Geneva about to jump to Lightspeed

The fuss about regulating companies that want to provide video service over telecommunications lines in Geneva is coming to a close, with the city council's preliminary approval Monday night of changes in its laws to accommodate things like AT&T's Project Lightspeed.

Of course, the council didn't have much choice; a state law passed this summer gave such communication and video service providers the ability to get a franchise from the state, instead of from individual towns, such as cable television providers, telephone providers, natural gas and electric utilities have to do.

Monday night the council reviewed changes in its rules for construction standards in rights of way to include utility easements in the definition of "rights of way."

Lightspeed is a video-over-Internet protocol. It contended that meant it was not subject to rules governing cable television delivery.

Geneva was one of several towns that had been sued by AT&T for putting a moratorium on allowing construction of the above-ground hubs needed for Lightspeed. Cable television providers such as Comcast, which serves Geneva, claimed that if AT&T's Lightspeed wasn't held to the same standards it was about making service available to the whole community, AT&T would have an unfair advantage. Lightspeed protesters have questioned whether AT&T would offer the service to poorer areas of towns.

Under the state law, the video service providers would have to provide availability to at least 15 percent of the customer area in Geneva to be served by that provider; that percentage is determined by the number of customers making $35,000 a year or less, according to federal census figures. In Geneva's case, those are customers served out of a telephone central office located across the street from city hall.

A set of customer service standards was also included in the state law, and Geneva will amend its laws to reflect that.

"This (the availability and customer service standards) is something we fought long and hard to include in the (state) act," said Mayor Kevin Burns.

Getting to regulate boxes some people think are ugly is another matter. In that regard, the city only gets to rule on whether their construction would disrupt traffic safety or interfere with others' use of the rights of way. The providers would still have to get a construction permit from Geneva, because they will need electricity and Geneva has its own municipal electric utility.

Nobody has applied for a permit yet in Geneva.