The cable industry this week is busy patting itself on the back for a new initiative they've dubbed "Adoption Plus." According to the cable industry's chief lobbying and PR arm, the National Cable And Telecommunications Association, Adoption Plus has been created to "promote sustainable broadband adoption for a vitally important-but-vulnerable population" -- namely middle school-aged children in low income households without broadband. As such, the industry says they're offering discounted broadband to low income homes. In a blog post, NCTA boss Kyle McSlarrow highlights the plan as such:The NCTA was quickly praised by its usual group of yes men organizations and loyal lawmakers. AT&T's top lobbyist Jim Cicconi called the proposal "creative," while expressing how AT&T was eager to participate in the new program. Even new FCC boss Julius Genachowski issued a statement (pdf) praising the industry's "considerable investment" in the new project. Trade mags highlighted the new program with the usual lack of skepticism.

It's not particularly clear if any of them actually looked at the proposal first.

For one thing the program is simply a proposal, and it's not fully cooked yet.

You'll of course recall that back 2008 we were the first to report that Comcast was implementing a clear 250 GB usage cap for all users. Despite some grumbling, this was actually a good thing, given many Comcast users spent the better part of the decade complaining that Comcast was kicking people off of the network for "excessive consumption," without actually defining what "excessive" was.

Canadian cable operator Rogers has constructed what's essentially the dream business model for broadband executives. They're launching a new broadband video portal that's only available if you sign up for Rogers wireless, TV or broadband service -- avoiding a stand-alone service in order to keep users from canceling regular cable.

Lazy cable installers have long draped coaxial over a customer's hedges and across their lawn instead of being buried or strung properly from pole to home. According to the Baltimore Sun, a new law would require that lazily draped cabled must be buried within fifteen days of a request or the company involved will face a fine.

Despite the best efforts by creditors who didn't like the bankruptcy conditions, Charter Communications has announced that the company has exited Chapter 11 after filing for bankruptcy back in March of this year. The bankruptcy process and reorganization eliminated about $8 billion of Charter's $21 billion debt load. According to Charter CEO Neil Smit, the bankruptcy will help the company to "remain focused on further enhancing the customer experience." Unfortunately for Charter, a lousy customer experience is one of the major reasons the company went bankrupt in the first place -- Charter consistently coming in last place in nearly every survey that measures customer satisfaction among ISPs and TV operators.

According to the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Comcast has settled a nearly four year customer class action lawsuit. The suit alleged that Comcast, even as far back as when it was AT&T Broadband, overcharged franchise fees -- in some instances for periods of time when customers weren't even active subscribers. The amusing part is that even though the amounts were fairly small to begin with, subscribers won't see a dime. However, the lawyers for the class action suit get a tidy payday of $462,962.50, nine times the actual settlement. On the plus side, Comcast has agreed to donate $50,000 to one or more local charities.

Users in our Rogers forum note that the Canadian cable provider will be beta launching an open beta of their On Demand Online service beginning November 30. The service, which is Rogers' version of "TV Everywhere," promises to offer users streaming access to several dozen channels of Internet video content, provided you already have Rogers TV service. According to users, the service will come with high quality (500kbps) or higher def (1Mbps) streaming options, all of which will eat away at your Rogers usage cap, incurring overage penalties. In house ad-driven content fueled by high per-GB overages is essentially most cable operators' dream business model -- though we'll see how well Rogers' product fares in the open market when it launches next year.

It's fairly common practice for cable carriers to blame their often bi-annual TV rate increases on the high costs their incur from broadcasters. Time Warner Cable appears poised to take this traditional tactic to a new level.

Charter Communications continues to battle with the company's lenders, who are trying to prevent the bankrupt cable company from exiting bankruptcy so they can appeal a court ruling approving the reorganization. Creditors have been fighting against Charter's reorganization plan all summer and fall, primarily because they don't like the pre-bankruptcy interest rates agreed to in the deal. "Hundreds of millions of dollars of additional interest and would put at peril the entire plan," Charter attorneys claim in court filings. Last week Charter executives indicated that a post-bankruptcy Charter would explore price hikes and metered billing for the company's customers.

Comcast's dream of acquiring NBC Universal can't come to fruition until Vivendi executives sell their 20% stake in the company, according to the Los Angeles Times. Obviously the value of that 20% differs greatly depending on how much the company is deemed to be worth -- and according to the Times, Vivendi wants that number to be at least $500-$900 million greater than what's currently on the table. GE has placed a value on NBC Universal of $27 billion to $30 billion. While Vivendi and GE hash out the numbers, consumer advocates continue to lambast the deal as only really being good for industry executives, giving the companies yet more market power, and the authority to restrict competition from Hulu (which Comcast would gain control over after the deal).

If you recall, back in May of 2008 we told you how the Comcast web portal was hacked by a group calling itself "Kryogenics," posting the usually gramatically incoherent shout out to their own supposed awesomeness and fellow nerd homies. The hack disrupted user access to the portal and the official Comcast forums for several hours, before Comcast tracked down the problem and the fix was propagated across DNS servers. According to the Philadelphia Business Journal, the three young men responsible for the hack have been indicted for "conspiring to disrupt service." The indictment claims the hack cost Comcast "a little less than $129,000," though each defendant could receive a maximum sentence of five years in jail, three years of supervised release, a $250,000 fine and a $100 special assessment, on top of potential forced restitution to Comcast -- who certainly could use the money.

Yesterday we issued a report exploring how Verizon was again hinting at how they believed metered billing is inevitable. We also discussed how yet again, you had an ISP suggesting that a shift to metered billing was financially necessary (not true) and that the ISP desire to shift to metered billing was dictated by some kind of altruism (also not true). Apparently, this position upset Todd Spangler over at Multichannel News, who somewhere in between taking pot shots at "edgy bloggers" and "clueless" flat-rate pricing proponents arrives at his central thesis: that consumption-based billing is inevitable: story continues..

After his company won approval of its bankruptcy plan this week, Charter Communications CEO Neil Smit tells Bloomberg that upon exiting from bankruptcy, the company will raise prices and consider consumption-based billing. Charter Communications hasn't been profitable since the company went public in 1999, posted a $2.45 billion loss last year, constantly ranks at the bottom of most customer satisfaction surveys, is swimming in debt, and was just forced into bankruptcy and reorganization.

You might remember Ohio-based Buckeye Cablesystems for when they came down hard on the heads of cable modem upcappers back in 2002, going so far as to bring in the FBI to investigate users who were trying to squeeze extra bandwidth out of the cable system. It's now 2009, and Buckeye has found a much better solution for bandwidth-hungry customers -- they've started a fiber to the home trial in Toledo, but they're installing it without having to dig up any existing infrastructure thanks to a new technology by Kabel-X.

With the cable company he founded currently struggling through bankruptcy, Charter Communications founder and Chairman now finds himself facing a much more serious and difficult task: beating back cancer a second time. Allen, who already fought and beat cancer some twenty five years ago, is now facing non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, according to The Seattle Times. "For those who know Paul's story, you know he beat Hodgkin's a little more than 25 years ago and he is optimistic he can beat this, too," says Allen's sister Jody Allen. Allen spent much of the summer battling with creditors, who didn't like Allen's efforts to retain control of the company after restructuring. The restructuring is supposed to eliminate about $8 billion of the company's $21.7 billion in debt.

So what's behind Comcast's usual last place showing when it comes to consumer satisfaction scores? Why is the company seemingly engaged in an endless showdown with Charter for the worst customer support in the industry? One Chicago Tribune writer decided to find out, and wound up getting an invitation to attend "Comcast University," the eleven week training program Comcast support reps have to go through before they're put on front line call center support. Tribune writer Jon Yates touches on an important tip for consumers to remember when trying to get good support: story continues..

When last we checked in with Comcast's Internet video "TV Everywhere" initiative, it was looking more like "TV in some places, some of the time," given there were hints the service wouldn't be available to customers who weren't using a Comcast cable modem for broadband access. The idea of course is to provide existing TV customers access to free Internet video so they won't cut the cord -- but as we've explored, if the industry screw things up it could have the exact opposite effect.

Bankrupt Charter Communications Is joining the seasonal cable rate hike festivities, the Oregonian reporting that the company is raising rates in Oregon for some of the customers who can least afford it. Meanwhile, the San Gabriel Valley Tribune (California) reports how Charter is eliminating discounts for senior citizens in the region, raising bills as high as 26%.

Comcast's acquisition of and/or merger with NBC Universal appears to be all but a done deal, but the regulatory approval of such a giant merger appears to be anything but certain. If approved, Reuters proudly proclaims that "FCC conditions on Comcast-NBC could hurt synergy" (apparently the possibility that conditions could help consumers didn't make it past editors.) Consumer advocates are asking a lot of questions about a company as large as Comcast controlling both the delivery pipe for broadband, voice and TV -- as well as a giant slice of the content being delivered over those pipes. They're questions you can be sure it will take Congress and the FCC a long time to ask -- meaning that once closed, the deal could take another year or more for approval.

Comcast is reportedly in the midst of testing femtocells, devices which essentially act as an indoor tower for wireless voice and data services -- allowing you to place calls over your home broadband connection. Comcast's investment deal with Clearwire included a provision that set aside 5 MHz of spectrum solely for WiMAX femtocells, but an anonymous source tells Fierce Wireless that deployment of the service won't happen until next year -- if it happens at all. Comcast of course offers re-branded Clearwire wireless broadband service as part of a new suite of bundles being offered in three markets so far. Ultimately, Clearwire and Comcast will likely deploy voice services over the Mobile WiMax network. Given the initial problems users are seeing with Clearwire signal, femtocells will likely be a necessary evolution.