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Town at odds with AT&T over U-verse
[October 10, 2007]

Town at odds with AT&T over U-verse


(New Haven Register (New Haven, CT) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Oct. 10--WALLINGFORD -- Democratic Councilman Michael Brodinsky told his colleagues on the Town Council Tuesday night that he is concerned the town's three local cable access channels are getting short-changed by AT&T's new television service offering.



Brodinsky said AT&T's U-verse television service -- which provides programming via the Internet -- does not carry the local access channels and that many residents subscribing to the offering aren't aware of that. Brodinsky said AT&T officials have told him that the channels won't be on the U-verse system for at least five months, and then only if the town spends $5,000 for special equipment and other fees.

"They are making money in this town, and I don't think we should have to pay this," Brodinsky said of the one-time expenditure of $5,000 to buy an encoding device and between $2,100 and $3,000 a year for the town to have dedicated high-speed Internet lines that he said AT&T is requiring from local access providers.


"I don't see any harm in going to them and raise the two points: Please pay (the startup costs) and please disclose (that local access programs aren't currently available)."

Mayor William Dickinson Jr. said the town needs to get the company to put the startup costs in writing, and after some discussion with the council, agreed that his office would pursue the documentation.

After the meeting, Brodinsky said that Dickinson, who is a Republican, "is on notice" and needs to make progress in addressing the problem.

"This isn't going away, and I think he'd rather do this than have me do it for him," Brodinsky said of the mayor.

Resident Susan Huizenga, who is chairwoman for the Cable Advisory Council for the seven towns, including Wallingford, that are part of Comcast Cable's Branford system, said she is concerned that the picture quality of local access programming will not be viewable because of the encryption technology.

That position was echoed by Scott Hanley, who manages the town's government access television, which telecasts the council meeting on Comcast.

"The video is going to come up on a Windows Media screen, similar to what you get when you play videos on your computer," Hanley said. "It's not going to be full screen."

Hanley said local access officials statewide are set to meet with AT&T officials Oct. 29 to address their concerns.

Seth Bloom, an AT&T spokesman for Connecticut, said the company is committed to bringing all local access channels onto U-verse.

"It's a very important part of what we're offering," Bloom said during a phone interview earlier Tuesday. Bloom said not only will U-verse include existing community access channels, but it also plans to make available local access programming from other communities.

"Say you want to keep track of what's going on in the town you work in," Bloom said. "With Uverse, you'll be able to do that."

U-verse is an Internet Protocol Television service, which Bloom said makes huge amounts of bandwidth available for programming.

"We don't have to eliminate an existing channel in order to add programming," he said.

U-verse is available in parts of 40 Connecticut communities, Bloom said. The area towns are Branford, Cheshire, Derby, East Haven, Guilford,Hamden,Milford,Naugatuck, New Haven, Stratford, Trumbull, Wallingford and West Haven.

It is available to 135,000 households in those communities, although AT&T officials aren't saying how many subscribers it has.

To see more of New Haven Register, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.nhregister.com.

Copyright (c) 2007, New Haven Register, Conn.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
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