[Mpls] Broadband legislation

[Mike Wassenaar]

I can speak about the possible impact.  

S 1504 is one of SEVERAL bills introduced this summer that have been
drafted primarily by the national telephone 
industry to allow their entry into the local video market.  S 1504 is
probably the bill that would hurt local governments and access
television providers the most.  While it allows access television to
exist, it gets rid of the mechanism that has enabled it to flourish in
the last 30 years...local franchising.   There are over 1600 channels
and access centers around the US.  Without the franchising mechanism,
people in local communities have no leverage on what a corporation can
or can't do with telecomm content in their community, other than market
mechanisms such as not buying cable, or turning their TV sets off. 

S 1504 also eliminates the ability of a municipality from collecting 5%
of the gross cable revenue in the form of a franchise fee.  It allows
only the recovery of "actual costs" for use of the public right of way
(streets, phone poles, sewers, adjacent land, etc).  How that's
determined is left unsaid in the bill.  So in Minneapolis, there is the
potential loss of up to 2.5 million dollars which goes to general
revenue...In Saint Paul, up to 1.5 million in general revenue could be
lost.  

The bill is a strange case of legislators who say they are against big
government, being for big corporations...at the expense of local
content, input and control.

Depending on who you talk to, the bills would equal either the slow
starvation or the quick elimination of Public, Educational and
Government Access Television in the US.  The bills are being opposed by
the cable industry, because it would set up a competitor with an
inherent advantage.  I believe that even if franchises are grandfathered
in under these bills, many of their provisions will be struck down in
federal court because they would be inherently anti-competitive.   

Sooo...Back to Minneapolis.  The city should have some urgency to lock
Time Warner into an agreement for its cable services.  However, Time
Warner also wants to get things done quickly, because it wishes to move
"assets"  (cable viewers)
to Comcast as part of its agreement to consolidate systems.  Under S
1504, such an agreement would be grandfathered.
S 1504 would PREVENT the city from creating its own telecomm service
(ala a municipal utility).  It probably would not prevent the city from
entering into an agreement with a corporation to provide a specific
service to the government (this is how I understand the current RFP for
wireless).  However, there would be nothing to compel a company to enter
into an agreement if it didn't want to.

And S 1504 would probably spell the end of access centers the way we
know them.  What it would mean for MTN (or my organization, SPNN) is not
entirely clear, but I cannot predict that it will be good. 

I am tracking this and other telecomm legislation as part of the
Alliance for Community Media (www.alliancecm.org).  Please contact me if
you want more information.

Mike Wassenaar
Executive Director, SPNN
www.spnn.org
651-298-8900



    







Senate Bill 1504 - the Broadband Investment and Consumer Choice Act -
was introduced in July by Republican Senators John Ensign of Nevada and
John McCain of Arizona. According to the bill, the act would "eliminate
government managed competition of existing communication service" and
"provide parity between functionally equivalent services." 
Essentially, the legislation would eliminate a requirement for
telecommunications companies to pay franchise fees to local
municipalities. 

These fees are required as compensation to the community for use of the
public right of way through which the companies route cables and
utilities.
By eliminating the franchise fees, the bill will eliminate the only
source of funding that the public access provider receives. 

The bills would also replace local cable franchises with national
franchises and the concern is that this will take control and oversight
away from local government as well as cut channel capacity for public,
educational and governmental access channels or PEGs."

For the full broadcast, link to:
www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/09/30/1411227

Can the Institute for Local Self Reliance, Community Technology
Empowerment Project or others on line provide insight into the
implications, if any, this legislation has for the current franchise
agreement between Time Warner and the City of Minneapolis and the future
of how our broadband network gets built, managed, paid for and used?