Time Warner Cable (TWC) is facing a lawsuit from New York attorney general Eric T. Schneiderman over unacceptably low performance. According to Schneiderman, Time Warner Cable intentionally provided consumers with service that was slower than advertised.
Although consumers in New York reported slow performance generally, a lot of complaints dealt specifically with Netflix and Riot Games' League of Legends. Interestingly, TWC's service was particularly slow for Netflix and League of Legends when TWC was negotiating new contracts with both.
Schneiderman says the company is still using "fraudulent and deceptive practices."
One of the issues is that Charter Spectrum, which came from TWC's merger with Charter, leased modems and routers that couldn't offer the advertised performance.
When connecting wirelessly, subscribers on the 300 Mbps plan typically received 15% of the promised speed; subscribers on the 200 Mbps plan received 20% of the promised speed; subscribers on the 100 Mbps plan received 39% of the promised speed; and subscribers on the 50 Mbps plan received 58% of the promised speed.- Schneiderman
Spectrum also used its market position to extract money from online companies. When Riot Games and Netflix agreed to pay the company, performance improved.
[Spectrum] lined its pockets by intentionally creating bottlenecks in its connections with online content providers, despite knowing that these negotiating tactics would create problems for its subscribers in accessing online content.- Schneiderman
Since these practices were most abundant before Charter's acquisition of TWC, Charter hopes to simply move on.
We are disappointed that the New York Attorney General chose to file this lawsuit regarding Time Warner Cable's broadband speed advertisements that occurred prior to Charter's merger. Charter made significant commitments to New York State as part of our merger with Time Warner Cable in areas of network investment, broadband deployment and offerings, customer service, and jobs. - Charter
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