Cable Choice and Competition Act

[Dave Doherty]

Let me start be saying that I am, in general, not a great fan of Verizon. 
There are things that they do exceedingly well, however, and I gladly buy my 
cell phone service from them as a result. Another thing I would readily buy 
from VZ - if it were available - is FiOS.

I recently moved from New Jersey, where FiOS was available, to Worcester, 
where it is not, and I have to say that I miss it very much.

The NJ regulators franchised Verizon for the entire state, after which they 
rolled it out very quickly. The cable companies complained a lot, but none 
of them went out of business.

FiOS is a fabulous service, and totally free of the restraints and problems 
that usually come with Verizon DSL and dialup service, which I wouldn't buy 
on any account. I had business-grade service with 5 fixed IPs and a direct 
pipe to the Internet - no blocking of Port 25 and the other nonsense that 
they put you through on the other services. I paid for "up to 15mbps" and 
never, ever, clocked it at less than 12.

Charter's rates are through the roof compared with other areas of the 
country, and all I can say about their Internet service is that it's better 
than dialup. They could sure use the competition on both Internet and Video 
services.

So from somebody who lived in a state that did what Massachusetts is 
considering, I say "go for it." Competition is a great thing, even if it 
does come from Verizon.

-Dave Doherty
 Skywaves, Inc.
 97 Webster Street
 Worcester, MA 01603
 508-425-7176




----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Aaron Read" <readaaron@friedbagels.com>
To: <boston-radio-interest@bostonradio.org>
Sent: Thursday, June 07, 2007 4:56 PM
Subject: Cable Choice and Competition Act


> That's essentially correct, John...but the problem is that if this act 
> passes, it will largely remove what little leverage local towns have over 
> their cable provider to provide things like local access funds, carrying 
> specific channels, providing regular maintenance, etc etc etc.
>
> All that stuff will be moved to up the state level, where it's much easier 
> to ignore.
>
> I recommend reading up at Dan Kennedy's Media Nation blog, he's got a good 
> summary there.
>
> http://medianation.blogspot.com/search/label/local%20access
>
> -- 
>
>
> --------------------------
> Aaron Read
> readaaron@friedbagels.com
> Boston, MA 02446-2204
>
>
>
> I believe that it is a law that, if passed, would remove the cities'
> and towns' right to award cable franchises to one company (or two, in
> the areas where both Comcast and RCN both have them).
>
> This is an issue because Verizon wants to get FIOS into more areas,
> but many towns are requiring them to go through the same process the
> cable companies do to get a franchise.  This is delaying FIOS rollout
> significantly, apparently.
>
> Verizon would MUCH rather deal with a single state-wide protocol
> and/or authority to get permission to build-out FIOS than being
> required to deal with 351 different authorizing bodies.
> John
>
>