July 28-August 3, 2005

loose canon

King Cable

Unhappy with Comcast? It's about to get worse.

by Bruce Schimmel

I recently got 200 bucks knocked off my phone bill by saying just three letters. True story. Cavalier, my local dial-tone provider, had been billing me for a service I never ordered. When I discovered the mistake, I asked for a refund, and of course the phone rep said no.

I then uttered the letters P-U-C. In about a minute my $50 debit became a $150 credit.

The PUC is Pennsylvania's Public Utility Commission, an agency that watches over utilities on behalf of consumers. The rationale was that if you had a monopoly on a vital service, you needed to be regulated.

But don't try this with your cable bill. As the cable company ad slogan goes, "That was then. This is Comcast." Try saying P-U-C to a Comcast service rep, and you'll get nada, because the PUC has no authority over cable.

According to Comcast spokesperson Tim Fitzpatrick, if a Philly consumer has a problem with high prices, bad service or slim pickings, they can tell it to the FCC, City Council, or the city Department of Public Property.

These are not such great choices: The FCC routinely blesses rocketing cable rates; City Council has always shown the door to any cable competition in Philly; and the city Department of Public Property has yet to return my calls.

If nobody cares, why should Comcast? And now the company has even less reason to be responsive. Thanks to a recent Supreme Court decision known as the "Brand X" case, cable companies have been declared content providers. And content — especially in this case — really is king.

Brand X was an independent Internet service provider (ISP) who tried to offer cable customers a choice — just like ISPs now compete for DSL customers over phone lines. But the court ruled that since cable are content providers (and not a public utilities monopoly) they don't have to offer consumers any choice at all.

Sanctified by the Supreme Court, Comcast can jack up your rates and junk up your screen any which way they want.

Comcast is now like a newspaper. Protected by the First Amendment, a newspaper can drop your favorite comic strip or columnist at will. Only with a newspaper, if you don't like what you see, or don't see, you can go somewhere else. But if cable is your information lifeline to video and the Internet, you've scant choice. Worse, being a content provider, a cable company can now block an Internet site they don't want you to see. And it's all perfectly legal.

Comcast pays the city a paltry $10 million a year for its monopoly — about 5 percent of the $200 million Philadelphians send to the company for cable TV service alone. That $200 million is part of a much larger figure that would include fees subscribers pay for cable Internet. How much larger a figure? Comcast's Fitzpatrick declined to say, claiming that Comcast doesn't know. Uh-huh, I see.

Once upon a time, cable was more compliant to consumer needs. That was then. This is Comcast. And in the brave new world of government deregulation, the worst is yet to come.

Schoolhouse on the Block

"Let the community decide!" was Terry Gillen's cry about what to do with an old neighborhood school. The district had shuttered the Durham School two years ago, turning the historically protected landmark at 16th and Lombard into a monumental eyesore. Surely neighbors deserved more than having the school simply sold to the highest bidder, argued the 30th Ward Democratic leader.

Last April, in a public meeting, Gillen got School District CEO Paul Vallas to agree to consider innovative proposals from the community. And so recently about 200 locals packed into a nearby, sweltering church to consider what might become of Durham. Neighbors were presented five detailed proposals — ranging from a new home for an ongoing charter school, to eco-sensitive housing plus a school, to luxury condos with underground parking, topped by community greenspace.

Great ideas, I thought. Real community-builders.

But Vallas never heard any of them. He never appeared. He was called away on an emergency, said Ellen Savitz, the district's chief development officer, who came in his place.

Savitz told the sweating crowd, in effect, that this community meeting was a waste of time. Vallas had already decided. Durham would be put on the open market. The district craved the $3.4 million the old school was expected to fetch, and the community could take up their concerns with the highest bidder.

Gillen was shocked, and a few folks in the hall howled. Still, many more said they didn't want a school, especially not a school, which has been depressing their property values for years. Besides, "we have no kids around here," said one neighbor.

Even better than community space, said some, would be selling to the highest bidder. That would elevate their property values, they argued — which I suppose for some sad souls may be the most important community value of all.