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January 10th, 2007 at 12:58 pm
Where’s the evidence that the state is better eqipped than cities to handle this type of thing? The “hope” that we end up with better legislation is not enough for me.
Competition is growing over time. I don’t want to see control moved to the state level just because it is not happening “fast enough.” Especially given that we have one of the most corrupt legislatures in the country.
January 10th, 2007 at 7:05 pm
We approved Verizon recently in Tyngsboro. They’re sneaky, they tried to define their “cable system” as being strictly the coaxial cables so that in 2 years when they start running the picture over fiber, we’re not regulating their cable system at all. Lots of tricky stuff like that, our lawyer (we retained a specialist) had seen it all before and we wound up settling right where we all knew we would at the beginning.
The key part of these contracts is most of the time the town manages to extract a small percentage of gross revenue to run the public access TV station, pay a media director, buy editing equipment, etc. If it wasn’t for that specific earmarked revenue, Tyngsboro might have eliminated our program by now in the face of all the other layoffs and reductions we’ve had to endure.
If the state licensing mechanism had fair provisions for towns and didn’t morph into legislative campaign contributions substistuting for Public Educational Programming funds, I’d be ok with it. And don’t let them sneak in any provisions about not having to service those “hard to reach” areas either. They should take a good hard look at all of the licenses granted over the state in the past year. Build those into a set of standard terms and give towns the option to yes/no vote the standard terms on a cable company’s way in and that would be fair to municipalities. As long as we’re not just getting kicked in the teeth again, I can see efficiencies in avoiding every town having to pay counsel while Verizon’s lawyers criss-cross the state making the same deal over and over again.
January 10th, 2007 at 9:58 pm
I like how they say this will promote competition. Supposedly Clinton deregulated cable companies, yet how many options do we have? Municipalities negotiate with cable companies without any public input. The only real competition is satellite television (I am ignoring over the air antenna which is not really an option).
I enjoy the quote: “The intent is to circumvent cities and towns, which for decades have been the leading advocates for competition and for offering affordable and widespread cable television services for their citizens.”
Yeah, cities and towns are leading advocates for competition. Give me a break. How laughable.
January 10th, 2007 at 10:40 pm
I seem to recall an overwhelming majority of legislatures pushing the 1996 communications act through. I wouldn’t put it all on Clinton.
January 11th, 2007 at 9:13 am
People still subscribe to cable? Haven’t had it in seven years, and I haven’t missed it.
January 11th, 2007 at 10:28 am
I’m with ya renee, although I’m more like 2 months without cable.
Mr. Bishop, most cities and towns will promote competition between cable services if the cable companies coming into town are reasonable about it.. competition is better for everyone. The issue is if the cable company coming in wants to give the town significantly less than the current one does, then the current one can scale down it’s commitment whenever their contract is up for renewal on grounds of fairness.
And as far as public input, I’ll have you know that we received and read into the record 6 letters from citizens supporting Verizon setting up their cable franchise in town the other month. All 6 were identical, and I’m pretty sure all 6 people were verizon employees… but hey
January 11th, 2007 at 1:25 pm
“As long as we’re not just getting kicked in the teeth again, I can see efficiencies in avoiding every town having to pay counsel while Verizon’s lawyers criss-cross the state making the same deal over and over again.”
Jay, thanks for that perspective. However, if it’s legislation that Verizon is pushing…I doubt it has much to offer the cities and towns in terms of protecting them from the very stuff they tried to pull on Tyngsboro when they came to you for approval.
January 11th, 2007 at 1:50 pm
That’s definitely the concern - hopefully our legislators will watch out for us.
January 11th, 2007 at 2:01 pm
We need our legislature to listen to independant analysis of the legislation. The problem with the 1996 Telecommunications Act was that it was sold as a boon to competition and most of our legislatures (or citizens for that matter) didn’t have any decent analysis on which to determin the veracity of that claim.
January 11th, 2007 at 9:19 pm
Explain to me how the telecommunications act was a boon to competition? It created a monopoly, one created not out of capitalism, but out of mercantilism where municipalities are the ONLY ones able to negotiate with cable companies.
It was a failed policy by the legislature, yet you trust the legislature to somehow “watch out for us.” The only things legislators watch out for is themselves and ways to fatten up their budget.
January 12th, 2007 at 7:44 am
Hi, Joe, read the comments please, carefully, before you go off on a rant.
Mr. Lynne said “the 1996 Telecommunications Act was that it was sold as a boon to competition and most of our legislatures (or citizens for that matter) didn’t have any decent analysis on which to determin the veracity of that claim.”
Mr. Lynne, I happen to know, is right pissed about that Telecom act. And there’s nothing in his post to suggest otherwise.
And bullshit, the 1996 act was a giveaway to corporations not municipalities. It has created monopolies, Comcast being a really good example…it started gobbling up everything in sight afterwards. Now look at us - Comcast and Verizon. That’s about the extent of competition in most of Massachusetts. That has nothing to do with municipalities and everything to do with corporate consolidation.
January 15th, 2007 at 3:07 pm
Hey folks, just came back from the Media Reform conference in Memphis where this was one of the issues at play. Verizon has pushed this legislation through the state legislature in TX. It is working its way through CA & PA legistlatures right now.
Re: competition - no one is saying Verizon can’t come into cities and play on the same level playing fleld that Comcast and other cable providers are playing on. They are looking for an advantage here and once they get it, Cable companies will want the same advantage too.
It would be instructive to look in communities where there are two or more companies providing video services. It may be that prices drop initially, but the new entrant will soon pull their prices up and the difference in cost become negligable.
Verizon, as it has in other states, may well get the OK not to provide or be demanded to provide build out into communities that are not economically advantageous. In CA they are definitely redlighting certain communities.
Finally, as a long-time supporter of community media (I use to work at LTC), if these decisions are pushed to the state level, important local control over funding, communication infrastructure, and bandwidth will be lost.
In the case of Lowell, the potential loss is almost $1M in cash each year (with additional funds for capital improvements), about 15 full-time jobs (for P, E, and G), 24mhz of bandwidth for 4 channels (not to mention a stand alone closed-circuit video / data network), and most importantly hours and hours of critical community information such as coverage of important munciple meetings, lifeline info for non-English speakers, outlets for social and human service agencies, and one of the only free speech venues for the average citizen on television today. All of these resources controlled and their used determined locally.
Why would we give up these resources in order for a for-profit company to have the ability to make more of a profit or have an easier time at making that profit? Seems like it works against our own community interests. We should also watch out that in this legislation, citizens are not sold out as deals get cut with current allies like Comcast and municiple governments.