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From: New Haven Register

Town at Odds with AT&T over U-Verse
by Luther Turmelle
North Bureau Chief

WALLINGFORD - Democratic Councilman Michael
Brodlinsky told his colleagues on the Town Council
Tuesday night that he is concerned the town's three
local cable access channels [sic] are getting
short-changed by AT&T's new television service
offering.

Brodlinsky said AT&T's U-Verse television service -
which provides programming via the Internet - does
not carry the local access channels and that many
residents subscribing to the offering aren't aware
of that. Brodlinsky said AT&T officials have hold
him that the channels won't be on the U-Verse system
for at least five months, and then only if the town
spends $5,000 for special equipment and other fees.

"They are making money in this town, and I don't
think we should have to pay this," Brodlinsky said
of the one-time expenditure of $5,000 to buy an
encoding device and between $2,100 and $3,000 a year
for the town to have dedicated high-speed Internet
lines that he said AT&T is requiring from local
access providers.

"I don't see any harm in going to themand raise the
two points: Please pay (the startup costs) and
please disclose (that local access programs aren't
currently available)."

Mayor William Dickinson Jr. said the town needs to
get the company to put the startup costs in writing,
and after some discussion with the council, agreed
that his office would pursue the documentation.

After the meeting, Brodinsky said that Dickinson,
who is a Republican, "is on notice" and needs to
make progress in addressing the problem.

"This isn't going away, and I think he'd rather do
this than have me do it for him," Brodlinsky said of
the mayor.

Resident Susan Huizenga, who is chairwoman for the
Cable Advisory Council for the seven towns,
including Wallingford, that are part of Comcast
Cable's Branford system, said she is concerned that
the picture quality of local access programming will
not be viewable because of the encryption
technology.

That position was echoed by Scott Hanley, who
manages the town's government access televsion,
which telecasts the council meeting on Comcast.

"The video is going to come up on a Windows Media
screen, similar to what you get when you play videos
on your computer," Hanley said. "It's not going to
be full screen."

Hanley said local access officials statewide are set
to meet with AT&T officials Oct. 29 to address their
concerns.

Seth Bloom, an AT&T spokesman for Connecticut, said
the company is committed to bringing all local
access channels onto U-Verse.

"It's a very important part of what we're offering,"
Bloom said during a phone interview earlier
Tuesday. Bloom said not only will U-Verse include
existing community access chaneels, but it also
plans to make available local access programming
from other communities.

"Say you want to keep track of what's going on in
the town you work in," Bloom said. "With U-Verse,
you'll be able to do that."

U-Verse is an Internet Protocol Television service,
which Bloom said makes huge amounts of bandwidth
available for programming.

"We don't want to eliminate an existing channel in
order to add programming," he said.

U-Verse is available in parts of 40 Connecticut
communities, Bloom said. The area towns are
Branford, Cheshire, Derby, East Haven, Guilford,
Hamden, Milford, New Haven, Stratford, Trumbull,
Wallingford, and West Haven.

It is available to 135,000 households in those
communities, although AT&T officials aren't saying
how many subscribers it has.