By: Rodney Graham

Rodney Graham — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 22:58:10 +0000

The final report issued by the consultant (ICON) should give everyone pause. In section six of the summary, it states “The primary premise on which a successful Consortium operation is grounded is the maintenance of an incumbent, near-monopoly position in the three communities….Should any major cable or voice provider compete…it will have a negative impact on the market assumptions upon which this model was based.” Section 7 states that in the financial model, no monies were included for future upgrades of the system, even though the consultant says that cable companies typically upgrade every six to eight years, at a cost of several million dollars. This was the experience of the Morganton, NC municipal-owned cable system which had to issue another $7MM of debt recently to upgrade its system a few years after buying it.

The town board has always said its business plans were “conservative.” It now appears – based upon reading the paid consultant’s report – that the business plan assumed no competition, and no new investments beyond the initial investments of 2008. To me, those are not “conservative” assumptions.

Our purchase appears to have been justified upon operating a monopoly that doesn’t make the investments required to provide state-of-the-art services to its captive audience. Ooh boy!

I am of course reading through the reports from the perspective of someone who has always opposed the cable venture. The board members looked at it from the perspective of wanting support for this venture. As Paul Simon wrote, “a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.”

Comments on: Town provides cable TV documents

By: Rodney Graham