Red Bank TV

“He’s gong to sign it” That’s a quote from Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg in an article on Bloomberg talking about NJ legislation(ACS-804/SCS-192) that was voted on and passed yesterday.  Meanwhile, Anthony Coley, a spokesman for Governor Corzine declines to comment on the legislation, instead saying “We're going to take the time to review the details of the bill”

Aside from being smug enough to read the mind of the Governor, Verizon has spent millions of dollars on what the Asbury Park Press calls “a long, expensive lobbying campaign that featured advertising, phone banks and many other trappings of elective politics.”

So much money and effort went into this legislation that it really makes you wonder why is cable TV so worth it for Verizon?  Can you really make that much money off of cable TV?  I find that hard to believe. So why is this issue so important to the phone company?

In my opinion Verizon doesn’t care about Cable TV.  Their only interest is getting into more and more homes so that they can establish themselves as the dominant internet service provider in the state.  Cable TV gives consumers another reason to sign up for Verizon’s FiOS internet service.

The cable franchise legislation that passed has no Network Neutrality wording in it.  Verizon’s NJ cable TV franchise will be delivered to consumers over their high speed FiOS internet connection; thus it is appropriate to talk about Net Neutrality as part of NJ’s cable franchise discussion.

Verizon only stands to make a lot of money if they are able to get into enough homes and begin to sell off portions of their internet bandwidth to their partners.  There is too much new competition for them to make money off phone service, there is too much competition for them to make money off of cable TV, Apple is about to launch movie downloads through iTunes so there is a lot of competition for video on demand.  So how do they plan to make money if not from controlling their portion of the internet?

Cable competition is only one form of competition in NJ’s high speed internet connection boom.  Not only do we want competition for cable TV service but we want to ensure that internet competition is not hindered on those very same wires.

If competition and keeping the internet a level playing field is important to you than I urge you to contact Governor Cozine and ask him to raise the issue of Net Neutrality prior to signing this legislation into law.