Well, it may not reach the level of "charm," but Comcast is certainly trying to improve the generally offensive reputation it has built over the years, just as the federal government is reviewing its proposed merger with Time Warner Cable.

Comcast has recently announced two improvements to its Internet offerings, expanding and fixing parts of its Internet Essentials program for poor families and improving its Internet speeds for customers in four states at no additional cost to customers. The announcements come while the FCC, Justice Department, and congressional judiciary committees are reviewing Comcast's proposed acquisition of the second largest cable provider in the nation, Time Warner Cable.

Internet Essentials Upgrades:

(Limited) Free Service and Unpaid Bill "Amnesty"

Comcast's Internet Essentials program is an initiative that brings low-cost (low-bandwidth) Internet to qualifying low-income families with school children, along with free Internet training and an option to buy a low-cost computer for about $150 during initial enrollment.

The program is meant to help bridge the so-called "digital divide," or the tendency for low-income families to be left behind as more educational, cultural, and economic opportunities implicitly require a costly broadband Internet connection.

The digital divide still affects many Latino families in the U.S. where, paradoxically, as more economically mainstream Latinos tend to be more digitally savvy than the general American population, still nearly half of Latino families live without fixed broadband Internet connected to their homes as of 2013. 

As we previously reported, the potential expansion of Internet Essentials to Time Warner Cable markets is one of the potential benefits of the merger that Comcast has been touting. But Comcast's digital divide program isn't the result of corporate compassion or a sense of responsibility to the community. The federal government mandated it when it gave Comcast the go-ahead to buy NBCUniversal.

And according to Ars Technica, there have been complaints from some nonprofits -- including in comments filed to the FCC regarding the merger -- that Comcast's Internet Essentials is too difficult to sign up for, too hard to prove eligibility, and sometimes breaks its own "no credit checks" rule during the signup process. This has resulted in quite a low enrollment rate, with only 11 percent of eligible families in California getting Internet Essentials, for example.

Internet Essentials does require families to prove they are eligible for the National School Lunch Program and has had a policy of rejecting applicants who had outstanding unpaid bills due to Comcast or unreturned company equipment. Comcast is now easing the second of those policies, launching an "amnesty program for certain low-income families who could qualify for Internet Essentials, but have a past due balance," according to Comcast's blog post written by Executive VP and chief pro-merger spokesperson, David L. Cohen.

Customers who have a past due balance over a year old can now still sign up for the program. However, wrote Cohen, if underprivileged families' outstanding Comcast bills are less than a year old, "we would like them to settle that debt with us before they can be eligible to apply for the program." He added, "We are willing to work with families whose debt is reasonable enough that that they could pay us back in installments."

On top of the "amnesty" program, Comcast is offering "up to six months" of complimentary service for new Internet Essentials customers who are approved between August 4 and September 20. Earlier this year, Comcast announced it was expanding the Internet Essentials program indefinitely, even though it was only required to provide the low-cost service until the end of June 2014. In its three year span, since the NBCUniversal merger in 2011, the program has connected about 1.4 million Americans to the Internet.

Boosting Internet Speeds... Where Competition Threatens

Beyond its offerings to low-income Americans, Comcast recently announced that nearly all residential customers in California, as well as certain parts of Kansas, Missouri and Texas, were getting an upgrade in Internet broadband speed at no extra cost.

California subscribers, excluding those the Santa Cruz, Scotts Valley, Isleton, Lodi, and Rio Vista areas, as well as Comcast customers in Olathe, Kansas, Independence Missouri, and Houston, Texas, will all see a bump in speed soon. The middle two tiers "Performance" and "Blast" are being roughly doubled from 25 Mbps and 50 Mbps (respectively) to 50 Mbps and 105 Mbps. The highest residential tier, "Extreme 105" is being bumped up to 150 Mbps.

It's no coincidence that the Kansas and Missouri customers live in areas where cheap and fast competitor Google Fiber is expanding, and Houston was similarly announced as one of AT&T's next targets for its gigabit Internet offerings as well.

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