No longer a cord-cutter -- I've spliced the cord

My 2014 post "How I cut my Time Warner bill by 33%" has been viewed 152,846 times -- the most of any in the history of this blog. The bill-cutting technique is simple -- threaten to cancel your service and the ISP will renegotiate the price.

I recently repeated the process, with a twist.

I was an early cord-cutter -- getting my local TV with a rabbit ears antenna and streaming the rest from the Internet. That worked fairly well, but I could not get local content in some of the rooms of my house and even in the best room, there would be an occasional glitch and I had to play around with the antenna orientation. I tried amplified antennas, but none were better than my rabbit ears and I am too lazy to install a rooftop antenna. (The local TV transmitters are on a mountain 24.5 miles as the crow flies from my home).

My monopoly ISP bill crept up over time, as monopoly ISP bills do, and my old monopoly ISP, time-Warner Cable (TWC), had sold to a new monopoly ISP, Spectrum.

Spectrum started sending out flyers offering good deals to new subscribers -- Internet, phone and cable-TV service for a little less than I had been paying TWC. I called and offered to switch to the introductory offer and they accepted -- I spliced the cord.

I now get rock-solid local TV and a DVR for less than I was paying before. That is an improvement, but nothing like I could get by moving to place with a competitve Internet service market like Riga, Stockholm or Korea.

Are you hoping new wireless technology like 5G mobile or PCell technology from Google will provide ISP competition? The technology remains to be seen in the field but, if it turns out to be a threat, the ISPs will work hard to fight competition, for example, by outlawing the sharing of public infrastructure.

In spite of periodic renegotiation with my ISP, the cost is drifting up and I pay for streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime, but I seldom go out to a movie these days. It looks like the long-run losers will be movie theaters and the public.

Netflix blames Verizon, Verizon blames Netflix -- let's see the data.

Netflix says Verizon is a streaming bottleneck, Verizon says the congestion is upstream -- we need data not accusations.

Netflix recently showed messages like this one when they had to adjust the bit-rate on their streams to FIOS customers:

Verizon responded, claiming that the congestion was upstream from FIOS, and threatened legal action. Netflix says they will drop the messages for now.

The public and regulators need more data and transparency, not less. For example, here are Netflix data rate histories for Google Fiber, Comcast, Verizon FIOS and Verizon DSL:

This data clearly shows the improvement in Comcast speeds when they and Netflix agreed to terms in February. (One wonders how that rapid improvement was achieved and how much investment it required).

Verizon DSL is slow because of the technology. Those Verizon customers who can get FIOS are surely better off, but one wonders why Verizon fiber is so much slower than Google fiber and Comcast cable.

If Netflix congestion is upstream from Verizon, they should present data demonstrating that.

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Update 6/10/2014

Google also publishes data on YouTube streaming performance for ISPs. I checked the performance of Time Warner Cable, my not-so friendly ISP, in Los Angeles, my city.

The following graph shows YouTube video consumption for time slots beginning at 6 AM and peaking at 9 PM.

Google also reports the percent of the time an ISP delivers high definition (720p), standard definition (360p) and lower quality. For me, the worst performance, HD 81% of the time and SD 19%, occurs between 9-10 PM.

This is one more source of ISP performance data -- check it out and see how your ISP rates compared to others in your location (if there are others).

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Update 6/13/2014

The FCC will scrutinize the pay for service deals Netflix and Comcast and Verizon. They will also look at others, including Google.

FCC Chairman, Tom Wheeler, said he already had copies of the contracts, but I hope he asks the companies to provide traffic data and also disclose the cost of the infrastructure investments they make to keep service reasonable.

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Update 7/7/2014

YouTube has joined Netflix in linking to data when video delivery slows down. I was watching a YouTube video that began to stutter. When it paused to rebuffer, I saw this message:

When I clicked on the find out why link, it took me to Google's Video Playback Checklist, which lists things that might go wrong and suggests fixes -- no blame on your ISP -- so far. If none of those fixes help, they also provide a link to the Google Video Quality Report (described above). As we asked -- they show us the data.

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Update 7/19/2014

I've asked to see congestion data and to know the cost of alleviating the bandwidth shortage noted by Netflix customers and other Internet users. Mark Taylor, VP of Content and Media at Level 3, a transit provider used by Netflix, has given us some data and some costs. This diagram shows data at one of the of the ten exchange points between Verizon and Level 3:

We see that the congestion between Level 3's customer (Netflix) and a Verizon retail customer occurs in the forwarding of packets between their routers (in the same building). Both the Level 3 and Verizon networks are uncongested (green) but the links between their routers are congested (red).

That is the data for this exchange point, but what about the cost of alleviating the problem? Taylor says it is a few thousand dollars and five minutes work to install 10gb port cards in the routers. He says they have been asking Verizon to install the cards for many months and offers to have Level 3 pay for them. He says he will throw in the short cables between the routers.

If more capacity were needed after those eight port cards were installed, new equipment would have to be purchased, but that would be a small fraction of the cost of the networks the routers connect.

Note that the above diagram is based on a Verizon post describing the situation at the Los Angeles exchange point. Furthermore, it shows under utilization on the Verizon network -- no need for data caps in that case :-).

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Update 7/24/2014

David Young, Verizon's Vice President for Regulatory Affairs, has posted a reply to the claim by Mark Taylor of Level 3 that Verizon is causing Internet congestion. Young says the problem is not datacenter exchange point congestion, as Taylor claims, but congestion in the Level 3 network. In fact he says that:

Level 3 insists on only using its existing settlement-free peering links even though, as Level 3 surprisingly admits in their blog, these links are experiencing significant congestion.

This is Verizon's view of the situation -- transit providers like Level 3 are the problem:

But, when I looked back at Mark Taylor's post, I saw no such admission. In fact, Taylor says "our network has plenty of available capacity" and goes on to state that:

I can confirm once again that all of those thousands of links on the Level 3 network are managed carefully so that the peak utilizations look very similar to those Verizon show for their own network – IN BOTH DIRECTIONS (his caps).

These are conflicting statements -- who to believe?

Considering Verizon's track record, I'd give the benefit of the doubt to Level 3. Verizon promised to install FIOS fiber in my neighborhood several years ago, but subsequently changed their mind and decided instead on a "gentleman's agreement" dividing the wireless (Verizon) and land-line (cable companies) ISP markets. Indeed Verizon has a track record of broken promises -- Bruce Kushnick has documented 300 billion dollars worth of them.

That history makes me suspicious that Level 3 is telling the truth, but it is not proof. Proof would require transparency on both sides. Level 3 and Verizon should show us the data -- let's see the traffic logs for your networks. (Or at least let the FCC staff see them).

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Update 10/15/2014

I've asked to see the data. It's not congestion data, but Generator Research has estimated the cost of delivering Netflix content in their report Over-the-Top Television, 2014, which includes an estimate of the cost to Netflix and Comcast of delivering Netflix content and of the fee Netflix is paying Comcast.

Their estimate of Netflix's "fast lane" fee to Comcast is $.86 per subscriber per month. That is a small portion of the inflated monopoly/oligopoly prices we pay to Comcast and other Internet service providers. It seems to me that we should be paying more attention to the lack of competition in the ISP industry than to network neutrality.

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Update 11/9/2014

M-Lab monitors Internet performance and has published a report on ISP Interconnection and its Impact on Consumer Internet Performance.

The report concludes that

Using Measurement Lab data, and constraining our research to the United States, we observed sustained performance degradation experienced by customers of Access ISPs AT&T, Comcast, Centurylink, Time Warner Cable, and Verizon when their traffic passed over interconnections with Transit ISPs Cogent Communications (Cogent), Level 3 Communications (Level 3), and XO Communications (XO). In a large number of cases we observed similar patterns of performance degradation whenever and wherever specific pairs of Access/Transit ISPs interconnected. From this we conclude that ISP interconnection has a substantial impact on consumer internet performance -- sometimes a severely negative impact -- and that business relationships between ISPs, and not major technical problems, are at the root of the problems we observed.

It seems that interconnection between transit ISPs and ISPs that connect customers (access ISPs) is indeed the weak link in the content delivery chain.

The above figure gives an overview of download throughput between Access ISP and Transit ISP pairs during 2013. For each of the 28 graphs, the Y axis shows the % of hours with the given download throughput, and the X axis shows the download throughput (Mbps). Red, on the left, indicates sub-broadband speeds (download throughput below 4 Mbps). What this table demonstrates is not simply a proliferation of performance issues, but that these issues cannot be laid at the feet of any one Access ISP, or any one Transit ISP: no Access ISP performs badly to all Transit ISPs, and no Transit ISP performs badly for all Access ISPs. Therefore, if the problem is not at one end, and not at the other, it must be in the middle around the interconnection between the two.

For example, my ISP, Time Warner falls below 4 Mbps (red) over 30% of the time when delivering Cogent packets, but does much better with data from other transit ISPs.

ISPs have the lowest American Customer Satisfaction Index.

The ISP industry ranks 48th out of 48 industries on the American Customer Satisfaction Index. Subscription TV is 47th.

Individual companies are also rated. Large companies are rated separately and smaller ISPs are lumped into "all other." Here are the ISP customer satisfaction indices:

Verizon Communications (FiOS)	71
Cox Communications	71
AT&T (U-verse)	68
Charter Communications	65
CenturyLink	65
Time Warner Cable	63
Comcast	62
All others	71

I am happy to see that my ISP, Time Warner Cable, which I have commented upon in previous posts, is not the lowest rated company in this dismal industry -- that honor belongs to their hopeful merger buddy, Comcast.

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Update 5/19/2014

The latest quarterly survey results are out and Internet service providers are now the lowest ranked industry and merger buddies Time Warner Cable and Comcast are now the two lowest ranked companies of all industries. The inverse correlation between size and customer satisfaction still holds for the ISP industry, so I am confident that if Comcast acquires TWC, they will continue to set dissatisfaction records for years to come.

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Update 6/11/2014

I just got a copy of the latest ACSI company ratings from the University of Michigan. Comcast is no longer the second lowest rated company in the survey -- that honor now belongs to Time Warner Cable (TV). My ISP, Time Warner Cable (ISP), retained its position as the lowest ranked company -- 230th out of 230 companies.

The ISP industry remains at the bottom of the list, with subscription television services next to last

The American public is fed up with the cable TV and Internet service companies (and we are ridiculing them) -- let's hope that translates into political pressure.

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Update 6/23/2016

Time Warner Cable and Charter Communication recently merged. Now a US Senate report concludes that they routinely overcharged customers and failed to issue refunds.

ISPs are aggressively pursuing their goal of remaining the industry with the lowest customer satisfaction index and worst customer service in the US.

The Senate subcommittee’s report also said that consumers are frustrated by the ongoing rise of the cost for cable and satellite TV, with some packages increasing up to 33% since 2011 A copy of the report is available here.

Don't you love monopolies?

You are in a weak position when dealing with the monopoly provider of a necessary service

I wrote a post on the conversation I had with a Time Warner Cable (TWC) retention agent, in which I cut nearly $40 from my monthly bill by threatening to cancel my account.

The post was referenced on Slashdot, causing it to be viewed over 45,000 times, and it occurred to me that it might be noticed by someone at TWC, who could reverse my savings in retaliation. To document my promised promotions, I started a chat session with Rueben, a TWC online representative.

It turns out that was a mistake.

The day before the ill-fated chat session, I was getting the following performance:

At one point during the chat (the red line in the transcript below), Rueben said he needed to talk with someone. It seems that they concluded that the representative who gave me a break in the first place had given me too good a break, and they throttled my speed. This is what it looks like now:

When this entire transaction began, I was on a plan with up to 20 mbps download and up to 2 mbps upload. The first representative evidently increased that to 20/5, and Rueben cut it back to 15/1.

So, I am paying less than I was before, but for slower service. The first rep had improved my service level, the second rep reversed that and then some.

TWC’s negotiation policy is opaque and capricious – perhaps expected when haggling at a garage sale, but not in dealing with a professional service provider. But, as the monopoly provider of an essential service, TWC can do whatever they please.

Here is the transcript of my chat with their “analyst:”

User LAURENCE_ has entered room
Analyst Rueben has entered room
Analyst has left room
Rueben>Thank you for contacting Time Warner Cable. At the end of our chat you will be given the option of taking a brief survey. My name is Rueben and I would be happy to help you.
Rueben>Hello Laurence!
Rueben>How can I be of your assistance?
LAURENCE_>Yesterday, your rep gave my account a promotional rate. Can I get the savings pro-rated for the balance of this month?
Rueben>Thank you for sharing the information with me.
Rueben>I will be happy to help you with the information regarding the billing and promotion on your account.
Rueben>Before we begin, I would like to review your account, allow me a moment here.
Rueben>I have checked your account and you are subscribed to Standard Internet and Home phone services for $64.99.
Rueben>The charge for modem is $5.99.
Rueben>There is a credit balance of $15.59 on your account.
LAURENCE_>Right, but my last month's bill was more -- before the promotion. Can that be prorated?
Rueben>Yes, that is correct.
Rueben>I do understand that you are concerned about the "Partial Month" charges reflecting on your bill. Any time a service is added or removed from your account, this line will appear on your bill. Your cable bill charges for one month's service in advance. All services are therefore prepaid prior to usage. The "Partial Month" (known as a Pro Rate) covers the period that you had service in addition to your "Monthly Service" charge. If your service was just installed or you’ve recently changed your service, partial month charges may be shown on your bill. This ensures that you will only be charged for the correct number of days for your service.
Rueben>Previously the charge for phone and internet services on your account was $83.99.
Rueben>Currently you have the same services for $64.99.
Rueben>As the services were changed in between your billing cycle, there are pro-rates applied on your account for the old and new package for phone and internet services.
LAURENCE_>You say my previous rate was $83.99, but I was billed $115 -- why?
Rueben>The charge for Turbo upgrade was $10, Home Wifi was $4.95.
Rueben>The charge for Voice mail was $3.95.
LAURENCE_>The rep told me my Internet service would be the same speed -- is Turbo faster than I currently have?
Rueben>Yes, that is correct.
Rueben>The download speed for Turbo is up to 20 mbps and Standard is up to 15 mbps.
LAURENCE_>So she was incorrect when she told me it would be unchanged?

Rueben>Please give me a moment while I check that for you.

Rueben>Thank you for waiting. I really appreciate that!
Rueben>I have checked the account details and Standard Internet and Home phone package was added on your account.
Rueben>If you wish, I can add Turbo upgrade on your account.
Rueben>The charge for Turbo upgrade is $10/mo, on top of current monthly charge.
LAURENCE_>So she was mistaken?
Rueben>I have checked the order details and Turbo 15 plan was added on your account.
Rueben>With our Turbo 15 Internet plan, you get download speeds up to 15 Mbps, upload speeds up to 2 Mbps.
Rueben>Previously, you had the Turbo plan which had the same download speed as of Standard plan. However, the upload speed is 1 mbps higher than Standard Internet plan.
LAURENCE_>I'm confused -- you said I previously had Turbo at 20mbps, then that it was changed to standard at 15 and now it is Turbo 15, which is the same speed as standard?
Rueben>I apologize for the confusion.
Rueben>We have Turbo 15 and Turbo 20 plan available.
LAURENCE_>So, I now have Turbo 15, not standard -- is that correct?
Rueben>Currently you have Standard plan on your account and Turbo 15 plan was removed from your account.
Rueben>The download speed for both the plans is the same.
Rueben>However, upload speed is 1 mbps higher for Turbo 15 plan.
LAURENCE_>I see -- now both my upload and download speeds are slower than previously. What was my old uplload speed?
Rueben>With our Standard Internet plan, you get download speeds up to 15 Mbps, upload speeds up to 1 Mbps.
Rueben>With our Turbo 15 Internet plan, you get download speeds up to 15 Mbps, upload speeds up to 2 Mbps.
LAURENCE_>And with my previous plane it was 20 down and 3 up?
Rueben>The Turbo 15 plan had 15 mbps download and 2 mbps upload.
LAURENCE_>And my initil Turbo plan was 20 down and 3 up, right?
Rueben>Let me check this for you right away.
Rueben>I am sorry, but we do not have a Turbo plan with 20 mbps down and 3 mbps up.
LAURENCE_>You mentioned turbo 20 above -- is that 20 down and 2 up?
Rueben>Yes, that is correct.
LAURENCE_>And is that what I had previously?
Rueben>Previously you had Turbo 15 - 15 mbps down and 2 mbps up.
LAURENCE_>Sorry, I thought you had said I had turbo 20 before. So, my standard plan is the same download speed as before, but the upload speed is lower. Right?
Rueben>Yes, that is correct.
LAURENCE_>So she was mistaken to say it was the same.
Rueben>Let me explain the plan change order.
Rueben>Previously you had Standard Internet + Home phone package for $83.99, Turbo 15 for $10, Home Wifi for $4.95, Modem for $5.99 and Voice mail for $3.95. Currently you have Standard Internet + Home phone package for $64.99 and Modem for $5.99.
Rueben>The download speeds are not affected by the package change, however, the upload speed is lowered by 1 mbps.
LAURENCE_>I get it now -- she was correct on the download speed, but not the upload speed.
Rueben>I do apologize for this inconvenience caused to you.
LAURENCE_>No inconvenience, just confusion.
Rueben>I apologize for the confusion.
LAURENCE_>I wish your rep had been straight with me.
Rueben>I will take this as a feedback and pass this to our Management. Your feedback is very important to us, as we thrive to improve our services. This will definitely help us to deliver quality services in future.
LAURENCE_>OK.
Rueben>Do you have any further questions I can assist you with?
LAURENCE_>No.
Rueben>Again, my name is Rueben. Thank you for chatting with Time Warner Cable. We value you as a customer and are here to assist you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. If you would like to take a brief survey, please click on close and the survey will load.

ISP competition -- testing a Time Warner Cable public WiFi access site

As mentioned earlier, a welcome bit of infrastructure deployment competition seems to brewing between the telephone and cable companies. At the Mobile World Congress last week, Philips and Ericsson announced WiFi-ready streetlights and a coalition of five cable companies has formed to roll out open WiFi hotspots.

I am a Time Warner Cable (TWC) customer, so I decided to try it out. I checked in my neighborhood and found a WiFi hotspot at a school two blocks from my house. I drove over, parked on the street in front of the school and logged in using my TWC account credentials. I had a solid, five-bar connection (whatever that means).

I ran Speedtest, which showed 16 ms ping time, 40.6 mbps download and 5.06 mbps upload -- considerably faster than the service at my home.

Our phones are able to switch seamlessly between WiFi and the cellular network (see, for example, Republic Wireless). I do not want to be bothered knowing which I am using at any time -- I just want my phone to pick the best connection available given my ISP terms and the application I am running.

I've beaten up on TWC and the other ISPs for exploiting their non-competitive markets in many blog posts, so it is only fair that this post congratulate them on providing a meaningful, competitive service.

Today the five-ISP coalition lists 200,000 hotspots in their database. How many will they have in five years? Might the cable companies have outsmarted the phone companies in splitting up mobile and landline access?
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Update 4/12/2014

Comcast has revealed that they have a million public access points, with at least 800,00 of them in the homes of their broadband subscribers and, if they succeed in acquiring Time Warner, that footprint will expand significantly.

We may be witnessing a race between cable companies deploying WiFi and phone companies deploying 4G (and later 5G) infrastructure. That might lead to increased competition or, more likely, they will gerrymander access so as to limit competition (following the example of the U. S. House of Representatives).

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Update 5/29/2014

FON's public WiFi routers are gaining steam. I've had one of their dual-SSID routers for years, but never used it because there are so few in my neighborhood, but they are catching on with ISPs in other nations.

How I cut my Time Warner Cable bill by 33%

It started when I decided to get a new WiFi router. I bought one and installed it, then called my ISP, Time Warner Cable (TWC), to let them know. They told me to bring the old router to their store.

I went to the store and, after giving back the router, the very courteous representative thanked me and said "that was it" -- she was was finished with me and ready to go on to the next customer.

I almost left, but first asked her what my new monthly bill would be. She replied that it would be $110, said it had been $115 before I returned the router, thanked me again and was ready for her next customer.

But the $110 bill surprised me -- it seemed high -- so I kept the conversation going:

Me: How does that $110 break down between Internet and phone service? (I do not get cable TV).

Rep (after tapping on her keyboard): the phone is $41.84 per month.

Me: That is outrageous, I want to cancel the phone service.

Rep: I can lower your bill.

Me: OK.

Rep: (after a few more keyboard taps) Your bill is now $100, not $110.

Me: How did you do that?

Rep: I put you on a promotion.

Me: So my phone bill is now $31.84, right?

Rep: No, I lowered your Internet bill, not your phone bill, but, don't worry, the speed will remain unchanged.

Me: Then cancel the phone.

Rep: Let me try something else. (after quite a few taps on the keyboard) Now your bill is $76.37 -- $50 for the Internet, $20 for the phone and $6.37 tax.

Me: How did you do that?

Rep: I put you on a different promotion.

Me: So, after 1 year, the bill will go up to $110, right?

Rep: No, it will only go up by $5-10.

Me: Then how did it get so high after my initial promotion ended?

Rep: It goes up by $5-10 every year after a promotion ends.

Well, I am kind of embarrassed to tell you this story. I have written many blog posts about the lack of competition in the ISP market, but have been too busy and too lazy to be an active consumer. So, shame on me.

But, shame on TWC too. Their courteous rep wanted to get me out of the store without telling me I was overpaying. I am sure she was following TWC policy. Is it ethical to not tell a customer that he or she could be paying less for the same service if they asked to?

I do not recall what my initial bill was, but it had evidently jumped when my promotion ran out and then continued rising $5-10 each year thereafter. Did their cost go up by 5-10% per year? If not, are they exploiting their monopoly hold on me? (My "alternative" service is Verizon DSL at 1.5 mbps).

Well, shame on both me and TWC. I promise to be more watchful in the future, but they will not change their policy. But what would happen if every one of their 11.1 million residential high-speed data subscribers did the same thing as I did? That would be too cool!

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Update 3/7/2014

There was a long (205 comment) discussion of this post on Slashdot. The comments are of varying quality, but there were tips from ex-ISP "retention reps" and suggestions of other ways to cut your bill -- primarily through alternative phone service.

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Update 3/8/2014

I held a chat session with another TWC representative in an attempt to document this transaction and he reduced the speed of my connection. I lost. You are in a weak position when dealing with a monopoly provider of an essential service.

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Update 7/15/2014

Check out this bizarre recording of a call to a Comcast phone representative requesting termination of service. The Comcast rep makes the Time Warner Cable rep sound good and he out-panders Time Warner -- hinting at huge speed increases and price cuts. I guess this is what we can expect from a merged TWC/Comcast. These guys make door-to-door magazine salesmen look good.

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Update 7/18/2014

A senior vice president at Comcast publicly apologized for the call, stating:

We are very embarrassed by the way our employee spoke with Mr. Block and Ms. Belmont and are contacting them to personally apologize. The way in which our representative communicated with them is unacceptable and not consistent with how we train our customer service representatives. We are investigating this situation and will take quick action. While the overwhelming majority of our employees work very hard to do the right thing every day, we are using this very unfortunate experience to reinforce how important it is to always treat our customers with the utmost respect.

Great -- except that Lauren Bruce, a former Comcast customer account executive says the customer service rep in the recording was not going rogue, but adhering to company policy. Bruce says the Comcast rep in the recording was trying to upsell the caller and also complete a mandatory questionnaire they had for each call. She says it was sometimes easier to make up answers than get them out of irate customers and that the customer rep in this call is being made a scapegoat.

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Update 8/7/2014

Here is a copy of the Comcast retention representative handbook -- the call rating system encourages them to be persistent and -- "take control, ask targeted questions, make an offer", etc. I'd hate to have their job -- it's like working on an electronics assembly line.

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Update 8/11/2014

Comcast COO Dave Watson posted a note on a company blog saying the employee in the above retention call ”did a lot of what we trained him and paid him — and thousands of other Retention agents — to do ... He tried to save a customer." It's nice to see Comcast assume responsibility -- let's hope they revise their policy and incentive system.