Charter Cable Workers On Strike For More Than a Year

Charter Cable and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 3 members in the city of New York have been fighting for more than a year now. The number two cable company’s disagreement with the almost 2000 New York City Union tech workers doesn’t look to be settled any time soon.

IBEW Local 3 says Charter Communications (Cable and Internet provider) is trying to take back the benefits they already enjoy. Benefits like overtime and holiday pay are in limbo for the workers that were acquired when Charter purchased Time Warner Cable a few years back. The union workers want to keep the same benefits they have had since before the purchase. For their part, Charter Communications says the New York employees should be happy with the pay increase Charter is offering.

It seems that Cable, Internet and telephone companies are often in negotiations with their workers. AT&T, Frontier and other companies have recently been in strikes, negotiations or just settled them.

At the same time, Charter Cable and Internet wants to renew the New York City cable franchise it got from the Time Warner Cable acquisition. Charter’s CEO Tom Rutledge got almost $100 million in pay and other benefits from the company in 2016.

The Best Way to Find Cable Internet

A lot of people prefer the high speeds of cable Internet to older technologies like telephone lines. Unfortunately it is not always easy to find the best high-speed cable Internet in your neighborhood.

The great news is that the days of having to look high and low to find the best Internet are over. Just go to the website http://cableinternetbyzip.com/ and type in your zip code to find the providers in your area.

You won't just find one or two providers. Those guys at http://cableinternetbyzip.com/ have already looked high and low to find the cable Internet providers where you live.

Whether it is one of the big Internet providers like Charter or a smaller provider like Buckeye Cable you will get your answer there.

Senator Wants to Reinstate Comcast Merger Conditions

Cable TV, Internet and voice bundle provider Comcast also owns NBCUniversal. Therein lies the rub according to some lawmakers. That is a lot of power.

The Democrat Senator from Connecticutt, Richard Blumenthal, wants to keep the conditions Comcast had to agree to as part of the approval for their purchase of NBCUniversl in 2011. Blumenthal, along with FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn penned an op-ed about Comcast, the largest cable and Internet company, that was published in Bloomberg recently titled  “It’s Too Soon to Unleash Comcast.”

Since Comcast provides bundles of TV, Internet and phone, in addition to the content of NBC and Universal studios, they do have a lot of power that they wouldn't have if they were smaller or didn't also own NBC. Senator wants to make sure that doesn't give them unfair advantage.

President Trump Unveils his New Rural Broadband Plan

President Donald Trump just announced his new plan to make high-speed broadband Internet available in rural areas.  Trump was speaking at the 99th annual American Farm Bureau Federation convention in Nashville, Tennessee. The President told farmers and other attendees that with the high speed Internet “you can compete on a level playing field, which you were not able to do.”

Much of the plan was as a result of new report from the President's Task Force on Agriculture and Rural Prosperity, which promised to "use all viable tools to accelerate the deployment and adoption of affordable, reliable, modern high-speed broadband connectivity in rural America, including rural homes, farms, small businesses, manufacturing and production sites, tribal communities, transportation systems, and healthcare and education facilities."

As part of his new Rural Broadband plan, the Department of the Interior will be directed to devote funding toward broadband installation in rural America. The President's plan also calls for the network installation processes to be streamlined with standardized forms. Seems that they would already have standardized forms. The plan is to also review requests to place antennas on federal buildings. The FCC has said that 53% of rural communities still can’t find high speed broadband service in their area.

For the most part, rural America supported Trump over Hillary Clinton in the election last year and if he wants to count on their support in the future he needs to come through with the promises he made on the campaign trail. Helping small rural businesses get high-speed Internet in the towns where they live would be a step in that direction.

Comcast Claims They Support Net Neutrality

Internet Service Providers like Comcast have had it out for the net neutrality rules passed back in 2015 since they went into effect. They might say they want a free and open Internet but their actions tell a different story.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai, probably taking orders from the telecom industry, announced recently plans to do away with net neutrality. Comcast has already started walking back its previous rhetoric on the subject.

In the past Comcast said, “We don't prioritize Internet traffic or have paid fast lanes, and have no plans to do so." Now Comcast says “We do not and will not block, throttle, or discriminate against lawful content." or impose the more nebulous "anticompetitive paid prioritization." What is actually “anticompetitive” is open to interpretation whereas before they just said they won’t prioritize. Most of the bigger Internet Service Providers say that they support net neutrality but want to repeal the net neutrality rules.

Several US Senators wrote a letter to Pai asking him to delay action on the rules but he has already made up his mind so refused to consider it. The Attorney General from New York also requested delaying action and wants him to investigate the cracing of the FCC website when they opened up comments on net neutrality rules. It seems like Chairman Pai forget that he works for the people and thinks he works for big business. Maybe he is just looking to secure a job for when he leaves government work.

After the dust settles on the whole net neutrality subject we will see if Internet providers like Comcast offers “fast lanes" to websites to ensure the site loads quickly.

Connecting America to High Speed Internet Across the Country

Although the percentage of Americans that can't get connected to the Internet has been going down over the years the need to be connected has gone up. It is more important than ever to find fiber optic Internet service in your area. It is hard to learn in school these days without an Internet connection.

Back when electricity was new it wasn't always easy to get electricity all the way to your house if you lived out in the country. Okay, maybe electricty wasn't actually "new" but having it connected to your house and using it to toast your bread and heat up your oatmeal was. Since it was hard to get electricy way out in the boondocks electrical co-ops were formed to help get power to all the houses.

Fast forward eighty or so years and people who don't live in the city are having the same issues with high speed Internet connections in their towns. It is expensive to install Internet to people's homes.

One problem now is that although they won't spend the money to connect them, the existing commercial ISPs don't want any competition so they sometimes try to make laws to make it harder for co-ops and municipalities to install Internet lines.

Ajit Pai, the new FCC Commissioner, seems to be taking orders from his former employer, Verizon and working to maintain the existing ISPs dominance in the industry. There are about 60 electrical co-ops that have started to offer Internet to make sure the residents can get access to the high speed fiber optic Internet in their zip codes.

Medicom Wraps Up DOCSIS 3.1 Deployment

After two years, cable TV, Internet, and phone provider Mediacom has completed its mission of company wide deployment of DOCSIS 3.1 network services. Now it is available across Mediacom's entire footprint according to JR Walden, Mediacom's Chief Technology Officer.

“We did the last one Friday,” Walden was speaking at an SCTE Cable-Tec Expo breakfast panel event that included technology executives from Midco, CableLabs and the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers. The event was produced by Broadband Technology Report. “We wanted to put a stake in the ground as fast as we could," he continued.

"We began launching markets in 2017," he added. "We staggered the launches to get our names in the paper a little more. It worked. But for all intent and purposes, we’re done."

To improve Mediacom's Internet, voice and digital television bundles are available in 22 states. Mediacom began switching from CableLabs’ DOCSIS 3.0 to the new 3.1 standard two years ago. Back then the vendors didn’t really even have any DOCSIS 3.1 products completed.

They could get the cable modem termination system or CMTS products for the hubs early on. They replaced about 200 cable modem termination system devices at around 40 different locations but the DOCSIS 3.1 modems were a lot harder to source.

“CableLabs kept telling us that the CMTSs would come first and the modems second,” Walden said. “I don’t know why I didn’t believe them. We really anticipated the modems coming a little faster.”

Mediacom conducted DOCSIS 3.1 field tests in 2016.

About 10% of new Mediacom Internet, cable and voice subscribers are signing up for 1-gig service, powered be DOCSIS 3.1, Walden said. They have deployed some 12,000 DOCSIS 3.1 gateways out of a million plus customers. Mediacom announced last year a billion dollar upgade plan.