State Laws/Franchising

Four more Chicago suburbs were sued by AT&T Inc. for delaying plant improvements that will lead to a launch later of the telephone company's video service.

The new defendants are Itasca, North Aurora, Wood Dale and Geneva. Suits were filed against the Illinois communities May 2 in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. Previously, AT&T sued the communities of Carpentersville, Roselle and Wheaton, Ill., as well as two communities in California.

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a state franchising bill into law late last week, stating that the bill will "add another significant player into the cable-television marketplace and help to speed the spread of new and innovative technologies across the state.”

New entrants will now apply for a single statewide franchise, to be administered by the state Public Utilities Commission. Schwarzenegger signed the legislation Sept. 29.

Amendment Puts A Curb on Towns’ Ability to Overbuild

Washington -- The Supreme Court case on the regulation of cable’s high-speed-data service is “massively important” and “about search engines not having to pay cable companies to get favored treatment or being discriminated against because Yahoo! [Inc.] has paid for faster treatment and Google [Inc.] can’t get it,” attorney Andrew Jay Schwartzman said Wednesday.

Las Vegas -- Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.) and several House members Monday expressed strong opposition to cutting off analog broadcasting at the end of 2006 when millions of consumers still don’t have the ability to view digital signals.

“I’ve got to protect my people in the state of Montana, because there will be a lot of televisions turned off,” Burns said. “We’ve got to make sure that we don’t turn off a lot of television sets in America whenever we make this conversion.”