by Roy Exum
posted September 24, 2007
 Roy Exum |
council I hardly know what to do.
Tomorrow Chattanooga’s City Council will have a chance to take two of our biggest monopolies and turn them into competitors, and nothing, nothing in all of business, is better than that. This could be the best thing that’s happened to us in years.
The Electric Power Board, which is the only way I know that you can get a spark in town, wants to bring a fiber optic plan to our city and needs the council’s approval to do it. The fiber optic deal – if you chose - can include telephone, cable television and Internet service, but only to those who wish to subscribe.
Our only cable TV provider, Comcast, filed a lawsuit in Nashville on Friday trying to block the EPB from doing that because the only way for me to get cable where I live, aside from DirectTV or something like that, is from Comcast.
What I relish is the idea that I will now have a choice. That is the most wonderful tool a consumer can have when dealing with a monopoly because it enables you to tell “Mrs. Rude” or “Charlie I-Don’t Care” what they can do with their wire.
Harold Coker, a great buddy of mine who has spent a lifetime helping others, sits on the EPB board and was quoted in the newspaper last week saying, “I knew the suppliers were not well liked, but I didn’t know it was that bad.” Are you kidding me?
What Harold failed to notice is that EPB’s batting average in customer appreciation ain’t exactly taking his outfit to the World Series. Walk down in that shiny lobby on almost any given day and you’ll see those who feel they’ve been wronged and now must contend with “Mr. Indifferent” or his sidekick, “Next Thursday.”
Comcast is worse when it comes to loving people. We have all got stories, but this isn’t about where we’ve been as much as it is where we are going. The absolute best thing that could happen to the Comcast attitude is for somebody else to offer a cable TV package. Just you wait and see.
Oh, Comcast doesn’t like it, not at all, and the “Tennessee Cable Telecommunications Association” (please!) has hired some slick Nashville lawyers to do all they can, but the people who will love it are those who’ll see Comcast get so much better as a result and, if I were Comcast, I wouldn’t wait on EPB’s first spool of that fiber optic line to get here.
“Mr. Hold-The-Line” would be replaced is a hurry by “Lucy I-Can-Help.” Instead of “next Friday between 1 and 5” you’ll hopefully hear, “When are you going to be home?” What is more delicious than that?
All of a sudden the EPB is jumping into an entirely new arena. You’ll see a company go from the only game in town to one where the customer has a choice for the very first time and, believe me, they’ll work hard at peddling the “extra benefits” to each electricity subscriber because that is exactly why the EPB board voted unanimously; it’s called m-o-n-e-y.
What I am telling you is that whether you want the new stuff of EPB’s or the “new and improved” Comcast is up to you and that is 10 times better to me than the latest fiber optic cable or satellites or microwave chips or whatever.
Tomorrow’s vote can take two bullies off the street and replace them with two of the prettiest, nicest, kindest, gentlest and gracious types you ever saw. What is better for every person in Chattanooga than that?
In my way of thinking, that’s what government is all about.
royexum@aol.com
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