More AT&T Bashing
Ever since AT&T successfully lobbied state legislators to modify the antiquated law which governed how video providers rolled services out to customers, they’ve been on the side of unfair attacks by many municipalities.
My first blog entry EVER here questioned why Novi had only one cable provider. I argued that even though no one was actively keeping providers from coming in to our city, the rules made it financially unfeasible for new franchises to compete with incumbent ones. AT&T should be commended for doing what it took to bring choice to consumers.
Recently, Novi city officials proposed to council that communication lines be purchased and installed so that AT&T’s U-Verse customers could watch PEG (Public Education and Government) programming. This was a great turn of events, as I’ve always felt that the city treated AT&T unfairly. The money for these lines would come from PEG fees (not taxes) that subscribers of the U-Verse service have been paying for some time now. They’ve been paying, even though they have not been receiving any PEG programming. Brighthouse Cable subscribers have had PEG programming available to them since cable first came to Novi.
Recently, my good friend Scott Olson of Novi.org published an editorial which took the city to task for the communication line expenditures. Mr. Olson has been a watchdog for wasteful city spending for quite some time, so I have much respect for him. Still, I could not disagree more with him on this particular issue.
After reading his editorial, I was left a bit confused and question where he got his information from. This issue seems to have been unnecessarily complicated. It seems to be driven by the same outside influences who wish to protect what’s left of the cable monopoly that existed here for some time.
I want to take this opportunity to respond to 5 issues that Mr. Olson brought up in his column:
1) The author questions whether we shopped around the lines. Maybe, maybe not, but why would we want to purchase this from outside of AT&T? Although someone out there might offer the lines a bit cheaper, why would we want to get tangled into that web? Under that scenario, when there are PEG service transmission problems, you’d have 2 entities pointing fingers at each other, AT&T and the line provider. With AT&T as the line provider, there is only 1 person to call if there are problems. Having employees involved in debugging a transmission issue in order to determine which vendor to call is cost ineffective. I’m comfortable with this decision. I should also add that AT&T conceded almost $10k worth of equipment to the city for this venture.
2) With regard to using one of the 2 lines as an emergency internet backup for the city, I see no problem with that either. This is just an “additional benefit” of purchasing the lines as mentioned by head of Novi Technology department, Rob Petty. The line in question is earmarked for live programming from the council chambers to AT&T U-Verse customers, although it could have additional uses. In the rare case that a switchover was ever needed, it’s as simple as swapping 2 cables and would only be done during normal business hours. Live meetings from council chambers take place AFTER hours.
By the way, since the city uses Brighthouse as their Internet Service Provider, do we really expect this to be an issue anyway? 
3) Mr. Olson questioned the need for 2 lines, yet he seemed to ignore the fact that there are 2 communication lines currently used to support the Brighthouse PEG infrastructure. To imply that the city (who again has been unfairly tough on AT&T since they came to Novi) is giving them an unfair advantage is just wrong. Will this give AT&T an the ability to offer more programming than Brighthouse (as he mentioned)? No. At least not as a direct result of these line purchases, but simply be as a result of better technology.
4) He questioned who is responsible to pay for the lines. As I mentioned earlier, AT&T U-Verve Customers have been paying paid PEG fees (without service), so obviously they deserve some of those dollars to go to infrastructure. It’s certainly possible that PEG dollars that were collected many moons ago were used to purchase the 2 lines that currently support the Brighthouse PEG infrastructure. Also, I’m certain that future AT&T customer’s PEG dollars will go to SWOCC for programing purposes, but I’ll leave that for the SWOCC board to negotiate with the city.
5) I agree with the editor that contrary to what was communicated to city council, there is indeed some programming by SWOCC that is available online. This is a good thing, especially for someone like me who spends MANY hours in front of a computer. Still, at the end of the day, I want to sit in my recliner, turn on my TV, and watch in comfort, just like Brighthouse customers do.
Although I am not yet an AT&T U-Verse customer, I fully expect to be shortly. I have had the opportunity to see and play with the AT&T service and I find it superior to anything available to Novi residents today.
I respect the editor of Novi.org and his concerns on this issue. Unfortunately, he’s been misinformed.
Willy,
Good start. Time to get back into blogging!!
AT&T Bashing? It’s hardly a monopoly. There is currently a nationwide ad campaign stating the “phone company” in 100 years has changed “nothing but its prices”. Lily Tomlin started a career in the late 60′s based upon the “phone company’s” service reputation. But this issue, like others in this discussion, isn’t the point.
For the record, I believe:
On this latter issue, one has to respect Scott Olson’s opinion. While I agree that both Brighthouse and AT&T customers deserve equal access, there is little evidence that competitive T1 bids were analyzed.
In this last piece of Council business, I find myself sitting with Kathy Crawford. During the council meeting she felt it necessary to voice that many citizens did not take advantage of the technology being discussed. Do we write off her constituents as “misinformed”. No that is not right.
This issue was simply about leasing the wire the AT&T Universe system runs on.
In my opinion this discussion should have been, -
This is the equal service these clients have payed for and this is a cost associated with having multiple cable providors. Staff has looked at T1 service from vendor A, Vendor B and AT&T. This is why staff fells AT&T is the best T1 provider.
Instead we heard how AT&T has been falsely portrayed and got an evalution of AT&T Universe.
In this Day and age a T1 connection can only be provided effectively by one vendor? Hardly. Service level agreements (SLA’s) with multiple vendors are common place in today’s networks.
Is AT&T the least cost responsible bidder? From Monday’s meeting I can’t answer that question. That’s the question I elect a Council to answer.
But who knows, maybe on the next Council agenda there will be a consumer report on Plasma TV’s.
My take on Kathy’s comments was that she was supporting having the PEG channels on the TV (ATT UVerse) rather than internet (the other technology). I thought she was strongly supporting the position being discussed.
ATT was selected because the Internet connection exclusively to their backbone using equipment that is for that specific purpose. There was no way to have an apples to apples comparison of service providers for T-1′s in this instance. Why anybody feels that ATT is a favored vendor in this decision is beyond my comprehension. Also, would another vendor have provided us with the nearly $10,000 in hardware that ATT provided? Taking the whole package into consideration, that City got a very competitive deal.
“In my opinion this discussion should have been, -
This is the equal service these clients have payed for and this is a cost associated with having multiple cable providors. Staff has looked at T1 service from vendor A, Vendor B and AT&T. This is why staff fells AT&T is the best T1 provider.”
We had that discussion at the Council meeting. I had the same concerns about why we would want to add a new T-1 connection with AT&T when we already had an existing Internet connection with BrightHouse. In an ideal world, the city would have a single Internet provider who could provide us a connection with enough bandwidth to support both our existing Internet traffic from the city as well as the new video service. But for reasons outlined below, that wasn’t an option. Rob Petty’s answers to why he recommended AT&T were:
1) The existing BrightHouse service could not dedicate the amount of bandwidth required for the video service on the existing Internet connection. You need that dedicated bandwidth to ensure the quality of the video service.
2) Even if the existing BrightHouse connection could have been used, it’s likely that the route from BrightHouse to the AT&T U-Verse network would have introduced additional potential points of failure as compared to using AT&T’s infrastructure. A video service like this requires a stable connection and each “hop” you add to the path of traffic introduces the potential of a reduction in the quality of the video service.
3) The city just recently signed a new contract for Internet service with BrightHouse. In order to aggregate our Internet and video service with AT&T or another provider, it would have required breaking that contract.
4) AT&T’s proposal also provided a rebate that covers the costs of the equipment, setup and maintenance for the service for the first year. If the city had gone with another service provider for T-1s, we would have had to cover those costs. While I don’t think AT&T is the lowest cost provider, as Rob Petty stated during the meeting, the savings realized from this rebate more than offset what would have been saved by going with another service provider.
Again, I think the questions that have been raised are good ones. I think for both technical and financial reasons, the AT&T solution that we selected makes the most sense. As I stated at the meeting, down the roads as contracts come up for renewal, we should be looking at consolidating our Internet and video service with a single provider. But at this time, I haven’t seen any information that indicates that another provider would have given the city a better solution for both the technical needs of the system and the financial costs of the project.
Andrew,
Well said.
Regarding your point #1 above… it would have been funny having U-Verse video running through a BrightHouse line
Didn’t anyone know that we needed the AT&T lines back when we were negotiating the City’s ISP service?
Willy,
Here was the proposal by BrightHouse that was approved by Council in April. In some ways, it’s not an apples to apples comparison as the city was looking to replace connections between existing facilities as well as upgrade its Internet connection. However, you can see that the cost of that service from AT&T was significantly more expensive that BrightHouse’s proposal.