Thursday, March 06, 2008

More Details on Statewide Cable Franchise Plan

A new plan and a new agency to create rules and regulations for a proposed change in the laws regarding cable franchises has something of a compromise to it. The full bill can be read here.

The one large problem I have with this legislation is that it alters the existing laws so that AT&T would not have to participate in the current system of making agreements at the local level for franchise agreements. The fact remains that they could make such agreements now to start providing service, and creating a new agency and new laws still smack of fixing something that is not broken.

There are pluses to the proposed change in law - it does preserve the current Public, Education and Government (PEG) or at least states that new franchise agreements include provisions for PEG channels.

It also irks me that while every resident of the state could be impacted by the proposed changes to the state law, the state's media has devoted more coverage of useless, grandstanding legislation which had no chance of passage. With so much info available to news agencies and anyone else with access to the internet why is it that more info is typically available from bloggers?

No doubt the technology in telecommunications has been and is rapidly changing and perhaps changes to how such agencies are governed is needed. So shouldn't that be the priority for our elected officials?

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