A major owner of apartment complexes in 13 states in the southeast and south-central United States has a deal for you, whether you like it or not.

Mid America Apartment Communities, which maintains a portfolio of 42,252 apartments, is requiring its residents to purchase cable television from providers like Comcast or they’ll find the $40 month cable fee tacked on their rent, water, or refuse collection bill.  They call it a wonderful savings opportunity for their residents.  But a Stop the Cap! investigation followed the money and discovered the real benefits are in kickbacks paid to Mid America by participating cable companies.

Mid America is extending the policy to all of its apartment complexes over the coming months, notifying residents about its new CableSaver program through flyers.  Enrollment in the program is automatic for new residents, and will take effect for existing residents upon the renewal of their annual lease agreement.

Known as “bulk buying,” apartment complexes can receive preferential discounts for their residents if they commit to mandatory cable service for each apartment.  In Chattanooga, residents of Mid America’s Hamilton Pointe, Hidden Creek, Steeplechase, and Windridge Apartments were notified this month they’ll be compelled to spend $40 a month for Comcast’s Digital Starter Package.

Mid America owns apartment complexes in 13 states. All of them will find the CableSaver program coming their way sooner or later.

The mandating of cable service is not going down well with every resident, particularly those who purchased satellite TV equipment or who have service with other providers like AT&T’s U-verse or Verizon FiOS.  While Mid America isn’t banning competing cable services from serving its complexes, residents will still be forced to pay for cable service in addition to whatever their current provider charges.

Lydia Ramirez of Chattanooga lives in a Mid America Apartment Communities property.  She told WDEF-TV News, “We told them that we are not interested in this but they say it’s mandatory. And so here we are.”

Ramirez just had Dish Network installed but says she’s been told she will have to pay for Comcast cable, too, if she renews her lease.  She said, “We don’t want Comcast and we feel that should be our choice instead of them making it mandatory.”

Instead of being allowed to choose satellite or other cable providers, Ramirez says being forced to go with Comcast is kind of like being told you can only grocery shop at Food Lion.  Ramirez adds, “I don’t see how they can do that. I think we as tenants have an option to choose what cable company we want to go with.”

Some renters in Houston, Texas have been there and done that.  Late last year, KPRC-TV reported residents at The Reserve at Woodwind Lakes got a deal they couldn’t refuse.  A letter from the front office promoted an exciting new offer: It reads the complex “has teamed up with a cable company to bring you an exclusive offer that will allow you to enjoy expanded basic service at a greatly reduced rate.”  Sounds great until you get to the second line of the letter, which uses language only a credit card company could love:

“If you have not yet chosen to opt in, the reduced rate of $40 will be added to your water and trash bill once your renewal takes effect.”

Text of a flyer delivered to Houston-area renters at a Mid America complex

In other words, your “choice” to “opt in” is neither.

Mid America is selling this mandatory cable program as a real money-saver.  But we discovered it’s actually a real moneymaker for Mid America, who earns compensation from kickbacks paid by cable companies in return for cramming cable service down renters’ throats.

Kickbacks for cable is nothing new in the rental business.  Complex owners used to routinely make exclusive deals with providers to deliver service to residents, often through contracts that kept competitors out.  But a 2007 FCC ruling made such exclusive arrangements illegal.  A Federal Court of Appeals agreed: cable companies cannot have exclusive rights to provide service in apartment buildings that they wire.  But complex owners and cable operators discovered an enormous loophole — complex owners can force residents to pay mandatory cable fees as part of their rent so long as they did not bar would-be competitors from also providing service.  But given that renters would already be paying for service, it is unlikely they’d choose another and pay double or more for duplicated cable service.

Cable companies like Comcast enter into these agreements because they provide guaranteed revenue for minimal cost, thanks to “install it once” cable wiring and bulk billing.  Since many renters are also young — renting their first apartment after leaving home — establishing a relationship with those customers may make them customers for life.  Cable companies can also use the program as an opportunity to sell add-on services to renters, such as broadband, digital phone, and premium channel packages.

But why would a company like Mid America want to alienate at least some of their renters who do not want to be forced to pay for cable service?  The answer is easily found in Mid America’s publicly disclosed financial reports — Mid America makes a healthy profit from the CableSaver program.

Mid America owns apartment complexes in these states

Mid America’s quarterly 10-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission shows the company is earning so much money from cable companies like Comcast, it has broken the revenue out into a new section of its financial report.

In the first quarter of 2010, as Mid America introduced its CableSaver program, the company reported earning $1.3 million dollars in revenue from cable kickbacks.  The company tells investors its new mandatory cable program will become an important source of new revenue for the complex owner:

“We continue to develop improved products, operating systems and procedures that enable us to capture more revenues. The continued roll-out of ancillary services (such as re-selling cable television), improved collections, and utility reimbursements enable us to capture increased revenue dollars.”

It’s all a part of a profit-making strategy to increase shareholder value and stick residents with increasing costs to deliver fatter profits.  Renters might be interested to know the company has more in store for them in the coming months:

Our goal is to maximize our return on investment collectively and in each apartment community by increasing revenues, tightly controlling operating expenses, maintaining high occupancy levels and reinvesting as appropriate. The steps taken to meet these objectives include:

• […] developing new ancillary income programs aimed at offering new services to residents, including telephone, cable, and internet access, on which we generate revenue;
• implementing programs to control expenses through investment in cost-saving initiatives, including measuring and passing on to residents the cost of various expenses, including water and other utility costs.

Unfortunately for residents, short of moving, there is no escaping these fees. Some residents have contacted their member of Congress or the FCC to complain about the loophole that allows a complex owner to charge for cable service residents don’t always want. Another way to send a message is to tell Mid America you will not do business with them until they make the CableSaver program truly optional. If the company stands to lose more money than it receives from cable company kickbacks, it may choose to amend its policies.

[flv width=”640″ height=”500″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Mandatory Cable 7-19-10.flv[/flv]

We have four reports on this story, courtesy of WDEF-TV Chattanooga, Tenn., and KPRC-TV in Houston, Texas  (10 minutes):

1. The FCC bans exclusive cable contracts forcing renters to buy service from one provider.  (KPRC-TV 10/31/2007)
2. Can Complex Choose Your Cable Company? In Houston, Mid America Forcing Renters to Buy Comcast Cable.  (KPRC-TV 1/7/2010)
3. Four Chattanooga Area Apartment Complexes Make Comcast Cable Mandatory for Renters. (WDEF-TV 7/12/2010)
4. AT&T U-verse Arrives in Chattanooga (But Won’t Be Too Attractive to Mid America Residents). (WDEF-TV 4/30/2010)

Free Press is raising money to buy advertising to remind residents in cities where Comcast has a lock on cable service that it now wants to acquire NBC-Universal.

Comcast won The Consumerist’s 2010 “Worst Company in America” award for its poor service, beating Ticketmaster, AIG and Countrywide Home Loans.  Now that’s a tough neighborhood.

Free Press wants to remind consumers if things are this bad now, imagine what they’ll be like when America’s largest cable company also owns a major U.S. television network and studio.

For its troubles, Comcast gets a small sculpture that Consumerist describes as “the Golden Poo” and the dubious honor of being mentioned in stories like this, notes The Washington Post.

Other contenders for the award included Bank of America and Cash4Gold.  They should have probably also included Chase Bank, which has been bloodsucking Americans since the days of the railroad robber barons.

One in eight Americans are poised to drop or curtail their cable, satellite, or telco-TV packages in the coming year because the bill has gotten too expensive, according to a new study.

With an average cable bill now $71 a month and rising an average five percent a year, middle class consumers are being priced out of pay television according to the Yankee Group.  The Boston research firm conducted the study of cable, satellite and telephone-company IPTV services and surveyed 6,000 consumers from across the country.

“At the most basic level, the decision to cut off pay TV services is an economic one,” says Vince Vittore, principal analyst and co-author of the report. “As programmers continue to demand ever higher fees, which inevitably get passed on to consumers, we believe more consumers will be forced to consider coax-cutting.”

Coming on the heels of a steady erosion away from traditional telephone landline service which has threatened the fortunes of major phone companies, the implications of millions of consumers coax-cutting are not lost on cable operators or phone companies getting into the IPTV business.

Back to the Future: Older Americans Going Back to Rabbit Ears When Confronted With Today’s Cable Prices

Retro TV is a network that piggybacks on digital television sub-channels in many cities across the country. The network airs classic television shows popular with older audiences.

Those dropping service often take diverging paths for their future entertainment in a cable-free household.  Among older consumers, especially those on fixed incomes, it is back to the future with over the air television and a pair of rabbit ears or rooftop antenna designed to receive digital television broadcasts.

Among these consumers, the most common reason for canceling service is cost.  Many signed up for cable in the 1970s and 1980s for better picture quality, and with the right rooftop antenna, last year’s conversion to digital television solved that problem for over the air viewers.  Post-cable, many are pleasantly surprised to discover new channels piggybacking on traditional stations, several offering classic TV shows from decades past that are familiar and welcome in older Americans’ homes.  Even better — no confusing equipment to deal with.

Jesus Chea, 59, of Queens, told the NY Post he ditched his Time Warner subscription “because I’m on a fixed income and I believe it’s not worth the money.”

To get around the $136 monthly bill, the retiree, who lives with his wife and two grown sons, had antennas installed on both of his TVs — at a cost of $298 — taking advantage of last summer’s national conversion from analog to digital broadcasts.

“Antenna is great,” he says, “because they don’t charge you for rent on digital boxes and they don’t charge you for the remote control. When you add up all those extra fees and so many extra [cable] charges, even if it’s three or four extra dollars, they all add up.”

For many others, the arrival of Redbox video rental kiosks in area grocers has replaced the HBO subscription, and has proven to be a worthwhile supplement to the coax-cutter who drops cable service altogether.

The savings from cord cutting can be dramatic.  Some have saved upwards of $60 a month — $720 a year just by dropping the cable-TV part of their package.  Those kinds of savings have become important when wages are frozen or in decline, jobs are hard to find, and everything else is still going up in cost.

The cable industry has never imagined a country where consumers have quit cable (or satellite) and gone “cold turkey,” especially when upwards of 90 percent of Americans pay for some type of entertainment — pay television, movie rentals, or broadband video.

But as the Yankee Group discovered, Americans are simply tapped out.

Your Father’s Cable TV: Why Would Anyone Under 30 Subscribe?

For younger Americans, the addiction to cable or pay television was something that afflicted their parents.  They never had a problem dropping service from a cable company with whom they never did business.  The teens and twenty-somethings have spent most of their video dollar on broadband and DVD’s for much of their viewing, not cable.

Younger cable subscribers are most at risk for coax cutting, rationalizing they can watch most of their favorite shows online through services like Netflix, Hulu, or websites run by the major American networks.  Others download content (legally or otherwise), rent or buy DVD’s, or subscribe to services like Netflix which combine video streaming with DVD rentals-by-mail.

Many of these viewers also own devices that can bring web-based viewing right to their 50-inch television sets, using set top boxes or video game consoles with web connections.

“Admittedly, this is a small phenomenon now, but a number or recent transactions and new items point to a shift in consumer thinking,” said Vittore.

With the increasing ubiquity of Internet-capable devices, the challenge to traditional coax-based cable TV has never been greater.

“Just like with telephone land lines, it’s going to become hard to sell pay TV to anyone under 30,” Vittore said.

Provider Revenge: You Won’t Get Away That Easy!

With billions of dollars at stake, providers and content producers are intent on not allowing a repeat of what happened to the newspaper industry to afflict their business plans.  Giving it all away for free is not their idea of a sustainable business model.  Keeping tight control over content and its distribution is their ticket to maintaining profits.

Many Olympic events were not aired on NBC television, instead moved to NBC Universal-owned cable networks.

Older Americans who’ve gone back to over the air television are least susceptible to provider revenge, but content is still king and the cable industry will own an increasing percentage of it if the NBC-Comcast merger is approved.  While the two companies are currently promising not to dispense with free over the air broadcasting, an increasing amount of content could be diverted to pay television channels like cable sports networks, movie networks, and general interest basic cable channels.  Broadcasters themselves are now hungry for the same dual-revenue stream their cable competitors already enjoy – advertising income and subscription fees.

Most of the coming wars over pay entertainment are expected to be fought on the broadband battlefield.  For younger Americans relying on Hulu and other video streaming services, subscription fees are coming.  Hulu promises to keep some free viewing options open, but additional access to back episodes or certain series are likely to be restricted only to those who agree to pay an anticipated $9.95 per month.  The cable industry’s own TV Everywhere streaming services offers a clearer dividing line — its available only for those who maintain their pay television package.

Broadband providers, often the same companies that stand to lose from the retreat from television subscriptions, are considering making up the difference with limits on broadband service to make sure consumers can’t watch too much online, or charging consumption fees for heavy online viewers to make up their losses on the TV side.

The long-standing business relationship between content producers and distributors, such as those between Hollywood studios and cable companies, have led to a united front against would-be competitors.  For consumers seeking access to the latest Hollywood movies through low cost rental services or online video, expect to wait longer.  The window of time between a movie release in the theaters and when it becomes available for rental through Redbox or Netflix is growing longer to protect video-on-demand revenues for the cable industry and DVD sales for Hollywood.

Some consumers don’t mind the wait, but are still regularly reminded what they can miss when they don’t agree to a monthly pay television bill.

Jeremy Levinn, a 27-year-old personal trainer from Manhattan, told the Post he jumped the cable ship last year, but Time Warner Cable reminded him whose still boss during the Olympics, when numerous events were available only on Universal-owned cable channels including USA, CNBC and MSNBC and not broadcast over the air.

[flv width=”384″ height=”236″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/CNN Converging Broadband and Television April 2010.flv[/flv]

CNN aired this review of the next generation of television sets capable of connecting with your broadband service to receive television shows and movies over the Internet.  (4 minutes)

Mediacom is the nation's eighth largest cable company, serving 1.3 million customers in 22 states

Customers across the country are growing increasingly annoyed with Mediacom, the nation’s eighth largest cable operator that scored rock bottom in this year’s Consumer Reports cable survey.

The complaints keep on piling up: unfulfilled service calls, uninformed customer service agents in the Philippines, poor quality service, and in one case, a supervisor more concerned about how a customer obtained her direct number than actually resolving the customer’s problems.

The fallout from irritated customers now extends beyond horror stories from some of the company’s 1.3 million customers in 22 states — it’s now costing the company rejection of extended franchise renewal agreements in some communities, and plenty of bad press.

Boone County, Illinois

Boone County, Illinois

Last spring, Boone County began discussions about renewing a cable franchise Mediacom had with the county for some 20 years.  Public meetings to discuss the renewal brought throngs of customers annoyed with Mediacom’s poor performance.

The Rockford Register-Star took up the story:

Candlewick Lake resident Roger McGee Sr. has been experiencing difficulties with his cable company since he moved to the gated community two years ago.

McGee, a former Huntley resident, said he’s spent more time trying to get resolutions to his cable and Internet issues than he ever imagined was possible. “Every single step of the way the customer service was horrible and mismanaged,” he said Wednesday. “I talked to Mediacom more than I talked to my wife in those three months.”

Mediacom representatives characterized the complaints as mere aberrations and suggested isolated complaints could be resolved without impacting the company’s franchise renewal.  But additional public meetings held later that summer illustrated Mediacom had problems in the north-central Illinois region where it provided service.  The Register-Star reported:

George Chorvat has experienced countless issues with Mediacom Communications, and he’s looking for relief. The Poplar Grove resident isn’t alone.

Chorvat attended the county’s second cable hearing Tuesday at the Belvidere Township Building along with roughly 20 residents to speak out about service woes and to provide input on the county’s nonexclusive franchise renewal, which is in the negotiation phase.

“You took away half of our movie channels and said it was OK because we had On Demand, but we do not and we’re paying the same price,” Chorvat said.

His challenge of the offerings provided by Mediacom was one of several problems residents said they face.

Some residents detailed months of waiting for maintenance cable wires to be buried underground. Others told of weeks without phone service or waiting at home for technicians to arrive for scheduled appointments only to find the cable company had canceled them.

Late last month, Boone County granted the cable company a one-year extension of its cable franchise, citing customer complaints as the primary reason for the short-term extension.  In addition, the county will hold a series of public meetings at three, six, and nine month intervals over the coming year to check on customer service concerns and how Mediacom responds to them before considering a five year franchise extension.

The interim extension also keeps Mediacom from using telecom-friendly legislation to obtain a franchise from the Illinois state government, bypassing local officials.  Statewide franchising in Illinois was the brainchild of AT&T, which wants to expand U-verse without having to answer to local communities.  Mediacom has the ability to hop on board the same provisions to avoid local control if local governments refuse to extend a franchise agreement.

“We need to make sure we keep some county control here,” board member Karl Johnson told the newspaper in February. “No matter how big we think we are here, they’re a whole lot bigger when they come through downstate.”

Johnson heard several complaints from Mediacom customers about missed appointments, incomplete wire maintenance, and some who went weeks without Mediacom phone or broadband service.

Springfield, Missouri

Springfield, Missouri

Cable customers who experience problems expect answers when calling customer service, but Springfield resident Nancy Walker found herself empty-handed after speaking with a Mediacom representative thousands of miles away — in the Philippines.

“I am really upset,” Walker told the Springfield News-Leader in February. “I want a local number I can call, not the Philippines.”

She finally resorted to calling the office number of a friend who once worked for Mediacom before that friend passed away.  A supervisor was more concerned about how she obtained that number than helping her, Walker said.

Mediacom disconnected its local call center about three years ago, and company officials admitted they route calls to call centers, including one in the Philippines.  Larry Peterson, regional vice president of Mediacom, said the company dropped the ball on Ms. Walker, finding the customer service she received “unacceptable.”  Peterson handed Walker his business card and promised any issues would be resolved.

For customers who do not have Peterson’s personal office number, many just have to take their chances.

Springfield’s Cable TV Advisory Commission, which actually holds almost no real power over Mediacom, thought the company could do better.

Commission member Rita Silic urged the cable company to find a way to route dissatisfied customer calls back to a local Mediacom representative.

Dave Iseman, editorial page editor of the News-Leader, opined Mediacom needs “a full-fledged apologetic jingle. And it better be a long one, considering the waiting time that can be necessary to phone in a complaint.”

Burlington, Iowa

The fact Mediacom rated near the bottom in Consumer Reports‘ latest ranking of telecommunications companies — 24th among 27 Internet providers, 15th among 16 television service providers and dead last among 23 telephone providers — didn’t escape the attention of Burlington-based newspaper The Hawk Eye.  The newspaper noticed local complaints were continuing to pour in about service quality and trouble reaching customer service.

Columnist Don Henry even wrote about his own personal experiences with Mediacom in December:

Mediacom last month took away the religious programming my wife enjoys: I guess she shouldn’t complain.

They also poked out one of C-SPAN’s eyes on Congress. The Nancy Pelosi House of Horrors remains fit for family viewing, but not the Senate Shell Game. No explanation of why and I watched both — but I’m not complaining.

We were satisfied with “expanded basic” — but Mediacom decided to improve our viewing experience by removing four channels and making us rent some new box gadget to see them, plus a few we didn’t need.

Lest you complain, you get one box free … until they automatically raise your bill a year later. Conservatives think God trumps Harry Reid, so our box went into Sandy’s exercise room. She’s not complaining.

Henry’s problems only got worse from there, including e-mail disruptions and other service outages.  He did what most customers do when their service is on the fritz — he called the cable company.  That turned out to be quite an adventure:

“For e-mail problems, press 1; otherwise, stay on the line.”

I pressed 1.

“For e-mail problems, press 1; otherwise, stay on the line.”

Burlington, Iowa

I pressed 1.

“For e-mail problems, press 1; otherwise, stay on the line.”

After maybe 10 replays, I disobeyed. I stayed on the line … and waited … and waited … until my patience wore thin enough to drive to the Mediacom office on Division Street. I talked to a rep who seemed blissfully unaware of any e-mail problems. It’s been over a day and I’m far from alone, I said.

“Well, nobody’s told us.”

Could you ask about it?

“I can’t do that.”

Could you at least adjust my bill for the lost service?

“I don’t know of that ever being done.”

You used to, when I could get someone by phone.

“Then you’ll have to call.”

Henry’s column struck a nerve among local residents, who flooded the newspaper with comments about their own horror stories, ranging from pesky squirrels chewing through fiber optic cables to tsunamis of spam after the company “improved” its e-mail service.

Phyllis Peters, communications director for Mediacom, admitted the company could improve its customer service, but decided to devote most of her attention to taking issue with… Consumer Reports‘ survey.  Peters wants customers to know Mediacom isn’t dead last in the country because the magazine didn’t ask customers about every cable provider in the United States.  She’s certain there are worse examples out there:

Peters said one reason the survey might rate Mediacom so poorly is because of the company’s ambition. Mediacom is the nation’s eighth largest cable company, and focuses on providing cable coverage to non-metropolitan areas. Expanding service over a large area means more fiberoptic cable and servers that must be monitored.

Peters said the top-ranking cable company Wow, which had top scores on almost every attribute in the ratings, serves a much smaller, consolidated area than Mediacom. Wow is the 12th largest cable provider in the country, and services parts of Illinois, Michigan, Ohio and Indiana. Consumer Reports was enthusiastic about the company, but acknowledged its small size.

“We would like to be higher in the rankings. We’ve put a lot of effort into customer service, and we did add a lot of calling staff,” Peters said. “Those things have moved forward in a significant way, and it takes a while for perception to change.”

It may not always be easy to get a Mediacom representative on the phone, but the company offers the fastest Internet service in Burlington, she said. The company offers a standard download speed of 12 megabytes per second, and that service can be upgraded to 20 megabytes per second for a higher price.

Competition for Burlington residents’ broadband needs come mostly from Qwest, which offers most customers 1.2 Mbps DSL service, although the company can provide up to 7 Mbps in selected neighborhoods.

Max Phillips, president of the western Iowa division of Qwest, told The Hawk Eye he doesn’t know if the company will be able to provide higher speeds to Burlington in the near future.

“We have a long-term plan to bring higher speeds, but our business is constrained by the government model,” he said, whatever that is supposed to mean.

Carthage, Illinois

Carthage, Illinois

Mediacom has been out of luck securing a franchise renewal in Carthage because of ongoing customer complaints about the quality of service being provided to Hancock County residents.

Carthage has been without a Mediacom franchise agreement since the old one expired last June.

A proposed renewal was shot down by the city after a vote failed to approve it, citing reception complaints.  Mediacom has been asking the city for a franchise renewal ever since, but the city has resorted to four-month extensions, waiting to see what service improvements were forthcoming in the interim.

Mediacom installed new hardware in the community, which it felt would improve reception, and city officials were hopeful the noted drop in complaints reaching them was an indication of that.

But in February, complaints began arriving at the city’s doorstep once again.

Carthage Mayor Jim Nightingale said he heard two complaints right after the city council offered the latest extension.

Now he’s withdrawn the offer.

Mediacom can always appeal to the state of Illinois to seek a new franchise under statewide franchise laws, but discussions with city officials are continuing for now.

Prior Lake, Minnesota

Prior Lake, Minnesota

Communities looking for competitive alternatives to Mediacom usually find phone companies who refuse to offer video service in Mediacom service areas, because the cable company typically chooses smaller communities where such “telco-TV” projects don’t meet the minimum Return On Investment requirements necessary to build them.  Some communities served by independent phone companies or are lucky enough to find a willing fiber-to-the-home provider are in better shape, unless the cable company files suit to stop such projects from moving forward.

The community of Prior Lake, twenty miles outside of Minneapolis, and its 16,000 residents are a case in point.

Last fall, Mediacom filed suit against Integra Telecom, a Portland, Oregon-based provider of competitive voice, broadband, and television service that won a franchise agreement to provide “telco-TV” in Prior Lake and nearby communities within its existing service area.

The suit claims city officials discriminated against Mediacom by not compelling Integra to meet the same terms and conditions Mediacom agreed to in a 1999 franchise agreement. Specifically, Mediacom wants Integra held to the same requirement it agreed to in defining its service area.  Because Integra is not planning on matching Mediacom’s service area house by house, Mediacom claims they are in violation of Minnesota law.

That suit is awaiting a hearing in the state Court of Appeals expected to begin this month.

The dispute between Mediacom and the city has led one state senator to write legislation clarifying the existing cable franchise laws in Minnesota.

Senator Scott Dibble (DFL-Minneapolis), has introduced Senate File 2535.  The bill would allow telephone companies to provide competitive service within their natural service areas, instead of being required to match incumbent cable operator coverage areas.  For example, a cable company might serve a broader area where multiple phone companies provide service.  Under current state law, competing phone companies could be required to wire every area where the incumbent cable company provides service, even inside other phone company’s service areas.  Senate File 2535 recognizes the current telephone company service area boundaries as acceptable enough to proceed with a video franchise agreement.

Integra's service area in the Minneapolis/St. Paul region, which is not identical to Mediacom's service area, is one point of contention between Mediacom and Prior Lake officials

Prior Lake City Manager Frank Boyles and Senator Claire Robling (R-Jordan), both testified in favor of the bill at a recent hearing held by the state Senate Committee on Energy, Utilities, Technology and Communications. The bill was approved unanimously and now moves to the State and Local Government Operations and Oversight Committee, of which Robling is a member.

The League of Minnesota Cities is also calling on its members and the public to support SF2535 which could speed competition across Minnesota.

Text of Senate Bill 2535:

A bill for an act relating to cable communications; clarifying requirements for the granting of additional cable franchises; amending Minnesota Statutes 2008, section 238.08, subdivision 1.

BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF MINNESOTA:

Section 1. Minnesota Statutes 2008, section 238.08, subdivision 1, is amended to read:

Subdivision 1. Requirement; conditions.

(a) A municipality shall require a franchise or extension permit of any cable communications system providing service within the municipality.

(b) No municipality shall grant an additional franchise for cable service for an area included in an existing franchise on terms and conditions more favorable or less burdensome than those in the existing franchise pertaining to: (1) the area served; (2) public, educational, or governmental access requirements; or (3) franchise fees. The provisions of this paragraph shall not apply when the area in which the additional franchise is being sought is not actually being served by any existing cable communications system holding a franchise for the area. Nothing in this paragraph prevents a municipality from imposing additional terms and conditions on any additional franchises.

(c) An area for an additional cable franchise is not more favorable or less burdensome if the franchisee is a telephone company, as defined in section 237.01, subdivision 7, and the area of the franchise is no less than the area within the municipality in which the telephone company offers local exchange telephone service. This paragraph is in addition to and not a limit to the authority of a municipality to grant an additional franchise for cable service.

The tradition some have of firing off weapons at the stoke of midnight on New Year’s Day managed to go awry when a stray bullet severed a Comcast fiber optic cable serving 300 subscribers with cable and broadband service in southwest Albuquerque.  Service was out for approximately 12 hours while the cable was repaired.

[flv width=”480″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/KRQE Albuquerque Bullet cuts cable services for 300 1-1-10.flv[/flv]

KRQE-TV Albuquerque reports on the impact of stray bullets on your Comcast broadband service.  (1 minute)