Updated with RCN, CNN comment.
Thursday night, an RCN customer in Boston tweeted the "Parts Unknown" show she'd tuned into on CNN had been replaced by some hard porn, and posted screen shots showing an RCN program guide for "Parts Unknown" overlaid on images of the porn.
Both RCN and CNN, however, deny that had happened.
Cybah, however, reports a friend of his saw the same thing on a Time-Warner cable system.
The user has since turned her Twitter account private.
RCN is alerting its customers they could have some cable issues for brief periods next week as the sun gets right behind the satellites it uses and overpowers the signals.
Between 11 a.m. and 5:30 p.m. on Oct. 4 through 12, the company says, the sun will be aligned right behind some satellites, which could cause from 5 to 45 minutes of issues, from pixellation to a frozen picture.
RCN is alerting customers they might have brief problems with their TV pictures during the day between Feb. 29 and March 8.
These outages are caused by a phenomenon called "solar satellite interference" or "sun outage." This happens when the sun moves directly behind a TV satellite and interferes with its signal.
Seems Viacom and RCN are having one of those fun little cable/network tiffs and as I watch the Daily Show and the Colbert Report tonight, I'm getting a scroll that sends me to some Web site that calmly and rationally explains how Viacom is having to take time out from hugging puppies and cooking hot meals for elderly nuns to defend itself from the heartless oligarchs who run RCN. Or something like that. RCN in turn is using its ad time during the shows to ask why Viacom doesn't believe in freedom.
For booking the following ad on Boston-area Web sites when RCN's Internet service goes down for 2,500 local customers around 7 p.m. on Tuesday and then stays down through Wednesday morning.
The FCC says Boston can reimpose Comcast price controls lifted in 2001, because RCN really isn't an alternative in most of the city.
The commission had lifted Boston's ability to dampen price increases on "basic service tier rates" in 2001 on the premise that RCN would eventually cover the entire city and provide effective competitive price controls.
Comcast told the City Council today it could begin wiring the Mission Main project by April.
Aaron Cohen reports that if you really want to get help with a problem, e-mail them or just post your complaint to them on Twitter rather than wasting your time on hold on the phone.
In his case, that's how he got a fix for an RCN "service" he didn't want - if he mistyped a URL, he'd get some RCN page instead of a Google page.
City Council President Michael Ross (Back Bay, Beacon Hill, Fenway, and Mission Hill) plans a hearing on exclusive contracts Boston's second-ranked cable company has with many apartment-building owners to provide cable service. In a statement, he says:
By law, residents can choose which cable provider offers them the best service for the best price. However, for many Bostonians this choice has been taken away from them as RCN has entered into long-term contracts that limit renters’ rights to choose a provider in the marketplace. Many of these subscribers are disabled, elderly, or low-income residents who rely on cable TV for entertainment and information. We must ensure that telecommunications companies are not gouging these subscribers to line their own pockets.
Seems RCN pulled the plug this morning on its Boston customers still using analog service. Like 4 a.m. to be exact, Nicole Atchison reports:
... I called RCN this afternoon, and spoke to a nice young man in the Chicago call center. He told me that they have been getting complaint calls from all over Boston since 7am. ...
Be is quite happy with RCN. She is not at all happy with Comcast, because in the process of hooking her landlord up, Comcast cut her RCN phone and Internet connections:
... THEY SUCK. IF THEY WERE THE LAST TELECOM IN THE US, I'D JURY RIG A SETUP WITH SOUPCANS AND SOME STRING BEFORE I PARTOOK OF THEIR "SERVICE" ...
Mark Bernstein discusses his discontent with Verizon:
To avoid a $100 service call, Verizon is practically begging me to go down the street to CableVision. It must cost them much more than $100 to get a customer; it costs them a lot more than $100 to get an old customer.
Glen Mohr discusses his discontent with RCN:
So RCN saved $60 by not crediting me for the full month and lost $230/month or more forever.
Daigo reports what happened when he called RCN to ask why his Internet service was so slow:
... After having a very unpressed, very unproductive conversation with a customer support who assumes she is talking to person with no computer knowledge, I have decided that I am switching my cable company. I pay what? for this? I just realized I am paying $125 bucks a month for those a-holes for all cable, TV, and phone. I will not stand for it. Bye bye RCN you have just lost a royal customer of past 5 years.
If somebody grows to really hate your service and cancels it, a voice mail offering $20 off is not going to get her back.
On Mass. Revolution Now, Andy has one word of advice: Don't:
... The morons who are contracted by RCN do to installation came to my home on Thursday morning to install cable for my neighbor. The idiots disconnected me! ...
And now they're telling him the best they can do for him to send somebody out is Oct. 7.
Eeka reports on One Smoot Short of a Bridge that when she did a Google search on
boston technology jesus
she got this:
Is that Comcastic or what? And no, I have no idea why she was searching on that phrase.
Jason reports on Q Daily News that RCN is running unintentionally hysterical local-access commercials that try to show subscribers how to get more out of their cable broadband service:
... Shannon turned to me during the tenth or so time we'd seen the power-cycling commercial and asked, "Do you think RCN is aware that they're the ones responsible for people having to power cycle their cable modems in the first place?" ...
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