Lee, Massachusetts is located in broadband sparse western Massachusetts

Mark Williams is the kind of customer Time Warner Cable would normally love to have.  He wants the complete, super deluxe Time Warner triple play — cable, digital phone, and especially broadband service for his home-based business.

Time Warner wants Williams to have their service, too — but for a price.  Instead of charging the regular $35 installation fee, the cable company wants him to pay $12,000 to install his service, because, they claim, Williams’ driveway is 100 feet too long.  Time Warner says the $35 dollar installation fee is only for homes within 200 feet of the nearest utility pole.  Williams home is 300 feet away.  He doesn’t mind paying something extra to cover the additional 100 feet, but not $12,000.

The town of Lee, Berkshire County, in western Massachusetts, managed to wrangle a franchise agreement from Time Warner Cable that entitles every home and business to cable service if electric and telephone service are already available.  That’s unique for many smaller communities, who routinely have cable service available in town, but not in outlying areas.  Cable companies hate wiring rural density neighborhoods, where the costs to wire comparatively few homes takes too long to earn back from the few subscribers they can reach.

But Time Warner found themselves a loophole — a “long driveway” clause in the franchise agreement that allows them to charge more for installing service to homes set far back from the road.

Now, according to the Berkshire Eagle, Lee’s representative to the Five Town Cable Television Advisory Committee is calling out Time Warner, claiming they are misinterpreting the town’s franchise agreement and wants the Lee Board of Selectman to start imposing fines against the cable company if they don’t relent within 30 days.

Malcolm Chisholm says the real reason Time Warner wants to charge $12,000 is because Williams’ home is roughly a half-mile away from the closest Time Warner Cable subscriber, not because his driveway is too long.

“We just want to put pressure on them,” Chisholm said. “We’re just trying to get them to follow the agreement.”

Chisholm said Time Warner Cable “won’t talk to us” about Williams’ situation. The Eagle was also unable to get a response from officials at the company’s regional office in Albany, N.Y.

The newspaper decided that since Time Warner Cable wasn’t responding to its private inquiries, it would air its views on the editorial page.

If a Lee resident moved into a cave in October Mountain State Forest, Time Warner Cable might be justified in charging him $12,000 to run cable there so he watch the Red Sox on NESN and keep up with the Kardashians on VH-1. But the $12,000 the cable giant wants to charge a resident who lives near the Tyringham line is preposterous, and beyond that provides the latest evidence of the desperate need for expanded broadband service throughout the rural Berkshires.

Because Mark Williams lives roughly a half-mile away from the closest Time Warner subscriber, his installation fee escalates from the standard $35 to $12,000, which may as well be $120,000 it is so devoid of logic. Mr. Williams appears to be an eager customer too, one who wants the entire cable/Internet package Time Warner is regularly flogging.