Negotiations Going From None To Worse

Are my blogs too long? (Some people have said so.) Ok, here's a short one - a few notes from the county advisory (TAC) meeting this past Wednesday.

Negotiations Going From None To Worse

In my MFP meeting summary last week ("How To Communicate Nothing"), I remarked that Verizon VP Briana Gowing was (to put it politely) rambling. At Wednesday evening's TAC meeting, I found out that I wasn't the only one confused by her testimony. Both Cable Office representative Margie Williams and Council Analyst Sonya Healy claimed that Briana had attested to a schedule of meetings planned between the county and Verizon to negotiate the franchise.

You can read the statement in question here. My interpretation was different - that Briana was hoping to set up a series of meetings. But I can see how the phrase "scheduled meetings" might have been misinterpreted to mean meetings having been scheduled. I think it was just an unfortunate choice of words. That combined with her overly optimistic prediction of an agreement by the next MFP meeting surely didn't help.

Anyway, the county representatives were surprised to find the county lawyers denying that any such meeting schedule existed. So, as if communication was bad enough last week, it's even worse this week.

When the TAC pressed over who (the Executive?) or what (Verizon?) was holding things up, Sonya said that things were so far apart that Verizon hadn't even applied for a franchise yet. I found that confusing as they obviously have had some negotations. What is clear is that the Executive has not taken the next step ("filing") which starts a clock requiring certain actions to be taken in specified time periods. This is significant because it means that the Executive presently has no pressure at the current time to take action. He can ignore Verizon from now until the election (which might possibly be his plan).

Meanwhile, Margie observed that the Cable Office was getting lots of letters from citizens frustrated that the franchise wasn't happening. She said that the letters were being forwarded to the Council and the Executive.

Refund

Earlier, I mentioned that Comcast was found to have overcharged Montgomery County customers by $2.50. The Cable Office said the exact amount is actually $2.57. Oddly, you are only eligible if you are a customer as of March 6 of this year. So if you overpaid last year and then left Comcast, you'll miss your refund. Seems kind of strange, no? Ok, I agree that $2.57 is a small amount. But doesn't Comcast keep records of their ex-customers? No wonder they can't figure out why customers have left - out of sight, out of mind.

Internet Customer Service Regulations

At the MFP meeting, Sonya had described how Comcast finally supplied - just that previous evening - their customer service compliance stats for internet service! During the TAC meeting, Margie finally cleared up the mystery of exactly what convinced Comcast to change their mind after a year of procrastination. The county finally threatened to start fining Comcast at $200/day for each day the report was late. With 13 reports late, Comcast would've had to pay $2600 every day!

Rockville Not In Motion

Following up on the letter from a Rockville citizen that I posted previously, I asked Kernan Chaisson what's going on with Rockville. Kernan is the City of Rockville's TAC representative. This isn't the first time I've asked him about the Rockville Right-Of-Way issue and his answer was the same as before - that Rockville is determined to avoid the problems that the rest of the county has experienced with Verizon - and that Rockville lawyers continue to negotiate with Verizon.

JT (author of the letter) received a more detailed answer from Doug Breisch for the City of Rockville. As best I understand it, Verizon declined to sign any of the standard applications that Rockville provides for access to the right-of-way. Instead, Verizon is providing their own proposal - which Rockville is currently analyzing. Rockville did go so far as to say just sign the same franchise that Comcast already holds for a cable franchise and that will suffice. But Verizon was not interested in that offer - presumably for the same reasons that I've outlined earlier regarding the county's offer for a Comcast-like video franchise.

So Verizon doesn't appear to be making things easy for us but at least the Rockville officials are meeting with Verizon. (Remember, the county officials aren't.) Is there anything the County Council can do to break this logjam? Is it time to ask the FCC to threaten us with loss of local control?