SEAL BEACH : City Won’t Back Bill on Cable TV Rules

Seal Beach will not join 10 other Orange County cities in urging Congress to pass a bill that would inject new competition into the cable television industry while giving cities a stronger hand in regulating local cable operators.

Congress is considering legislation aimed at reducing cable television rates by breaking up local cable monopolies, which have flourished under conditions created by the Cable Communications Policy Act of 1984. Cities also would regain the power to regulate rates.

The City Council voted Monday not to support the proposed changes to the act because the legislation could allow telephone companies to enter the cable business.

Council members expressed concern that it would be harder for the city to deal with General Telephone than with Comcast Cable, the city’s sole cable provider, which has a regional office next door to city hall.

“I don’t think they can operate at the local level,” said councilman Joe Hunt of large telephone companies such as GTE, which currently are prohibited from offering cable services.

Comcast offers extensive local programming, including broadcasts of City Council and Planning Commission meetings, a weekly crime prevention and interview program hosted by a police officer, and a number of programs produced by local residents. Council members said they doubted that GTE could duplicate such service.

A GTE spokesman disagreed, saying “I don’t see that any of these things would ever be lost” if the telephone company was allowed to compete with Comcast in Seal Beach.

Further, phone companies will be able to offer high-tech services that cable companies cannot match when fiber optic cable replaces copper wire in the next five to 10 years, said Thomas Facon, a GTE district manager.

Families would be able to use their television and telephone together to shop at home, instantly transmit a video of their child’s first steps to a relative, and choose movie videos from a menu on their screen and watch them any time, he said.

GTE is experimenting with such “two-way television” services in a pilot project in Cypress.

City officials also worried that allowing GTE to offer cable services could reduce the franchise fees that Seal Beach receives because GTE could use its telephone business revenue to subsidize its cable service. The city collects five cents from Comcast for every dollar the company receives from subscribers. Lower cable rates would mean less revenue for the city.

Facon said GTE, even if it wanted to, would not be able to keep its cable rates artificially low by charging telephone customers more because telephone rates are regulated by the Public Utilities Commission.