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from: LI Biz Blog

Cablevision cries foul

Sep 18th, 2007 by David Reich-Hale

handcables.gifFascinating Viewpoint page in Crain’s New York Business. It’s a must read for anyone as infatuated with the Verizon-Cablevision battle as we are.

The New York business publication writes an editorial demanding that New York City grant Verizon a video franchise so the FiOS provider can start to roll out its TV services in the Big Apple. Crain’s takes a shot at Cablevision and Time Warner, the two cable companies that do business in NYC, by saying “New Yorkers want a choice. A Charney Associates Poll commissioned by Crain’s New York Business found that 51 percent of cable subscribers in the city would switch if they had that option - a startling percentage.”

The publication also accuses the Bloomberg Administration of tilting the landscape against Verizon by waiting so long to grant the video license because most New Yorkers want a bundled package of phone, TV and high-speed Internet on one bill. The editorial also accuses the cable companies of laying roadblocks in Verizon’s path by stirring up debate on “minor issues.”

The editorial comes following a story “New Yorkers hail Verizon cable option.” That story was less than fair, according to Cablevision spokesman Jim Maiella, who we know well here at LIBN.com Maiella wrote in that the Crain’s story read more like a “Verizon press release than the kind of balanced reporting that New Yorkers should expect from Crain’s. Conveniently missing from the dialogue, and from your survey, is any mention of the two satellite companies that have provided video competition to New Yorkers for more than a decade.”

Maiella also argues that Cablevision has kept their prices in line while Verizon’s raised its FiOS price multiple times since the product rolled out. He also said Crain’s should have focused its attention on the local phone market, where the phone company enjoyed a near total monopoly until 2003.

Maiella also wrote:

Cablevision broke this hold over area consumers with the launch of Optimum Voice, which was recently named the best residential phone service in our market by J.D. Power