Verizon cable license to be decided on this month
By Ken Powers Contributing Writer

Westborough - The Board of Selectmen postponed its vote on whether to grant Verizon a license to offer cable services in town until its Tuesday July 17 meeting. The board had hoped to vote on the license at its June 26 meeting following a public hearing on the matter.

When it was informed that Verizon and Charter Communications, currently the sole provider of cable services in Westborough, had not reached an agreement and signed a contract relative to their negotiations, the board decided to postpone its vote.

The board voted at the June 26 meeting to extend the public hearing until noon June 29 to allow residents who were unable to attend the public hearing time to call or send e-mail to the selectmen with their comments on the matter.

"This has been an incredibly frustrating experience. We've been ready to provide service since last September [2006]. If you sign off on the license tonight," Verizon representative Jim McGrail told the board at the June 26 meeting, "we could start providing service Friday [June 29]."

The bone of contention in the negotiations between Charter and Verizon is something called an interconnect agreement.

While Charter's boundaries for service are directly tied to Westborough's town boundaries, Verizon's aren't because Verizon plans to use the same lines for its cable and Internet signals that it installed for phone service several decades ago. Those lines were installed via a grid plan, not along town boundaries.

Because of that, there are a limited number of homes - estimated at 30 - that are not within the Westborough town boundary that would be able to access local Westborough programming that is provided by Charter.

The compensation for these out-of-area homes appears to be the sticking point. If Verizon decides that Charter's compensation amount is too high, an alternative solution would be for Verizon to install its own cameras in all the various locations where local programming originates.

Verizon, while frustrated by the length of time negotiations are taking, does not yet seem ready to opt for Plan B, McGrail said, but he was confident the issue would be resolved.

Bob Spain, the attorney representing Charter at the public hearing, also expressed confidence the issue would be resolved.

Town residents at the public hearing expressed impatience that the negotiations between Charter and Verizon were continuing at such a slow pace.

"As residents, what can we do to make this happen?" Sandra Tassinari of 12 Spring Road asked the board. "We truly want to be able to have the choice."

The two dozen residents at the public hearing seemed to be overwhelmingly in favor of Verizon coming to town. When Selectman Leigh Emery asked for a show of hands of residents in favor of Verizon being allowed to offer services in town, several hands shot into the air. When she asked for a show of hands of those opposed, one hand was raised.

In addition, Emery said she had received 50 e-mail messages about the issue, with 49 being in favor of allowing Verizon into town.

The agreement that the selectmen hope to sign with Verizon at their July 17 meeting was presented to them June 12 by the Cable Committee. That agreement requires Verizon to pay the town licensing fees based on a percentage of gross revenue. That fee, announced at the June 26 board meeting, will be $396,000.

McGrail said Verizon will support Westborough TV Inc. via quarterly payments of 4 percent of gross revenue, which he said, based on estimates, will be comparable to Charter's annual payment of $156,000.