TelecomWeb — Here are your legislators failing to serve the public interest — once again. How do the supposedly tough Texans put up with this sort of abuse?
During a special session ostensibly called to take care of pressing school and tax legislation, the Texas State Senate passed a hotly contested bill eliminating local franchise requirements for telcos to enter video markets — instead allowing for a single statewide franchise. The bill has pitted Verizon and SBC against cable operators that are fighting to delay the onslaught of IPTV in any way they can.
“How do the supposedly tough Texans put up with this sort of abuse?”
I reckon IPTV is way down the list of things with which Texans are concerned.
The Texas legislature meets for six months every two years and, as is typical of all legislatures, they fail to address the difficult issues in hopes that those issues will quietly go away.
Texas is near a property tax revolt similar to what happened in California with Prop. 13.
This year the Texas governor called the legislature back into a special session to deal with property tax issues that they failed to complete during the regular session.
The thirty-day special session is just about over and those boneheads still haven’t accomplished anything with the property taxes, but they did manage to pass a bill raising their pensions 20 percent…without a recorded vote. Voice votes are only recorded if a member requests it and, surprise, none of them did.
IPTV? That’s the least of our problems.
How is this against the public interest? Don’t you support making IPTV more easily available? Also, in your column you say that the telcos and cable companies are colluding, so why all the feuding here?