The baby bells have lobbied very hard to gut the existing local franchise system, without it getting much coverage from the technology media. With the FCC’s help, they’ve passed franchise “reform” laws in more than a dozen states under the promise of more jobs and lower TV rates. In reality, the bills are designed to legalize cherry picking, kill consumer protection laws, eliminate local authority and eminent domain rights, and streamline lobbying. According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, with TV rates skyrocketing, Wisconsin is the latest to notice that the franchise “reform” bill they were sold didn’t actually do anything for consumers that the old system didn’t.

Gosh, if only someone had warned them. Actually the State had plenty of warning, local UW Madison Professor Barry Orton testified to the new bill’s dangers at length. Orton explained, but was ignored, how the changes proposed by AT&T and Verizon would actually eliminate some decent consumer protections:

AT&T and Verizon spent several years arguing that local franchise control prevented them from deploying telcoTV. With the occasional fib by FCC chief Kevin Martin, the baby bells convinced state legislators around the country that scattered, unreasonable demands by towns and cities were the norm, and were preventing the arrival of TV competition utopia. By demonizing local video franchise authorities, AT&T convinced many States to pass bills that were little more than anti-consumer telco wishlists. Wisconsin’s was among the worst.

In reality, Verizon deployed FiOSTV to many municipalities under the old system of local franchise control, and has publicly stated that they were able to do so quickly. In most cases it was AT&T, not the local municipalities, that stopped AT&T from deploying U-Verse IPTV service and next-gen broadband infrastructure. AT&T simply didn’t want to deploy next-generation services evenly or deal with the tough consumer protection laws in several states, and threatened to sue any town or city that said otherwise.

The State by State approach was only attempted because efforts to pass a federal version of these bills failed. Initially, AT&T and Verizon had recruited the help of convicted felon and recently re-elected Alaska Senator Ted Stevens to pass a national franchise “reform” law, but that effort was derailed by the network neutrality debate.

On the even less savvy state level, the sales pitch of lower rates was too compelling, telco lobbyists were simply too well funded, and consumers too under-represented. In Wisconsin, AT&T’s astroturfing front group, TV4US, was particularly aggressive in getting the law passed, giving promotional packets to State lawmakers with lists of people who supported the measure — when they actually didn’t. TV4US is still trying to swindle additional States into passing reform bills, and is still promising lower TV prices they know will never come.
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