New York state’s attorney general says Time Warner Cable misleads consumers about its Internet speeds

The ink is barely dry on Charter's massive acquisition of Time Warner Cable but New York's attorney general is wasting no time pressing the firm on customer complaints about their Internet service. Thousands of Time Warner Cable's customers have written in to the attorney general's office saying they aren't getting the download speeds they paid for as part of an ongoing investigation by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman into Internet providers' advertised speeds. And on June 8, Schneiderman sent a letter to Charter calling for the cable company to "clean up Time Warner Cable's act" in the wake of the acquisition.

Calling TWC's performance "abysmal" compared with other Internet providers, the letter sent by Schneiderman's office to Charter says TWC's customers have been subjected to slow-loading movies and websites while online video games stutter and lag. "In advertisement after advertisement, Time Warner Cable promised a 'blazing fast,' 'super-reliable' Internet connection," the letter reads. "Yet it appears that the company has been failing to take adequate or necessary steps to keep pace with the demand of Time Warner Cable customers. …" "What we have seen in our investigation so far suggests that Time Warner Cable has earned the miserable reputation it enjoys among consumers," the letter reads. "Overcoming this history will require more than a name change; it will require a fundamental revolution in how Time Warner Cable does business and treats its customers." The letter also claims that Time Warner Cable has effectively misled some of its customers by giving them network equipment that can't reach customers' promised speeds and by "advertising its Wi-Fi in ways that defy the technology’s technical capabilities." Leading Schneiderman's probe into advertised Internet speeds is Tim Wu, the former Columbia University law professor who coined the term "net neutrality".