08/26: States Waking Up To AT&T, Verizon 'Franchise Reform' Con; Unfortunately for them, it's several years too late...

States Waking Up To AT&T, Verizon 'Franchise Reform' Con; Unfortunately for them, it's several years too late...
by Karl Bode, DSLReports.com; August 26, 2009

As we've been saying for years, the "franchise reform" bills the baby bells have been pushing state by state promise lower TV prices, but are really little more than legislative wish lists that erode consumer protections, legitimize next-generation broadband "cherry picking," strip away eminent domain rights, and make lobbying easier for carriers. After dozens of states drank a little too much lobbyist juice, consumers in those states are waking up in bed with a ragged-looking AT&T or Verizon, and no lower TV prices anywhere in sight.

In AT&T's home state of Texas "reform" was passed quickly, but locals have noticed no savings, and a commission tasked with studying whether the bill actually helped consumers has mysteriously disappeared after the fact.

Last week, Tennessee woke up with a headache wondering where exactly the TV savings was that they were promised by AT&T lobbyists, who broke records for state lobbying spending to get a similar bill passed in their state. While AT&T's finally now offering TV service in the State, the deployments have been very selective, and the law there includes language prohibiting towns and cities from wiring themselves with broadband.

Wisconsin consumers recently realized their lawmakers passed one of the least friendly "franchise reform" bills in the country. That law not only gave carriers the right to cherry pick next-generation deployment, but it also obliterated consumer protection laws that protected subscribers' rights to prompt repairs, ensured refunds for service outages, mandated notice of rate increases or service deletions, and forced carriers to provide a written notice of disconnection.

Does that sound like "reform" to you?

Michigan is the latest to come to their senses, the Detroit Free Press suddenly realizing just how miserable these bills really are for consumers. The paper notes that by letting AT&T cherry pick profitable deployment markets and eliminating local consumer protections, said "reform" not only raised prices, but made Comcast more powerful; and while local communities used to have the power to do something about it, now they don't:

Now, three years after AT&T's champions in the Legislature crowed that Comcast's reign as the 800-pound guerrilla of Michigan cable service was over, Comcast remains the state's dominant provider, maintains a de facto wire-line monopoly in most its franchise areas, charges higher rates for basic cable service, and has far fewer legal obligations to the subscribers and communities it serves.  [ more ]