LETTER: Comcast franchise contract with City

The City votes on the cable franchise proposal from Comcast on Tuesday. According to Lancaster Newspapers, they've worked out a deal that includes $470,000 and a channel to be used by SDL and SACA. Comcast, however, values the Lancaster cable TV market at between $60 million and $90 million, with annual cable TV revenues of about $12 million. I don't have the numbers on their internet and phone revenue, but it's substantial

The City should take a percentage of revenue for access to this market, closer to 10% of annual gross revenues. Comcast would gladly pay it as the price of admission to this lucrative market. Further, the City residents are entitled by law to a fully free, public access channel provided by Comcast, unrestricted by any gating institutions like SDL and SACA. I think it's great that these institutions will have a channel to work with, but the public deserves its own channel, and this is the time to secure it.

Finally, Comcast has not been a positive player for its customers, forcing unwanted, expensive packages instead of giving customers choice of individual channels and billing a la carte. Worse, Comcast has interfered with its customers internet use by tracking and interrupting downloads that exceed a certain size or bandwidth usage, in violation of net neutrality. Comcast has thus limited free speech instead of remaining neutral.

Customers should have a choice of cable provider. But the City is giving Comcast a monopoly deal for 10 years over this market. The only alternatives are Satellite and Internet TV, but Comcast deliberately interrupts Internet TV streams. That's why we cancelled our Comcast subscription to TV and the Internet last November, and switched to D&E, Netflix, Internet TV, and a nice little antennae.