AT&T Offers Concession on Statewide Cable Franchising Bill

The long-delayed statewide franchise bill for new players in the cable TV market sailed out of a House Subcommittee yesterday with a new build-out requirement.

A 23-page amendment sets deadlines by which companies – namely AT&T – would be responsible for running wire to hook up new customers who aren’t already on their grid. The amendment demands that a statewide franchise-holder must expand its network to serve half of the state within six years.

Representative Steve McDaniel, the bill’s Republican sponsor, says the ‘build-out’ timeline shouldn’t slow down the legislation.

“I guess we can live with those amendments and the build-out requirements that gave us some heartburn, that we felt competition would do the build-out, without government telling it to do that.”

The fine-tuning follows months of maneuvering by AT&T, current cable providers, and local governments that have always granted their own franchises to such providers.

But one of the House co-sponsors, Democratic Representative Charlie Curtiss, said the new deadline still only affects large companies.

“The way I see it right now, not every new franchise-holder, if we pass this and it becomes law, is gonna have more than a million customers. So therein, those people wouldn’t even have a build-out requirement. We’ve got to do some adjusting on it.”

Curtiss chairs the House Commerce Committee, next in line to vote on the so-called AT&T bill. The company is pushing hard to get the statewide franchising passed this session so it can start providing cable TV service more quickly in Tennessee.

 

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Cable opponents of the phone company have argued (in commercials on their own cable channels) that AT and T only wants to serve silk-stocking areas. The newly added build-out requirement is intended to make the service available to a broad economic cross-section of subscribers.

AT and T, concerned that the issue would be deferred to 2008, last week kicked off its own hard-core commercials that questioned cable companies’ commitment to customer service.

HB 1421 /SB 1933, the “Competitive Cable and Video Services Act,” has bipartisan sponsorship. In the House, Republican Steve McDaniel and Democrat Charlie Curtiss are signed on; in the Senate Republican Bill Ketron and Democrat Doug Jackson.

But even sponsors have been hesitant to move the bill forward as the big cable companies (like Comcast in the Nashville area) have gone head to head with AT and T over the potential big bucks of a statewide video franchise.

State Rep. Joe Towns (D-Memphis) told AT and T at the subcommittee meeting that cable bills hadn’t been reduced since the beginning.

“The consumer wants better prices,” he said. “Cable bills are ’way too high.”

AT and T attorney Joelle Phillips told the Utilities Subcommittee that experience in other cities and states indicates that more competition causes lower prices.

In the Senate the bill is still lodged in the Senate Commerce Committee.