Monday, February 02, 2009
Blind to the Law
at&t keeps making these “presentations” in places they say they say they are going to build. They pull Public, Educational and Government (PEG) access managers into a room and extol the virtues of PEG on U-Verse. The infamous channel 99 ghetto for PEG channels. The PEG “solution.”
“We’ve lowered the load time to 8 seconds.”
“Your viewers will be able to watch city council meetings from other cities.”
“The quality is great! 480 x 480.”
“It only takes 4 clicks on the menu to find your channel.”
I can’t remember the last time I waited 8 seconds for anything to load. I get irritated when it takes more than 10 seconds to put the hot in my coffee. Around my house, it’s speed-racer time when a program goes to commercial, who can be the quickest to mute it or change the channel? I can barely stand to watch county council meetings in my own county, why on earth would I want to watch Anne Arundel or Baltimore County meetings? The pixels are the equivalent of a cell phone and no, I don’t want to click, click, click, click to get to the school district snow closing notices.
I’m glad somebody is finally taking some action. The Alliance for Community Media with the Alliance for Communications Democracy and a host of other organizations, filed a petition at the FCC on January 30th for a declaratory ruling that AT&T’s delivery of PEG is contrary to the Communications Act. This petition comes on the heels of a much encouraging Congressional hearing in September (that AT&T completely snubbed) and the heels of a tersely worded letter to the FCC by the representatives at the hearing, telling the FCC that changes in the cable industry should not result in PEG being treated as second-class.
The petition is asking the FCC to determine if AT&T is violating the law. What I am really waiting anxiously for is AT&T’s response, it should be juicy!
For the rest of the story>>>>
http://www.riedelcommunications.blogspot.com/
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