Local TV Franchises Are For Chumps, Says The New Ma Bell

from the lawsuits-are-so-much-fun dept

Earlier this year, SBC realized that going around and convincing every local government to grant it a franchise license to offer IPTV was too much of a pain (with good reason). The company then announced that it was just going to ignore local TV franchises and offer service with or without them -- and if anyone didn't like it, they could sue. It appears that Walnut Creek, California hasn't quite taken them up on their offer, but it has told them they can't offer service without a franchise. So, (what's now) AT&T has said if that's the way it's going to be, then they'll be the ones to sue. They claim that they don't need a cable license, because what they're offering is "different" -- a claim that would be a lot more credible if they didn't make their IPTV offerings look so much like cable offerings. It seems that they're at risk of the ever-popular (among politicians) "looks like a duck" test. If they had really offered something different, then they'd have a better case. Still, hopefully these (potential) lawsuits will cause people to revisit the question of whether or not local television monopolies make sense any more. Of course, if you take them away, then it only adds incentive for muni-broadband and muni-TV to help reach the areas that are under-served by the providers. So, AT&T may want to be careful what it wishes for.
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  • identicon
    Mikester, 13 Dec 2005 @ 10:34am

    Typo?

    Earlier this year, when realized that... When who realized?

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • icon
      Mike (profile), 13 Dec 2005 @ 11:08am

      Re: Typo?

      Whoops. Sorry. Fixed. Thanks. "SBC" was the missing word.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

      • identicon
        Anonymous Coward, 13 Dec 2005 @ 11:59am

        Re: Typo?

        Mike, You might want to look again. The first sentence makes no sense. "Earlier this year, when SBC realized that going around and convincing every local government to grant it a franchise license to offer IPTV, the company decided that was too much of a pain..."

        link to this | view in chronology ]

        • identicon
          dorpus, 13 Dec 2005 @ 12:04pm

          Re: Typo?

          The man is a rhetorical one pump chump, what did you expect?

          link to this | view in chronology ]

        • icon
          Mike (profile), 13 Dec 2005 @ 12:46pm

          Re: Typo?

          Mike, You might want to look again.

          Cleaned it up. Sorry about that. Looks like fixing the first typo introduced a second one. I need a better debugging system. ;)

          link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    mds, 19 Dec 2005 @ 12:05pm

    Still, hopefully these (potential) lawsuits will c

    what "local television monopolies" are you speaking of? can you id one city that granted an exclusive cable tv franchise? most cities want competitive video services.

    just as rcn and others have obtained local franchises, there's no reason the bells can't too. the reality is they won't roll out their service at once, it will be incremental. therefore the arguement for a statewide or national agreement is flawed.

    link to this | view in chronology ]


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