WASHINGTON, February 6, 2024 – A coalition of local internet advocates in Philadelphia pressured the city council to leverage its Comcast cable franchise agreement to secure a renewed deal that vastly expands free and affordable internet access resources, addressing a number of issues city residents experienced with Comcast.
The city’s renewed franchise agreement with Comcast includes major victories for the coalition, such as the expansion of free internet and video services to over 200 public institutions, heightened customer service improvements, enhanced protection for cable and internet workers, and the introduction of new local job opportunities, among other major benefits to the city.
The renewed cable franchise agreement includes an expansion of Comcast’s Internet Essentials program for city residents. This program, which provides low-cost internet access, a computer, and a Wi-Fi router, is now accessible to every low-income family with schoolchildren, all eligible seniors, and an additional 1200 qualifying citizens in Philadelphia.
Under the renegotiated contract, Comcast also committed to end the “90-day freeze out” policy. This policy had previously required individuals hoping to benefit from the Internet Essentials program to first go without Comcast services for three months, in order to qualify.
Other favorable provisions in the renewed franchise agreement include:
- Comcast will donate $500,000 dollars as seed money for a digital literacy fund that will allow the city to raise other funds in its attempt to allow everyone to have access to the internet.
- Comcast will pay prevailing and living wages for all its employees and subcontractors.
- Comcast will hire 150 to 200 new customer service workers in Philadelphia.
- Comcast increased its funding for public educational and government channels from 8 million to 21.3 million.
- Comcast will continue to collect and turn over to the city the 5% percent franchise fee that allows the city to fund basic services.
- Comcast has agreed to pilot any new programs in Philadelphia first, ensuring Philadelphians have access to the newest programs.
A cable television franchise agreement is a contractual arrangement between a cable television provider and a local government, which grants the cable company the right to use the city’s public roadways and other property to provide cable television services to residents within a specific geographic area.
In return for the privilege of using public rights-of-way in a franchise agreement, the cable company typically agrees to certain conditions, such as providing a certain level of service quality, offering public access channels, contributing to local programming, and paying franchise fees (typically 5 percent of yearly gross cable revenue) to the local government.
Local advocacy groups spur accountability in Philadelphia’s renewed franchise agreement
The CAP Comcast campaign, initiated by the Movement Alliance Project in 2014, played a significant role in pushing for the renegotiation of the cable franchise agreement.
As the impending 15-year renegotiation approached in 2013, MAP coordinated with local organizations to engage city council members, attend meetings, and participate in hearings.
Recognizing the dissatisfaction among Philadelphians with Comcast’s cable internet service—marked by issues of reliability, affordability, and quality—the local internet coalition, led by MAP, advocated for the release of a third-party survey on Comcast’s performance.
According to reports, the city disclosed findings marked by prolonged service outages, lowest overall satisfaction rates among multiple surveyed areas, five times the regulatory-mandated number of busy signals when attempting to contact customer service, and an average monthly charge of $154.86, significantly higher than in comparable Comcast markets, as reported by The Guardian.
Additionally, it was uncovered that Comcast’s growth had been fueled by tax abatements granted by both the city and state, further underscoring the need to hold the company accountable to its promises under the franchise agreement with Philadelphia.
In their advocacy efforts, Philadelphians helped create a model that cities and communities across the country can adopt and implement in their own franchise agreements.
Despite successful efforts, both Hannah Sassaman, former policy director for MAP, and Jackie Williams, director of operations for LA21, say that looking back, they would have done things differently knowing what they know now, reports Next City.
“Making sure that city offices are funded as a part of the deal or having a permanent digital inclusion effort to make sure the city is empowered and tasked with observing the community-based elements of the agreement, we didn’t do that,” Sassaman says.
“I wish we had really focused on how we could help small businesses get internet access,” adds Williams, whose organization greatly aided in the CAP Comcast effort. “We talked about it a little bit, but the concern was more with the digital divide” on the individual and community levels instead of the business dimension.
