Arlington has become among a wired few of U.S. communities to be served by three cable providers after selectmen approved a license with Verizon on March 26 following a public hearing. Phil McCarthy, an attorney who helped negotiate the just-completed 10-year license agreement with Verizon, told selectmen March 19 that most communities with cable have one provider and few have two. A "handful" have three, he said. Details of the approval are here >>

   
Verizon joins Comcast and RCN in serving the town with cable-TV, Internet and phone service.

{mosimage}In the competition, Verizon may have an edge: It's offering FiOS, which speeds information through its network at a rate greater than RCN's or Comcast's broadband. In addition, under a FiOS setup, you do not share nodes with your neighbors.

For a broader view of what Verizon seeks to do, see >>

{mosimage}McCarthy said Verizon is committed to wiring the whole town, and the installation of FiOS continuing now. He said 65% of the wiring is complete.

The other 35% "will take a little longer," he said. That part of Arlington includes those dwellings with more problematic utilities as well as multi-unit housing. He said Verizon expected whole town to be wired within three years.

McCarthy said Verizon matched Comcast's 10-year commitment of $400,000, or $40,000 a year for each of the 10. In all, Verizon agreed to provide the town $491,000 over the period, he said.

 

The three selectmen present March 19 -- Annie LaCourt, Clarissa Rowe and Jack Hurd -- accepted McCarthy's report. Kevin Greeley and Diane Mahon were absent.

 

The agreement was reached with Verizon in FiOS-like speed. Talks began Nov. 20 and were concluded recently, in fewer than 120 days. In contrast, the negotiations with Comcast, stretched on for months and were jump-started last year after town officials balked at Comcast's slow pace and residents complained at a public hearing.

Negotiations with RCN are expected to begin in the fall.

McCarthy said Verizon could have delayed following a March 5 Federal Communications Commission order requiring any community to act in 120 days after receiving an application for a license from a provider. "They could have have stalled, but they did not," he said.

The Verizon agreement means better assurance about the funding for the Arlington Cable Studio, now run by Arlington Community Media Inc (ACMI), a not-for-profit corporation, with an executive director. Even so, possibly three providers does not necessarily mean more funding.

One knowledgable observer about town cable operations noted that the penetration of Arlington's cable-TV may be nearing a saturation point. "That is, everyone who wants cable has it already," he said. "All Verizon will do is start carving up the current 'pie' into three parts instead of the two we have now.

"So that means that the total revenues for the studio are not likely to rise all that much; they'll just come from different sources in different proportions. They could even fall slightly, if competitiond oes in fact drive prices down a little."

The observer said he did not expect significant price reductions. "Each channel you receive costs the carrier something -- sort of like wholesale prices -- so if they cut prices back too far, they all start losing money," he said.

In a related matter, McCarthy noted that, as of March 13, COmcast and RCN now provide three channels each, available for government and educational programs. Comcast's are channels 8, 9 and 10. RCN's are 3, 13 and 15.

For example, Board of Selectmen meetings are broadcast live on Comcast Channel 8 and RCN Channel 3. School Committee meetings are broadcast live on Comcast Channel 9 and RCN Channel 13. Reboadcasts are also on these channels.

So far, the fare on the third channels, Comcast's 10 and RCN's 15, amounts to announcements in text with a musical background. The challenge remains for Norm McLeod, Arlington Studio's executive director, to find programming for those channels -- and ones Verizon is expected to provide.

To see whether FiOS is available to you, see Verizon's site >>

 

{mospagebreak title=Also on March 19}