Interesting article in the Asbury Park Press about Optimum service in Howell, NJ.
Howell 'horrible' Optimum internet service gets Township Council attention
Alex N. Gecan
Asbury Park Press
HOWELL - Imagine your internet going out. Now imagine it going out when you have to work from home, and your children have to attend school from home. Hundreds of Howell residents have been dealing with just that.
After Optimum subscribers reported more and more problems over the pandemic summer, the township began asking that users keep them in the loop, and have collected 678 specific complaints so far, according to township Manager Brian Geoghegan.
The Township Council has gone so far as to ask a state regulator to halve Optimum's rates to local subscribers.
Meanwhile, attorneys for the township and representatives from Altice USA, which operates Optimum, are hammering out a renewal of the provider's franchise agreement with the town.
"We've been having a lot of issues throughout town," Geoghegan told the Asbury Park Press in a phone interview. "Anytime we've had contact with Optimum or Xfinity or Comcast these days, they're blaming it on everyone working from home, kids home-schooling. ... They're having a hard time keeping up with it."
Altice has "worked closely with the town over the last few months as we continue to invest in our network, products and services to support the increasing demands of our customers, including undertaking recent network activity to improve broadband reliability and performance and launching faster broadband speeds, including our 1 gigabit speed tier," Janet Meahan, a spokeswoman for Altice, said in an email inquiring after Howell subscribers' complaints.
Meahan added: "We are looking forward to continuing productive conversations with the Howell community and remain committed to delivering high-quality service and support to the community."
Shoddy internet service, specifically with Optimum, has been a constant topic at public meetings, with Mayor Theresa Berger describing Optimum's service as "horrible" in a September Township Council meeting and name-dropping Optimum as one of the issues she intended to take on in her new term, which began this month.
Internet access has become crucial to both professionals and students as the world continues to grapple with COVID-19. Around three fourths of students in the township's public K-8 district have opted to attend school in person, according to district officials.
But 60% of the Freehold Regional High School District, to which Howell also belongs, is now virtual, up from 40% last semester, according to district Superintendent Charles Sampson.
Most of Howell's only option for cable and internet is Optimum, which must provide service to the entire township, according to its franchise agreement. Verizon also has a franchise in town but its service is not widely available, making Howell something of a captive market for Optimum. Precise figures were not immediately available on how many Howell residents subscribe to each service, but Verizon's Fios service is available to less than 43% of the township, according to Broadband Now.
According to the complaints the township has received, subscribers are not just rankled at service outages, but also with billing increases.
"People are just generally frustrated, they're paying more for what is now worse service," Geoghegan said.
But while the complaints the township has collected give it ammunition at the bargaining table, they don't necessarily translate into an immediate remedy for the subscriber.
"When we started getting complaints, I tried telling people, it is a private company, there's not a lot we can do about it," Geoghegan said. "It would seem when they file a complaint with the (New Jersey) Board of Public Utilities it tends to get noticed."
It is the BPU that the Township Council asked to intercede.
In October, Berger and council members Evelyn O'Donnell and John Bonevich voted in favor of a resolution asking BPU to direct Altice to give Howell subscribers a 50% rate cut. Councilwoman Pamela Richmond was absent and Councilman Thomas Russo abstained.
The township has hired Andrew Bayer, a lawyer who specializes in litigation, municipal law and land use, to spearhead the negotiations.
The township first signed a franchise agreement, which requires the provider to offer service everywhere in town, in 2009, according to township records. At the time the provider was still called Cablevision.
The agreement does not exclude any other providers from moving in, and mandates that the provider pay annual fees to the township, which Geoghegan estimated to be around $300,000. Providers may also renew franchises directly through the BPU, as Verizon is doing.
Whether Verizon will become a realistic second option remains to be seen.
"We have reached out to them to encourage them to try and build out their network more," Geoghegan said. "They were very receptive but they haven an internal process. ... I don't know if that is actually going to happen."
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