AT&T’s IPTV-based U-verse service is being rolled out in Hartford, New Haven and Stamford, Connecticut this week. The carrier will continue to expand service availability in those markets with IPTV service that includes more than 25 high-definition channels and more than 300 total channels, as well as features like remote access to DVR functions.
AT&T was hoping to launch some 15 IPTV markets for its Project Lightspeed fiber-to-the-node (FTTN) services by the end of the year, reports Telephony Online. Now it looks more like ten markets or so.
The Connecticut launches also came just a week after AT&T was sued by the City of Milwaukee, which wants to force the telco to pay local cable franchise fees to offer U-verse there. Connecticut, California and Texas are among the eleven states to have already created statewide video franchising.
Ars Technica says AT&T’s IPTV-based U-verse service went wrong in spectacular fashion in Chicago:
Fingers were pointed, moratoria were passed, lawsuits were filed, and the FCC was petitioned. AT&T refuses to concede that its new service is a “cable system” with all the regulation that implies under US law, and neither Congress nor the FCC nor the courts have decided one way or the other.
That leaves local communities caught between giants.
If they allow AT&T to build out a television service without requiring them to abide by the same terms that existing cable companies have to follow, they risk a lawsuit from Comcast for not providing the “level playing field” required by Illinois law. If they require AT&T to sign such an agreement, AT&T will sue, claiming that the cities are illegitimately blocking a legal network upgrade.
AT&T spokesman Jeff Bentoff said the company has “made very significant commitments to share revenue and transmit the public channels - a binding commitment.”
He said, however, that the company does not believe its system is a cable system, as defined under federal law. “We want to see the city continue to have revenue sharing when a cable customer shifts to our product,” stated Bentoff.
National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA) president Kyle McSlarrow blasted FCC leadership last week. McSlarrow took aim at FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, a fellow Bush appointee.
Using some of the harshest language that an NCTA president has reserved for an FCC chairman in recent memory, McSlarrow stopped just short of calling Martin a blatant hypocrite, as well as a traitor to the Bush Administration cause of open markets and government deregulation. “What I see, when you put all of these dots together, is an agenda that really represents one of the most sweeping examples of regulatory micromanagement.”
The FCC will have the final word on the $84 Billion BellSouth/AT&T merger.
It would bring together more than a third of the nation’s land lines and allow AT&T to dominate local service in California and 21 other states. It would hold 23% of the broadband Internet market, leave nearly 95% of the offices in major cities without real choice in service and run the nation’s largest cellular carrier, Cingular Wireless.
It would also give AT&T greater control over the backbone network that connects both land line and wireless calls, said Earl W. Comstock, president of the Competitive Telecommunications Assn., a trade group representing companies that lease the regional carriers, and FCC commissioner McDowell’s old employer.
DailyWireless has more on AT&T’s controversial IPTV service and AT&T & Microsoft: HD On Demand.
