September 2007 CFB Minutes

September 17, 2007

 MEMBERS PRESENT

Peter Blum , Chairman
Lara Beck, Member
Richard Curry Jr., Member
Loren Heger, Member

 OTHERS PRESENT

 Chairman Blum calls the September meeting of the Marion County Cable Franchise Board to order.  

The first items on the agenda are the Approval of the August Minutes.  

Ms. Beck moves to approve the August Minutes.  Mr. Heger seconds the motion.  The motion is voted on 4-0.  

The next order of business is the Agency report submitted by Mr. Maultra, Director of the Cable Communications Agency.

Mr. Maultra thanks the Board for the opportunity to highlight some of the things that the Cable Communications Agency has been involved with during the past month.

The Cable Agency has done additional follow up with Comcast and been working with IFD to see that their INET programming is up and running at the battalion stations in Warren and Washington Townships. At present, the Warren battalion station is operational but Washington Township is not.  The Agency is monitoring that situation to see it gets resolved.

The Information Services Agency (ISA) has asked the Cable Agency to participate on a committee to study WI-FI solutions for the City and to network on the success and learning's of other cities within the NATOA municipal network.

The Agency has met several times with AT&T on getting educational and government access channels connected to their video platform.  Much progress has been made in several meetings. It appears as though the AT&T dedicated circuit will connect to 2 video and 4 audio lines over to EB20 (the telephone room).  They had an additional meeting last Thursday to discuss timelines to get this all done.

During the site survey visit the Agency/Channel 16 learned that they will be able to provide regular programming updates to the U-verse onscreen menu.  This will be as simple as doing the website updates, via an online access site.  Viewers will be able to see and access the current schedule of their upcoming programs on both channels.  This is something that has not been available to viewers on Comcast or Bright House Networks because their programming schedules cannot be determined months or weeks in advance (they update daily for Channel 16).  This will be a great benefit for those viewers who make their channels a regular destination, and even those viewers who are just browsing for interesting programming at the local level.

The Cable Communications Agency has been serving as a consumer advocate to Indianapolis and Marion County cable subscribers in assisting them in mediating cable complaints on their behalf.

For the month of August, the Cable Agency received a total of 11 complaints for Bright House .  The high areas of complaints were primarily with billing procedures.  For Comcast , the Agency received 15 complaints since the Agency’s contact information has been taken off of Comcast ’s billing statement.  The high areas of complaints for Comcast were derived from their telephone service.

That concludes Mr. Maultra’s Agency Report and remarks and he will answer any questions that the Board may have.

The next item on the agenda is the Government Access TV Programming Report with Mr. Ken Montgomery, Manager of Channel 16.

Mr. Montgomery will go over the August 2007 Programming and Production Report that was included in the Board packets.  Channel 16 completed 83 hours and 57 minutes of live and tape delayed meeting coverage for the month of August.

There were 6 hours and 24 minutes of specials and events production for the month of August.  Channel 16 did 1 hour and 58 minutes of In-Kind Production for City-County/Government Agencies and 2 hours and 30 minutes on Series Programs

The total for new production in all categories was 94 hours and 50 minutes. 

The In-Kind Services were tracked at $3,895 for materials and services for the month of August if Channel 16 would have charged.

Mr. Montgomery has included an On-Line Archives Usage Report to track how the amount of requests for particular meetings.

With that, Mr. Montgomery will answer any questions from the Board.

The next item on the agenda is the Cable Operators Management Reports by Bright House Networks. 

Buz Nesbit, Division President for Bright House Networks will present the Operator’s Management Report that was distributed to the Board. 

Bright House began the month with 57,139customers and ended the month with 56,558, giving a system total of 581 customers as a loss for the month of August.

On the incoming call report, Bright House handled 63,717 calls out of 64,389 calls received.  56,270 calls were answered in 30 seconds or less, which gave a call answer rate of 88.3% and a busy rate of 0.295%, as represented by them.

On the Complaint Summaries Report, there were 11 complaints from 9 customers. 

100% of service interruption calls were addressed within 24 hours. 

There were no planned outages, but there were 37 unplanned outages that affected 4,142 customers.  The system reliability for the month was 99.98%, as reported by Bright House .

100% of total service calls were addressed within the next business day, unless as otherwise directed by the customer.  There were no appointments kept outside of the 4-hour service window during normal business hours, unless requested by customer.

100% of standard installations were performed within seven business days after the order was placed.

There was construction done at Minkis Condos during the month of August.

The Division was the recipient of a special recognition from the Mayor’s Office for their support of Net Literacy.  Net literacy is a youth run non-profit, that uses youth volunteer to teach computer literacy and Internet safety.  They also work with computer repurposing agencies to get computers for special programs. The Mayor proclaimed that the 20^th of August 2007, as Bright House Networks and Techpoint Foundation Day in the City of Indianapolis .   The proclamation was presented at a ceremony in an IPS School , whereas Net Literacy provided over 200 computers for a school lab and for a take home program for the students. 

Bright House wanted the Cable Franchise Board to know that their Operation Bright Eyes project that they notified the Board about a few months ago has started to show some results.  Bright House technicians have alerted emergency personnel on three occasions since they launched; an Installer had a person approach his van and stated someone was breaking into their home. He called 911 and let the person stay at his van until police arrived, a Service Tech was asked by a person if he would report a suspicious group of kids on his street to police because he didn’t have a phone, and a Service Tech called in a medical emergency for a person.

The Division, in sponsorship with the Indiana Cable Telecommunications Association (ICTA) and the Indiana Bar Foundation (IBF) sponsored a visit of the CSPAN Campaign 2008 Bus at the Indiana Government Center .  The visit was to help announce a new program of the IBF’s Summit on Civic Engagement.   Dr Sue Ellen Reed, Superintendent of Public Instruction was also on hand to assist with the launch of the announcement of the summit.

The division also sponsored a visit of the CSPAN Campaign 2008 Bus to the IPS Back to School Carnival at School 110.  The event is a way to promote parental involvement with education.  The CSPAN crew provided guided tours of the 45-foot bus, which is a mobile, multimedia demonstration center and TV Studio that is funded by the cable television industry. This was the 3^rd year that the Division has been a sponsor of this event.

The Division was a supporter of the unveiling of the 4^th edition of Who’s Who in Black Indianapolis .  Al Aldridge, the Division Public Affairs Director, was included in the 3^rd edition in 2006.

Bright House continues to support various community organizations with volunteers such as, the Indianapolis Public Schools Education Foundation, Gideon’s Gate, the Indiana Cable Telecommunications Assn., the YMCA, the 100 Black Men of Indianapolis, LEAD, Inc, the Coalition of 100 Black Women, Indianapolis Chapter and the Indiana Hemophilia Foundation, and IPS School 51.

Mr. Nesbit concludes his report and offers to answer any questions that the Board may have.

The next item in the agenda is the ETC Monthly Report submitted by Mr. Robert Gobetz.

A program originally proposed as “The Spot” as a 5-minute program is now being produced as “Impact.”  The group speculated that a new program proposal may be in order, but took no action.  No new programming was proposed.

AT&T U-Verse technicians inspected the ETC playback site (September 7) to begin planning to include the two ETC channels on their video service.

A discussion is underway to learn if it is possible to make the University of Indianapolis the fiscal agent for ETC.

Mr. Gobetz offers to answers any questions that the Board may have.

There were no public speakers.

Chairman Blum announces the next Board meeting on Monday, October 15^th, 2007 at 2:30 PM in room 260 and adjourns this meeting.

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