City to access thoughts on cable service

June Casagrande

NEWPORT BEACH -- Three unhappy Adelphia customers enjoyed a rare

opportunity to vent directly to cable TV executives during a special

meeting at City Hall on Thursday.

“Right now the service is totally inadequate,” resident Paul Baskin

told participants at the meeting, including two representatives of

Adelphia cable.

City Councilman John Heffernan and Assistant City Manager Dave Kiff

both said they have received a disturbing number of complaints about

unreliable Internet connections, download times, customer service and

channel changes, such as the recent loss of TechTV.

“Service has drastically improved in the last two weeks. . . . For the

most part, the issues are gone,” said Adelphia representative Nancy

Stinson. Her comment was met with a small collective grunt from the three

residents who attended the meeting.

The city’s Telecommunications Subcommittee had scheduled the meeting

with its consultant, the Buske Group, to plan ways to collect residents’

input on what they want in a cable provider. Officials plan to use the

information as leverage when they renew their agreements with Adelphia

and Cox Communications, the city’s other cable provider, whose customers

have not had similar problems.

The two Adelphia representatives said their technical problems have

been a result of the sudden collapse of former Internet partner

excite@home. They added the problems are being fixed rapidly.

But officials and residents weren’t satisfied.

The Buske Group will conduct phone surveys of residents and hold focus

groups to gather information about what’s wrong. As the city prepares to

renew its franchise agreements with the cable companies early next year,

it will use the data to persuade Adelphia to keep its Newport Beach

customers happy. But even then, little can be done to force the companies

to comply. Under the 1996 Telecommunications Act, the city is compelled

to renew the agreement regardless of whether a provider lives up to its

promises.

The agreement, basically a legal formality, gives the companies the

right to have their cables under city streets. In return, the city gets

5.25% of the companies’ revenues in the city. In 2001, this amounted to

$705,709 to the city from Adelphia and $227,319 from Cox.

The percentage is not negotiable by the city or the company, and would

remain the same even if Adelphia left and another company came in. The

one disparity, though, is that Cox does not pay the city a franchise fee

for data services.

A recent court ruling in Oregon has left open the question of whether

companies are required to pay to the city this fee, which is charged to

customers on their monthly bills. In 2001, $35,589 of the money the city

received from Adelphia was in the form of this franchise fee for data

services. Cox paid nothing. In 2000, Adelphia paid $79,544, and Cox paid

$43,485.

* June Casagrande covers Newport Beach. She may be reached at (949)

574-4232 or by e-mail at o7 june.casagrande@latimes.comf7 .