Hopefully at least one person will benefit from today's story. Maybe more.
Like many retirees, my parents travel for months at a time. When they do, they redirect their US Mail to me. I open it, dial their cell phone and tell them which bills have arrived and for how much. They pay the bills over the web. This system works pretty well.
But not always.
Best Effort
As I was going through my parents redirected mail recently, I found a bill payment to Comcast. That's right - a bill payment TO Comcast. Not from my parents but from one Mary Hagan of Bensalem PA.
Why would Mary Hagan's payment to Comcast end up in my parent's mailbox? Her payment was addressed to Box 3005 in Southeastern, PA - so the payment went in exactly the opposite direction that it should have - northeast instead of southwest - ending roughly 50 miles off.
Could she have made a mistake writing the Comcast address? Nope. She used the Comcast-provided payment coupon with its preprinted address - which showed through the appropriate opening in the Comcast-provided envelope.
Ok, so USPS made a mistake. Mistakes happen. But USPS then forwarded the mail to me in Potomac, Maryland. Huh?
The Post Office uses barcodes to expedite routing. But it wasn't an error in creating the barcode because Comcast preprints their own barcode on their payment coupon. So the Post Office had to misroute the correctly-barcoded envelope twice and maybe even more as it went through several post offices from PA to MD by way of NJ.
So here I was with some Comcast customer's bill payment in hand. My first thought was to put it back in the mail. (As Jon Stewart recently said about George Bush's latest plan for Iraq, "Hey, everyone deserves a seventh chance.")
But then I took a closer look at the due date and saw that it had already passed (USPS forwarding takes time to get wrong) so even if I sent it back the day I received it, late charges would still be due.
I also considered calling Comcast but decided against it. Comcast has never been one to talk with you about other customer's accounts (rightfully so).
Dropping it in the garbage and letting the customer take the hit of the late fee seemed pretty reasonable at that point. Was it worth my time and effort to send it back to Mary so she'd have evidence to tell Comcast that it wasn't her fault it was late? Would Comcast even accept that excuse?
Around here, Comcast's late fee is $4/month. Nope, not worth mailing it back to Mary. I did however call her up - whitepages.com yielded her phone number readily enough. I figured I'd suggest she try to get the late fee waived - perhaps they would if she could only get Comcast to look at my blog! And I also wanted to ask her a few other questions - such as whether it had ever happened before.
So I called her number and ... well, whoever answered the phone gave me a very chilly reception. I guess he figured I was a solicitor or pollster offering "free money" or something that sounded close to it. I don't blame him.
Anyway, I tried. If anyone reads this who knows Mary (unlikely) or lives near Bensalem (a bit less unlikely) - perhaps you could let her know that she should request Comcast waive her late fee (I already know the Post Office won't cover it) since it wasn't her fault - or at worst, find a way to pay it without relying on the Post Office in the future.
No, I'm not suggesting using Comcast's offer to extract funds directly from one's checking account. As I've said before, Comcast isn't trustworthy enough for that. (See Automatic Billing - Convenience That Will Cost You.) But online billpay from a bank or a service like Quicken or Money sounds much more reliable.
Better yet, since I know there are Comcast officials who read this blog, perhaps they could take it upon themselves to waive Mary's late fee - or track down the Comcast official in Mary's region who can do so.
PS: Why did I say earlier that I know the Post Office won't cover it? Because first class mail is a best effort service. Now where have I heard that phrase before?!
Sunday, February 18, 2007
Sunday, February 11, 2007
Quarterly Review
As I mentioned earlier, the county's MFP committee was scheduled to review the performance of the cable franchises.
I was unable to attend so I plowed through the packet - 42 pages of the same stuff as usual. I already mentioned in my all-too-verbose report (Rubberstamp This) from last week that Comcast was being fined. Some new statistics were mentioned but in the interest of brevity, I'll merely mention that Comcast failed to turn in all the 4th quarter data so no one can even tell whether or not they're in compliance. However Comcast finally did turn in data (late!) for the 3rd quarter showing it was out of compliance in all customer service areas. Most notable is the requirement to repair within 24 hours - Comcast was below the 95% level required by the franchise.
RCN turned in its 4th quarter data on time and was in compliance. It received a warning for being out of compliance in the 3rd quarter. (In contrast, Comcast has been out of compliance long enough to start being assessed fines. See my earlier report for more detail.)
Some positive news: Complaints about Comcast to the Cable Office were down 44% in the 4th quarter with, ahem, only 282 complaints. In contrast RCN's complaint level nearly doubled in the 4th quarter. Of course, the absolute figures are significant - Comcast had 282 complaints, RCN 16. The largest number of Comcast complaints were service-related. RCN billing-related.
Construction
In the 4th quarter, county inspectors reported 2298 construction violations in the Comcast cable plant. (Construction violations include such things as improper grounding, missing guy wires, missing pedestal covers, and exposed temporary underground cables in rights-of-way. Note that the entire plant is not inspected in each quarter.) At the end of the year, 1447 remained unfixed. That's an astounding 63%.
RCN: 526 construction violations. For the entire year, 2114 remain unfixed. If Comcast was astounding at 63% remaining unfixed for the year, RCN is super-astounding at 87%. Congratulations you two!
I'll Stick With Analog, Thank You
Earlier, I mocked a Comcast representative for suggesting that pixelation problems in the digital channels were not easily solvable. People are still complaining about these. And although the complaint levels have gone down, the county's outside consultant, Columbia Telecommunications Corp, says that this so-called tiling remains an ongoing problem. CTC asserts that these complaints are issues in the local wiring and have recommended that Comcast replace customer drops as each is converted from analog to digital. If problems remain, CTC recommends Comcast send technicians that are trained to diagnose and fix such problems.
Bottom line: The problems are diagnosable. Are fixable. (But here's the rub...) With trained technicians.
Oh, and if you don't complain, don't expect your problems to clear up.
I was unable to attend so I plowed through the packet - 42 pages of the same stuff as usual. I already mentioned in my all-too-verbose report (Rubberstamp This) from last week that Comcast was being fined. Some new statistics were mentioned but in the interest of brevity, I'll merely mention that Comcast failed to turn in all the 4th quarter data so no one can even tell whether or not they're in compliance. However Comcast finally did turn in data (late!) for the 3rd quarter showing it was out of compliance in all customer service areas. Most notable is the requirement to repair within 24 hours - Comcast was below the 95% level required by the franchise.
RCN turned in its 4th quarter data on time and was in compliance. It received a warning for being out of compliance in the 3rd quarter. (In contrast, Comcast has been out of compliance long enough to start being assessed fines. See my earlier report for more detail.)
Some positive news: Complaints about Comcast to the Cable Office were down 44% in the 4th quarter with, ahem, only 282 complaints. In contrast RCN's complaint level nearly doubled in the 4th quarter. Of course, the absolute figures are significant - Comcast had 282 complaints, RCN 16. The largest number of Comcast complaints were service-related. RCN billing-related.
Construction
In the 4th quarter, county inspectors reported 2298 construction violations in the Comcast cable plant. (Construction violations include such things as improper grounding, missing guy wires, missing pedestal covers, and exposed temporary underground cables in rights-of-way. Note that the entire plant is not inspected in each quarter.) At the end of the year, 1447 remained unfixed. That's an astounding 63%.
RCN: 526 construction violations. For the entire year, 2114 remain unfixed. If Comcast was astounding at 63% remaining unfixed for the year, RCN is super-astounding at 87%. Congratulations you two!
I'll Stick With Analog, Thank You
Earlier, I mocked a Comcast representative for suggesting that pixelation problems in the digital channels were not easily solvable. People are still complaining about these. And although the complaint levels have gone down, the county's outside consultant, Columbia Telecommunications Corp, says that this so-called tiling remains an ongoing problem. CTC asserts that these complaints are issues in the local wiring and have recommended that Comcast replace customer drops as each is converted from analog to digital. If problems remain, CTC recommends Comcast send technicians that are trained to diagnose and fix such problems.
Bottom line: The problems are diagnosable. Are fixable. (But here's the rub...) With trained technicians.
Oh, and if you don't complain, don't expect your problems to clear up.
The New Blogger
This is a test of Google's new blogging software. That's all it is. This is the last sentence in the test.
Monday, January 29, 2007
Rubberstamp This
This past Wednesday (Jan 24, 2007), I attended a meeting of the Cable and Communications Advisory Committee (CCAC) for Montgomery County, Maryland. This is a meeting of citizens who volunteer to meet once a month to discuss cable-related issues and advise the County Executive.
As I've said before, it's difficult to tell whether the committee has an impact any more. As long as I've been writing this blog, I've encountered nothing to justify its existence. Despite this, 14 people felt motivated enough to answer the call to fill four open seats on the committee. Their term starts in November of ... 2006. A Cable Office official speculated the seats might be filled by April - in other words, 6 months late.
Note that some citizens apply for many committees simultaneously even though they may only serve on one committee at a time. I guess people figure that it's nice to be on a committee, any committee. So it's unclear which if any applicants are really interested in cable issues and which are merely tired of bitching that Verizon isn't on their street yet. The committee complained about this too and asked the Cable Office if the Executive had standards that could be imposed to winnow down the list of applicants. The Cable Office said no. Ergo, 14 full interviews coming up.
You can tell that applicants don't have a clue when they've never even bothered to attend a meeting before applying. One applicant joined me in attending the meeting (hi Art!) and said he found it worthwhile. I do agree that it's worthwhile to attend as a guest - I learn a fair amount from the briefings given monthly by officials such as the MC Cable Administrator. However, it shouldn't require a committee to receive these briefings. News should be promptly made public via the web.
This very idea - making news available promptly - was made, albeit indirectly, several times during the meeting. For instance, the committee asked if the Cable Office could issue press releases when issuing fines against franchisees. Donna Keating, acting Cable Administrator, said that the Cable Office doesn't issue press releases. Actually, the Cable Office does make a fair amount of information available online - although I'd like to see more. But lacking is any kind of notification mechanism to let citizens know when information has been made available. I've been asking the Cable Office for this for 6 years. Even a simple email list would be better than what we have now (i.e., nothing).
This is all rather sad for a committee with Communications in its name. As far as I know, the committee itself doesn't even have a mail list. Nor are there public archives of the meetings in either video or written form. I went so far as to create a mail list six years ago as a yahoo group, started posting the committee minutes and other documents to it, and the committee used it for a year until the Cable Office decided that they wanted direct control. That was the end of it. The Cable Office assured me that the county's IT department would provide an official mail list and webspace. Over the years, the committee occasionally queried Alisoun Moore, MC CIO, on the status of that request. No response was ever heard. The latest news is that Alisoun has stepped down and the county is in search of a new CIO. Anyone interested? Perhaps someone who knows about mail lists? RSS? Web pages? Videos? Communication? It's not that hard, is it?
Budget
Perhaps the only activity with the potential for real work that regularly faces the committee is the opportunity to weigh in on the cable budget. The cable budget is roughly $15 million. This supports the PEG channels, the Cable Office, the inspectors, the lawyers and the county network ("I-Net" or "institutional network"). The majority of the money for this comes from the franchise fees paid by cable TV customers.
Amy Wilson of the Cable Office gave the briefing on the budget. Briefing is an apt word because it was all too brief. She provided no new numbers but rather the old estimates from last year and asked for comments before they were sent back to Executive Leggett and on to the Council. But her deadline was February 5, meaning 7 business days. The committee has never been able to turn things around so quickly - so after making a show of staring at the spreadsheets for a minute and plaintively asking for guidance from the Cable Office (which refused), the committee agreed to rubberstamp the existing numbers without debate and provide a letter supporting the old figures in the budget - figures which presumably won't be the ones issued by the Executive. (The budget subcommittee nominally left the door open for last minute observations in the remaining few days but I don't see that happening.) Bottom line: Nominal budgetary support without justification. Or in more familiar terms: Taxation without (meaningful) representation.
Amy pointed out that the Executive asked the Cable Office for two budgets: one capable of sustaining existing operations and a version with a 5% cut. The Cable Office didn't share where the 5% might come from nor did the committee ask.
Personnel Changes
Besides a new CIO, there are a few other changes in personnel worth mentioning: Jane Lawton, MC Cable Administrator is off to Annapolis again as a Delegate for District 18. She is expected back mid-April. In her stead as Acting Cable Administrator is Donna Keating who normally takes care of the G (Government) of the PEG channels.
Suzanne Weiss is the new chair of the CCAC. Suzanne appears to be continuing the same procedures created by outgoing chair Shep Bostin. The most unfortunate of these is to restrict public questions until the end of the meeting - when context has been lost, when visiting officials have left, and committee members are half out the door as well. Suzanne officially ended the committee's secretarial position. I suppose it was a formality but one that bears mentioning because the Cable Office is in charge of recording the committee minutes, a practice which I think inappropriate given that the committee sometimes has very different opinions than those of the Cable Office about what is important and what is not.
Comcast has a new VP of government affairs. I don't know the name but this person will be responsible for both Montgomery and Frederick. Is the Frederick cable system (which includes the old Adelphia franchise) in good shape? What's the regulatory environment there - does anyone know?
The new Comcast VP asked to attend the next CCAC meeting. Years ago, it used to be common for Comcast and RCN VPs to attend CCAC meetings and give status reports and take questions. I can only assume that the representatives realized that it didn't matter whether or not they came - reporters didn't come, the committee had no power, and the meetings frequently became ugly venting sessions by the members - so why bother? Anyone want to participate in a pool for the number of meetings the new Comcast VP attends before deciding Wednesday evenings are better spent elsewhere? (PS: RCN reps haven't shown up for a long time. And Verizon reps have yet to show up.)
Finally, Sonya Healey has moved on from her position as the council staffmember responsible for cable matters. I'm sorry to see Sonya leave as she did an excellent job. She prepared the council briefing packets - very thorough and well written. She was happy to talk or email whenever citizens wanted and provide whatever they requested. And she regularly emailed briefing packets and agenda in advance, providing alerts for items of significance that were upcoming. She was the ideal of a county employee. I understand Sonya's new position is chief of staff for Councilmember Ervin. Ervin in turn worked in a similar position herself prior to winning election to the Council so perhaps Sonya is following in her footsteps. Sounds good to me!
Rate Increases
All of the franchisees (Verizon, Comcast, and RCN) have recently announced price hikes in their TV rates. This seemed to surprise committee members: Wasn't competition supposed to hold down rates? However their analysis was superficial. There are all sorts of significant factors that belie the rates themselves. The fact is that despite rate increases that exceed CPI increases and a lack of a la carte channels, there are still good choices out there for the consumer willing to hunt them down. For instance, Verizon's new rates are still significantly below Comcast's. Verizon offers a broader selection of channels and HD programming as well. Satellite is also very competitive. And one poster to the dslreports forum claims that Comcast is offering HBO free for the year. (Send me email or post a note here, if you are also able to get free HBO merely by asking.)
Comcast appears to be resting on its laurels, rotted as they are, and enjoying the slow speed of Verizon's deployment as well as the resistance of consumers to try satellite, and the confusion of the marketplace, particularly with respect to higher tiers such as HD (where providers make a huge profit). A good article about the complexities of the local marketplace appeared in this week's Washington Post in which Howard Bryant and Rob Pegoraro described the difficulties and disappointments of the choices. I mentioned recently how the (ostensibly) technically superior service of Verizon could still be unacceptable - giving my own case as an example.
Apart from complaints about the inability to get Verizon TV (only available to 75000 homes in MC so far), the committee spent more of its time grousing about Comcast. Complaints included poor analog picture quality, poor audio quality, poor HD quality, and so on. Cable Office staffer Marjorie Williams described how disappointed she was in her own Comcast service, specifically pointing out that on some channels, she could detect little difference between digital and analog quality. Verizon TV, on the other hand, seems to be delivering on quality. Everyone to whom I've spoken is quite happy with what they're seeing. Margie went on to say that the early complaints received by the office about Verizon were entirely about billing. No service complaints and no installation complaints. (If you're reading this and have complaints that aren't being resolved by Verizon, please file them with the county.) Complaints are understandable with a brand new service. We won't know the true extent of them until the council's MFP review at the end of Q1. (Note: The Q4 review will be Feb 5, 2007.)
Meanwhile, Comcast is being fined again by the county for violations of the customer service provisions of the franchise related to telephone answering time in the 4th quarter of 2006. The new fine is roughly $12K. As one member observed, this is well below the cost of hiring another person to answer phones so it's not surprising that Comcast would gladly pay the fine rather than avoid it by increasing staff.
Consumer Rights Brochure
I missed the last two committee meetings and so was surprised to see the committee continuing to flagellate itself over the cable consumer rights brochure. To recap, this is a one-page brochure that I drafted years ago and made the mistake of believing the committee could agree to publish with minimal additional work. Since then, the brochure proceeds to come up at each meeting: yet a new draft is shown, members recommend changes, ask what the hell it is or what it means, some condemn it as incomprehensible, and discuss yet again how it should be distributed. And the committee has also been jerked around by the county lawyers who evidentally feel there is something illegal or immoral about the whole thing. This month the committee reported being rebuffed by a representative of the Office of Consumer Protection which publishes a lot of similar brochures and, when asked, declined to help instead suggesting that the committee take responsibility itself.
CCAC Vice-Chair Joy Ragsdale observed that one Don Libes had made a version of the brochure complete with county logo available on a website which would lead to confusion between it and the official one. I doubt that - not only is much of the text different but so is the title! In any case, it's surely a moot point. The latest move by the committee was to turn the whole thing over to the Cable Office - which surely means a final death - because the Cable Office always wanted to kill the brochure. There is no one in the Cable Office who has a burning desired to invest any effort in the brochure.
The committee didn't ask for my opinion on any of these issues - even though I was sitting right there as they continued to throw my name around. Note: Since 2006, members of the public have not been allowed to speak unless specifically called on by the committee. If they had, I would've suggested they drop the whole thing and return to the useful parts of the meeting - the briefings by the Cable Office and other visiting officials.
PEGs
Richard Turner, Executive Director of Montgomery Community Television, gave a status report about the PEG channels. Alas, he did not provide an update on MCT so my understanding of what's going on there is limited to what appeared in the draft minutes of the previous committee minutes. To wit:
If there is further interest in the PEGs, I'd like to cover what they're doing (and why they need so much money!) to do it. Let me know if you'd like to read more about the PEGs. And tell me which PEG shows you watch. Thanks!
As I've said before, it's difficult to tell whether the committee has an impact any more. As long as I've been writing this blog, I've encountered nothing to justify its existence. Despite this, 14 people felt motivated enough to answer the call to fill four open seats on the committee. Their term starts in November of ... 2006. A Cable Office official speculated the seats might be filled by April - in other words, 6 months late.
Note that some citizens apply for many committees simultaneously even though they may only serve on one committee at a time. I guess people figure that it's nice to be on a committee, any committee. So it's unclear which if any applicants are really interested in cable issues and which are merely tired of bitching that Verizon isn't on their street yet. The committee complained about this too and asked the Cable Office if the Executive had standards that could be imposed to winnow down the list of applicants. The Cable Office said no. Ergo, 14 full interviews coming up.
You can tell that applicants don't have a clue when they've never even bothered to attend a meeting before applying. One applicant joined me in attending the meeting (hi Art!) and said he found it worthwhile. I do agree that it's worthwhile to attend as a guest - I learn a fair amount from the briefings given monthly by officials such as the MC Cable Administrator. However, it shouldn't require a committee to receive these briefings. News should be promptly made public via the web.
This very idea - making news available promptly - was made, albeit indirectly, several times during the meeting. For instance, the committee asked if the Cable Office could issue press releases when issuing fines against franchisees. Donna Keating, acting Cable Administrator, said that the Cable Office doesn't issue press releases. Actually, the Cable Office does make a fair amount of information available online - although I'd like to see more. But lacking is any kind of notification mechanism to let citizens know when information has been made available. I've been asking the Cable Office for this for 6 years. Even a simple email list would be better than what we have now (i.e., nothing).
This is all rather sad for a committee with Communications in its name. As far as I know, the committee itself doesn't even have a mail list. Nor are there public archives of the meetings in either video or written form. I went so far as to create a mail list six years ago as a yahoo group, started posting the committee minutes and other documents to it, and the committee used it for a year until the Cable Office decided that they wanted direct control. That was the end of it. The Cable Office assured me that the county's IT department would provide an official mail list and webspace. Over the years, the committee occasionally queried Alisoun Moore, MC CIO, on the status of that request. No response was ever heard. The latest news is that Alisoun has stepped down and the county is in search of a new CIO. Anyone interested? Perhaps someone who knows about mail lists? RSS? Web pages? Videos? Communication? It's not that hard, is it?
Budget
Perhaps the only activity with the potential for real work that regularly faces the committee is the opportunity to weigh in on the cable budget. The cable budget is roughly $15 million. This supports the PEG channels, the Cable Office, the inspectors, the lawyers and the county network ("I-Net" or "institutional network"). The majority of the money for this comes from the franchise fees paid by cable TV customers.
Amy Wilson of the Cable Office gave the briefing on the budget. Briefing is an apt word because it was all too brief. She provided no new numbers but rather the old estimates from last year and asked for comments before they were sent back to Executive Leggett and on to the Council. But her deadline was February 5, meaning 7 business days. The committee has never been able to turn things around so quickly - so after making a show of staring at the spreadsheets for a minute and plaintively asking for guidance from the Cable Office (which refused), the committee agreed to rubberstamp the existing numbers without debate and provide a letter supporting the old figures in the budget - figures which presumably won't be the ones issued by the Executive. (The budget subcommittee nominally left the door open for last minute observations in the remaining few days but I don't see that happening.) Bottom line: Nominal budgetary support without justification. Or in more familiar terms: Taxation without (meaningful) representation.
Amy pointed out that the Executive asked the Cable Office for two budgets: one capable of sustaining existing operations and a version with a 5% cut. The Cable Office didn't share where the 5% might come from nor did the committee ask.
Personnel Changes
Besides a new CIO, there are a few other changes in personnel worth mentioning: Jane Lawton, MC Cable Administrator is off to Annapolis again as a Delegate for District 18. She is expected back mid-April. In her stead as Acting Cable Administrator is Donna Keating who normally takes care of the G (Government) of the PEG channels.
Suzanne Weiss is the new chair of the CCAC. Suzanne appears to be continuing the same procedures created by outgoing chair Shep Bostin. The most unfortunate of these is to restrict public questions until the end of the meeting - when context has been lost, when visiting officials have left, and committee members are half out the door as well. Suzanne officially ended the committee's secretarial position. I suppose it was a formality but one that bears mentioning because the Cable Office is in charge of recording the committee minutes, a practice which I think inappropriate given that the committee sometimes has very different opinions than those of the Cable Office about what is important and what is not.
Comcast has a new VP of government affairs. I don't know the name but this person will be responsible for both Montgomery and Frederick. Is the Frederick cable system (which includes the old Adelphia franchise) in good shape? What's the regulatory environment there - does anyone know?
The new Comcast VP asked to attend the next CCAC meeting. Years ago, it used to be common for Comcast and RCN VPs to attend CCAC meetings and give status reports and take questions. I can only assume that the representatives realized that it didn't matter whether or not they came - reporters didn't come, the committee had no power, and the meetings frequently became ugly venting sessions by the members - so why bother? Anyone want to participate in a pool for the number of meetings the new Comcast VP attends before deciding Wednesday evenings are better spent elsewhere? (PS: RCN reps haven't shown up for a long time. And Verizon reps have yet to show up.)
Finally, Sonya Healey has moved on from her position as the council staffmember responsible for cable matters. I'm sorry to see Sonya leave as she did an excellent job. She prepared the council briefing packets - very thorough and well written. She was happy to talk or email whenever citizens wanted and provide whatever they requested. And she regularly emailed briefing packets and agenda in advance, providing alerts for items of significance that were upcoming. She was the ideal of a county employee. I understand Sonya's new position is chief of staff for Councilmember Ervin. Ervin in turn worked in a similar position herself prior to winning election to the Council so perhaps Sonya is following in her footsteps. Sounds good to me!
Rate Increases
All of the franchisees (Verizon, Comcast, and RCN) have recently announced price hikes in their TV rates. This seemed to surprise committee members: Wasn't competition supposed to hold down rates? However their analysis was superficial. There are all sorts of significant factors that belie the rates themselves. The fact is that despite rate increases that exceed CPI increases and a lack of a la carte channels, there are still good choices out there for the consumer willing to hunt them down. For instance, Verizon's new rates are still significantly below Comcast's. Verizon offers a broader selection of channels and HD programming as well. Satellite is also very competitive. And one poster to the dslreports forum claims that Comcast is offering HBO free for the year. (Send me email or post a note here, if you are also able to get free HBO merely by asking.)
Comcast appears to be resting on its laurels, rotted as they are, and enjoying the slow speed of Verizon's deployment as well as the resistance of consumers to try satellite, and the confusion of the marketplace, particularly with respect to higher tiers such as HD (where providers make a huge profit). A good article about the complexities of the local marketplace appeared in this week's Washington Post in which Howard Bryant and Rob Pegoraro described the difficulties and disappointments of the choices. I mentioned recently how the (ostensibly) technically superior service of Verizon could still be unacceptable - giving my own case as an example.
Apart from complaints about the inability to get Verizon TV (only available to 75000 homes in MC so far), the committee spent more of its time grousing about Comcast. Complaints included poor analog picture quality, poor audio quality, poor HD quality, and so on. Cable Office staffer Marjorie Williams described how disappointed she was in her own Comcast service, specifically pointing out that on some channels, she could detect little difference between digital and analog quality. Verizon TV, on the other hand, seems to be delivering on quality. Everyone to whom I've spoken is quite happy with what they're seeing. Margie went on to say that the early complaints received by the office about Verizon were entirely about billing. No service complaints and no installation complaints. (If you're reading this and have complaints that aren't being resolved by Verizon, please file them with the county.) Complaints are understandable with a brand new service. We won't know the true extent of them until the council's MFP review at the end of Q1. (Note: The Q4 review will be Feb 5, 2007.)
Meanwhile, Comcast is being fined again by the county for violations of the customer service provisions of the franchise related to telephone answering time in the 4th quarter of 2006. The new fine is roughly $12K. As one member observed, this is well below the cost of hiring another person to answer phones so it's not surprising that Comcast would gladly pay the fine rather than avoid it by increasing staff.
Consumer Rights Brochure
I missed the last two committee meetings and so was surprised to see the committee continuing to flagellate itself over the cable consumer rights brochure. To recap, this is a one-page brochure that I drafted years ago and made the mistake of believing the committee could agree to publish with minimal additional work. Since then, the brochure proceeds to come up at each meeting: yet a new draft is shown, members recommend changes, ask what the hell it is or what it means, some condemn it as incomprehensible, and discuss yet again how it should be distributed. And the committee has also been jerked around by the county lawyers who evidentally feel there is something illegal or immoral about the whole thing. This month the committee reported being rebuffed by a representative of the Office of Consumer Protection which publishes a lot of similar brochures and, when asked, declined to help instead suggesting that the committee take responsibility itself.
CCAC Vice-Chair Joy Ragsdale observed that one Don Libes had made a version of the brochure complete with county logo available on a website which would lead to confusion between it and the official one. I doubt that - not only is much of the text different but so is the title! In any case, it's surely a moot point. The latest move by the committee was to turn the whole thing over to the Cable Office - which surely means a final death - because the Cable Office always wanted to kill the brochure. There is no one in the Cable Office who has a burning desired to invest any effort in the brochure.
The committee didn't ask for my opinion on any of these issues - even though I was sitting right there as they continued to throw my name around. Note: Since 2006, members of the public have not been allowed to speak unless specifically called on by the committee. If they had, I would've suggested they drop the whole thing and return to the useful parts of the meeting - the briefings by the Cable Office and other visiting officials.
PEGs
Richard Turner, Executive Director of Montgomery Community Television, gave a status report about the PEG channels. Alas, he did not provide an update on MCT so my understanding of what's going on there is limited to what appeared in the draft minutes of the previous committee minutes. To wit:
Jane met with Richard Turner and Theresa Cameron regarding the MCT volunteers. The situation is still very delicate since MCT Volunteers who have been with MCT for years are attempting a take over by regaining board seats with the intention of remoing the current executive director. An arbitrator is now in place to assist with resolving the issues.I have no idea what that really means but at the request of committee member Yen-Ju Chen, herself an ex-PEG official, the "delicate" sentence was stripped from the official minutes.
If there is further interest in the PEGs, I'd like to cover what they're doing (and why they need so much money!) to do it. Let me know if you'd like to read more about the PEGs. And tell me which PEG shows you watch. Thanks!
Thursday, January 04, 2007
And We Are Here To Help
Montgomery County's MFP committee will be holding a quarterly hearing on the county's cable franchisees. This will be the first meeting with Verizon as an official franchisee. Are we still in the honeymoon? We'll find out. February 5 at 9am on the 7th floor of the Council Office building.
My guess is that the honeymoon is still on (and the council has its hands full of other problems) but I've heard a lot of complaints from people waiting to get fiber and not understanding that, well, it takes time. And Verizon, despite wanting to roll out service as quickly as possible, has plenty of time built into the franchise. Please calm down folks!
I've got my own problems. I've become dismayed to find - as I had feared all along - that I cannot get any kind of device with which I can readily schedule recordings of FIOS TV on my computer. I really don't want to get a separate DVR and display. Might I end up with FIOS for internet and Comcast for TV? Egad. And please don't tell me the quality of FIOS TV is so much better. Or that it costs more this way. I accept this. Or do I. This is so frustrating.
Volunteers Wanted
The County is looking for citizen volunteers to serve on the Telecommunications Advisory Committee (TAC). This committee advises the County Executive and County Council. Well that was always the theory anyway. Very little advising has taken place in the years that I've been observing the committee. For example, the TAC was not invited to any of the Verizon negotations or strategy sessions held by the Executive.
Just about everyone involved shares some of the blame for lack of communication. (Well, the council wasn't invited either so I can't blame them too much.) I've explained the problems several times before so I won't repeat them again. (Browse the archives.) Hopefully, new members will be more informed and willing to work. And perhaps the new Executive will be more interested in the committee's opinions.
There are five openings on the committee. Four members are eligible to apply for a second term. But I would assume that most of them won't.
If you have any questions about the committee, please post them here and I'll answer them. And attend the meetings to see what goes on. Hmm, looks like the Cable Office hasn't been updating their online calendar. Sigh. Assuming they stick to the usual schedule (3rd Wednesday of each month), the next TAC meeting should be January 17, 2007. However, I see the official solicitation for new members says that meetings are on the "forth (sic) Wednesday evening of each month." A new strategy to keep attendance down?
Incidentally, if you'd like to serve on another committee, here's the full list of openings. Hmm, I just tried clicking on it and got Windows NT Error number 2 occurred. (And I know it's not my computer since I'm not using Windows!) Maybe you'll have better luck.
My guess is that the honeymoon is still on (and the council has its hands full of other problems) but I've heard a lot of complaints from people waiting to get fiber and not understanding that, well, it takes time. And Verizon, despite wanting to roll out service as quickly as possible, has plenty of time built into the franchise. Please calm down folks!
I've got my own problems. I've become dismayed to find - as I had feared all along - that I cannot get any kind of device with which I can readily schedule recordings of FIOS TV on my computer. I really don't want to get a separate DVR and display. Might I end up with FIOS for internet and Comcast for TV? Egad. And please don't tell me the quality of FIOS TV is so much better. Or that it costs more this way. I accept this. Or do I. This is so frustrating.
Volunteers Wanted
The County is looking for citizen volunteers to serve on the Telecommunications Advisory Committee (TAC). This committee advises the County Executive and County Council. Well that was always the theory anyway. Very little advising has taken place in the years that I've been observing the committee. For example, the TAC was not invited to any of the Verizon negotations or strategy sessions held by the Executive.
Just about everyone involved shares some of the blame for lack of communication. (Well, the council wasn't invited either so I can't blame them too much.) I've explained the problems several times before so I won't repeat them again. (Browse the archives.) Hopefully, new members will be more informed and willing to work. And perhaps the new Executive will be more interested in the committee's opinions.
There are five openings on the committee. Four members are eligible to apply for a second term. But I would assume that most of them won't.
If you have any questions about the committee, please post them here and I'll answer them. And attend the meetings to see what goes on. Hmm, looks like the Cable Office hasn't been updating their online calendar. Sigh. Assuming they stick to the usual schedule (3rd Wednesday of each month), the next TAC meeting should be January 17, 2007. However, I see the official solicitation for new members says that meetings are on the "forth (sic) Wednesday evening of each month." A new strategy to keep attendance down?
Incidentally, if you'd like to serve on another committee, here's the full list of openings. Hmm, I just tried clicking on it and got Windows NT Error number 2 occurred. (And I know it's not my computer since I'm not using Windows!) Maybe you'll have better luck.
Wednesday, December 27, 2006
Avoid Free Email
Christmas is over. I can go back to delivering uncheery news. Here goes.
Montgomery County's cable franchisees provide customers with "free" email and "free" email addresses. Great! Or is it? Let's look at these two offerings one at a time.
Free Email Addresses
By "free" email addresses, I mean addresses such as chocoholic@comcast.net or poodlefan@verizon.net. The domain names (comcast.net and verizon.net) show they are provided by a franchisee. I strongly recommend avoiding such addresses for your own use. These addresses tie you to the franchisee so that if you decide to change from one (oh let's say for example, Comcast) to another (gosh, let's say Verizon), you have a huge problem in front of you. There's no easy way to get all of your friends, colleagues, and family to use your new email. It's a hassle for you and it's a hassle for them. And you're probably on lots of email lists, too. Providers cannot be depended on to forward email after you close your account and get a new email address. So any mail that goes to the old address is lost to you.
Even worse are all the services that do authentication by reachability: You're authenticated if and only if you can receive email at the address you used when you originally signed up. I've got oodles of such accounts. There's no way to easily update all of these accounts. Apart from the number of them, some of the services using this technique make it very tricky to change email addresses.
I am particularly surprised when I see people using such addresses as part of their business. That's just asking for trouble - and having to reprint business cards or letterhead is the least of the problems. All the places on the web that have that old email address are essentially set in stone. There's just no way to get all the search engines on the web to give up a pointer to an old email address. If, for example, your business as a dance teacher received a favorable mention in the Gazette, it will be impossible to get the Gazette to change their archives to reflect your new address.
I know a lot of people switching from Comcast to Verizon and this is exactly the pain that they are going through. (And perhaps they'll be going through the opposite problem next year.) And this is why companies like AOL, offering an otherwise uncompetitive service, have been able to keep customers as long as they have. Because they own the email addresses that so many people have used for years are loath to give up. AOL recently recanted on this policy - AOL now allows non-customers to have AOL addresses - in an effort to stem the loss of customers by the millions - so ex-customers can keep their old AOL email addresses.
Even if you're happy with your provider or just decide it's easier not to switch to avoid such problems, you could still run into the same problems. For instance, cable companies go out of business or get bought out. Even Comcast - which has been stable here in Montgomery County, MD - has a record of switching domains. Comcast has bought several other franchises (e.g., Adelphia, Telemedia), forcing those users to switch to a comcast.net mail address. And Comcast has sold or traded franchises in other areas (e.g., Time-Warner), with users having to give up their comcast.net mail addresses. Such a scenario could definitely happen here.
Even without these franchise swaps, email addresses can be taken back by the provider. A number of reasons are plausible - from claims about spamming to demands by other users who happen to have clout. Bottom line: You don't own these mail addresses. (The provider does.) You don't even rent them. (They're "free," remember?) There is nothing in the terms-of-service (e.g., Comcast TOS) preventing you from losing your email address.
The Solution
Buy an email address thereby giving you control over it. It doesn't take very much money to buy a domain with lots of email addresses. For example, google, yahoo, and godaddy offer domains from $10 or less a year. Some, such as active-domain.com include an unlimited number of email addresses. There are many other providers that offer similar service and rates. (If you know of better deals with quality providers, please post them.)
Recognize that these email addresses are forwarding addresses. You can advertise your personalized email address but the email gets forwarded to some other service. So people may email me at don@libes.com but that is just a forwarding address that sends mail on to my mail provider - which might be Yahoo mail, Gmail, or some other provider (see below). If your mail provider, say, Google, takes back your account or you depart, say, Comcast, you can simply get a new account somewhere else and redirect your forwarding address to it. Note that I'm not recommending Google or Yahoo for mail; I'm just using them as examples here.
Having your own domain for mail forwarding is excellent and inexpensive but it's only half of the solution. Now the other half...
Free Email
A counterpart to free addresses is the free email offered by providers. By email, I mean the actual process of sending mail, receiving mail, and storing mail. Some providers also provide other services - such as spam filtering.
Can you guess what I'm going to say next? Avoid using the email service offered "for free!" by your internet service provider.
Before I get into the whys and wherefores, you're probably noticing how much I harp on the "free!" clause. Of course, we know they're not really free. Obviously, someone is paying for them. Could it be, uh, you and me? What the companies mean when they use the term free is really bundled. You are forced to pay for it and the cost is hidden, buried within your other fees (along with "free" webspace, "free" videophone service, "free" game portals, and so on). But when it is "free" in this sense, it's generally of minimal quality; whatever the provider can offer and still stick it in advertising copy with a straight face. Maybe some asterisks will help.
What do I mean by minimal quality? Well, for starters, there are few stated performance levels. No explanations of quality. No real guarantees. Just implied promises - most of which you, the wishful customer, read into it.
In the Comcast forum at dslreports.com, I have seen repeated reports of:
I have not followed Verizon's email service for as long but I have no reason to believe it would be any better - for much the same reason - it is offered as a freebie. Indeed, within the past few months, there have been outages reported (also at dslreports.com) of Verizon's email service as well.
If you ask in just the right way, you may get credit on your bill for outages but such credits aren't guaranteed. There's no law requiring it nor is there anything in your contract to compel it. And even if you get credit, will it make up for the loss of service?
I've heard people claim "Personal email is not that important to me." Huh? Why even bother sending email if you're willing to accept that it won't be delivered? Or that you won't get the reply? Or that your email may disappear from your inbox?
I believe email’s use for telecommuting, communicating with businesses, or just interacting with friends and family, to be very important. Unfortunately, there are no organizations that monitor or regulate email performance. This means that any claims made by your provider should be viewed skeptically. And even if literally true, you need to read between the lines and think about the implications.
There are many providers who have mail standards and good records to match. For instance, fastmail.fm and tuffmail are popular with some of my friends (although I don't use either myself). I hesitate to recommend my own provider or to even give specific recommendations because your choice will depend on numerous factors which differ from one provider to another. Most people focus on price and disk space limits. I give much more weight to reliability and support for IMAP. Other important attributes include bandwidth limits, spam/virus filtering, privacy, security, and timely status reports. Infinite Ink has a discussion of quality measures for IMAP providers that you may find helpful. If you know of a similar listing of POP providers or a forum in which mail service providers are discussed, I'd like to hear it.
Bottom line: Don't be surprised by disappointing (but "free!") email service from your cable provider. Expect to pay for quality mail service. Recognize the consequences of your choices in email providers. Anyone requiring a particular level of email service should arrange for email service from a provider which can provide a written performance standard and can demonstrate a record of timely delivery and reliable service.
Montgomery County's cable franchisees provide customers with "free" email and "free" email addresses. Great! Or is it? Let's look at these two offerings one at a time.
Free Email Addresses
By "free" email addresses, I mean addresses such as chocoholic@comcast.net or poodlefan@verizon.net. The domain names (comcast.net and verizon.net) show they are provided by a franchisee. I strongly recommend avoiding such addresses for your own use. These addresses tie you to the franchisee so that if you decide to change from one (oh let's say for example, Comcast) to another (gosh, let's say Verizon), you have a huge problem in front of you. There's no easy way to get all of your friends, colleagues, and family to use your new email. It's a hassle for you and it's a hassle for them. And you're probably on lots of email lists, too. Providers cannot be depended on to forward email after you close your account and get a new email address. So any mail that goes to the old address is lost to you.
Even worse are all the services that do authentication by reachability: You're authenticated if and only if you can receive email at the address you used when you originally signed up. I've got oodles of such accounts. There's no way to easily update all of these accounts. Apart from the number of them, some of the services using this technique make it very tricky to change email addresses.
I am particularly surprised when I see people using such addresses as part of their business. That's just asking for trouble - and having to reprint business cards or letterhead is the least of the problems. All the places on the web that have that old email address are essentially set in stone. There's just no way to get all the search engines on the web to give up a pointer to an old email address. If, for example, your business as a dance teacher received a favorable mention in the Gazette, it will be impossible to get the Gazette to change their archives to reflect your new address.
I know a lot of people switching from Comcast to Verizon and this is exactly the pain that they are going through. (And perhaps they'll be going through the opposite problem next year.) And this is why companies like AOL, offering an otherwise uncompetitive service, have been able to keep customers as long as they have. Because they own the email addresses that so many people have used for years are loath to give up. AOL recently recanted on this policy - AOL now allows non-customers to have AOL addresses - in an effort to stem the loss of customers by the millions - so ex-customers can keep their old AOL email addresses.
Even if you're happy with your provider or just decide it's easier not to switch to avoid such problems, you could still run into the same problems. For instance, cable companies go out of business or get bought out. Even Comcast - which has been stable here in Montgomery County, MD - has a record of switching domains. Comcast has bought several other franchises (e.g., Adelphia, Telemedia), forcing those users to switch to a comcast.net mail address. And Comcast has sold or traded franchises in other areas (e.g., Time-Warner), with users having to give up their comcast.net mail addresses. Such a scenario could definitely happen here.
Even without these franchise swaps, email addresses can be taken back by the provider. A number of reasons are plausible - from claims about spamming to demands by other users who happen to have clout. Bottom line: You don't own these mail addresses. (The provider does.) You don't even rent them. (They're "free," remember?) There is nothing in the terms-of-service (e.g., Comcast TOS) preventing you from losing your email address.
The Solution
Buy an email address thereby giving you control over it. It doesn't take very much money to buy a domain with lots of email addresses. For example, google, yahoo, and godaddy offer domains from $10 or less a year. Some, such as active-domain.com include an unlimited number of email addresses. There are many other providers that offer similar service and rates. (If you know of better deals with quality providers, please post them.)
Recognize that these email addresses are forwarding addresses. You can advertise your personalized email address but the email gets forwarded to some other service. So people may email me at don@libes.com but that is just a forwarding address that sends mail on to my mail provider - which might be Yahoo mail, Gmail, or some other provider (see below). If your mail provider, say, Google, takes back your account or you depart, say, Comcast, you can simply get a new account somewhere else and redirect your forwarding address to it. Note that I'm not recommending Google or Yahoo for mail; I'm just using them as examples here.
Having your own domain for mail forwarding is excellent and inexpensive but it's only half of the solution. Now the other half...
Free Email
A counterpart to free addresses is the free email offered by providers. By email, I mean the actual process of sending mail, receiving mail, and storing mail. Some providers also provide other services - such as spam filtering.
Can you guess what I'm going to say next? Avoid using the email service offered "for free!" by your internet service provider.
Before I get into the whys and wherefores, you're probably noticing how much I harp on the "free!" clause. Of course, we know they're not really free. Obviously, someone is paying for them. Could it be, uh, you and me? What the companies mean when they use the term free is really bundled. You are forced to pay for it and the cost is hidden, buried within your other fees (along with "free" webspace, "free" videophone service, "free" game portals, and so on). But when it is "free" in this sense, it's generally of minimal quality; whatever the provider can offer and still stick it in advertising copy with a straight face. Maybe some asterisks will help.
What do I mean by minimal quality? Well, for starters, there are few stated performance levels. No explanations of quality. No real guarantees. Just implied promises - most of which you, the wishful customer, read into it.
In the Comcast forum at dslreports.com, I have seen repeated reports of:
- mail delivered after significant delays
- undelivered mail
- problems with their spam filtering
- problems related to unadvertised limits
- problems with other sites classifying Comcast as a provider of spam resulting in delays or blockages
I have not followed Verizon's email service for as long but I have no reason to believe it would be any better - for much the same reason - it is offered as a freebie. Indeed, within the past few months, there have been outages reported (also at dslreports.com) of Verizon's email service as well.
If you ask in just the right way, you may get credit on your bill for outages but such credits aren't guaranteed. There's no law requiring it nor is there anything in your contract to compel it. And even if you get credit, will it make up for the loss of service?
I've heard people claim "Personal email is not that important to me." Huh? Why even bother sending email if you're willing to accept that it won't be delivered? Or that you won't get the reply? Or that your email may disappear from your inbox?
I believe email’s use for telecommuting, communicating with businesses, or just interacting with friends and family, to be very important. Unfortunately, there are no organizations that monitor or regulate email performance. This means that any claims made by your provider should be viewed skeptically. And even if literally true, you need to read between the lines and think about the implications.
There are many providers who have mail standards and good records to match. For instance, fastmail.fm and tuffmail are popular with some of my friends (although I don't use either myself). I hesitate to recommend my own provider or to even give specific recommendations because your choice will depend on numerous factors which differ from one provider to another. Most people focus on price and disk space limits. I give much more weight to reliability and support for IMAP. Other important attributes include bandwidth limits, spam/virus filtering, privacy, security, and timely status reports. Infinite Ink has a discussion of quality measures for IMAP providers that you may find helpful. If you know of a similar listing of POP providers or a forum in which mail service providers are discussed, I'd like to hear it.
Bottom line: Don't be surprised by disappointing (but "free!") email service from your cable provider. Expect to pay for quality mail service. Recognize the consequences of your choices in email providers. Anyone requiring a particular level of email service should arrange for email service from a provider which can provide a written performance standard and can demonstrate a record of timely delivery and reliable service.
Thursday, November 30, 2006
Unanimous
As I predicted, the Verizon franchise was approved on Tuesday (November 28, 2006). With the full council present instead of just three MFP committee members, the same questions were asked; the same responses were given. The very same responses were also given to new questions. For example, one councilmember asked how Verizon was able to buy out of the unlimited future obligations to provide free access to many agencies that Comcast is required to do.
Here's my paraphrase of that interchange between Jerry Pasternak, Special Assistant to the County Executive and Councilmember Steve Silverman:
Steve: I can understand that Verizon bought us off, but 1 million? My dog could've come up with that number.
Jerry: < insert handwaving here >
Steve: As long as you're not going to explain how you came up with that obviously arbitrary figure, can't we bleed them for more?
My paraphrase of Jerry's response is terse but otherwise accurate. His actual words were remarkably close to those that I quoted on Monday so I won't repeat them.
And with that ("that" meaning 10 minutes of decent discussion and 30 minutes of unnecessary hot council air and protocol), the franchise was passed. No last minute amendments. Unanimous.
Immediate Future
I've heard conflicting statements as to when it would be possible to order service. A Gazette article appears to suggest that, although approved, the franchise has yet to be signed by the council president but availability should follow immediately. The Verizon's press release says "by the end of December." The latter makes the most sense. However, availability will be rolled out in stages across the county with requirements for some areas on the order of years. For instance, as I understand the section applying to Rockville, even if they get approval from the City, Verizon has three years to offer service there. And if the issue isn't settled by the end of this year, the limit is pushed back to four years. (If the final franchise is different, I'll correct this as soon as I find out.)
Of course, these are just limits and, while legal, will probably be moot in the future. For example, the county could let Verizon take longer if things don't go well (RCN being an example of this). Alternatively, Verizon could act more quickly on its own. For now, Verizon promised availability to 75,000 homes as of January 1 2007 and asserted that they would have the staff - including bringing personnel from other regions - to deliver on that promise. Of course, that presumably refers only to the Initial Service Area described in the franchise. As for actually getting TV service installed - according to Lori Edwards' testimony, the franchise allows seven days for the installation of an ONT at the house and seven more days to turn on the service. So unless you have Verizon's internet service already, you can expect to wait a while from your initial service call.
Let the Discounts Commence
Earlier, I had said (incorrectly) that Verizon's internet service required an annual plan. I was wrong but the price is significantly higher for a monthly contract - so high that few people will get it. For instance, Verizon charges a $69.96 installation fee for monthly subscribers; for annual subscribers, the installation fee is $0.
If that seems an unconvincing come-on, I recently received a flyer: $15/month off for 3 months on an annual contract for Verizon's 15/2 service. This brings the price down to that of their lowest-speed service, which you can switch to at any time without penalty (e.g., after the 3 months is over). Think of it as a come-on to experience their higher-speed service for awhile at no extra charge.
On the downside, you're still obligated to a pay a $19.99 activation fee as well as being subject to a $99 early termination fee should you decide not to go the full year.
Will Verizon roll out more discounts come January 1? Undoubtedly they will offer something similar to what Comcast is doing - a triple or quadruple play offer. I'll have more to say about this as the promos roll by over the weeks ahead.
Of course, rates aren't everything. Nonetheless, it will be interesting to see how quickly Comcast responds.
Here's my paraphrase of that interchange between Jerry Pasternak, Special Assistant to the County Executive and Councilmember Steve Silverman:
Steve: I can understand that Verizon bought us off, but 1 million? My dog could've come up with that number.
Jerry: < insert handwaving here >
Steve: As long as you're not going to explain how you came up with that obviously arbitrary figure, can't we bleed them for more?
My paraphrase of Jerry's response is terse but otherwise accurate. His actual words were remarkably close to those that I quoted on Monday so I won't repeat them.
And with that ("that" meaning 10 minutes of decent discussion and 30 minutes of unnecessary hot council air and protocol), the franchise was passed. No last minute amendments. Unanimous.
Immediate Future
I've heard conflicting statements as to when it would be possible to order service. A Gazette article appears to suggest that, although approved, the franchise has yet to be signed by the council president but availability should follow immediately. The Verizon's press release says "by the end of December." The latter makes the most sense. However, availability will be rolled out in stages across the county with requirements for some areas on the order of years. For instance, as I understand the section applying to Rockville, even if they get approval from the City, Verizon has three years to offer service there. And if the issue isn't settled by the end of this year, the limit is pushed back to four years. (If the final franchise is different, I'll correct this as soon as I find out.)
Of course, these are just limits and, while legal, will probably be moot in the future. For example, the county could let Verizon take longer if things don't go well (RCN being an example of this). Alternatively, Verizon could act more quickly on its own. For now, Verizon promised availability to 75,000 homes as of January 1 2007 and asserted that they would have the staff - including bringing personnel from other regions - to deliver on that promise. Of course, that presumably refers only to the Initial Service Area described in the franchise. As for actually getting TV service installed - according to Lori Edwards' testimony, the franchise allows seven days for the installation of an ONT at the house and seven more days to turn on the service. So unless you have Verizon's internet service already, you can expect to wait a while from your initial service call.
Let the Discounts Commence
Earlier, I had said (incorrectly) that Verizon's internet service required an annual plan. I was wrong but the price is significantly higher for a monthly contract - so high that few people will get it. For instance, Verizon charges a $69.96 installation fee for monthly subscribers; for annual subscribers, the installation fee is $0.
If that seems an unconvincing come-on, I recently received a flyer: $15/month off for 3 months on an annual contract for Verizon's 15/2 service. This brings the price down to that of their lowest-speed service, which you can switch to at any time without penalty (e.g., after the 3 months is over). Think of it as a come-on to experience their higher-speed service for awhile at no extra charge.
On the downside, you're still obligated to a pay a $19.99 activation fee as well as being subject to a $99 early termination fee should you decide not to go the full year.
Will Verizon roll out more discounts come January 1? Undoubtedly they will offer something similar to what Comcast is doing - a triple or quadruple play offer. I'll have more to say about this as the promos roll by over the weeks ahead.
Of course, rates aren't everything. Nonetheless, it will be interesting to see how quickly Comcast responds.
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