Mike McCabe has it right in his Big Money Blog:
If Wisconsin's experience is anything like what is happening in other states, the so-called Video Competition Act being pushed by AT&T and put on a fast track to passage by eager-to-please state lawmakers will end up deserving a place right next to No Child Left Behind and the federal Clear Skies and Healthy Forests initiatives in the Doublespeak Hall of Fame.
Mike cites Steve Walters' story in Sunday's Milwaukee JournalSentinel on the increases in Texas cable rates after that former Republic's "video competition" bill became law.
The 25-city Texas survey showed that, with the exception of introductory temporary discount rates designed to attract new customers, "rates in Texas did not decrease but, in fact, increased," said Margaret Somereve, president of the Texas Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors.
"Eventually, the introductory rates expire and subscribers pay the published rate," which has steadily gone up in many cities, said Somereve, who works for the city of Farmers Branch, a community of 27,500.
Cable TV rate increases that resulted in Texas will also occur here, said Barry Orton, a University of Wisconsin-Madison telecommunications professor working for local governments that have fought the bill. Those governments would lose the right to issue cable TV franchises, which allow communities to oversee local cable service and to gain revenue from the providers.
"The people that really believe that cable rates will go down probably also think that gasoline will someday sell for $2 a gallon again," Orton said. "In the last 30 years, cable rates have only gone down once, in 1993-'94." (emphasis added)
The rare decreases in 1993-4 came as a result of the Federal Communications Commission implementing the 1992 Cable Consumer Protection and Competition Act and forcing rate reductions on the industry, using the cities as the blunt point of the sword of outrageously complex regulations written by the FCC. The 1992 Act was the only George Herbert Walker Bush veto ever overridden by Congress. It was passed in response to the serious abuse of cable customers allowed by the 1984 Cable Act, which deregulated oversight of rates and service. The 1984 "dereg" law was followed by 1992's "rereg," which was largely reversed by the 1996 Telecom Act, Congress being in "dereg" mode again following the 1994 Republican takeover of control. The current Wisconsin bill, of course, is largely "unreg" in orientation.
McCabe nails it:
As sure as Clear Skies allowed more air pollution and Healthy Forests gave timber companies the green light to more aggressively harvest trees on public lands, it's a safe bet that cable bills will go up under the Video Competition Act. Just look at Texas, where legislation virtually identical to AT&T's bill in Wisconsin has done the opposite of what was promised.
George Orwell's got to be doing double axels and triple toe loops in his grave.
- Barry Orton
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