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from: Online Athens

Video franchise legislation needs to be put into law
Editorial
February 24, 2007

A bill now in the state House of Representatives could, at long last, put cable television customers whose local franchisee has subjected them to poor customer service and rising prices into a competitive marketplace.

House Bill 227, the Consumer Choice for Television Act, is designed to allow AT&T/BellSouth to speed its rollout of video services by establishing a single statewide franchise authority. Currently, video service providers must negotiate agreements separately with nearly 700 municipal or county governments across Georgia. AT&T contends that entering the marketplace under that rubric could take 10 to 15 years, while negotiations with a statewide franchising authority could take just 12 to 18 months.

There are a couple of reasons to be concerned about the bill. It could endanger the future of local public-access channels, such as the channels in the local cable system that carry programming from the Athens-Clarke County government, the University of Georgia and the Clarke County School District. The bill would require the operators of such channels produce a set amount of non-duplicative original programming each month, although current programming levels could be maintained until 2012.

Locally, however, the Northeast Georgia district manager for AT&T/BellSouth, Paul Chambers, has told the Athens Banner-Herald his company "has every intention of carrying those ... channels. If a customer wants to watch the county commission meetings, we'll have it." (Story, "Cable reform bill would give oversight to the state," Feb. 3).

There also is a concern that telecommunications companies like AT&T/BellSouth, which simply could upgrade their existing phone network to provide television services, could opt to provide service to only certain parts of the communities where they would operate.

But according to a report from the American Enterprise Institute-Brookings Institution, quoted in a recent Georgia Public Policy Foundation commentary, "Low-income households subscribe to current video services at about the same rates today as high-income households, providing the same basis for deploying ... video in low-income and high-income neighborhoods." So it would appear that there would be little incentive for new entrants into the television services market to limit their service areas.

Overshadowing the relatively minor concerns outlined above, though, is the crying need for competition in television services. That need has been felt acutely in this area, where Charter Communications, current franchisee for Athens-Clarke County, has been out of touch with customer concerns for years, failing even to maintain an easily accessed local telephone number to lodge service complaints. At the same time, the company has not been shy about regularly raising its rates. In recent days, in fact, the company has shown itself to be politically tone-deaf on the issue of House Bill 227, sending out notices of another rate increase to its subscribers.

As currently written, the Consumer Choice for Television Act is a 26-page document. Because it proposes a significant change in the way television services can be delivered to consumers, it will need the careful attention of lawmakers. But, if the bill opens up the marketplace in an equitable fashion, as it appears to do, it will deserve to become law in this state.

Published in the Athens Banner-Herald on 022507