Save Access

from: The Columbus Dispatch

Bill Would Mean Lots of Money for Giants: AT&T, Time Warner Unite to Push Lawmakers

By Alan Johnson, The Columbus Dispatch, Ohio

Jun. 3--A proposed state law expanding Ohioans' cable-video service options stretches 29 pages. But it can be summarized in just two words: big bucks.

Senate Bill 117 is almost certain to be approved by the Ohio General Assembly in the next few weeks.

It means big money, and we're talking hundreds of millions of dollars here, for AT&T, the telecommunications company now moving into the video-entertainment business. The same goes for Time Warner and other cable companies already in the field.

The legislation sponsored by Sen. Jeff Jacobson, R-Vandalia, is one of the most heavily lobbied in the legislature since electricity deregulation zapped lawmakers in 1999.

AT&T has more than two dozen high-powered lobbyists on its Ohio payroll. The cable industry has 17.

They sit shoulder to shoulder in packed hearing rooms as lawmakers debate the bill.

It's already been approved by the Ohio Senate and could be voted out of the House Public Utilities Committee as soon as this week. It would then go to the entire House for a vote, and eventually to Gov. Ted Strickland for his signature.

"The debate here is about nothing more than the transition from past to future," Diane S. Katz of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, told the Public Utilities Committee last week. "I'm here to suggest that the only interests you must protect are the best interests of consumers."

Thirteen other states, including California, Indiana, Michigan, Texas and, just last week, Georgia and Iowa, have approved similar one-size-fits-all franchising laws. Twenty others are contemplating action.

The technologies of cable TV and telephone, while quite different, operate similarly from a layman's point of view.

Time Warner offers telephone, high-speed Internet and video service through cable lines.

AT&T (formerly SBC, Ameritech and Ohio Bell) provides telephone and broadband Internet, but wants to add television service. That's happened in Texas and several others states through U-verse, the company's video system.

But what does this government debate and hi-tech talk mean for consumers?

Well, there's good news and bad news.

The good: Consumers would have more choices for home video service and potentially lower prices because of competition. Ohio's flagging economy could get a boost, too, by the addition of thousands of jobs for communications workers and billions of dollars in investment connected with the new TV service using telephone lines.

The bad: The 30-year tradition of local control of hard-wired cable-television service would die. Instead of a franchise with each local community, cable and phone companies would get one video franchise for the entire state.

City officials (including the Ohio Municipal League) and advocates for public access TV are up in arms about the measure, but are outgunned by a formidable army of telephone and cable lobbyists presenting a rare united front.

Townships also have franchise agreements with cable operators. They, too, have qualms about the brave new world.

Ed Humphrey, a trustee in Clermont County and member of the Ohio Township Association, told lawmakers that the bill "would not only be detrimental to local access channels across the state, it could also minimize if not totally eliminate government facilities."

Cable companies often provide connections for government, school, police and community buildings.

Humphrey also expressed concern about what he called the "most terrible flaw in the bill," a provision that would allow existing cable companies to abandon service with only a 30-day notice.

"It is simply a giveaway to the current cable operator without any relation to actual competition," Humphrey said.

ajohnson@dispatch.com

-----

To see more of The Columbus Dispatch, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.columbusdispatch.com.