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from: Daily Herald

Suburbs to fight federal cable TV plan

By Lisa Smith
Daily Herald Staff Writer
Posted Saturday, June 10, 2006

Suburban officials said Friday a proposed federal telecommunications law would undermine their authority to establish agreements for cable TV service.

Municipalities also could lose hundreds of thousands of dollars annually — $1.5 million in Naperville’s case — on franchise agreements with Comcast and other cable companies that serve residents and businesses if the measure is signed into law.

The bill would make it easier for phone companies such as Verizon and AT&T to enter the subscription television market alongside Comcast and other providers.

“Really what this bill does is it takes oversight of local cable operations away from local governments and gives it to (Washington) D.C. That’s very concerning to our municipalities,” said Larry Bury, policy analyst for the Northwest Municipal Conference, a consortium of 50 suburban townships and municipalities in Cook, Lake, DuPage and Kane counties.

Naperville and Geneva are among the suburbs that have passed measures opposing the House of Representatives’ Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement Act.

A companion bill in the Senate — the Communications, Consumer’s Choice, and Broadband Deployment Act —is scheduled to be considered by a Senate committee June 20.

Alison Murphy, Naperville’s assistant to the city manager, said officials already have expressed the city’s opposition to their congressmen and now plan to contact their senators.

Suburban officials say both proposals would reduce financial support of local cable access stations that are important to the community. The measures also would strip municipalities of their power to grant access to local rights of way for cable infrastructure.

“Does the FCC really want to decide where cable TV pedestals should be placed in a Naperville resident’s backyard, or how to track customer service calls?” Naperville City Manager Peter Burchard wrote in a media release issued last week.

City and village officials also say they’re better able to respond to cable service complaints than the Federal Communications Commission, which would provide oversight under the proposal.

“Believe me, the local government’s going to be a lot more responsive than the FCC,” Bury said.

But supporters hailed the measure, approved by the House Thursday 321-101, as a way to spur competition and lower prices for consumers.

“The bill streamlines the cable franchising process in order to better provide service innovation and accessibility,” House Speaker Dennis Hastert, a Plano Republican, said in a statement issued Thursday. “Furthermore, it will ensure that the Internet remains an open marketplace.”

Speaking out against the Senate proposal last month, the vice president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors told lawmakers the plan actually would limit accessibility because companies likely would market their offerings to more affluent areas rather than to an entire municipality under a local franchise agreement.