comcast

Comcast does us all a favor by handing the FCC a clear net neutrality case

27 November 2015 by Steve Blum
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You don’t need a video replay to referee this one.

When is streaming Internet video not Internet video? When it’s a cable company doing the streaming. At least according to Comcast. Ars Technica has a good article on Comcast’s latest ploy, which is to offer a cut down video package over the Internet connection that broadband-only subscribers can buy, and not count it against the monthly 300 GB cap it’s beginning to impose in some states (but not yet in California).… More

Comcast exec says yeah, competitition made us do it

15 October 2015 by Steve Blum
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The only sure way to respond to a threat.

Comcast has a habit of upgrading and extending its infrastructure when the threat of competition raises its beautiful head. That’s a deliberate strategy, and not a coincidence, according to a Comcast executive quoted by FierceTelecom…

Speaking to attendees during the opening afternoon sessions during SCTE 2015, Jorge Salinger, VP of access for Comcast, said that the cable industry’s development of the DOCSIS 3.1 specification has come together very quickly and is being driven by an emergence of new broadband competition from Google Fiber and telcos like AT&T and CenturyLink.

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Competition keeps incumbent prices down and speeds up

9 October 2015 by Steve Blum
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There’s a reason Chicago sings the blues.

If you want faster and cheaper broadband service, the surest way to get it is to threaten incumbents with competition. We saw it in Santa Cruz where, after years of charging high speed prices for low speed bandwidth, Comcast suddenly upgraded its network to support Silicon Valley-levels of service. The spur was a combination of legislative pressure, in the form of new eligibility for infrastructure construction subsidies, a county plan to create a fiber backbone connecting key economic areas and, critically, the announcement of a city-backed fiber to the home project.… More

Santa Cruz muni fiber threat forces Comcast upgrade

28 September 2015 by Steve Blum
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After years of blowing off customers, sandbagging local governments and stonewalling regulators, Comcast has finally upgraded its Santa Cruz County service area to what appears to be the same broadband speeds enjoyed to the north in Silicon Valley and to the south in Monterey County. All it took was a single word: competition.

Comcast hasn’t said so, but it’s no coincidence that the upgrade came barely six weeks after the Santa Cruz City Council voted to move ahead with building a city-wide fiber-to-the-home (and business) system in a public/private partnership with Cruzio, a local Internet service provider.… More

Comcast buys process error plea bargain for $33 million

20 September 2015 by Steve Blum
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A customer care associate will be right with you.

About 75,000 telephone service customers who paid Comcast extra to keep their phone numbers unlisted and out of the hands of telemarketers and fraudsters did so in vain between 2010 and 2012. Via a convoluted process that involved third party licensing and directory companies, as well as its own in-house listing service, Comcast sold their information and published it online. According to a set of stipulated facts agreed by Comcast, the California Public Utilities Commission and the California Attorney General’s office…

Comcast has explained that, in connection with a system-wide account number change in California that occurred in October and December 2009, a significant portion of those California customers who elected non-published status prior to December 2009 were mistakenly not flagged as “non-published” and thus were made available for publishing in July 2010 via Neustar.

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CPUC leaves a hard decision on its broadband authority for another time

24 July 2015 by Steve Blum
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Some games go on forever, and reach no result.

The California Public Utilities Commission passed on the opportunity to officially assert its jurisdiction over broadband infrastructure and service yesterday. By a unanimous vote, commissioners allowed Comcast to simply withdraw its now moot application for permission to take over Charter and Time Warner cable systems in California.
The mega-merger died in April, after federal regulators insisted on deal killing conditions. The CPUC had also spent about a year reviewing it, amassing a huge amount of data and documents, in addition to the even bigger stash developed by the Federal Communications Commission.… More

CPUC to choose between broadband activism or accommodation

22 July 2015 by Steve Blum
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Two key broadband decisions are scheduled to go in front of the California Public Utilities Commission tomorrow. Commissioners have to decide what kind of funeral to hold for the not-so-dearly-departed Comcast – Time Warner – Charter mega-merger, and whether they need to actually investigate the condition of California’s ageing copper telephone networks, or just assume the telcos will take care of it.

There are three completely different alternatives on the table for wrapping up the Comcast deal:

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CPUC will wait another month to vote on establishing broadband jurisdiction

27 June 2015 by Steve Blum
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The California Public Utilities Commission kicked the Comcast can down the road a month. It was supposed to take up two competing proposals for closing out Comcast’s failed purchase of Time Warner’s cable systems and market swaps with Charter this week, but the decision was pushed off to the commission’s 23 July 2015 meeting. A third alternative is also expected to be on the agenda that day.

The options in front of the CPUC are…

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CPUC offered opportunity to duck broadband responsibilities

18 June 2015 by Steve Blum
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The third way.

The California Public Utilities Commission has a third option for closing out the failed Comcast-Time Warner-Charter mega mash up. In response to a request from the companies involved, a CPUC administrative law judge has drafted yet another proposed decision that basically calls it all off, with a couple of housekeeping conditions.

Chief among those conditions is a requirement that the companies turn over digital copies of documents they previously provided to the Federal Communications Commission.… More

Comcast discloses attempt at one-on-one back room negotiations in California

28 May 2015 by Steve Blum
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You call those suits?

As it said it wanted to do, Comcast did in fact try to bargain directly with the commissioner assigned to handle the California Public Utilities Commission’s review of its bid to take over Time Warner and Charter cable systems in California. In a disclosure filing that was made public last week, Comcast detailed how a posse of its suits met with commissioner Carla Peterman and two aides for an hour – twice the time originally expected – in March to detail its objections to the conditions the commission was considering if it approved the deal…

Comcast described how the conditions in the Proposed Decision could be improved by revising them to be within the parameters of Commission programs with preexisting rules or by establishing metrics that are clearer and easier to measure than what has been proposed.

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