In 2005, the City of Baltimore, Maryland entered into a 12-year exclusive contract with Comcast Cable, giving the company complete control of the city's cable-television franchise. What did the city get out of that deal? A pittance paid toward creating more "robust" public-access television programming, and an agreement that the city would have partial regulatory control over the company via a Cable Communications Advisory Commission. In March of this year, City Councilman William Cole (D-11th District) revealed that the commission, which should have 14 members, is not currently in operation. Which means that Comcast, which provides cable television, high-speed internet, and digital phone services in the city, gets to operate with little to no oversight. Ask around and you'll find that many of your friends living in the city have horror stories about bad customer service, incorrect billing, and myriad other problems--but nowhere to take those complaints but to the company itself, which has no real competitors and thus no incentive to improve. We know that Cole and other City Council members want to hold hearings on whether we can get Verizon's FiOS service in the city before Comcast's monopoly contract is up, but we'd settle for some assurance that someone, anyone, in city government would listen to our complaints about Comcast and put some pressure on the company to treat the city residents who are stuck with it with some respect.
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