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Executive
Summary
City
of Reno Cable Television
Community Needs Report
The
Future Cable Related Needs and Interests of City of Reno residents
January 10, 2003
Prepared by
Action Audits, LLC.
101 Pocono Lane
Cary, NC 27513
The
future community needs and interests of Reno residents include: competition,
a choice in service providers and affordability; reliable and uninterrupted
service; high quality, diverse, and locally-oriented programs covering
public, governmental and educational issues; High Standards of Excellence
in Customer Service; Technology Choice and Control; and Access to (reasonably
priced) state of the art services and facilities. In lock step with its
residents, the needs of the community’s public, educational and government
(PEG) institutions include: Establishing a minimum of five new analog
channels on Charter’s cable system for PEG programming; Financial
support for the purchase and upgrading of existing video production equipment
to digital/web formats and for annual upgrades; Operational financing
for creating or increasing PEG production staff; Insertion points onto
and connections to Charter’s cable network; Bandwidth allocation
and the reservation of bandwidth for future uses; and Community Computer
Training Centers.
Reno’s future community needs are a
direct reflection of the community’s experiences from the past —
namely, its treatment by and services from Charter Communications, a St.
Louis based Company owned by Microsoft’s Paul Allen, which has been
serving the community for the last 1.5 years.
These experiences have been marked by the
following Charter practices: “expensive” services, the lack
of competition or choice in service providers, unreliable and interrupted
cable service, limited choice in the technologies offered, lack of programming
quality, diversity, localism or program control. The community complained
in various forums about Charter’s unresponsive customer service,
including the company’s inability to answer its telephones, the often
“surly” and “aggressive” attitude of customer service
representatives, the company’s inability to provide accurate bills,
levy credit due, or follow through with promised credits. Community residents
criticized the company’s use of subcontracted cable technicians who
do not show up for appointments or call to reschedule missed appointments,
and who appear to be lacking proper training, professionalism and appropriate
local identification. Residents articulated high levels of frustration
with and intolerance of Charter’s twelve-hour appointment windows
for repairs or installations. They want cable modem Internet service in
Reno.
As an outgrowth of this past, Reno residents
have demonstrated a desire to be involved in the City’s franchise
renewal process, establishing a Citizens Cable Compliance Committee in
November 2002, and for their local government officials to demand accountability
from Charter on their behalf. It can be concluded by the strong and clear
comments from community members that Reno’s residents will not easily
accept the renewal of Charter’s franchise unless local government
actions are taken to ensure that residents will no longer be subject to
Charter’s perceived abusive and aggressive business tactics and low-quality
service.
While it is apparent that Charter’s
local management has been making bold attempts to bring to Reno what it
recognizes as the most valuable company resource — a state-of-the-art
broadband infrastructure spanning throughout the region -- these efforts
appear to be suffering under the weight of a corporate parent saddled
with serious financial problems, dramatic management reorganization and
the pinch of a grand jury investigation.
Charter currently carries $19 billion in
debt, the Company’s bonds and equity have been depicted as “trading
as if the company is bankrupt,” and is the subject of a federal probe
into faulty accounting practices. In late December 2002, Charter fired
its chief financial officer, terminated its former chief operating officer,
reorganized into five divisions, and will re-audit its books for the years
2000 and 2001. The parent Company has lost 277,000 subscribers since December
2001.
The city of Reno recognizes that it must
maintain a highly trained and educated workforce and offer high quality
infrastructure to successfully diversify its economy and attract new logistics
and high tech industries from California. The City has included infrastructure
as one of five characteristics that make Reno one of the top 25 places
within which to build a business and advance a career: reasonable cost
of living, quality housing, diverse outdoor recreational attractions and
rich local arts culture, low taxes and reliable power.
In the same fashion that it approached its
economic development mission by building on the strength of current resources,
the city of Reno must utilize its authority, provided through the cable
franchise renewal process, to compensate for the absence of market forces
that would normally stimulate a high quality broadband infrastructure
and services responsive to the needs of the community. The City of Reno
must step in and use its regulatory authority to develop the resources
of the community’s PEG institutions that want to be responsive, and
can be structured to be responsive, to the needs of Reno’s residents.
The City of Reno must use its franchising authority to ensure that Charter
Communications is providing the level of service excellence its citizens
demand.
Action Audits’ recommendations toward
these efforts include the following:
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• Acquire at least
five new analog channels on Charter’s system;
• Establish franchise requirements which mandate analog carriage
of Reno’s public, educational and government channels until
every Reno cable subscriber has moved to digital tier service;
• Equip, fund and provide a minimum of five new analog channels
for use by the Reno Educational Cable Consortium;
• Establish a separate analog channel devoted solely to Reno
city government programming;
• Upgrade equipment in the city council chambers to digital
telecast/webcast standards;
• Secure access to unsold local insertion “ad-avails”
on cable networks for the promotion of Reno PEG programming
• Upgrade the Media Center’s master control room and video
production equipment and master control room facilities to a digital
telecast/webcast standard;
• Secure initial $500,000 capital equipment grant from Charter
to purchase needed digital equipment for PEG facilities;
• Establish annual $150,000 capital equipment grant, indexed
for inflation, from Charter for equipment replacement for franchise
term;
• Establish a 50 cent per subscriber monthly PEG fee, indexed
for inflation, for the franchise term, to fund PEG and public access
computer training centers operating expenses ($252,000 1st year
estimate);
• Earmark one-third of all future Media Center funds solely
for capital equipment (digital upgrades);
• Require the Media Center and Education Consortium file annual
work plan and monthly reports to the Reno Citizens Cable Compliance
Committee regarding original and syndicated programs telecast and
the residents served each month;
• Require the Media Center and Education Consortium to conduct
annual viewer surveys to determine the effectiveness of their programming
and related activities;
• Charge the Reno Citizens Cable Compliance Committee with
responsibility to ensure that PEG programming and activities serve
Reno residents;
• Provide funds to increase the number of Media Center staff
available to extend operating hours;
• Obtain insertion points for the Truckee Meadows Community
College, the Regional Public Safety Training Center and various
remote locations in the community, such as the downtown Wingfield
Park and area senior citizen centers.
• Acquire 10 MHz of symmetrical digital bandwidth for use by
the RPSTC, SNCAT and the City for in service training and future
community programming;
• Secure insertion points on the cable system for Truckee Meadows
Communication or at the Regional Public Safety Center;
• Connect all municipal buildings to Charter’s cable system;
• Acquire DSL (minimum 10 Mb) and T1 bandwidth (1.54 Mb) circuits
between city hall and 18 municipal building sites for the City of
Reno;
• Obtain a reverse video feed on the cable system at the WCSD
Administration site for live School Board of Education telecasts;
• Designate a single city official responsible for stringent
enforcement of the cable franchise, cable standards ordinance, customer
service policies and federal/state/local regulations;
• Establish a telephone hotline number between the City’s
enforcement officer and Charter’s chief engineer;
• Require Charter to establish a hotline telephone number so
Reno officials can contact the “on duty” supervisor of
Charter’s technical and customer service departments;
• Implement semiannual signal technical audits by a city-sponsored
engineer;
• Conduct mandatory semiannual live call-in public hearings
to assess the state of cable service provided in the City of Reno;
• Implement mandatory state of the art reviews of Charter’s
cable system every 3.5 years to assess the level to which Reno residents
are availed of broadband services and technologies offered communities
of similar size and economic composition; include upgrade triggers.
• Establish franchise terms that are competitively neutral
so as not to deter future competitors from market entry;
• Begin regulating basic service rates; equipment and installation
prices and enforce uniform rate requirements;
• Establish (need based) discounts for senior citizen, disabled
and fixed income residents.
• Establish a “skinny” basic plus cable life-line
service tier for senior citizen, disabled and fixed income residents.
• Establish stringent customer service standards by updating
Reno’s consumer protection ordinance;
• Update the consumer protection ordinance with policies that
protect consumer interests in the absence of price stabilization
and customer service pressures generated by a competitive market;
• Update Reno’s consumer protection ordinance to include
stringent customer service standards. These standards must include:
- Minimum customer
service representative phone answering times;
- Minimum service
repair times for outages;
- Two hour appointment
windows;
- Mandatory customer
notification for all no show technician appointments and
immediate $20 customer credit;
- Mandatory requirements
for the display of local Charter contact numbers on vehicles
used by Charter employees and subcontractors;
- Mandatory uniforms
and identification requirements for all subcontractors working
for Charter in the City of Reno;
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• Prominent display
on cable bills of the City of Reno’s cable consumer telephone
number;
• Quarterly reporting requirements on the number of full-time
customer service representatives by shift and service location;
• Quarterly reporting requirements on subscriber counts by
service offering;
• Quarterly reports on Company “credit” policies
for outages;
• Quarterly reports detailing Charter’s corporate and
local financial condition;
• Quarterly bill stuffers to inform subscribers of their credit
rights for service outages;
• A separate telephone number to request outage service credits;
• Require a local office in Reno where consumers can discuss
and resolve billing and equipment problems;
• Require Charter to maintain local (toll free) telephone numbers
so that Reno residents can contact Charter’s customer service
representatives.
• Require the cable operator to file quarterly reports detailing
the number of company and contract installers & technicians,
dispatch operators and customer service representatives;
• Require the cable operator to file quarterly reports detailing
the number of National Cable and Telecommunication Association*
certified technicians and installers, both Company and contract
personnel.
• Establish minimum requirements for the maintenance of a local
workforce of installers, technicians and system engineers;
• Prepare to establish system technical performance specifications
should the City invoke formal franchise renewal proceedings;
• Establish financial penalty provisions for failure to comply
with Reno’s consumer protection and franchise requirements;
• Establish immediate penalty provisions for failure to comply
with terms of the franchise agreement and customer service standards;
• Require a $100,000 letter of credit which can be drawn against
to satisfy penalties and damages levied by the City;
• Continue to support and develop the Media Center’s community
radio station.
• Establish programs that encourage the education and training
of Reno’s youth and elderly in broadband technologies and services.
• Nurture and fund community organizations whose sole mission
is to provide high quality community oriented local television programs
for viewing;
• Equip and locate public access computer training facilities
throughout the community.
• Foster web-based video applications and community computer
training centers.
• Limit the franchise term to 5-8 years;
• Tie any extension of an initial franchise term (5 - 8 years)
to the Company’s ability to provide reliable cable and Internet
service, responsive customer service and satisfy evolving community
needs;
• Establish bankruptcy provisions in the franchise agreement
to protect the City and its PEG facilities.
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* Formerly the National
Cable Television Association.
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