Cable Agency Report
 
August 20 - September 23, 1996

Please allow me this opportunity to highlight some of the things that the Cable Communications Agency has been involved with during the past month.

-Attended Great Lakes Cable Conference in Indianapolis August 21-22.  Conference summary included in your Board packets.

-Reviewed draft of Rights-of-Way Ordinances, submitted comments and attended meeting to discuss draft with DCAM.

-Submitted and discussed NPRM with Public Safety as it pertains to the new provisions on 911 enhanced access.  The appropriate public safety officials have a copy of the NPRM that we pulled off the Internet in case they wish to file comments.

-Researched and gathered information and ordinances needed pertaining to the City's own Rights-of-Ways Ordinance.

-Passed along updated information on satellite tower and antenna provisions of the Telecommunications Act onto Corporation Counsel that deals with zoning issues.

-Attended NATOA Conference during second week of September.  A summary of that conference is included in you Board packets.

-Received numerous complaints and mediated the addressable ones to the customer's satisfaction.

Customer Complaint Log

For the dates August 20 through September 23, the Cable Agency received 58 complaints against Comcast Cablevision and 34 complaints against American Cablevision.  The complaints that could be resolved, have all been resolved to the customers' satisfaction.

Here is a summary of the complaints for September:

Comcast

The majority of the complaints this month concerned problems with Comcast's telephone service.  Other complaints included:

-construction concerns (cable needing to be buried)
-problems receiving the Pay-Per-View Mike Tyson Fight
-installation problems
-customers desire for competition in the cable industry
-customers not satisfied with the customer service they received
-frequent outages
-bad reception on certain channels

American

Two of the major complaints this month concerned customers receiving unsatisfactory service by customer service representatives, and customers experiencing frequent outages.  Other complaints included:

-franchise fees increasing from 3% to 5%
-billing cycle procedures
-frequent outages
-requests for ESPN2 and the History Channel
-problems getting through to a CSR on the phone lines
-unreasonable late fees

Customer Complaint Log

August 20th through September 23rd, 1996