01-13-26 City Council Workshop Packet

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8 / Municipal Lawyer Broadband cont’d from page 7 Broadband Franchising Results in Equal Access to Broadband Plain and simple, local franchising has a history of success and should be used to ensure equal access to broadband. The following is a sampling of the issues that franchising can address. Long-Term Protection. Updating state laws to clearly autho- rize broadband franchising is particu- larly important now, as states across the country are about to distribute over $42 billion in federal grants to broadband companies over the next two years.37 Additionally, the broad- band industry is seeking additional public benefits, such as sales tax exemptions for purchasing broadband facilities and government subsidies to serve low-income families.38 Cur- rent federal and state programs do not address the long-term interests of residents, which is somewhat shocking considering the hundreds of millions of public dollars being given to the broadband industry. Franchising pro- vides long-term protection. Equitable Buildout. Broadband franchising will allow local governments to require reasonable build-out schedules to ensure all resi- dents are served with the same quality of services. The effectiveness of local cable franchising buildout is undeni- able. Compare the availability of a standard quality of service throughout the country and it will consistently show the local cable system outper- forms the local telephone company. Local governments have required every cable operator to construct its cable system to serve everyone in the mu- nicipality, and, later, required system upgrades to ensure the cable system provided an appropriate level of ser- vice.39 Additionally, local governments have, as required in the 1984 Cable Act, prohibited cable operators from redlining lower income communities.40 Minnesota cities saw this firsthand when granting cable franchises to the local ILEC (incumbent local exchange carrier) phone company. According to the ILEC, to provide cable service to a household, the ILEC needed to be ca- pable of providing a certain minimum broadband download speed. In re- viewing build-out data from the ILEC, it became immediately apparent that, unlike the traditional franchised cable operator, the ILEC had an inconsistent, non-universal, quality of broadband service when compared to the cable system. Since local franchising of phone companies was prohibited by state law in Minnesota, local govern- ments were never allowed to require the ILEC to provide universal service across its service territory. When franchising the ILEC’s cable service, it was the first time the phone company was required to equitably build out its network with significant investment throughout a city.41 These provisions resulted in deployment of fiber optic facilities and the availability of cable service and high speed broadband services in all areas of cities, including areas with low income households and historically underrepresented popula- tions.42 Franchising ensures broadband systems will be built in a way that serves all residents equally. Customer Service. When it comes to broadband service, residents want a local person they can call with service issues and questions about their bills. Cities do that today with cable providers, but not with other broadband providers. There are instances when a broadband provider’s service is down, but the customer and the city have no way of communicat- ing with the provider. For example, in one Minnesota city recently, an elderly resident was without service for over six weeks. In another in- stance, an administrative law judge found that customers of state’s largest phone provider, “experienced multiple services outages or disruptions caused by deficient outside plant or equipment over an approximately four-and-a- half-year period.”43 With broadband franchising, customers will have some- one advocating for them, there will be standards for response to customers, and there will be consequences for failing to comply. Through franchising, local gov- ernments protect their residents by negotiating and enforcing customer service requirements in cable franchise agreements.44 These customer service provisions include call response times, installation response times, late fee restrictions, access channels, electron- ic programming guide provisions, anti-redlining, and anti-discrimination requirements.45 Local governments have supported, and the state of Maine recently adopted, customer service re- quirements relating to access television and refunds.46 Contrast these efforts to the broadband customer in Wisconsin who was told that she could not termi- nate her service just because she called on a weekend. Franchising will protect these customers with reasonable cus- tomer service protections. In addition to negotiating and enforcing cable franchise customer ser- vice provisions, local governments are relied upon by the FCC to participate in consumer protection dockets. Just in the past year, local governments from across the country have supported consumer protection rules at the FCC, and they have also supported digital discrimination rules at the FCC.47 Local government Comments and reply Comments were cited favorably by the FCC numerous times in its final Report and Order that adopted digital discrimination rules.48 Local government franchising au- thorities supported All-In Cable Pric- ing rules to require the disclosure of all cable fees, including some referred to as junk fees.49 These fees include extra fees to receive local broadcast channels, sports programming, and even high-definition television service. Once again, local government Com-