Save Access

from: DrewClark.com

Connect Kentucky Article Raises Bell Lobby Specter
January 17th, 2008 By Drew Clark

Art Brodsky’s 4,789-word article about Connect Kentucky and its offspring Connected Nation has been the talk of telecom circles over the past week.

from: Jackson Sun

Bredesen may weigh in on fight over cable
The Associated Press

NASHVILLE — Gov. Phil Bredesen says he may get involved in a contentious proposal to change cable permitting rules in Tennessee to encourage broadband access around the state.

Bredesen, a Democrat, stayed out of last year’s legislative fight over the measure that would create statewide franchising rules that would allow companies like AT&T Inc. to avoid having to seek hundreds of municipal permits as it enters the cable TV business.

from: WAPC

January 17, 2008

Dear PEG Access Television Supporters:

The video competition bill is now law.

You and WAPC have spent the last year working hard to ensure AB207 would not spell the end to PEG access television in Wisconsin. I can report that we have succeeded, yet even the Governor, who signed the bill on December 21, admitted concerns about PEG's future under this law -- Act 42 -- and urged lawmakers to consider remedial legislation.

from: CNET

Should AT&T police the Internet?

By Marguerite Reardon

Story last modified Thu Jan 17 04:00:04 PST 2008

A decade after the government said that AT&T and other service providers don't have to police their networks for pirated content, the telecommunications giant is voluntarily looking for ways to play traffic cop.

from: Washington Post

White House Says It Routinely Overwrote E-Mail Tapes from 2001 to 2003

January 17, 2008
By Elizabeth Williamson and Dan Eggen

E-mail messages sent and received by White House personnel during the first three years of the Bush administration were routinely recorded on tapes that were “recycled,” the White House’s chief information officer said in a court filing this week.

Sigh: Taping over previously used back-up tapes? Does the White House IT department know anything about standard archiving procedure, then again, perhaps they do. Hopefully the White House ISP is either AT&T or Verizon, in which case the NSA probably already has copies.

from: Houston Chronicle

Jan. 16, 2008, 11:43PM

More Media on AT&T replacement of batteries
- saveaccess

Our Jan 12th story on the Christmas morning explosion of an AT&T VRAD cabinet in Wauwatosa WI was picked up Tuesday, Jan 15th by LightReading. The exposure led to an AT&T announcement that they would replace all 17,000 Avestor lithium batteries in their U-verse network (across 22 states). AT&T proposed no timeline for this effort but hopefully they will complete the replacement before further incidents.

from: Wet Machine

Follow Up On MI PEG Lawsuit
by Harold Feld

So the judge heard the motion for a restraining order by Dearborn and Meridian to keep Comcast from migrating PEG channels to digital. The court issued the restraining order, finding that the towns were more likely than not to prevail on several of their issues, that Comcast would suffer no harm from the delay, but that the cities would potentially suffer irreparable harm if Comcast migrated the PEG channels to where most citizens couldn't see them. (You can find the opinion, the pleadings, and other useful information here.)

from: Nashville Scene

Marital Bliss
Are the House speaker and his lobbyist wife teaming up for AT&T?

by Jeff Woods

Even the jaded denizens of the state Capitol are wrinkling their noses at House Speaker Jimmy Naifeh’s intervention in one of the legislature’s costliest business battles ever.

from: App Rising

January 16, 2008 8:37 AM
Reporting From the Trenches in the Battle Over the Future of PEG

I had the great fortune to chat with Lynn Meikle of Meridian Township, Michigan on Monday.

You may have heard of Meridian recently as last Friday they made news by filing suit against Comcast to stop plans to move PEG channels from the analog tier to the digital one, which would then force analog subscribers to pay for a digital converter box to access them.