Important stuff:

I want to mention my two favorite Things That Should Have Gotten The Committee To Sit Up And Take Notice, But Apparently Didn’t:

1. Gary Cavin, the Chief Information Officer of the City of Columbus, pointed out that his city has three competing cable companies, but Time Warner still charges just as much for basic cable there as it does in places with no competition.

2. A representative of Cleveland Heights reported that in their negotiations with AT&T over a local “video competition agreement”, AT&T frankly acknowledged that it didn’t plan to offer its U-Verse service in the (predominantly Black) part of the city closest to East Cleveland… which is why Cleveland Heights terminated the negotiation.

Added Wednesday morning, 4/25: Here’s my testimony on behalf of the Ohio Community Computing Network. Here’s the memo on potential neighborhood abandonment mentioned at the bottom of page 3. (Both are .doc files.)

Added Wednesday evening: For historical perspective on SB 117 and AT&T’s cable franchise history in Ohio, you can’t do better than this testimony presented by Bill Hanna of Walter and Haverfield…

Callahan’s Cleveland Diary » Blog Archive » The SB 117 hearing