[bouldercouncilhotline] Hotline: Customer Survey about cable service

[cmosupport at bouldercolorado.gov]

Sender: Cowles, Macon

This question arises from a reading of p. 94 of the Council Reference Manual about the Comcast Franchise Renewal. In this post, I lay out the rationale the City-Comcast survey to include questions about issues that people care about with their cable service
 
Federal law prohibits local jurisdictions from creating regulations or standards governing cable companies that relate to 1) rates charged for the service; 2) types of programming and packages offered, and; 3) internet service.
 
In other words, cities and counties cannot regulate the issues that people care about or matters that may lower the amount of money that cable providers can take from a community.
 
Most people, for example, would prefer to have a la carte programming, where they can pick and choose the channels to which they subscribe rather than paying for a large block of channels, chosen by the cable provider. The blocks of programming, premium channels and sports on the cable providers' menu pretty much guarantee that most households will be spending more than $100 per month for programming, even if the selection of channels the household watches are only 5 or 6 in number.
 
Boulder is in a quiet zone out of respect for NIST, and that is why Boulder residents are required to have cable deliver even what are normally Over The Air (OTA) broadcasts of ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC and Channel 8. For Comcast to charge, as they do now, $20 for this basic service is profiteering at the expense of low income residents. Recently, Comcast even removed its own Bravo station from the basic service, so now low income people have to pay extra for that as well.
 
Many subscribers realize that what Comcast calls HD is actually lower resolution than OTA HD available in other parts of the Metro area. Comcast's high definition generally is not even the 1080i HDTV resolution specified in the ASTC broadcast standard nor anything close to 1080P BluRay HD video resolution. So OTA TV high def looks better than Comcast's "HD". Comcast calling their overly compressed low-rez programming HD should attract the scrutiny of the FTC.
 
Internet Service is another area where cable subscribers are overcharged for inferior service. In most dwelling units within the City Limits of Boulder, there are adequate signals from two or three different WiFi networks--typically from the adjacent dwelling units. In higher density areas, there are signals from tens of WiFi networks. The overlap from these many networks indicates waste and inefficiency for unused bandwidth--and it means many people are paying separately for a service that could be provided that is faster and dramatically less expensive if it were provided on a neighborhood wide basis.
 
And try to make sense of a Comcast bill! It is impossible. When you initiate or change subscriptions, the company offers discounts for periods from three months to a year. But after the discounts expire, it is impossible to tell what you are paying for, because they charge for muddled packages, e.g.:
 
"Xfinity Bundled Services, $99.99"
"Additional Xfinity TV Services, $52.99"
 
And there are some fees you can never get away from, such as the requirement that if you get HD TV, you have to "rent" a Comcast modem to provide the service. Comcast hides this as an "HD Technology Fee." Many people end up paying Comcast for TWO MODEMS: one for HDTV; the other for phone and internet.
 
Here is the point: we need to provide a questionnaire to Comcast customers that lets customers express their views on matters about which we cannot regulate at the local level, so that we can provide the results to our Congressional delegation to ask them for a change in federal law. 
 
The cable providers have wired the system to their benefit. We need to gather the information sufficient to let Congress know the extent to which the current federal law is hurting consumers and suppressing innovation.
 
A final point: the Comcast franchise was a non-exclusive franchise. Perhaps the City should explore a partnership with another cable provider that would provide service to Boulder customers by providing people what they want instead of merely providing what is most profitable for the cable company.
 
Macon Cowles
Boulder City Councilor