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from: Broadband Reports

The Fiscal Problems Of Franchise Laws
There's a problem when telecom companies write legislation

The Video Service Competition Act, passed into law last year by the General Assembly in North Carolina, is your basic cable franchise agreement. It was supposed to increase competition, reducing pricing and give consumers more cable service choices. What it wasn’t supposed to do was cost the local and state governments in the area over 25% of their revenue. But that’s exactly what’s happened in the six months since the franchise agreement has been effect because of the way that the tax on cable TV is now funneled through the Department of Revenue. Oh, and by the way, competitive pricing for consumers hasn’t materialized either. This could mean a bad future for the other states that have passed franchise agreements.