Callahan’s Cleveland Diary

The Ohio House Public Utilities Committee will hold its sponsor/proponent hearing on Senate Bill 117 this Wednesday. At least one local representative heard this from an AT&T lobbyist before he heard it from the committee leadership, but hey, what’s new there? Anyway, it’s on the official schedule now, so the train’s moving. That’s the inevitable bad news.

The good news is, I hear that Democrats on the committee are talking seriously among themselves about amendments to the bill, which emerged from the Senate as quite possibly the “worst of breed” in the country. I also hear that there’s amendment talk from the Communications Workers of America, which has supplied much of the muscle behind SB 117 up to now. In other states CWA has pushed for stronger “buildout” requirements and for giving real enforcement powers to public service commissions; in New York the union is actually backing a state video franchising bill opposed by AT&T and endorsed by Free Press! So it’s reasonable to expect CWA District 4 to try for similar improvements here if they see a chance of success.

The Plain Dealer editorialized yesterday that House members “should not be shy about debating its [B 117's] remaining flaws.”

As it now stands, libraries and schools served by video providers could be left without service after 2012. Those are important institutions that reach nearly everyone. They should be protected by the House.

In addition, video service providers must offer services to at least 30 percent of poor households in their area within five years. That may sound like a lot, but under the old system, most communities required every section of their localities to be covered.

A new law that promises to increase cable competition and lower prices shouldn’t leave Ohio’s poorest residents behind. Keeping the digital highway accessible to as many Ohioans as possible may not interest corporations, but it’s clearly in the public interest. The House should remember that.

This is all progress. Of course, it doesn’t change the fact that this bill will get out of committee and pass the House in some form. The General Assembly is going to eliminate local cable franchises in favor of statewide “Video Service Authorizations”. Everyone has known that since before SB 117 was introduced.

The only question is, can this bill be made less godawful?

Here are the most important changes I’m hoping for. Feel free to share them with your State Representative if you’re so inclined:

1. Prohibit the abandonment of less profitable cable markets (like inner-city neighborhoods) which now have access because it’s required by local cable franchises.

2. Strengthen the bill’s fiber buildout requirements for AT&T, and extend the same buildout guarantees to communities and consumers served by Verizon, Embarq and Cincinnati Bell (at least). Why should Ashtabula, Mansfield, New Philadelphia, Norwalk, Newark, Athens and Portsmouth (to name just a few) give up their home rule authority over cable franchising but get no guarantee of new fiber or “cable competition” in return?

3. Make the bill’s provisions to stop the redlining of lower-income communities serious and enforceable.

4. Give the state “franchising” agency the authority and resources to enforce the bill’s buildout, redlining and consumer protection provisions — including the authority to cancel a provider’s Video Service Authorization for serious failure to comply. (This might work better if that agency is the PUCO, which has a regulatory infrastructure in place, rather than the Commerce Department, which doesn’t.)

5. Preserve local I-Nets and public, education and government (PEG) channels provided by existing local franchises — no new “common head-end” limits, no peremptory take-backs of channels deemed “insufficiently used” by providers, etc. It’s clear that legislators don’t fully grasp the implications of these changes, and anyway PEG channels have nothing to do with the point of the bill, which is to encourage fiber buildout and competition by new providers. Disrupting communities’ existing institutional networks and PEG channels is just a gimme for the cable companies, which are already getting plenty of gimmes in exchange for their “neutrality” on SB 117. This one is wretched excess. Dump it.

6. Finally, let’s recognize what Ohio is actually trying to buy with SB 117 — the deployment of lots of new fiber bandwidth — and use this occasion to create a strategic capacity to develop real ubiquitous broadband access, along with digital inclusion for low-income and rural Ohioans. I hear some legislators (and CWA) are talking about amending SB 117 to create an Ohio version of Connect Kentucky. Assuming they include a revenue mechanism to make it work, this strikes me as an excellent idea.

Will any of this happen? Maybe not, but we seem to be closer today that we were two weeks ago. Spreading the word will help. Calling or writing your State Rep will help even more.

Update 5/22: Local Voice Ohio’s take on what needs to happen in the House. Also from LVO… a video interview with Committee member Louis Blessing (R-Cincinnati) and the full Committee agenda for tomorrow. Note that Rep. Evans’s broadband task force bill is up for its first hearing, too. Coincidence?

This entry was posted on Monday, May 21st, 2007 at 3:19 pm and is filed under Community technology, Senate Bill 117. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.