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from: NY Daily News

Verizon cable TV deal worth too much to be done in secret

Juan Gonzalez
Wednesday, October 3rd 2007, 4:00 AM

In the next few weeks, the city is expected to conclude talks with Verizon over a new 15-year franchise that would let the telephone giant offer cable TV service throughout the city.

For New Yorkers fed up with price gouging and poor service from Time Warner and Cablevision, the two goliaths that monopolize land cable service in the five boroughs, this should be welcome news.

Well, think again.

The Verizon talks will likely set the pattern for City Hall's renewal of the Time Warner and Cablevision franchises, both of which expire next year.

No one has any idea if that will be better for the public or for the shareholders of Verizon and the cable companies.

Mayor Bloomberg's aides have conducted all the Verizon talks in virtual secrecy. They refuse to share their strategy with the City Council, which authorized the franchise talks in a resolution last year.

"People keep calling me and asking, 'When are we getting a Verizon deal?' I tell them, I have no idea," said City Councilman Tony Avella (D-Queens), who heads the city's Franchise and Concessions Committee.

Avella says he has tried for 18 months to schedule a City Council public hearing on the cable contracts, but Speaker Christine Quinn, who has built a close relationship with City Hall, has blocked his efforts.

A spokesman for Quinn said yesterday the speaker was not aware of Avella's requests.

Given the mind-boggling financial value of a cable franchise in this town and the amount of time New Yorkers spend watching cable, it's amazing how little attention is being paid to these negotiations.

In 2005 alone, cable company revenues in the five boroughs surpassed $1.6 billion. That figure has exploded since then, largely because of Triple Play - the combined package of cable, Internet and phone service.

The constant advances in communications technology have made it tough for government officials to figure out which policy best serves public needs.

"The communication monopolies are trying to lock up the system for their own possession," says State Assemblyman Richard Brodsky (D-Westchester), who heads the committee that oversees public utilities.

Verizon, for example, has lobbied fiercely across the country for statewide cable franchises. It doesn't want to negotiate separate deals with every city and county the way cable companies did more than two decades ago.

Brodsky says he's willing to grant Verizon that statewide franchise, but only in exchange for tough consumer protections.

A bill he introduced in Albany this year would require Verizon to provide cable service to all communities, not just the wealthiest ones. It would earmark 7% of all cable revenues for government fees and public access programming, instead of 5% some cable companies pay, and it would require Verizon to guarantee "Net Neutrality."

That's the term consumer advocates use to denote a policy of nondiscrimination in Internet service to all customers. Verizon and the traditional cable companies want the right to charge different prices for different speeds of service.

Verizon opposes the Brodsky bill because of its Net Neutrality provision.

Bloomberg officials have yet to reveal where they stand on Net Neutrality or on demanding more government and noncommercial public access channels.

When the nine public channels were established for New York City, cable systems offered a mere 80 or 90 channels. Today, with cable capacity reaching many hundreds of channels, local communities deserve a bigger share of them for noncommercial programming.

Once the talks with Verizon or any other firms are completed, all contracts will be submitted to the city's Franchise and Concessions Review Committee for a vote, said Nicholas Sbordone, spokesman for the city's Department of Information Technology & Telecommunications.

As for Verizon, company spokesman John Bonomo would only say, "We are not at liberty to comment about negotiations."

Well, cable service is too important to be carved up behind closed doors. It's time for some public access on these giant cable deals.