Michael's Insight

Hackers steal $415,000 from one Kentucky county's bank account

$415,989 taken from Bullitt bank account [Louisville Courier-Journal]

While it's not clear yet exactly how it happened, it appears that hackers have absconded with over $400,000 from the county government's bank account in Bullitt County, Kentucky. According to this story from the Louisville Courier-Journal, hackers managed to infiltrate the email account of a county employee, and used the information within that account to impersonate the county employee to initiate several transfers of county funds out of the county's bank account.

The county was notified by its bank that a set of transactions was set to occur last month, which tipped them off that someone was using the account in an unauthorized fashion. Using that information, the county and the bank were able to determine that some money had already been stolen. Since some of the stolen funds were transferred to other banks in the U.S., some of the money has been recovered and returned to the county. This article indicates that prospects are dim for finding all the stolen cash.

Though this article doesn't indicate how the hackers gained access to the county's bank account, phishing scams are a popular method for hackers to steal funds out of bank accounts. These scams involve hackers sending an email that purports to be from a legitimate bank, and links within the email to resolve to a site that appears to be legitimate. But the site is hosted by the hacker, and if any user name or password information is entered into the site, it will be used by hackers to siphon funds out of the legitimate bank account. Microsoft has a good guide to identifying and protecting yourself from phishing fraud emails.

Only 3.3 million Amercian homes unprepared for DTV

Fewer than 3% of U.S. Homes Unready for Digital TV Transition [Nielsen Wire]

We're just a few short weeks away from the nation's transition from analog television broadcasts to digital. And even though over 40 percent of broadcast stations have already transitioned, there are still millions of Americans who aren't yet ready for the transition. As they have for several months now, The Nielsen Company has released May's count of households that are still unprepared for DTV. This month's count totals 3.3 million U.S. households.

While that is still a large number of Americans that are heading for a static filled screen after June 12th, it's a number that has slowly worked itself lower and lower over the past five months. On February 15th, just before the originally planned deadline, just over 5 million American homes remained unprepared. And at this point, the unprepared homes represent less than 3 percent of households nationally.

From a regional standpoint, within the Insight footprint, the two reported metro areas in Nielsen's count -- Columbus, Ohio and Louisville, Kentucky -- report better than average DTV preparedness rates. In Louisville, 2.42 percent of homes still need to get ready for digital television. In Columbus, only 1.51 percent of households aren't prepared.

If you're one of the few DTV holdouts that hasn't resigned yourself to watching static after the digital transition, there's still time to give Insight a call. We're ready to be your DTV solution, helping get all your televisions connected to cable, preparing you for the digital transition. And remember, even if you're ready on your main TV, all the analog televisions in your home needs a solution if you want to keep using them after June 12th.

Insight's digital migration in Louisville

Analog viewers lose Faith Channel [Louisville Courier-Journal]

Over the weekend, the Louisville Courier-Journal reported on two channel changes - one that has already happened and one forthcoming - that involve the migration of analog channels to digital. The Faith Channel was changed to a digital signal after working with us to accomplish the conversion.  In the words of Reed Yadon, the Faith Channel's general manager:

"With the competition being what it is for viewers, (we felt) we needed to have the best technical presentation that we could," Yadon said.  "At some point, analog is going away anyhow."

By moving the channel to digital, 30 percent of our subscribers who subscribe only to analog service need an option to receive the Faith Channel.  For those subscribers, Insight is offering, for one year, a specially programmed set-top digital converter that will allow analog subscribers to continue to view the Faith Channel. Analog customers with a digital television can receive the Faith Channel by performing a channel reset on their TV.

In addition to the Faith Channel, Insight will be converting Univision, the Spanish-language channel, to digital on Wednesday of this week with the same opportunities available for analog customers who wish to continue to receive the network.

These changes are not related to the current broadcasting digital transition. That's the ongoing transition of broadcast television stations to digital, which is ongoing until June 12th of this year. The digital migration that Insight is performing will allow us to free up bandwidth that is currently being used by analog channels. By reclaiming that bandwidth, we can offer our subscribers enhanced programming options like more standard and high definition video channels and faster cable broadband speeds. The bandwidth that one analog channel takes up can be replaced by up to a dozen standard digital signals.

These types of changes will continue to be made on cable systems throughout the country as the cable industry proceeds with its own digital transition, unrelated to the broadcast transition that is now scheduled for completion on June 12. 

CBS cuts away from last night's U of L game

CBS cuts away from U of L game in second half [Louisville Courier-Journal]

It sounds like last night was a long one for Louisville's WLKY-TV. WLKY is the local CBS affiliate in Louisville, which was broadcasting the U of L versus Sienna matchup in the second round of the Men's NCAA Basketball tournament to thousands of Cards fans when CBS inexplicably switched the broadcast feed to other games that were going on simultaneously.

Louisville was in an up and down game with the upstart Sienna College Saints, and was in the middle of making a crucial run when CBS cut over to the Marquette-Missouri and USC-Michigan State games. According to this article, WLKY was flooded with calls from irate fans trying to find the game. However, give the local affiliate a break.  WLKY didn't have access to a separate satellite feed of the U of L game, and had to explain that they were at the mercy of the CBS feed. I understand from some of my Facebook friends that WLKY started running a crawl at the bottom of the screen explaining the situation and directing complaints directly to CBS where they belong.

One thing to keep in mind throughout the tournament is that each game is available in its entirety streaming online at mmod.ncaa.com. The quality of the stream is fairly good, and you won't have to worry about the network bumping you over to another game in progress.

Go Cards!

Talking cable at the University of Louisville

Last Thursday I had the privilege of spending part of my day at the University of Louisville with the Cable Center's Cable Mavericks program. I was hosted by UofL's College of Business and had the opportunity to speak with several groups of UofL students Thursday afternoon.

My first stop was an on campus television studio to record an interview with some questions posed by students and faculty. Even though the University's Big East Conference regular season champion (and now tournament champion) Cardinals were playing their first game in the Big East tournament, a group of students skipped the game to come ask me questions about the cable industry and Insight. I've YouTubed a portion of one of my answers to a question about how Insight works to provide our customers with the highest levels of service.

After the interview, I spent some time in the atrium of the College of Business with students interested in coming to work for Insight. Even with the challenging conditions of our present economy, Insight is looking for bright, energetic individuals, and I got to speak with some of the UofL students interested in starting a career at Insight. Later, Gregg Graff, Insight's Senior Vice President for Field Operations, and I spoke to a marketing class about Insight's efforts to build and retain our customer base by distinguishing our products from our competitors'. After that, I spent some time with a class of students majoring in various aspects of information technology. A couple of Insight's folks whose primary focus is on the technical aspects of delivering our products - Jeff Warner and Jeff Leftwich - worked with those students on interviewing skills.

It was great to spend the day with the next generation of innovators in cable and telecommunications, and I appreciate the opportunity that UofL and the Cable Center provided for me and the rest of Insight's team to share some of my experiences with students.  Special thanks to Jane Goldstein of UofL for taking such good care of us all day.

Louisville television stations may stick with February 17th DTV deadline

DTV May Go Ahead as Planned…Here [The 'Ville Voice]

Even though Congress looks poised to approve a bill delaying the national digital television transition from February 17th until June 12th of this year, it appears that at least some of the  television stations in Louisville, Kentucky will proceed with their digital transition on the earlier date. The 'Ville Voice interviews two Louisville television station managers who indicate that there are plans underway for at least some Louisville stations to make the switch to digital on February 17th. 

While the congressional DTV delay would set the new deadline at June 12th, individual stations are free set a different transition date. If you're watching Louisville television over-the-air, I'd recommend that you prepare for the digital switch in February. And, like I've said a hundred times before, if your televisions are connected to cable, we've got you covered.  You're already prepared for the digital transition - no matter when it occurs in your area or for your favorite TV station.

Broadband 100.0? Not Yet

As reported in the Lexington Herald Leader and on Broadband Reports, Insight is testing a 100 meg broadband service at one location in Louisville.  We are pushing the limits of speed on our network as an early part of a process that will lead to more extensive hypersonic speed testing in the future.  In this test, a doctor's office is using the service to electronically transfer medical imaging to and from his office.

Our business services group, Insight Business Services (IBS), is conducting this test for us.  We are able to provision for just about any bandwidth requirement for IBS customers and what better result is there -- to help doctors treat their patients more efficiently and effectively.  In order to increase speeds to 50 or even 100 meg for residential customers, we plan to utilize the new cable modem open standard of DOCSIS 3.0.  We're doing a lot of preliminary work to get ready for DOCSIS 3.0 but don't yet have a timetable. 

Meanwhile, we are watching DOCSIS 3.0 tests that are underway in other markets and we're extremely encouraged with the performance of the new technology.  A couple of questions being asked by interested customers have do do with upstream speeds (some are testing 5 to 10 meg) and whether you will need a new modem (yes). 

We have been a leader in pushing the limits of speed having been one of the first cable ISP's to break the 10 meg barrier followed by our early launch of our premium 20 meg service.  Going much beyond that requires a whole new standard for cable modems which eventually will increase speed capabilities into the triple digits.  We are going to be absolutely sure DOCSIS 3.0 works well in a large-scale deployment before we launch.  However, knowing us, after we take it out for a test drive, I wouldn't be surprised if we find we can't help ourselves and look to press the pedal to the medal soon after we break in the new speedster. 

Storm Aftermath -- The Slow Recovery

Nearly a quarter million households in the greater Louisville area are still without power in the wake of Sunday afternoon's storm. This is the result of over 5,000 broken lines and nearly 300 snapped utility poles.  American Electric Power reported that over 300,000 were still without power in central Ohio and it might be six more days until everyone has power restored.  Duke Energy reported 500,000 still out of service in the Greater Cincinnati area, including our service area in Northern Kentucky.  Needless to say, this type of damage affects all utilities are impacted by the damage of this surprise severe weather.  We are too.

Our Network Operations Center (NOC) remains without power.  Those of you outside the Louisville market and those in Louisville who have power and Internet service remain online because of the back-up generators that have now been keeping us up and running for over 30 hours.

Insight's Headquarters

Eric sent me an email asking the following question.

Please write a blog post to help customers understand why Insight Communications does not have its corporate headquarters located in the geographical region they serve.  Although New York is cool and all, doesn't it make more sense to be where your customers are? 

Great question.  And the fact is, most of our corporate functionality is in Louisville, KY.  We maintain a New York office that houses primarily our finance and accounting department.  We continue those functions in New York for a number of reasons.

Louisville stations to conduct DTV test on September 3rd

If you live in or near Louisville and watch television via an over the air antenna, you're going to have an opportunity soon to see whether you're ready for next year's digital transition. On September 3rd, five Louisville television stations will be temporarily pulling the plug on their analog signal and broadcasting in digital only.

WAVE-TV 3, WDRB-TV 41, WHAS-TV 11, WLKY-TV 32 and WMYO-TV 58 have announced the digital transition test will happen at 7:58 PM on September 3rd. At that time the stations will broadcast in digital only for 90 seconds, before returning to regular analog broadcasts. Those viewers with digital TVs, digital converter boxes or cable or satellite will continue to receive each station's signal during the 90 second switchover. But those without digital-ready equipment will lose signal.

HBO/Showtime Digital Migration in Louisville

Our Louisville system is in the process of having our last remaining premium channels migrate from analog to digital.  In this case HBO,  HBO2 and Showtime will be removed from the analog lineup and be made available only on digital.

Several customers have posted comments on this blog about this move. 

Michael asked,

Why is it necessary to make users pay for additional digital boxes to see HBO and Showtime.  Is the government driving this change.  How come i don't need a digital box to see all of the other channels?

The digital transition, as clear as it gets

I sat down with WHAS TV reporter Andy Treinen on Wednesday to talk about the digital television transition that will be happening next year on February 17th.

Andy put together an excellent story that helped to clarify what consumers need to know to successfully transition from the current analog television transmission to digital. His story also mentioned Insight's transition of HBO, HBO2 and Showtime.

Shame on you AT&T!

AT&T has stooped to a new low by running "confusion" ads in Louisville, KY.  The ads obviously were designed to suggest that their bundled pricing is more of a guarantee than ours.  Nothing could be further from the truth. 

We sent a letter to AT&T asking them to stop misleading consumers and guess what -- their lawyers refused. 

I'll be specific and you judge for yourself.

One blogger reacts to my a-la-carte post