Article:

Disparities must be rectified between local access channels and mainstream TV on U-verse

Click and Find Less

By Linda A. Badamo

Director of Cable TV and Communications

Clinton Township, Michigan

Michigan NATOA Secretary

On May 21, 2007, an anticipated letter arrived in many Michigan communities from AT&T, announcing the roll-out of its U-verse video product.  Clinton Township became the first community in the Midwestern United States to transmit programming on U-verse, according to AT&T.  Clinton Township’s involvement to-date has been in a test phase of what AT&T calls the PEG Solution, where “PEG becomes a URL”, as AT&T officials explained.

The test began when Clinton Township sent a letter on August 21 to AT&T Michigan President Gail Torreano requesting that Clinton Township Television (CTTV) and the school districts’ channels be included on the line-up.  It is important to note, however, that the letter included a long list of concerns with the PEG Solution, the AT&T method of handling public, educational and governmental (PEG) access channels as an application on their U-verse system, which delivers cable channels through phone lines.  At that point, the PEG Solution had been described to communities, but it had not been demonstrated. 

AT&T’s response was an invitation to Clinton Township to send its content to Channel 99 during a test period, enabling AT&T technicians to experience the handling of a television station’s audio and video over a T1 line, and to tweak the end product that would be entering subscribers’ homes.  Clinton Township’s participation would also allow the real-world demonstration of PEG on U-verse, which had been requested by numerous communities.

The following month, in September, Foster City, California, became the first community in the U.S. to have its government access channel telecast on U-verse Channel 99.  Foster City Administrative Services Director Steve Toler explained that in California, not only were communities afforded a 1- to-3% PEG fee on top of a 5% franchise fee by the state-wide video franchising act, but lawmakers included certainties in the legislation that cable and video providers would continue to transport the signal for telecast without charge to the municipalities, schools districts and access centers.  Michigan’s Public Act 480 of 2006, the Uniform Video Services Franchising Act, allows a 5% franchise fee, but it does not have a guaranteed PEG fee for all communities, nor does it assure that providers cannot charge PEG stations for transporting their signals.  

Some of the concerns that Michigan NATOA had first outlined in a letter to Ms. Torreano and that were reiterated in Clinton Township’s letter were:

1)      Rather than finding programming when a viewer clicks Channel 99 on the remote, the viewer is faced with several menu screens.  Each PEG Channel on U-verse is not a single, exclusive, linear channel like all other U-verse channels, and as PEG channels have been handled on legacy cable systems since the inception of PEG.  “We are requesting the same linear channel line-up terms that broadcast channels and other programmers have,” the letter stated.

2)      PEG on U-verse is not transmitted with the same broadcast standard that other channels enjoy.  As a result, the viewer receives a lower-quality picture and oftentimes audio not synchronized with the video.  “Our viewers are not expecting to see a product that looks a lot like YouTube on their family television sets,” Clinton Township wrote.

3)      A combination of inaccessibility and quality problems will mean a reduction in public safety.  “The difficulty in locating (a community’s) PEG channels in the manner that the company describes is that this vital link to the public may not be received on a timely basis.”  In addition, Emergency Alert System (EAS) messages cannot currently be viewed on U-verse’s PEG channel.

In addition to these items, Clinton Township’s board meetings are televised with closed captioning, and closed captioning does not come through AT&T’s PEG Solution.

After accepting AT&T’s invitation to embark on the PEG test, Clinton Township worked with AT&T in an intense month-long set-up that first involved coming to an agreement on a free T1 line for the duration of the test and signing a PEG Test Memorandum.  Normally the charge for a T1 line is approximately $550 per month.  In addition, an encoder was needed and the township spent $5,800 on this item.  This encoder is also used to stream programming to the Internet.  Clinton Township’s cable channel was also assigned an address on the World Wide Web and properly secured through the managed router AT&T provided with the T1 line.  The agreement included a drop to a residence as part of the test for the purpose of monitoring the channel.  AT&T refused to provide a free U-verse drop to the municipal offices, citing fear of setting precedent for communities and school districts; furthermore, we were told that a U-verse service box was greater than 2,300 feet from the building (a distance that was too far to service the cable department control room).

One subscriber to U-verse, who enjoys the overall video product, but has much to criticize regarding the PEG Solution, is a member of the Birmingham Area Cable Board.  Elaine McLain reported that following a long installation process six months ago, she has found U-verse to be of good quality and user-friendly.  Then, ask her about the PEG Solution…

Ms. McLain sits on the cable board representing Birmingham, Beverly Hills, Bingham Farms and Franklin, several upscale communities in Oakland County.  “I decided to get involved in cable issues because I was a very dissatisfied cable customer and there was no real competition in our area,” explains McLain.  Since then she has had many opportunities to talk with executives at Comcast and at AT&T.  Most recently, she told an AT&T executive face-to-face that PEG is of utmost importance to Michigan residents. 

“Public information is more important than ever at this time in our history and people want to access it,” she says.

Clinton Township is the only community in the state on AT&T’s U-verse system as of this writing.  While speaking with Ms. McLain, she decides to see how long it will take for CTTV to load on Channel 99.  “It usually takes an average of 20-30 seconds until I actually see programming,” she reports.  The channel can take much longer to load and sometimes it doesn’t load at all.

She clicks the menu options to find the channel and counts the time it takes, “I try to be fair because I want to give it a chance.  Right now, it’s processing…it’s taking a long time…there’s a small arrow going in a circle.”  Eventually on this try, she gives up.

We talk about ways in which Channel 99 is different than the rest of the U-verse line-up.  “You cannot press ‘last’ to immediately go to the last channel you were watching.  You can’t record it on the DVR.  You can’t go up or down the channels to exit; you have to press Exit TV to get out of Channel 99.  It’s just not user friendly.”

The quality?  Once in program viewing mode, the PEG Solution suffers from grainy digital noise, artifacts caused by compression (also described as “bug swarms” and “mosquito noise”), especially around object edges, and choppy movement, graphics and transitions.  Often, audio and video do not match up.  Sometimes audio, video or both freeze up.  All of these problems were also reported by various municipal access producers who have seen firsthand demonstrations at various sites.

Menus as barriers to accessing the channel, coupled with having to learn how to handle the remote control differently, continue to be cumbersome despite a quick training session that AT&T says is part of every installation.  McLain fears that the PEG channel will not only be difficult for viewers to access, but could likely become a channel to avoid.

Communities and schools districts are reluctant to send their program streams to AT&T because the lease of the T-1 line, one for each channel transmitted, is costly and the end product is unsatisfactory.

When these problems are discussed with AT&T representatives, they promise that these issues will be addressed.  “This is PEG version 1.0,” they say.  They point out how this method allows system-wide viewing of all participating channels.  They promise improvements and urge dialogue to continue to improve the PEG Solution.  They fail to see that pursuing this solution is inherently the problem for PEG programmers and viewers alike, with the extreme cost of the delivery method, menu screens, long waits for loading, and audio and video quality problems.

Michigan PEG stations might find recourse by pursuing enforcement of the anti-discrimination clause in 2006 P.A. 480.  An effort to this end was made in August 2007 by the Michigan Chapter of the Alliance for Community Media (ACM).  “The Alliance for Community Media has been a champion of free speech and access through the medium of cable TV, along with many other avenues of electronic expression. The PEG Solution has fundamental flaws that harm the public,” says Mark Monk, Michigan Chapter chair for ACM and operations manager of Community Access Center in Kalamazoo.

Those in PEG access positions nationwide have been active in pointing out the deficiencies of PEG being delivered via this still-experimental method.  The protection of PEG must continue to be a proactive endeavor.  The public deserves a delivery method for local access channels that is at par with the way all other channels arrive on their home television sets:  click and find, with television benchmarks met.  Anything less is unacceptable.

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Michigan NATOA has been at the forefront of several actions, including letters and meetings, to address the problems of the PEG Solution.  To stay posted on Michigan happenings, check out the web site www.mi-natoa.org.