EATEL agreement hits snags at council

The Baton Rouge Metro Council on Wednesday again deferred ruling on a measure that would allow EATEL Video to offer multimedia service in East Baton Rouge Parish. The original motion, as well as a substitute motion adding a buildout agreement, both failed prior to the deferral vote. The buildout clause, in which EATEL would be required to provide video services to all clients in the service area upon assumption of 50.1% or a plurality of the market share, was the catalyst for disagreement. Cox spokeswoman Alyssa Blake accused EATEL of “cherry-picking” its clientele. “They’re telling you they don’t want to have a buildout requirement,” she says. “They intend to only serve the most demographically desirable areas.” Cox, Blake says, is “not scared of competition, but for the government to give one provider an advantage over all the others is not what should happen.” But Janet Britton, EATEL’s director of legal and regulatory affairs, countered that because Cox did not demand the same buildout when AT&T entered the multimedia market, it cannot now demand it of EATEL. “I’d like to be able to play by AT&T rules. … It would be an unreasonable burden to place a different agreement on EATEL than you had on AT&T.” Bob Allen of the parish attorney’s office agreed, saying that an attorney with the Federal Communications Commission told him, “If you treated the second provider one way, you can’t impose greater burdens on the third entry into the market.” When asked for his legal stand, Allen said, “We should give them the same requirements as in AT&T, which is no buildout requirements.” Shortly after the vote to defer on EATEL, the council meeting ended abruptly after losing quorum, leaving the fate of two controversial downtown projects—the River Center library plans and the Galvez Plaza stage canopy—also deferred. —Ian McGibboney