Cable Choice and Competition Act

[Garrett Wollman]

<<On Fri, 08 Jun 2007 00:03:24 -0500, "A. Joseph Ross" <joe@attorneyross.com> said:

> I have no problem with the competition issue, but I don't see why 
> Verizon can't go through the local communities, just as Comcast and 
> RCN have done.

They want to be able to cherry-pick the most profitable customers,
while leaving other areas unserved.  Most communities won't allow
that, and want to hold Verizon to the same build-out standards as the
incumbent operators were held to.  (RCN didn't mind having to serve
lower-income areas of the communities they operate in, because their
whole strategy was to aggressively target customers in MDUs[1]
anyway.)  They also don't want to have to fund or carry PEG[2]
channels, since that (a) would put them at cost parity or even a
disadvantage relative to the incumbents, given their cost of capital,
and (b) would require them to have dedicated bandwidth in every
community for channels which no one watches.

-GAWollman

[1] MDU: Multiple Dwelling Unit; i.e., an apartment or condominium
building.

[2] PEG: Public/Educational/Government [-access channels].  The FCC
requires them to carry them, if they exist, but not to fund them.  All
cablecos want to get out of having to fund them, figuring (quite
rightly) that their customers have no interest in either watching or
paying for them, and if they stopped funding them, the local
communities would not have money on their own to operate them any
more.