Audio Video News

The city government of Lincoln, Nebraska wants its citizens to enjoy the benefits of cable competition. So it is allowing a second cable operator onto the playing field. And guess what? The incumbent cable operator isn’t happy about it.

During a public hearing before the city council, Time Warner Cable’s lawyer complained that the city’s new franchise agreement with Windstream Communications would violate its existing franchise agreement with TWC by being “more favorable or less burdensome when taken as a whole,” reports the Lincoln Journal Star.

The devil is in the details. TWC says it is required to provide five public access channels, whereas Windstream would be required to provide only four. Ah, but currently TWC is providing only four. TWC also complains that Windstream is being asked to pay less per subscriber for public access capital needs—but TWC refuses to say exactly how many subscribers it has, so how much it’s paying per subscriber is unclear.

The most concrete difference between the two franchises seems to be that TWC is required to do business with any city resident who requests service, while Windstream’s service target is 45 percent of the city initially and 80 percent within 15 years.

The Lincoln City Council listened to both sides, then granted Windstream a franchise to compete with TWC. Shortly afterward, the new cable operator announced it would start service by the end of March, a few months earlier than anticipated, reporting that its call centers were “hearing a lot of pent-up demand.”

Windstream is not exactly puny. A Fortune 500 and S&P 500 company, it offers telecom and broadband services in 48 states using a combination of DSL and fiber, and is the dominant land-line company in parts of 18 states. Time Warner is the nation’s third largest cable operator. With its pending absorption into Comcast, it would become part of the nation’s largest cable operator. Is it possible that TWC could stand a little competition?