Minutes - 19950822 - Laserfiche WebLink

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~~ 3 1 Bob Gwyn, Chair of the Cable TV Advisory Committee, said that 2 Cable TV has two advantages over the increasingly popular direct 3 satellite to home reception. One advantage is that local programming 4 can be accessed through cable and not through satellite and the other 5 advantage is combining telephone with the fiberoptic lines of cable TV. 6 Time Warner is very interested in getting into the telephone business 7 which would offer some competition to the existing telephone carriers. 8 The density issue is not an issue in urban areas where people live 9 close together but is an important issue for people living in the 10 County. The Cable Committee as well as the Cable TV companies have 11 looked at the issue of density and it is now a Board of County 12 Commissioners decision. They have looked at the figures which indicate 13 that fifteen homes per mile would take twelve years to recover their 14 costs. This would require the County to extend the franchise to 15 probably fifteen years to allow the Cable Companies to recover costs. 16 Under North Carolina law, a franchise may be for twenty years so a five 17 year extension could be done. Mr. Gwyn stated that it would be in the 18 best interests of the citizens of Orange County to approve a resolution 19 which stipulates a density of 25 homes per mile. He also noted that 20 Time Warner is about to reach agreement with the Federal Communication 21 Commission to provide programming to schools and upgrade their entire 22 system. 23 Bob Sepe, Cable TV consultant, said that it would take one- 24 acre lots on both sides of the road to get 15 homes per mile. He noted 25 that because of the rapid changes in telecommunications, he would not 26 recommend doing a franchise for twenty years. The resolution presented 27 with this item is a transfer of CVI to Time Warner and also requests a 28 five year extension. They will negotiate for a new franchise sometime 29 this fall so the density is actually an interim density until the new 30 franchise is negotiated. 31 Chair Carey said he supports a density of twenty homes per 32 mile. 33 Marla Dorrel, CVI Regional Vice President in Charge of 34 Government Relations, said that as part of the transfer CVI has the 35 responsibility to obtain the consent of local governments to the 36 transfer and deliver those to Time Warner. She reiterated that this 37 document is an interim step until the renewal franchise is completed. 38 The twenty-five homes per mile provision will give the County a lower 39 threshold with which to begin their negotiations with Time-Warner. She 40 said that people on both sides of the transaction are saying that 41 twenty-five is the lowest they can go, particularly in the interim 42 step. She noted that once cable lines are run, they expect that 50 to 43 60 percent of the homes they pass are homes that will be paying 44 subscribers. They are seeing 35~ in Orange County which makes it even 45 harder to go to a lower density requirement. She believes that in the 46 negotiation process, there is more latitude for lowering the density, 47 than in the interim. She asked that the Board consider this interim 48 measure and approve the resolution with the density of twenty-five 49 homes per mile. She distributed a substitute resolution which is 50 identical to the one in the agenda except the homes per mile is changed 51 to 25 and the language in number five on page three changed from 52 "within twenty-four months" to "at such time that the two systems are 53 merged, then the resulting system will serve all of Orange County". 54 Commissioner Halkiotis emphasized that the Board of County 55 Commissioners have been elected by the people of Orange County to serve 56 and vote in their best interest and representatives from the cable