City Council unanimously passes a resolution opposing Verizion's petition to change state/local cable franchise rules

LOCAL GOVERNMENTS “PROTECT THE INCUMBANT’S INVESTMENT”

“By managing the deployment as we do, we protect the incumbent’s investment in existing infrastructure, we protect the public from unnecessary disruption to private business and to their safe use and enjoyment of the public right-of-way, and we ensure that new entrants are provided with unfettered access in a reasonable and timely fashion, while ensuring that they comply with all safety requirements. This system has worked well for cable, traditional phone and other providers for many years, and is necessarily performed by the local government.”
– Arvada Colorado Mayor Ken Fellman’s Testimony before the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce and the Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet Wednesday, April 27, 2005 (Fellman is also a cable franchise lawyer and VP at NATOA)

"PROTECT THE INCUMBANT'S INVESTMENT", YOU BET THEY DO, SO WELL THAT YOUR CABLE BILL SHOT UP 93% INCREASE (1995-2005 FCC source)

WHY DO THEY JUST JACK UP THE TV BILL

Comcast is raising the price of the average metro-area customer's cable bill by 6.9 percent starting March 1, yet they held the line on prices for high-speed Internet and phone services. – RMNews January 2007

THEY “PROTECT THE INCUMBENT’S INVESTMENT”, THAT MEANS NO COMPETITION. RESULT FOR YOU IS A 93% INCREASE IN YOUR CABLE BILL.

Comcast Profit Triples - Reuters, 2/1/07

How’s that for a double whammy – one week after Comcast announces a 7% increase for its captive cable customers, the cable monopoly announced record profits.

And as they rake in the cash and their executives get richer and richer, they fight every effort by their employees to get fair wages and benefits – all the while milking customers for everything they got!

As American Rights At Work found in a special report, wages for Comcast’s cable techs are a third lower than wages in traditional land-line telephone companies like at&t, where unions represent about three-fourths of the workers. Benefits are less generous and jobs are less secure, with annual turnover about twice as high.

Worse, Comcast fights tooth-and-nail to keep unions out, or decertify them once their in. Northwest Labor Press reports of a 37-page Comcast anti-union management training document that stated: “Comcast does not feel union representation is in the best interest of its employees, customers and shareholders.”

But it gets worse. Comcast is waging war against union employees – literally. During the AT&T days, unions made headway organizing in a handful of cities, including Beaverton, OR. But once Comcast acquired AT&T’s cable systems they began to systematically dismantle union shops…and show union workers the door. In Beaverton, Comcast vice president Curt Henninger made the company’s intentions crystal clear when he told commissioners in videotaped testimony: “I will tell you we are going to wage a war to decertify the CWA.”

Cable is anti-consumer & anti-competition

Legislators must send them the message that their days of pillaging customers and exploiting workers are over.