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Telecom & Video Services Agency Report
April 21-May 19, 2008

Thank you for this opportunity to highlight some of the things that the Cable Communications Agency has been involved with during the past month.

NAME CHANGE

Since our last Board meeting, the City-County Council approved the name change of the Cable Communications Agency to that of the Telecom & Video Services Agency.  With that, our office has been expediting numerous changes to have that change reflected for our day to day business operations.

 ETC TRANSMISSION PROBLEMS

ETC 2 continues to have ghosting issues which previously Bright House attributed to plant related problems dating back to last October.  It is possible that the problem could be a result of the B Cable not having been upgraded to a hybrid fiber-coax per the 1996 local franchise agreement upgrade requirements to the Bright House system.

 ETC GRANT

The City is received the invoice for the 2007 grant that the City-County Council approved last month.  The amount of $37,749.49 will be dispatched directly.

 BRIGHT HOUSE FRANCHISE FEE REVIEW

With respect to the Bright House audit review period of 2004-2006, the City is standing by to speak with Bright House’s counsel on the amounts owed to the City for this time period. Via Bright House’s franchise agreement and the City Code, the Office of Corporation Counsel has also requested that amount above and beyond what the City had been liable in paying in past years to execute a franchise fee review, be issued back to the City by Bright House. The past due amounts now owed the City in the amount of $76,868 as of today. With regard to Bright House’s 2007 franchise fee review, the City and Bright House hope to get the 2004-2006 review periods behind them before proceeding on that.

COMCAST 2007 FRANCHISE FEE REVIEW

The 2007 franchise fee review has been completed by the City’s auditor and he is preparing a draft for our office. Comcast was fully compliant to all data requests and the process took about a month and a half to complete.  The auditor found that Comcast had overpaid the City in 2007 by about $10,000.

AT&T PEG ISSUES

The City is still waiting to hear back from AT&T regarding fixing the closed captioning on their system for government access programming.  As our constituents know, the City provides closed captioning for the City-County Council meetings for the hearing impaired.  The City did follow up with AT&T that it was aware of similar situations around the country and particularly in San Francisco where AT&T responded that it could not provide closed captioning to their system. We sought further clarification with AT&T after we found out about this and have yet to hear back from them.

Additionally, AT&T and ETC had some preliminary discussions about getting ETC connected to the UVERSE system and ETC reports that AT&T has not engaged them any further for some time.  The City followed up with AT&T as to what the status was regarding ETC’s connection to UVERSE and we have yet to hear back from AT&T.

The Telecom & Video Services Agency hosted several municipalities to meet and discuss the similar PEG issue problems that we all share with respect to AT&T.  The meeting served as a good foundation in gathering related data needed with respect to necessary next steps.

BUDGET PREP

The Agency has been involved in CFO and individual meetings with respect to the budget prep. The long range plan as set out by the Controller’s Office is for the City and County to submit 95% of their 2008 budget for 2009 through 2011. We anticipate having our budget done soon and ready for the Board to vote on by June’s meeting.

MEDIATING CABLE COMPLAINTS

The Telecom & Video Services Agency has been serving as a consumer advocate to Indianapolis and Marion County video subscribers in assisting them in mediating complaints on their behalf.  

Customer Complaint Log

April 1st through April 30th, 2008