsuits!
It’s why the Lexington thing is so funny. You guys are all excited about muni level broadband but it’s exclusionary to the max. Gigabit in town, and if you live 1 mile outside, forget about it! Under normal circumstances, you guys would yell and scream about it. Hmmm!
Good fun to watch the opinion change with the wind direction!
Re: Re: Re:3 Re:
You can sit down, nobody needs to see that Ajit Pai e-boner.
Re: Re: Re:3 Re:
The US doesn’t work that way. The old "no extremely rural dust farmer left behind" type things that the government loves gets in the way. If you want to divide it up over 10 years, you need to tell 90% of the people to wait 1 to 9 years longer than someone else. Imagine the lawsuits!
That was what you decided to fixate on? People wouldn’t want to wait so they’d sue? I mean, I can understand why you would say that, when you give the money to Comcast, Verizon or one of those companies they start and complete the build out in under a year max, so it makes sense that people wouldn’t have the patience to wait ten years(assuming it wasn’t rolled out quicker in exchange for condensing how much was paid each year for construction costs).
Nope, people just do not have the patience for infrastructure improvements, they want it right now, and they would much rather deal with the absolutely stellar service they are getting from their current providers than have to wait even the slightest bit for some government funded option.
It’s why the Lexington thing is so funny. You guys are all excited about muni level broadband but it’s exclusionary to the max. Gigabit in town, and if you live 1 mile outside, forget about it! Under normal circumstances, you guys would yell and scream about it. Hmmm!
Why yes, if they act like the companies you are so eager to defend, declare that they are wiring up a particular area and fail to do so people probably will be upset, because they went back on what they claimed. So long as they make it clear that this is the area that’s being wired up and follow through there shall be no gnashing of teeth, your latest laughable attempt at a ‘gotcha’ aside.
Again though I can understand why you would think people would be upset, when one of the major telecom companies promises to provide service they do an absolutely thorough job of it, and they would never refuse to wire someone up because they are just slightly beyond the correct area(and they would certainly never claim that simply being near the network counts as being served.)
Good fun to watch the opinion change with the wind direction!
No, just your strawman version of people’s opinions, which counts for nothing to anyone but you.
Re: Re: Re:
That’s less than the ‘extra fees’ on a typical ISP bill for the year… sounds like a good deal to me
Perspective
Having lived and worked in IT around Lexington for 50 years, this is one of the best moves the city has ever made. Lexington had failed to buy their water company some years back, and learned a hard lesson about utilities.
I watched the large telcos lobby my state government to outlaw municipal broadband, in spite of having some real success stories to point to (Frankfort, Williamsburg, etc). Some of the small telcos to the east of Lexington have realized broadband was the only hope for them, and have rolled out fiber already (Mountain Telephone: Morgan, Wolfe, Bath, and Menifee Counties). What is plain as day is the larger telcos to the west (ATT ) will likely never roll out broadband, they want to force their customers off of modems and DSL onto the less regulated and more profitable Cell network, and abandon their copper loops. This is working to create a new poverty in some regions, an unavoidable outcome from the lack of a state sized solution.
Having lobbied the elected in Frankfort, the state’s capitol, I can say from personal experience that most of the folks working against public broadband are imports, working for the telcos. I’d gotten, in the 1990s, an Attorney General’s decision that the state’s educational networks were available to the public in off school hours. Seeing how the telcos and schools circled the wagons on that was a lesson- neither would embrace the notion that a publicly financed fiber net was open and rate free for the folks that had paid for it. Taking that public LAN and essentially privatizing it in off school hours was just my first lesson.
Charter /Spectrum pricing
The 23 states of TWC bought out by Charter brand name ‘Spectrum". TWC accounts bought out by Charter TWC customers are paying 40% more in services people are dropping charter because of the prices. Charter prices are not affordable internet start speed is 60 at $44.00 a month is very steep why not offer a lower speed to 30 lower pricing. If you bundle the prices are higher. Charter has a 70% outages of the internet which is there biggest problem Charter needs to lower internet and cable prices instead of dictatorship.
Hacking Tampering Bricking Personal Property by Spectrum
Please tell me if my spectrum problem fits the bill here. I documented the issue and filed with all the appropriate "consumer protections" as indicated on my website: http://springfield-ohio-post.com/ohiopostunderground/spectrum/legal/
My contact information is readily available if you need to contact me: 937-718-3586
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This website is developed in regards to the unprovoked blacklisting, hacking/tampering, and termination of personal property caused by Spectrum. Herein Spectrum is used interchangeably for all it’s other names, including Spectrum, a.k.a Time Warner, a.k.a Charter Group, a.k.a. Road Runner, a.k.a. Bright House, and any other name that the monopoly may be using.
Spectrum call for service activation, call log (855) 202-0960,Incoming,11/20/2017 02:23 PM,00:00:26
Spectrum service was stopped on November 29, 2017
Spectrum BRICKED my personal property AND ADMITTED TO IT~! Recorded conversations (see below)
*See Call logs at bottom of this page
When spectrum failed to make right their wrong I began to publish the issue.
Puco was contacted December 1, 2017 Case: KHEN113017OR
FCC was contact December 2, 2017 FCC Ticket No. 2077867
December 3, 2017 upload converstion to youtube
I upload the recorded Spectrum conversations on December 13, 2017
January 14, 2018 Consumer Affairs was again contacted Jamie at ConsumerAffairs<members@consumeraffairs.com>14 jan. at 06:01
January 27, 2018 posted the issue on pissedconsumer.com #1177451
February 1, 2018 Motorola responded concerning Incident: Incident # 27750 and #180202-010823
I also promptly filed a claim with spectrum, claim ticket #26135861
This Webpage is commenced on January 10, 2018 and is not yet complete. I already filed a complaint with the FCC (AND OTHERS which I’ll document below) by December 2, 2017 yet look what happened after I filed my complaints (seen below, and now I get collections calls daily from more than one collections agency even though I’ve received no service and no product!). So timeline is Service with Spectrum (november 2017), then I file with a slew of "consumer protection agencies" in November / December of the same year, and by January I’m receiving collections notices when in fact Spectrum owes me!
Destruction of Personal property
Spectrum/Charter Internet Provider Negligence
The following will include Proof of statement. For a copy of complete full recorded conversations, email
Synopsis: Spectrum on day one of service, added THEIR modem to 3 blacklists thereby availing only tainted "service". In an effort to solve the problem, the spectrum agent and myself tried my personal modem (a motorola modem), it worked fine for the few hours it was up until Spectrum decided to "push firmware" into my modem (the wrong firmware) thereby bricking (rendering my property completely broken and unusable).
Despite that I have recorded all the calls and already filed formal complaints, in came the bills and then promptly came the calls from collections agencies (yes, plural!)
Even if Spectrum’s second excuse or statement is to be believed (that arris told them to do it), Arris adamantly refute the Spectrum Claim altogether
Arris states NO UPDATES AVAILABLE
Play Arris Statement vs Spectrum Claims: Play Spectrum hacked my modem (.webm)
Or download whichever format works in your version of operating system:
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The following is found on Arris’ Website
Arris Website – No Drivers or UpdatesArris Website – No Drivers or Updates
But enough of this Spectrum blaming Arris farce because….
I DON’T EVEN OWN AN ARRIS MODEM in the first place!
Save the admissions for some other modem owner, perhaps someone that owns an Arris Modem! My Motorola modem series was designed and developed PRIOR TO ARRIS’ buyout of the Motorola series modem and contained at least a couple of features that the Arris modem does not contain, those features are not to be mis-construed as "bugs", as the Spectrum Agent made reference to. Those features are:
1.) The ability to reboot the modem (locally or remotely)
2.) The ability to flash the modem back to factory condition
There were physical differences between the modems also.
Here is whas the Arris modem looks like (click to enlarge):
Arris Modem 1st photoArris Modem Arris Modem 2nd photoArris Modem
This is what my MOTOROLA modem looks like (click to expand):
Motorola Modem 1st photoView 1 of my modem Motorola photo 2View 2 of my modem
The software contained in each of the modems is markedly different also
The Arris modem hasn’t any useful features aside from being a simple stripped-down version of my modem, it was merely an intermediary device that allowed no user control.
This is what my Motorola modem’s software looked like before the damaging actions caused by Spectrum:
My modem’s software before hackThis is my modem’s software before the Spectrum Hack, Photo 1
My modem’s software before hack 2This photo shows both features eliminated by Spectrum Tampering
Spectrum acknowledge that they removed these features from my PERSONAL property without my consent, then they confess that it was Arris software that was involved, then they blame arris for telling them to do it!~
Even if I HAD an arris modem, I am highly upset that these monopoly types can feel so righteous in hacking other property that they do not own. Can they manipulate an entire community to suddenly need to replace modems and thereby increase the sales for a friend at Best Buy (as an example)?
If they can do it to my modem (which isn’t running some fly-by-night software, it’s BSD and LINUX that they hacked through; that in itself is very disturbing to know now due to another somewhat related past issue).
Rather than offering to remedy the situation, the arrogant monopoly sends 5 different bills in less than 3 weeks (with 5 different amounts)
How do we get so many different priced bills all in the same month? profiteering for no service and no product
Below are the myriad of bills that the monopoly responded with (as opposed to a humane apology letter). Notice the prices are all over the place and that their expectations are for NON-service (The same day that the monopoly’s modem arrived in the mail is the same day that I called to inquire how I was summarily added to three blacklists instaneously without cause or justification whatsoever and that I would try my modem and see if that changes anything, otherwise I need to cancel because your (spectrum) service would not be good for me (or anyone summarily added to a secret blacklist). The blacklists affect most search engines from wanting to count my server’s websites. Being on a blacklist is damaging to anyone, whether business or private (I started a website years ago when spectrum was using a different alias, that being Time Warner. Adding people to blacklists are apparently accomplished without the Nation’s Judiciary, monopoly is the intermediary, and by all counts, were at one time illegal).
There had been no service received, but in came the odd bills
THE SERVICE WAS JUST TURNED ON WHEN THE SPECTRUM MODEM ARRIVED, HOW IS THIS BILL LEGITIMATE?
November 20, 2017 – $89.97 1st bill for no service or product1st bill for no service or product
Later in the week came another bill with a different price I HAD ALREADY BEGUN TO PUBLISH THE PROBLEM SO HOW CAN SPECTRUM BE SENDING A BILL at all?
Check out the dates in which I ALREADY published the problem with Spectrum!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0SIImRDZpA
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6azkjb
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8kQNPsQpyk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4MH0gbZtv8
I even already filed with the FCC, consumer affairs, and many others!
November 26, 2017 – $94.482nd bill for no service or product; different price now 2nd bill; different price
then another, with yet another price
December 1, 2017 – $122.973rd bill for no service or product 3rd bill; another price
And still another bill for yet another amount
December 19, 2017 – $167.964th bill for no service or product 4th bill and yet another price
8 days later I am threatened for non-PAYMENT (even though there had been less hours used than one has digits on their hand; that which ended with negative impact i.e. 3 illegal unwarranted blacklists against the IP address from Spectrum)
Delinquent AccountDecember 27, 2017">Threat of Deliquent (profiteering?)
5th bill for no service and no product Spectrum insist on blaming Arris (Arris told us to do it)
January 2, 2018 – $83.97Spectrum ProfiteeringSpectrum persists in antagonizing arogantly, they know there’s no longer any consumer protections
Keep in mind that I’ve thus far not received any of my end of our agreement! The very same day the spectrum modem arrived I am recorded as saying to the spectrum agent over the phone that if we can’t remedy the faulty blacklisting they arbitrarily added me to (3 blacklists) then I’ll have to cancel this service, there’s nothing I can do with the state in which the internet was being delivered to me.
There is actually another strangely similar incident that occurred years prior to Time Warner having changed its name to Spectrum. The account I started writing years ago is in it’s virtually pristine nature in which I left it, and recorded it for anyone that wants to read more into how blacklisting is an unprovoked attack and causes obvious damage against the person or group in which it is directed against: http://springfield-ohio-post.com/ohiopostunderground/time%20warner/
Again, Arris did not even make my modem, nor did they do what Spectrum/Charter evolved to claiming (that arris told them to do it).
Here is the call logs that show when I first inquired about service and the prompt calls when that service failed
(800) 892-2253,Incoming,01/04/2018 09:01 AM,00:01:42
(614) 827-7914,Incoming,12/07/2017 12:59 PM,00:00:40
(614) 827-7914,Outgoing,12/04/2017 01:30 PM,00:08:11
(614) 827-7914,Incoming,12/04/2017 12:07 PM,00:01:25
(614) 827-7914,Incoming,12/01/2017 06:19 PM,00:00:49
(614) 827-7914,Incoming,12/01/2017 02:59 PM,00:00:47
(614) 827-7914,Incoming,12/01/2017 07:31 PM,00:01:17
(614) 827-7914,Outgoing,12/01/2017 07:12 PM,00:14:37
(855) 202-0960,Outgoing,11/30/2017 05:20 AM,00:00:11
(855) 202-0960,Outgoing,11/30/2017 03:56 AM,00:00:15
(800) 892-2253,Outgoing,11/25/2017 04:43 PM,00:18:52
(855) 202-0960,Outgoing,11/25/2017 04:39 PM,00:03:15
(855) 202-0960,Incoming,11/21/2017 05:02 PM,00:02:19
(855) 202-0960,Incoming,11/21/2017 10:09 AM,00:00:46
(800) 892-2253,Incoming,11/20/2017 10:00 AM,00:00:40
(800) 892-2253,Incoming,11/20/2017 09:02 AM,00:01:19
(855) 202-0960,Incoming,11/20/2017 02:23 PM,00:00:26
(800) 892-2253,Incoming,11/19/2017 06:27 PM,00:01:30
(855) 202-0960,Outgoing,11/19/2017 10:51 AM,00:00:01
(855) 202-0960,Outgoing,11/19/2017 10:46 AM,00:00:23
(855) 202-0960,Incoming,11/19/2017 10:35 AM,00:01:00
(855) 202-0960,Incoming,11/18/2017 03:28 PM,00:01:03
(855) 202-0960,Incoming,11/18/2017 09:47 AM,00:01:00
(855) 202-0960,Incoming,11/17/2017 05:09 PM,00:00:06
(855) 202-0960,Incoming,11/17/2017 01:26 PM,00:00:19
When one entity controls our only option for our preferred means of communications, our nation is at risk. If they can take my system down (which runs on BSD and Linux) then is it not coneivable that the solitary entity can take down an entire community the same way? What about our nuclear weapons or our nuclear power plants? What operating systems do you think run those critical areas of our nation’s infrastructure? Hint: It’s not microsoft or macintosh. It’s systems that have always been presumed to be safer; and now we have "our" internet providers exploiting that last bastian.
Nationalize the monopolies, let’s use our military for something good for a change! http://usdebtclock.org
Private ownership is only good when there’s more than one or two "private" owners at the monopoly board.
Miscellaneous other recordings:
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Play Audio Clip 2
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