From extra, unexpected fees, Broadcast TV charges, or a completely different base price for your service of choice, it’s not uncommon to open your cable or internet bill to find the amount higher than you anticipated. One state is taking on these surprise bills by suing CenturyLink, accusing the cable and phone provider of frequently billing customers at higher rates than sales agents quoted. [More]
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Today In Streaming TV: Charter Tests Skinny Bundle, CenturyLink Launches $45 Package
By 6.30.17
The trend continues: As consumers increasingly cut the cord and back away from traditional pay-TV, they still want to watch content. And rather than let all the money go to Hulu, PlayStation Vue, and YouTube, cable and satellite companies are cautiously wading into the all-online world. This week, CenturyLink and possibly Charter are joining the fray. [More]
CenturyLink Employee Says She Was Fired After Alerting CEO To Wells Fargo-Like Scam
By 6.16.17
Most of us have looked at a cable or phone bill and questioned a random charge we felt shouldn’t have been there. Usually this is an error, but a former CenturyLink employee claims that some workers at the telecom company were deliberately adding these charges to pad their sales figures. What’s worse, she says she was fired after bringing this possible scheme to the CEO’s attention. [More]
FCC Chair Claims Broadband Investment At Historic Low Level Because Of Net Neutrality; That’s Not What The Numbers Say
By 2.28.17
This morning, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai made a claim that net neutrality, which hasn’t even been in place for two years, has driven investment in U.S. broadband to historically low levels. However, the actual numbers given by the nation’s largest cable and telecom companies don’t appear to back this up. [More]
CenturyLink Snapping Up Level 3 For $34 Billion To Make Internet Service Voltron
By 10.31.16 — Updated: 11.1.16
Boo! If you think mergers and acquisitions are scary, than two huge companies have a special Halloween morning treat for you: CenturyLink and Level 3 announced this morning that the former is acquiring the latter for $34 billion. [More]
Cable, Wireless Industries Try Yet Again To Take Net Neutrality To Court
By 7.29.16
We have had had net neutrality as the law of the land for over a year now. Lawsuits immediately followed its implementation, of course, but the appeals court took the FCC’s side. So if you’re industry and you’re still ticked off, what’s left? Ask for a do-over… if you can get one. [More]
CenturyLink Joins AT&T, Comcast In Charging You For Going Over Your Data Cap
By 7.19.16
We know that home broadband carriers want to horn in on all that sweet wireless money, but we do wish they wouldn’t do it by creating more data caps and then charging you overage fees to exceed them. And yet that’s what one provider after another seems determined to do. [More]
Hundreds Of Thousands Of Consumers Call On AT&T To Help End Robocalls
By 2.23.16
In spite of efforts to legislate and regulate them out of existence, unwanted prerecorded and/or auto-dialed robocalls are still dominate consumers’ complaints about their phone service. Today, our colleagues at Consumers Union delivered a petition — signed by hundreds of thousands of people who want the nation’s telecom providers to do something about robocalls — to the AT&T headquarters in Texas. [More]
Washington Law Would Let Counties Sell Broadband Service When Comcast Won’t
By 1.26.16
Last year, we told you about Seth, who had recently relocated to Washington only to find out he might have to sell his new house because Comcast had lied to him about being able to provide the Internet connection he needs for his home office. And even though the county runs a high-speed fiber network not far from his property, current state law restricts consumers from buying access to that service. Recently proposed state legislation hopes to right that wrong and give counties the ability to serve residents when Comcast and others refuse to. [More]
More Than 500,000 People Ask CenturyLink To Help End Robocalls
By 12.15.15
Even though the FCC has said that landline operators can offer robocall-blocking technology to their customers, many of them have so far chosen to not do so. That’s why our colleagues at Consumers Union hand-delivered a petition with more than 500,000 signatures to CenturyLink this morning, hoping to drive home how fed-up consumers are with these unwanted interruptions. [More]
POSTSCRIPT: Even After Embarrassing Story, CenturyLink Still Has No Idea That This House Is Not On Their Network
By 8.18.15
You probably remember the story of Seth, the Washington state homeowner who was on the brink of having to sell his new house because — in spite of what their websites said — neither Comcast nor CenturyLink were willing to sell him the broadband service he needs for his home office. Even though this made national headlines, with CenturyLink looking particularly inept, the company still hasn’t figured out that Seth’s house is not connected to its network. [More]
45 Attorneys General Agree: Phone Companies Should Give Consumers Ability To Block Robocalls
By 7.22.15
While the FCC tries to allow consumers to take a more active role in which calls they do or don’t receive, a group of 45 state attorneys general (well, 44 states and the AG for the District of Columbia) are calling on the phone companies to just stop dilly dallying and start offering call-blocking services already. [More]
UPDATE: A Happy Ending For Man Who Almost Had To Sell His House Due To Comcast’s Incompetence
By 7.13.15
Remember Seth, the Washington state homeowner who was putting his recently purchased house up for sale because no one — not Comcast, not CenturyLink, not his county — was willing or able to provide the broadband connection he needed for his home office? We’re happy to tell you that Seth is still in the house and he can now go online. [More]
Appeals Court Won’t Hold Up Enforcement Of Net Neutrality Rules
By 6.11.15
A number of lawsuits filed by telecom and cable companies and their associated trade groups in recent weeks had hoped that the court would block the FCC from enforcing the new net neutrality rules that are slated to kick in tomorrow, June 12. But with the clock ticking to reach that deadline, a federal appeals court has denied this request, meaning that the Open Internet Order will go into effect (at least until lawmakers do their best to de-fund it). [More]
The People Of Minneapolis May Someday Get To Choose Something Other Than Comcast
By 5.18.15
A year ago, when we investigated the sad state of broadband competition in the U.S., Minneapolis was one of the markets we mapped to to show just how few choices people had. As you can see from the map above, the city is almost exclusively Comcast territory, but that may change over the next five years thanks to a recent city council vote. [More]
FCC Fines CenturyLink $16M, Intrado Communications $1.4M For Actions During Massive 911 Outage
By 4.6.15
Last month the Federal Communications Commission ordered Verizon to pay $3.4 million for failing to alert authorities of a preventable programming error that left nearly 11 million people in seven states without access to emergency services for six hours in 2014. While Verizon’s fine was decidedly hefty, it pales in comparison to the $16 million penalty the agency just levied against CenturyLink for the same 911 outage. [More]
New Homeowner Has To Sell House Because Of Comcast’s Incompetence, Lack Of Competition
By 3.25.15
Only months after moving into his new home in Washington state, Consumerist reader Seth is already looking to sell his house. He didn’t lose his job or discover that the property is haunted. No, Seth can’t stay much longer because no one can provide broadband service to his address; even though Comcast and CenturyLink both misled him into thinking he’d be connected to their networks and in spite of the fact that his county runs a high-speed fiberoptic network that goes very near to his property. [More]
Comcast Says that Mobile Data is Competitive, but it Costs $2k to Stream ‘Breaking Bad’ Over LTE
By 8.18.14
Comcast keeps on claiming that mobile broadband is real competition for wired home broadband. But for most users, it’s just plain not. Not only is the speed and reliability of mobile broadband still hugely variable depending on location and time of day, but also mobile data is still clearly not competitive on price. [More]
