posted by Joe Polk at 1:46 PM /
The cable television stakes have just been raised in western Pennsylvania with the announcement today that Verizon will be bringing its FiOS TV here in late 2007. As one of the first communities in the area with Verizon's fiber optic system, it will be interesting to see if Verizon will be able to negotiate with Mt. Lebanon's board of commissioners to bring it to town.
Link: www.postgazette.com/pg/06331/741619-100.stm
Link: www.postgazette.com/pg/06331/741619-100.stm
9 Comments:
Finally some competition.
By the way, I have DirectTV, and it hasn't gone out in 8 years. (I once called Adelphia for their prices and when I told them DirectTV was half the price, they said that I couldn't get DirectTV because in Pittsburgh it never works.)
The bills that the PG (and Greg) mention are House Bill 2880 and Senate Bill 1247.
They both essentially do the same thing - remove the requirement for a cable television operator (in this case Verizon) to negotiate individual franchise contracts with the municipalities they intend to service.
Opponents of this bill are Comcast, and several local municipal groups. You may have seen the ads on (heh) tv, arguing that the legislation would remove power from the local governments to negotiate rates and guarantee service.
Personally, I don't buy it. While the current laws do mandate things like the MtL channel, etc, they are also keeping cable from being regulated like any other utility, (i.e. by the PA PUC).
Furthermore, any expense being incurred by these individual agreements certainly isn't being eaten by the cable co. Whereas opening the doors to competition would certainly force market pressure to lower cable rates.
So I certainly don't see how local governments can argue that the increased revenue they see from their one-off arrangement is helping taxpayers. After all, it's our money paying the cable bill.
Links:
Keep It Local PA (anti-bills)
PA Consumers First (pro-bills)
PA PUC
I have FIOS for voice and data and look forward to video. Competition is important in the market. Local governments have limited negotiating muscle when there is only on service provider.
Mt.Lebanon is a member of a local franchise group. Represented by a lawyer who negotiates "the deal" for all of the municipalities in the group. The reason why most local municipalities are hesitant about Verizon, is they fear the return percentage per user is going to be lower or non-existant. In Mt.Lebanons case that would be alot of dollars. The local channels they also get from Adelphia/Comcast is another area of concern. I suspect if Verizon can match the dollars that each local municipality gets from their cable provider, we will see Verizon FIOS TV in the very near future.
Had Comcast when I was in Alexandria couple of years ago. The customer service staff was wonderful, the service reliable, everything beautiful.
Here? It sucks camel nuts.
Why is that?
We have FIOS at home in UStC for wireless but not up at our Mt. Lebo store. It has changed everything at home. But our wireless connections does hang and cut out on occasion.
While that's an annoyance while online, it would be positively disconcerting watching, say, "24".
Still, competition is good. And hey, if we can prove competition is good in the cable industry, maybe we can convince Harrisburg it's good for wine sales as well!
Hey Rich,
I had the same trouble with my wireless with the FIOS until I upgraded from 802.11B to G. I haven't noticed any lag at all now on the laptop. Not sure if that might be what's causing you trouble.
My understanding with FIOS tv is that the optical router will get hooked in to the existing cable (co-axial) wiring in your house, so there's no wireless connection to the TV.
In 2004 and 2005 MTL received $409,975 and $427,266 in Cable TV Franchise fees. Without these payments to MTL our taxes would be higher or the budget would be smaller - OK - our taxes would be higher.
As correctly noted above, these dollars were not a donation from Adelphia/Comcast - we paid them in our service fees. No free lunch here.
There is no reason to believe the combined cable franchise fees would be reduced - unless we ultimately paid less to the cable operators. It will be disappinting if the Municipality only focuses on their take and not the services provided and customer cost.
I have Verizon FiOS for internet (in Dormont) and DirecTV instead of cable. The combined bill is about $40/month cheaper than my cable/internet bill was from Time Warner Cable in Austin. And the service is much better for both products. Avoiding local cable franchise fees is an extra bonus that hadn't occurred to me.
The DirecTV service is so good and so cheap that I'm not sure I'll bother with FiOS-TV, even if it does come here. I'm certainly not going back to cable unless (a) I move to a house on the north side of a huge mountain, or (b) I'm overwhelmed by testimonials from friends about how awesome and cheap the local cable company is. (how likely is that?)
In Austin, Time Warner Cable was constantly running ads slandering DirecTV service. I almost believed them, but I have DirecTV now and I realize that these ads were all a pack of lies: My service has never gone out in the rain; I've never had to get on the roof to manually adjust my dish (in fact, I've never laid hands on my dish); and my equipment is leased, not bought. To top it off, the quality of DirecTV's hardware and software engineering is so vastly superior to TWC's that it's not even funny. I have no idea whether Comcast is as bad as Time Warner, but that's not the kind of experiment I'm interested in participating in either. I enjoy buying from a company that actually tries to compete on price and quality, instead of relying on being the default provider.
I hope the bills allowing statewide franchising eventually pass. Municipal franchise agreements are a ridiculous anachronism in an era of cheap global telecommunications. That the fees generate municipal revenue is not a reasonable argument for keeping them.
I will be moving to MtL from Northern Viginia where I have had Verizon FIOS for a year now. It is a major improvement and has caused the Cox Cable monopoly to offer matching deals. Hopefully the reactionaires im charge of approval can be persuaded to okay the service. Is anyone pressing local authorities on this?
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