When the St. Paul City Council approves a new 10-year franchise agreement with Comcast on Wednesday, the council members will also vote on an additional resolution involving the cable giant and the city’s failing municipal “Intranet,” or government building-to-building communications.
Comcast and the city of St. Paul are settling a dispute over unpaid franchise fees and other “noncompliance issues”
Comcast disputes allegations it failed to live up to its franchise agreement with the city of St. Paul, but critics call its customer service and municipal "Intranet" a real turkey...
In two terse pages, the wide-ranging settlement notes that during franchise negotiations, “the city alleged certain noncompliance issues on a variety of obligations related to the institutional network, PEG (public access, education and government) programming, underpayment of franchise fees, and failure to meet customer service and reporting requirements.”
The settlement notes that the allegations are disputed by Comcast.
The payments will put the city’s claims for any concerns through January 2012 to bed, but they do not let Comcast off the hook for any franchise or PEG fees that were owed from that time onward.
It’s unclear how much money could yet be owed pending the outcome of a separate audit.
Under the new franchise agreement, Comcast must pay the city 5 percent of its gross annual revenue, on top of a public access fee of 2.5 percent, for a total of roughly $3.5 million annually. The 10-year contract agreement does not prevent other cable and Internet providers from entering the St. Paul market, and the duties would transfer to a new company if Comcast merges with Time-Warner and spins off the Twin Cities market.
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