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from: MultiChannel News

Verizon Sues Time Warner Cable Over Ads
Telco Alleges Cabler Makes False Claims About FiOS Service
By Todd Spangler -- Multichannel News, 4/9/2008 10:21:00 PM

Verizon Communications filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday against Time Warner Cable, alleging the cable operator’s TV ads make “blatantly false” statements about its FiOS services in an attempt to dissuade customers from switching.

from: The Durham News

New public-access TV law comes with a price
Samiha Khanna, Staff Writer

East Durham resident Mattie Rouse doesn't have a car, and can't get around that easily on foot. So she doesn't get to Greater Joy Baptist Church much anymore to see the bishop.

But she's hopeful she'll continue to be able to see him on cable Channel 8. Greater Joy's Bishop James Daniel is one of several ministers in Durham who have been broadcasting their sermons on Durham's public-access channel for nearly 20 years for free. Many of the shows are broadcast on Sundays and repeated during the week.

from The Business Journal

Tuesday, March 4, 2008 - 2:55 PM CST
Cable providers in Wisconsin seek statewide franchises
The Business Journal of Milwaukee

Five Wisconsin cable and video service providers - Charter Communications Inc., Time Warner Cable, AT&T Inc., CenturyTel and Comcast Cable - have applied for statewide video franchises under legislation passed last year.

from: News and Observer

Durham to pay for public access TV
A city-county pact with Time Warner Cable sets a price of $120,000 for 10 months' programs

Samiha Khanna, Staff Writer
DURHAM - City and county leaders agreed Monday to pay Time Warner Cable $120,000 over the next 10 months to air public access programs -- shows that used to be aired for free.

The leaked Time Warner memo of January annoucing a Texas trial to meter cumulative bandwidth usage for new subscribers and charging a levy for excess consumption should be met with outrage and derision. If implemented nationally, such metering will result in another layer of tiered internet access and turn the web into something resembling a cable TV package, both in escalating cost and eventual loss of content diversity.

from: Ars Technica

Cable and telcos side with Comcast in FCC BitTorrent dispute

By Matthew Lasar | Published: February 19, 2008 - 04:57AM CT

The race is on to get the last word in on the Comcast/BitTorrent controversy. With ten days left to file, telcos, trade, and advocacy groups are sending the Federal Communications Commission their statements on whether Comcast and other ISPs purposefully degrade peer to peer traffic, and if so, what to do about it. Not surprisingly, the debate pits broadband content providers and advocacy groups against the big telcos, cable companies, and their trade association backers.

from: Wall Street Journal

Cable Prepares an Answer to FiOS

From Wall Street Journal, February 14, 2008
By Vishesh Kumar

Stung by the success of phone companies in selling packages of TV and high-speed Internet services, the cable industry is getting close to launching a counteroffensive — an inexpensive new technology that dramatically boosts Internet connection speeds.

from: SaveAccess Texas

This Could Be The End of Public Access in Austin...
Submitted by savetexasaccess on Fri, 2008-02-15 19:03.

. . . if Time Warner successfully sues to get out of the franchise agreement with the City.

The following article “Court allows Texas Cable Industry to Challenge State Law” appeared in last week’s Austin American Statesman (Feb. 8, 2008).

A very useful article for sorting out all the broadcast digital transition (DTV) misinformation in the media these days. It also highlights cable company strategies for playing the transition to their own end (the cable digital transition deadline isn't until Feb 2012). Lost here is any mention of affordable 'basic' cable service, the tier of analog service consisting of local broadcast and PEG channels priced to ensure that low-income and fixed income families can afford basic local TV service. We need to ensure that digital cable affords this tier of service for those that need it most.

from: MultiChannel News

Analog is Dead. Long Live Analog
Why Cable Won’t Go All-Digital By Feb. 18, 2009, Even If Broadcasters Will

By Todd Spangler -- Multichannel News, 2/18/2008 8:22:00 AM

Is analog TV an albatross for cable?

from: Multichannel News

Where PEG Fits In Squarely

_ At a public hearing in New York City on Jan. 17, a man stood up and told city officials about a category of local programming that is cable-exclusive.

"You're not going to find this on satellite," the man said. "You're going to find it on cable."