14 May—Among Altice USA’s dissatisfied customers in Connecticut is Attorney General William Tong. But unlike most of us he can do something about it other than bitch and switch. Bitching is easy; we can do it till the cows come home and Altice, whose cable-broadband franchise in the east is deceptively called Optimum, can simply thumb its corporate nose at us.

Switching, on the other hand, is problematic, given that Optimum, like most cable-broadband franchises, is a virtual monopoly and owns the copper and fiber-optic cables the other service providers must use to provide service.

Frontier Communications is in the process of fibering up its system, but has no immediate plans to do it in the area towns currently monopolized by Altice. Reports from the City of Torrington are that Frontier service there is pretty good. As well it should be, after Frontier settled a lawsuit stemming from its notorious unreliability and excessive charges in Connecticut in 2022 for $60 million.

Back to Altice, then, AG Tong is suing the bastards for what his office maintains is a junk fee that we, its essentially captive subscribers, have been paying since January 2019. Of course, what everybody knows is, as Tong says, a junk fee, Altice has the chutzpah and PR acumen to call a network enhancement fee (NEF).

The AG’s office has been working on the Altice case for a year and a half, after receiving over 500 complaints about hidden fees, poor technical support, and slow internet speeds. It’s safe to say those complaints are a but tiny drop in Optimum’s bitch bucket.

The lawsuit, filed yesterday in Hartford Superior Court, alleges, inter alia, unfair trade practices under the Connecticut Unfair Trade Practices Act (CUTPA) and that Altice used English-language disclosures in Spanish marketing materials. (Very few customers bother to read those things in any language and even fewer understand them, but what the hell.)

The complaint tells us that the NEF, which is in addition to the internet service charge and started its life at $2.50, is now $6.00 per month. According to Tong, Altice insists that the NEF is necessary to “maintain and improve the network.” In that case, Altice customers may well ask why the hell they haven’t done it.

Tong said in a written statement, “When customers pay for Internet service, they have a right to expect promised speeds and network reliability without being nickel and dimed with junk fees. Altice has extracted millions of dollars in hidden, escalating fees from Connecticut customers over and above the base rate simply to keep their network running. And even with all that extra revenue, they won’t stand by their promised advertised speeds without a series of fine print, fast moving caveats.”

Altice spokeswoman Erin Smyth retorted in a written statement, “The Attorney General’s lawsuit is without merit. The company has invested hundreds of millions of dollars into its network, products, and support experiences across the state of Connecticut, which includes the deployment of our 100 percent fiber internet network to over two-thirds of our footprint in the state, delivering symmetrical speeds of up to 8 gig, the fastest residential internet service in our Connecticut service area. Altice USA provides customers with various offers at different speeds and price points, delivering reliable speeds and service with transparent pricing to customers throughout the state.”

Really? Erin is paid to say that.

Back to Tong, calling himself a victim of Altice at a press conference, he reminded us that the NEF “is not a tax, not a federally or state-mandated fee. It’s not some climate-related thing. It’s just an extra charge that Altice is slipping in on the bill to take money from all of us. That’s all it is. Straight up.”

And Tong stated the obvious, that customers have to pay because Optimum is a monopoly: “Those are monopoly rents. That’s why we are forced to pay them. They are wrong and they’ve got to pay money back.”

No disagreement there . . .

[Editor’s note: There’s no mention of a NEF on Optimum statements. Can it be hidden in Taxes and Other Fees, in addition to State and Local Sales Tax, 911 Surcharge, and Federal Universal Service Fee?]