Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt recently crowed before investors that the company's new and unpopular modem rental fee had room to grow. He now appears to have carried through on that promise, with the news that the company's $4 modem fee -- is now a $5 modem fee for new users. Alongside the new higher modem fee, Time Warner Cable is charging news users a $20 "one-time charge" simply for signing up for certain promotions. Given Comcast charges $7 for modem rentals you can expect Time Warner Cable's charge to continue growing in time (users are strongly recommended to buy their own modem instead of throwing more money at their cable operator). As for the new $20 charge, it's just one more way these companies jack up your advertised price post sale.

As we've noted previously, despite serious advancement in broadband speeds, many ISPs have been having serious problems offering a consistent YouTube streaming experience over the last years -- including faster options like Verizon FiOS. By and large I've noted that given this is a problem across numerous ISPs, it would appear to be an unspecified peering or YouTube issue that causes the problems.

The Justice Department appears poised to take a closer look at the cable industry after their admission this week that they pay or threaten content companies to keep content away from Internet video competitors. An anonynmous source now tells the New York Times the Justice Department is "looking into the issue as part of a broad investigation into cable and satellite company practices." After Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt oddly decided to admit such practices at a cable industry trade show this week, the company then turned around and tried to argue that paying and threatening companies to crush smaller competitors was just good spirited, healthy, competitive fun. Perhaps Britt's planned retirement at the end of the year may be magically stepped up a few months.

Time Warner Cable has issued a longer statement in response to reports this week disclosing that the cable company, along with many of its contemporaries, pay and/or threaten content companies to keep their content off of competing Internet video services. While this had long been suspected, Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt for whatever reason decided to confirm it this week, as did sources speaking to Bloomberg news.

The cable industry today announced that their creatively named joint "CableWiFi" initiative now offers access to more than 150,000 hotspots if you're a paying customer of Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cablevision, Bright House Networks, or Cox Communications. That number is up from the 50,000 offered just last year. The initiative piggybacked initially on the back of Cablevision's idea to deploy free Wi-Fi to paying customers across NYC commuter regions. Users simply have to look for the CableWiFi SSID and log in with their cable credentials. Time Warner Cable offers this hotspot location map, as well as a Wi-Fi finder app available both via Google Play or the iTunes store

Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt simply can't give up his dream of socking his broadband users with usage charges and even-higher fees, despite the immense and unprecedented public backlash to the idea just a few years back. Speaking at the Bank of America/Merrill Lynch Global Telecom and Media Conference in London, Britt stated that he sees some room to raise the company's recently imposed $4 modem rental fee.

Back in April Time Warner Cable proclaimed that the company would be cutting back on promotions, in large part because the triple play no longer resonates with customers who are looking to cut their cable VoIP line and go wireless only. As part of that strategy Time Warner Cable appears to have returned to offering users a $20 standalone broadband promotion -- but only for speeds of around 1 Mbps. Time Warner Cable was forced to offer reasonably-priced standalone broadband back when they were part of Time Warner as an AOL acquisition condition, but this new voluntary embracing of standalone offers in key markets highlights the fact that the cable triple play is slowly starting to go the way of the dodo.

Responding to investor worries that cable rate hikes aren't sustainable, the cable industry has spent the last few years paying a lot of lip service to lowering cable TV prices, insisting that they were very conscious of the fact that the recession and housing implosion left many users struggling. However, bi-annual rate hikes have continued, and the "discount" tiers we've seen offered have been so packed with restrictions as to have little to no value.

Speaking on the company earnings call this week, Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt stated that Time Warner Cable is seeing "de minimis" impact on their business from Google Fiber so far. Granted that's because two of the three Google Fiber locations have yet to connect any customers.

It has been interesting to watch the responses of the two companies impacted most by Google Fiber's deployments: AT&T and Time Warner Cable. Both companies have fought competition tooth and nail over the years, and now that they're finally staring a little bit of it in the face, their responses have very much matched their corporate character.

A significant outage is impacting Time Warner Cable Digital Voice customers from North Carolina to California, according to user posts in our Time Warner Cable forum. According to the company, 911 voice calls are still being completed, but all other services do not work.

Time Warner Cable hasn't been exactly what you'd call a hero when it comes to furthering national broadband deployment. The company was behind bills in both North and South Carolina banning or hindering towns and cities from deploying their own broadband, even when nobody else will.

Time Warner Cable owns a number of local news outlets in numerous cities, such as YNN in upstate NY, News 14 in the Carolinas, and NY1 in New York City. The company is now seeing some significant blowback for a decision to rename all of these news outlets "Time Warner Cable News." The change of NYC's long-time staple NY1 to such a heavily corporate name is seeing the heaviest criticism. One user calls the plan the "stupidest media rebranding scheme I’ve ever heard of." "Our research shows that people who watch our stations, such as NY1, are loyal viewers, yet most people don’t understand their connection to Time Warner Cable," the company said in a statement.

Some Time Warner Cable may soon be seeing refunds courtesy of New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. According to a notice posted over at the AG's website, Time Warner Cable had been overcharging customers in upstate New York, and will have to issue $2.2 million in refunds to 18,437 customers, in addition to $200,000 in fees and costs to the State of New York. The AG notes that a two-year investigation found that Time Warner Cable consistently violated franchise rules by charging higher fee totals than those agreements allowed. Users will on average be seeing credits of $119, plus interest, credited to their accounts.

Despite carriers being a bit mute earlier this week with the launch of the entertainment industry's new six strikes anti-piracy initiative, each participant is slowly now outlying how their respective plans will work. Verizon throttles repeat offenders to 256 kbps.

Last December Time Warner Cable Rob Marcus insisted that there was no demand for 1 Gbps service, though if there was the company would surely provide it. His evidence? Not many users are signing up for the company's fastest tiers, intentionally ignoring that it's likely the very steep price tag that keeps those users away.

Despite the faster speeds now being pushed through fiber and DOCSIS 3.0, there's many users who continue to suffer from the inability to quickly and consistently stream YouTube videos. Spend a few minutes in any of our forums and you'll find this is a universal problem with many carriers, including AT&T U-Verse, Verizon FiOS and Time Warner Cable.

A fiber digging crew clipped a gas line in Kansas City resulting in at least one death and fifteen injuries as the resulting explosion destroyed a restaurant and part of a shopping complex. ABC News notes that the resulting explosion created a massive fireball seen for miles, and that more than 100 firefighters spent the majority of the evening battling the blaze. According to USAToday, the gas main was clipped by Heartland Midwest, which had been subcontracted to extend a fiber-optic line for Time Warner Cable. While fiber digs can also be highly complicated due to poor buried line records, the local utility claims the line had been clearly marked. The deceased is believed to be 46-year-old restaurant employee Megan Cramer.

Here in the States the start of the new year has seen an absolute flood of rate hikes for TV and Internet services from the likes of AT&T U-Verse, Comcast, and Charter Communications. Not to be outdone, users in our Time Warner Cable forum say the cable operator is also sending notices to users alerting them to new price hikes for numerous services.

Back in 2011 the FCC began collecting real-world user broadband data from customized routers, then issuing reports on which ISPs were failing to deliver advertised speeds. It's one of the few FCC policies in recent years that has truly paid dividends for consumers.