Local Lobbyists Launch Anti-Telco Site
Telecommunications Advocacy Coalition-Sponsored Site Compares Pro-Telco Legislation with Blackjack
By Linda Haugsted -- Multichannel News, 3/2/2007 4:40:00 PM
City and county lobbyists are painting pro-telephone-company legislative reform as a blackjack game where consumers lose on a newly launched Web site.
The site is sponsored by the Telecommunications Advocacy Coalition. Its members are the National League of Cities, the National Association of Counties, the Government Finance Officers Association and the National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors.
The groups asserted that moving video franchising from local governments to state or federal levels will cost local government up to $8 billion in revenue annually. Local agreements mean city officials can quickly act on consumer complaints, can seek compensation for the use of public rights-of-way and can assure that roads opened by providers as they install plant are properly repaired, according to opinions expressed on the new site.
The site invites visitors into the "big telco casino" to play a hand of blackjack with chips bearing labels including "consumer complaints" and "first responders." The telephone "dealer" hand always gets 21, with the consumer getting messages like, "You just lost local control. Who's going to make sure big telecom repairs the roads they dig up?"
Asked for a comment on the new site, Michael Balmoris, AT&T’s media contact for federal regulatory and legislative affairs, referred Multichannel News to the coalition site AT&T supports, TV4US: WeWantChoice.com. That site noted that successful reform bills -- such as AB2987, which passed last year in California -- guarantee continued franchise-fees payments to local governments, reaffirm local authority over rights-of-way and prohibit discrimination in infrastructure deployment based on area economics.
The municipal lobbyists said they launched their Web site to thwart the "aggressive lobbying and marketing tactics" used by telecommunications companies to further their agendas.
