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NY Attorney General tells TWC its broadband is 'abysmal'
Late last year, the New York Attorney General's office called on internet customers to submit broadband speeds as a part of its probe into service providers keeping their promises. After the stats were tallied, the AG found one company to be the worse than the others. In a letter from senior enforcement counsel Tim Wu, the office informed Time Warner Cable that speeds customers has submitted were "abysmal."
The Weather Channel's odd local news service is coming to iOS and Android
The Weather Channel is a shining example of cable TV's heyday -- but it's become increasingly irrelevant with the rise of the internet and smartphones. The company started working to get more into localized news and weather with Local Now, a channel that covers news, weather, sports, traffic and other such updates for specific geographic areas, but it was only available on Dish's Sling TV service. Now, Reuters says its Local Now's reach will greatly expand with the launch of apps for Android and iOS.
Time Warner Cable's monthly prices are going up in New York
Last month, Time Warner Cable confirmed some customers would see their bill go up beginning in mid-January. And, well, here we are. The upcoming price hikes apply to both cable and internet users in the state of New York, as the Albany Times Union pointed out. For starters, TWC's Basic and Standard web services will now cost $49.99 and $59.99 per month, compared to the previous $47.99 and $57.99, respectively. That's not much of a change right away, sure, but it adds up over time.
Time Warner Cable: 320,000 customers may have been hacked
Time Warner Cable (TWC) may have a data breach on its hands. The cable outfit told Reuters that up to 320,000 customers' email passwords were potentially comprised, either through phishing or hacking of third-party companies that store TWC customer information. The FBI notified the company of the possible attack, saying that some of its customers' emails and account passwords "may have been compromised."
TWC robo-calls customer 153 times, now owes her $229,500
Reuters reports that Time Warner Cable has been slapped with a hefty ($229,500) fine after hammering one of its own customers, Araceli King of Irving, Texas, with robo-calls. The cable company reportedly autodialed her 153 times in less than a year. The kicker: they weren't even looking for her -- TWC was actually looking for the guy that originally owned the phone number. But even after repeatedly pleading with the company and a seven minute discussion with a TWC rep in which she made it clear that she wasn't Luiz Perez (the number's original owner), she kept receiving calls. The harassment was so consistent and extensive that the company continued calling her -- an astounding 74 times -- after she instigated her lawsuit in March 2014.
Time Warner Cable receives the first net neutrality complaint
Time Warner Cable has made history by being one of the first (if not the first) broadband providers hit with a net neutrality complaint. Virtual server and streaming media provider Commercial Network Services (CNS) has submitted its grievances against TWC to the FCC, claiming the company is violating net neutrality's "no paid prioritization" and "no throttling" sections. In its complaint, the company said TWC only gives it access to congested traffic routes and refuses to deliver its content through low-latency connections -- that is, unless it pays up.
TWC is threatened with the first Net Neutrality lawsuit
It's been less than a week since the net neutrality rules came into force, but they're already being used to slap the ISP that everybody loves to hate. According to the Washington Post, Commercial Network Services is about to file a complaint against Time Warner Cable for holding its video traffic to ransom. CNS runs SunDiegoLive, a site hosing webcam streams across San Diego, which is popular with the military crowd whenever a US Navy vessel comes into port. As far as CNS is concerned, TWC has been charging unreasonably high rates to let these videos get through the internet without being throttled into dust.
Charter and Time Warner Cable agree on $55 billion merger
Time Warner Cable (TWC) has leaped into the arms of Charter Communications in a merger valued at $55 billion, confirming previous rumors. That's considerably more than the $45 billion Comcast proposed to pay for TWC in a controversial deal that was eventually called off. Charter said that the merger will "create a leading broadband services and technology company serving 23.9 million customers in 41 states." Time Warner Cable rejected a similar offer back in 2014, but Charter sweetened it considerably this time around with an offer that values it at $75.7 billion.
The French are coming... for Time Warner Cable
Ever since Comcast was scared off buying Time Warner Cable, a slew of other firms have been eyeing up the business for a purchase. The latest to throw a beret into the ring is French telecoms firm Altice (us neither), which Reuters and the Wall Street Journal claim has eyes on America's No. 2. The outfit is already attempting to make it big here after announcing that it's purchasing Suddenlink, a regional cable company operating in a handful of states, including West Virginia, Texas and Louisiana, at a cost of $9.1 billion.
Time Warner Cable's Xbox One app now streams live TV
Time Warner Cable's Xbox One app, TWC TV, just became much, much more useful. The company has added live streaming for up to 300 channels, so you don't have to miss out on a show when you're at a friend's place or can't hook up cable in your gaming den. There are still 8,000 free and subscription-based on-demand shows, too, so you'll usually have something to watch. Grab the free app today if you're hoping to get a little more mileage out of your TV package.
Comcast officially gives up on Time Warner Cable merger
The rather unpopular, $45 billion merger attempt between Comcast and Time Warner Cable has been officially called off. In a very brief statement, Comcast CEO Brian L. Roberts said that he would have liked to pair the two companies together, but governmental pressure has killed the deal. The biggest objection to the deal was that the combination would control the majority of high-speed internet connections in the US, raising the ire of both the FCC and Justice Department. Unlike the failed AT&T - T-Mobile deal a few years back, it doesn't appear as if either party has to pay a severance fee to the other, which should make walking away a little easier. Update: In a statement, Attorney General Eric Holder said the decision is a victory for "providers of content and streaming services who work to bring innovative products to consumers across America and around the world." Check after the break for other statements from around the industry, including Time Warner Cable and some of the consumer groups that opposed the deal. [Image credit: Spencer Platt/Getty Images]
Comcast and TWC will negotiate with officials to save their merger
The merger between Comcast and Time Warner Cable is no longer as certain to get approval as it once was, and the two cable giants know it. Wall Street Journal sources understand that the companies will meet with Department of Justice officials this week (the first time they've met since the announcement) in hopes of negotiating concessions and saving the deal. It's not clear what more they'll propose beyond existing offers, although history suggests that they could give up more customers or promise more efforts to expand low-cost internet access.
Justice Department may try to block the Comcast / TWC merger
It's been more than a year since Comcast announced its plan to buy fellow cable giant Time Warner Cable in a $45 billion deal, but it still hasn't received the blessings of various regulators. Now, word is leaking out from unnamed sources to Bloomberg and the New York Times that suggests Justice Department lawyers will recommend blocking the merger. Many consumer groups, politicians and executives from other companies have raised concerns over the last year that the combination would put too many customers, and too much of the nation's internet under one banner, despite a promise by Comcast to divest itself of some 3 million customers. Facing so much negative attention, Comcast is trying to improve customer service and reassure skeptics that it will be a friendly giant telecommunications company, but hasn't had much success convincing anyone that its plan will make cable TV better.
'Stop Mega Comcast' group aims to kill the Time Warner merger
Comcast just can't catch a break. Opponents of the company's $45 billion Time Warner Cable merger have gathered forces to create the "Stop Mega Comcast" coalition, just as the FCC has announced that it's restarting its regulatory review of the deal. The group, which includes Dish Network, the communications non-profit Public Knowledge and others, serves as a united front against the merger. Comcast is already the largest cable provider in the U.S., but the Time Warner deal would make it even more of a juggernaut with 11 million additional customers and control of 50% of the home broadband market. "This much power concentrated in the hands of one company would be frightening even for the most trustworthy of companies," Public Knowledge's CEO Gene Kimmelman said in a statement. "And Comcast is definitely not that."
Time Warner Cable says routine maintenance caused national outage
Large chunks of the US will have woken up this morning in a panic. No, not a natural disaster, their Time Warner Cable internet was down. A mother-of-all-outages saw TWC's Internet service down from New York to, well, pretty much everywhere (see map below). What's more curious, is that a statement from the company claims it was due to planned maintenance that went awry. Still, for at least an hour and a half, Netflix's main beef with the company won't have been about neutrality.
Comcast tries to clinch TWC merger by sweetening its low-income internet plan
Comcast mostly uses its Internet Essentials program to butter up antitrust regulators; it created the low-income plan to help complete its NBC takeover, and extended the offering indefinitely to improve its chances of acquiring Time Warner Cable. It's no coincidence, then, that the company has just sweetened Internet Essentials at a time when the TWC merger remains an uncertain prospect. The cable giant is now offering debt amnesty to those who would normally qualify for the $10 monthly plan, but are saddled with outstanding Comcast bills that are over a year old. It's also offering six months of free service for those who sign up by September 20th, in part to guarantee that kids have access to online educational resources when they return to school.
Comcast and TWC voted most-hated ISPs in America's most-hated industry
America's Consumer Satisfaction Index doesn't have a lot of nice things to say about Comcast or Time Warner Cable. The two business, which are currently trying to merge with each other, were found to be the worst ISPs in the most-hated industry that the index covers. Time Warner has the dubious achievement of making an all-time low score of 56 out of 100, with Comcast coming in just ahead of it with 57. On the other end of the scale, the 12,248 participants reluctantly gave their blessing to Verizon's FiOS, with a score of 71, and AT&T's U-Verse, which scored 65. What will this mean if Comcast and TWC do create a nationwide "triple play" behemoth? Mammoth profits for some, and red-faced calls for plenty of others.
The Weather Channel comes back to DirecTV, but now with less reality TV
After dragging on for months, a standoff between DirecTV and The Weather Channel has ended and the winner is pretty clear. In mid-January TWC went dark on the satellite service and DirecTV started pushing the three people left who don't get their weather info from the internet to another channel, WeatherNation. There hadn't been any movement since, but after news a few days ago that DirecTV signed a multiyear deal with WeatherNation, it appears The Weather Channel finally blinked. A statement announcing the deal includes an apology to DirecTV and its customers from Weather Company CEO David Kenny, plus a promise to cut TWC's reality TV programming by half on weekdays (Deadliest Space Weather is a real show). Other throw ins include the return of instant local weather and letting DirecTV subscribers stream The Weather Channel's video feed to other devices over the internet no matter where they are. Now that this long national nightmare is over (DirecTV is still duking it out with the Dodgers, PAC-12 and CSN Houston networks), we're hoping they go back and add a line ending TWC's silly new practice of naming winter storms -- that's not a thing, stop it.
Weekly Roundup: Comcast acquiring TWC, the Galaxy S 5 and more!
You might say the week is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workweek, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Weekly Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past seven days -- all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
Daily Roundup: LG G Pro 2 announced, Comcast acquiring TWC, and more!
You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours -- all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
