Jon Brodkin

The Washington state attorney general's $100 million lawsuit against Comcast uses a sales script and transcripts of chats with customers to make the case that Comcast deceived subscribers when marketing what the state calls "near-worthless" service plans. Since January 2011, Comcast made $73 million selling Service Protection Plans (SPP) for up to $5 a month to 500,000 customers in Washington. But the service plans were sold to customers under false pretenses, with Comcast describing the plans as being far more comprehensive and useful than they were, Attorney General Bob Ferguson alleged.

One of Ferguson's key pieces of evidence is a sales script that Comcast used until June 2016. (Comcast recently made changes to address the attorney general's complaints.) Though Comcast service plans had various limitations and purportedly "covered" certain services that were actually available for free, the "sales scripts did not include any reference to limitations on the SPP's coverage," the AG's lawsuit said. "Nor did Comcast's training manuals teach its employees to disclose the limitations to Washington consumers."

Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson announced a $100 million consumer protection lawsuit against Comcast, alleging that the nation's biggest cable company "engag[ed] in a pattern of deceptive practices constituting more than 1.8 million individual violations of the Washington Consumer Protection Act." Comcast's conduct affected about 500,000 customers who purchased service protection plans in Washington, Ferguson said. State officials filed the lawsuit in King County Superior Court, seeking refunds for consumers.

The "lawsuit accuses Comcast of misleading 500,000 Washington consumers and deceiving them into paying at least $73 million in subscription fees over the last five years for a near-worthless 'protection plan' without disclosing its significant limitations," the state AG's announcement said. "Customers who sign up for Comcast’s Service Protection Plan pay a $4.99 monthly fee ostensibly to avoid being charged if a Comcast technician visits their home to fix an issue covered by the plan." Washington said it alleges 1.8 million violations because Comcast made false claims regarding the scope of its service protection plans to 700,000 customers, and "deceptively represented the scope of its Customer Guarantee to over 1.17 million Washington consumers." Comcast allegedly led customers to believe that they needed to buy service protection plans to get services that were actually covered for free by the "Customer Guarantee."

Google Fiber started examining Nashville (TN) for a possible deployment more than two and a half years ago, it confirmed plans to build in January 2015, and it started serving a few apartment and condominium buildings in the city in April of 2016. But further progress is being slowed in part by difficulties obtaining access to utility poles, and legislation designed to solve the problem is being resisted by incumbents AT&T and Comcast.

Google Fiber needs access to thousands of telephone poles and must cooperate with the area's other Internet providers to install their wires. Most of the poles are owned by Nashville Electric Service, the local utility, while AT&T is the second biggest owner of utility poles in the city. When Google notifies the owner that it needs access to a pole, the owner "will then notify each telecom company that it needs to send a crew to the pole—one after another—to move their equipment and accommodate the new party," Nashville Scene wrote. "The process can take months, even if contractually mandated time frames are followed. Google Fiber officials and operatives working on their behalf suggest that’s not always the case."

As Verizon plans a fiber expansion in Boston (MA), CEO Lowell McAdam said the company is talking to other cities about potentially building fiber networks. Verizon stopped expanding its FiOS fiber-to-the-home Internet, TV, and phone service several years ago, making it a surprise when in April the company announced plans to replace its copper network in Boston with fiber.

McAdam said, "We are talking to other cities about similar partnerships." Verizon's fiber expansion plans are as much about improving backhaul to its more profitable mobile network as they are about bringing wired Internet to people's homes. "We will create a single fiber-optic network platform capable of supporting wireless and wireline technologies and multiple products," McAdam said. When asked which cities Verizon might build fiber in, McAdam said, "We have a stronger position in the Washington to Boston corridor" and "can move to market more quickly" there. But the geographical footprint isn't a "boundary," McAdam said, pointing to San Francisco (CA), where Verizon doesn't offer fiber-to-the-home service but deployed fiber and small cells to boost its wireless coverage for the Super Bowl.

Netflix and Comcast will be available on the same cable box later in 2016, but Netflix video will still count against Comcast data caps. The deal raised questions about whether Netflix would be exempt from Comcast data caps, but it has already been decided. A Comcast spokesperson answered "yes" when asked if Netflix will continue counting against data caps after being integrated into Comcast cable boxes. "All data that flows over the public Internet (which includes Netflix) counts toward a customer’s monthly data usage," Comcast said.

Comcast imposes 1TB monthly caps in portions of its territory, with overage fees ranging from $10 to $200 a month unless customers pay an extra $50 for unlimited data. Comcast and Netflix have had a rocky relationship, with some of their squabbles centering on data caps and data cap exemptions (also known as zero-rating). In 2012, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings accused Comcast of "no longer following net neutrality principles" when the cable company exempted its Xfinity on-demand video for the Xbox 360 from data caps, while counting Netflix, HBO, and Hulu usage against the cap. In 2014, Netflix and Comcast fought over whether Netflix should have to pay to send video traffic directly into Comcast's network. Netflix paid up.

Verizon Wireless customers who have held on to unlimited data plans and use significantly more than 100GB a month will be disconnected from the network on August 31 unless they agree to move to limited data packages that require payment of overage fees. Verizon stopped offering unlimited data to new smartphone customers a few years ago, but some customers have been able to hang on to the old plans instead of switching to ones with monthly data limits. Verizon has tried to convert the holdouts by raising the price $20 a month and occasionally throttling heavy users but stopped that practice after net neutrality rules took effect. Now Verizon is implementing a formal policy for disconnecting the heaviest users.

Verizon FiOS customers using one of the company's older routers are being told they must pay a new monthly "maintenance charge" of $2.80 to cover the cost of supporting the apparently outdated equipment. Customers also have the option of buying one of the company's newer routers, though some report being able to convince Verizon to give them a new one for free.

"Our records indicate that you have an older model router that is being discontinued," says an e-mail to customers. "If you do plan to keep using your current router, we will begin billing, on 9.29.16, a monthly Router Maintenance Charge of $2.80 (plus taxes), to ensure we deliver the best support." Verizon confirmed the change, saying that the notice was sent to customers using the BHR1 and BHR2 routers. "Many of these routers have been in use for nearly ten years and have required more frequent repairs, so we’re trying to reduce that maintenance load and expense," Verizon said.

The Federal Communications Commission is trying once again to limit the prices prisoners and their families pay for phone calls, proposing a new, higher set of caps in response to the commission's latest court loss. A March 2016 federal appeals court ruling stayed new rate caps of 11¢ to 22¢ per minute on both interstate and intrastate calls from prisons. The stay remains in place while appeals from prison phone companies are considered, but FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler and Commissioner Mignon Clyburn recently proposed new caps of 13¢ to 31¢ per minute in an apparent attempt to satisfy prison phone companies and the courts.

Prison phone companies Global Tel*Link (GTL) and Securus Technologies had argued that the FCC's limits fell short of what the companies are contractually obligated to pay in "site commissions" to correctional facilities. The new Chairman Wheeler and Commissioner Clyburn proposal still wouldn't ban the commissions or limit what prisons can charge companies for site access. However, they say that the caps of 13¢ to 31¢ per minute account "for the possibility that jails and prisons bear legitimate costs in providing access to ICS [inmate calling services]." The FCC will vote on this proposal at its August 4 meeting.

Comcast is getting ready to bid on spectrum as it prepares a move into the mobile broadband business. Bidding under the name "CC Wireless Investment, LLC," Comcast submitted its application a few months ago and is now one of 62 qualified bidders announced by the Federal Communications Commission on July 15. These bidders have submitted down payments and met all the necessary requirements to participate in the auction, which is shifting 600MHz airwaves from TV broadcasters to wireless carriers. Bidding is scheduled to begin on August 16.

Comcast has said it will only buy spectrum if the price is right, but there are ample signs that it is planning a mobile data service. Comcast has activated a Mobile Virtual Network Operator agreement with Verizon Wireless that will let Comcast resell the carrier's service, and it has created a new mobile division, Multichannel News reported. Comcast has also been developing a large network of Wi-Fi hotspots, in part by turning its cable Internet customers' home modems into hotspots.

Sens John Thune (R-SD) and Ed Markey (D-MA) are urging the mobile phone industry to fight robocalls and texts by creating a database of phone numbers that have been reassigned from one customer to another. Reassigned numbers are one of the major contributors to unwanted calls and texts, and carriers haven't done enough to fight the problem, said Sens Thune and Markey. The lawmakers wrote a letter to CEO Meredith Attwell Baker of CTIA–The Wireless Association, a lobby group that represents AT&T, Verizon Wireless, T-Mobile USA, Sprint, and other mobile carriers. Sens Thune and Markey "believe wireless carriers may have an opportunity to provide consumers and businesses more needed relief by establishing a reassigned numbers database, containing a list of cell phone numbers that have changed ownership," they wrote. "Periodically, consumers receive unwanted robocalls and robotexts because the previous holder of the phone number provided consent. Not only are robocalls and robotexts to reassigned numbers a nuisance to consumers, but they also create liabilities for calling parties."

Sens Thune and Markey asked the CTIA to provide information on how wireless companies could compile reassigned numbers in a database and how they could provide access to the database so that callers (often telemarketers) can determine whether a number is still assigned to the original owner. The senators also asked whether the cost of the database can be covered by charging a fee to callers.