If you saw Chris Seper's story in the PD Friday about SBC's plan to start offering TV-over-internet ("IPTV"), you should also take a look at this:
Ministers Denounce SBC Internet-Cable TV Push as 'Digital Redlining'The ministers' group cannot have been reassured by the Reuters story on SBC's initiative:
SBC's announced $6 billion program to deliver high-speed Internet and cable TV over fiber-optic phone lines will target affluent customers, amounting to redlining of disadvantaged communities, the Ministerial Alliance Against the Digital Divide (MAADD) charged today.
"This is another discriminatory scheme disguised as technological progress by SBC," said Reverend James L. Demus III, co-director of MAADD. "These so- called investment proposals by SBC come with one fat string attached: no franchise agreement, and thus no requirement to invest in an entire community versus only the wealthy parts."
"This is nothing short of digital redlining. SBC is planning to deprive poorer customers of access to $6 billion in vital new technology," continued Demus. "We urge municipalities to stand firm and demand that SBC sign contracts that require it not to cherry-pick customers."
The $6 billion in investment by SBC is sure to almost completely bypass poor and minority neighborhoods -- SBC's own briefings to investors and analysts show the company intends to bring its new services to only five percent of what it calls "low-value customers" while targeting 90 percent of high-spending customers.
Not yet clear is the issue of regulation, and whether municipalities will seek to force franchise agreements on SBC for its local service as they do with cable companies.If that's what's on Michael Powell's mind, there's going to be a problem for municipalities -- and that problem will show up almost immediately on the doorstep of Cleveland City Hall. One of the Powell FCC's abiding interests has been to reduce local communities' cable franchising powers. Cleveland, still one of SBC's major markets and with our cable franchise with Adelphia up for review next year, may well become a test market for FCC/industry initiatives aimed at taking local government out of the "converged media" game completely.
... And the issue is already on the mind of the regulator-in-chief, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Michael Powell.
Powell said IPTV posed challenges for U.S. regulators who are used to regulating new technologies in distinct categories, whereas IPTV blurs boundaries between television, Internet and cable.
"If you are SBC and you deploy IPTV are you a cable company? Are you a telephone company? Are you a satellite company?" he said in a question-and-answer session at the show.