Minutes Cable Regulatory 8 14 MINUTES OF CABLE TV REGULATORY COMMISSION MEETING
AUGUST 14, 2002
CITY HALL ANNEX CONFERENCE ROOM # 2, 1300 MAIN ST.
MEMBERS PRESENT:Charles Ellis, Chairman, Ron Tigges, Walt Webster
MEMBERS ABSENT: Michael Pratt. One seat remains vacant on the Commission.
OTHERS PRESENT: Kathy McMullen, General Manager, Mediacom
Merrill Crawford, Cable Franchise Administrator
Mr. Ellis called the meeting to order at 5:49 p.m.
1. Acceptance of the Agenda.
Upon a motion by Mr. Webster, seconded by Mr. Tigges, the agenda was
approved as distributed.
2. Approval of the Minutes of the April 10, 2002 Meeting.
Upon a motion by Mr. Webster, seconded by Mr. Tigges, the Minutes of the April
10, 2002 Commission meeting were approved as distributed.
3. Public Comment.
There was no one present to address the Commission. Mr. Crawford advised
Commissioners that there may be a citizen contact with the Commission later
regarding a dispute on the return of some digital converters. Ms. McMullen
announced a new policy by Mediacom regarding the return of converters that have
been damaged or are malfunctioning. There will be no charge levied to the
customer at the time the converter is brought in, but the device will be sent to the
repair center and the actual charges for repair will later be assessed to the
customer. She also mentioned that with regard to equipment damaged or
destroyed by lightning, Mediacom will first dispatch a technician to the home to
verify that the cable company's grounding system is proper and intact. If so,
Mediacom will assume that the lightning reached the device through the power
supply and will assess the customer for the cost of repair.
4. Status of Telecom Projects in Dubuque.
Mr. Crawford reported for the record that Qwest was now offering DSL service,
although he was not sure as to the approximate number of local subscribers or
how extensively Qwest's cable network is able to provide DSL service throughout
the city.
He told Commissioners that the City had prevailed in the lawsuit brought by Illinois
PCS as a result of the Zoning Board's denial of an IPCS request to place a cellular
tower near the Four Mounds property off of Roosevelt. At this point, it did not
appear that IPCS was going to appeal the ruling.
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Mr. Crawford told Commissioners that United States Cellular was proposing to
move some existing antennas on the West 3rd Street water tower, that the City
was still pressuring Nextel to finish the brick facade on their transmitter building
next to the City's water tower on Pennsylvania Avenue, and that Telecorp was still
in the process of getting its monopole tower painted in Murphy Park.
Commissioners had a brief conversation about the progress in getting needed
telecommunication services to businesses in the new industrial parks and along
Kerper Blvd.
Mr. Crawford told Commissioners of the City's efforts to upgrade its
telecommunications conduit specification for conduit and interduct dropped into
new street construction and reconstruction.
He also indicated that he was trying to schedule a series of meetings between
representatives of the Iowa Communications Network, America's River, local
schools and non-profit institutions, and additional City staff.
5. Franchise Renewal.
Mr. Crawford told Commissioners that CBG Communications has nearly completed
analysis of the citizen survey, the focus group data, the results of interviews and
other information-gathering processes, and had received earlier in the week, the
last packet of information it had requested from Mediacom, regarding the
institutional network and signal leakage details. He told Commissioners that the
reports and recommendations from CBG should come first as a draft form and then
in a revised form to the City's Washington attorneys and that shortly thereafter, we
should be able to form our negotiating agenda and positions, and begin scheduling
face-to-face meetings with Mediacom representatives. Although a public
referendum is not part of the cable franchise renewal process under federal law,
Mr. Crawford indicated he would be recommending that as soon as the negotiating
team had reached a tentative agreement they felt could be recommended to the
City Council, details would be published and an additional opportunity for citizen
comments would be made available prior to final Council action.
6. Mediacom General Manager's Report.
Ms. McMullen announced that Mediacom would be hiring six to seven additional
employees to conduct door-to-door sales efforts, which would not include
subscriber or account auditing as in the past. They would also, however, be hiring
a full-time field auditor whose purpose would be to move around the city auditing
drops and accounts.
She told Commissioners that a blackout of Chicago Cubs game coverage on ESPN
earlier in the day was a result of the Major League baseball sports blackout rules
and that such blackouts are now performed by ESPN itself, not by the cable
company.
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Ms. McMullen told Commissioners that her company was about to begin offering a
new set of digital programming packages and that the forms of contracts for use in
discounted long-term subscriptions were presently being reviewed by City staff and
legal advisors. Mr. Crawford added some explanation about several forms of
Powerpaks contracts which have been the subject of recent confusion. One form
seemed initially to indicate that the stated rate for the service was locked in for the
length of the contract term, but then bore an asterisk and a disclaimer stating that
the printed rate was only a beginning rate and that the monthly rate could increase
at Mediacom's discretion. This form of contract had been found by the City to be
confusing and deceptive. Mediacom was no longer using it and had given affected
customers the right to terminate the agreement in the event of a rate increase,
without penalty. A second form of contract was then discovered which appears to
lock in the rate for the term of the contract, and which does not carry the asterisk
and disclaimer. Those contracts, which appear to have been used in November
and December of 2001 and perhaps a bit later, were judged by the City to be valid
and not subject to the Mediacom letter and termination option. It was the City's
opinion that in the case of this second form of contract, the rates should indeed be
locked in for the term of the contract and Mediacom has agreed to accomplish this
by the monitoring of specific accounts and the writing of appropriate credits.
Ms. McMullen told Commissioners that Mediacom had recently shut off the second
IP Internet address, which had been provided at no extra charge for a few months.
The same package previously from AT & T had included a $5.00 charge for the
second IP address. Customers who want additional IP addresses, can purchase
them but must acquire new addresses rather than keeping the second one they
were originally assigned.
Ms. McMullen said that Mediacom was in the process of merging its cable and
Internet services onto a single monthly bill, which following setup could be paid by
Easy-Pay deduction or by credit card.
Finally, Ms. McMullen informed Commissioners that the Dubuque cable headend
and the headend at Lena, Illinois had both been vandalized over the weekend.
The Commissioners discussed with Ms. McMullen the details of the vandalism and
steps to be taken for additional security.
7. Cable Franchise Administrator's Report.
Mr. Crawford distributed copies of a topical agenda for a two-day municipal
broadband seminar he will be attending in early September in San Francisco. He
also discussed with Commissioners the City Council's goal of conducting a study of
possible business plans and alternatives by which the City might get more directly
involved in the providing of competition and state-of-the-art telecommunication
services. He discussed the possible disparity of expectations between the
residential public, the news media, the business community, and the City Council
as far as whether the City should focus on offering cable television services in
competition with Mediacom, or build high speed internet and data networks to
serve large and small businesses, institutions and residences, or a combination of
both.
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Shortly following his return from San Francisco, Mr. Crawford will be in Chicago for
the annual NATOA Conference.
The City continues to move at a measured pace to increase security of its
buildings, facilities, communications systems, etc. following the September 11
terrorist attack and the local pipe bomb incidents. The next physical work at City
Hall Annex will include improving the security of basement level windows and
window wells.
Mr. Crawford reported that the City website was up and functioning.
As an advisory, he informed Commissioners that Mediacom had refused to air a
portion of a public access program, which was part of a series called "Dubuque
Championship Wrestling." He told Commissioners it was a question of program
content, which the City does not regulate, and that there is no indication at this
point if access producers would appeal the cable company's action.
Mr. Crawford distributed a series of trade magazine articles and reference
materials, including an article about Mediacom's finding favor in the stock market
because of its comparatively positive financial performance, an article reporting
MIT scholars who suggest that a major transformation of telecommunications is
coming to a relatively wide open wireless configuration, and an article about an
experiment involving the University of Georgia and the town of Athens, GA to
intentionally place wireless "clouds" over certain downtown areas, which would
enable free internet access. He also distributed articles regarding the attack on
local authority over rights-of-way, and a local officials' guide from the National
League of Cities and NATOA regarding telecommunications and rights-of-way.
Finally, he distributed an updated list of the agenda topics of all Cable TV
Regulatory Commission meetings from 1981 to the present.
8. Future Agenda Items.
It was noted that Mr. Crawford will be out of town on both the second and third
Wednesdays of September and Commissioners agreed to suspend the scheduling
of a regular meeting in that month, but would be willing to respond to a special
meeting if necessary.
9. Adjournment.
Upon a motion by Mr. Webster, seconded by Mr. Tigges, the meeting was
adjourned at 7:09 p.m.
MC/cj
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