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MR. ROSENBLUM: Good morning. I'm Barry
Rosenblum, I'm president of Time Warner Cable of New York
City. I'd like to thank you for the opportunity to speak
before you today.
Less than two years ago, I came before you to
speak about the renewal of Time Warner's franchises in New
York City. At that time, we spoke about the many benefits
to New York City contained in the new agreement. Included
in that agreement is a $10 million fund to build the
City's institutional network, $5 million to upgrade and
run the City's Crosswalks channel and millions more in
operating and capital dollars for use to the public access
organizations in each borough, just to name a few of those
commitments.
In that franchise contract there was also an
agreement to upgrade the systems to a sophisticated
broadband network designed to provide New Yorkers with a
state of the art system for the delivery of new and
innovative services, services such as high speed access to
the Internet and hundreds of channels delivered digitally
to homes of our customers. I'm pleased to report that
both high speed access to the Internet and digital cables
are not only realities, but are being embraced by our
customers. Our system-wide upgrade to enable deliveries
of those services is nearly complete and these services
are being provided in those upgraded areas.
Digital television also allows our customers
to receive several channels of high definition TV as long
as they have a high definition receiver and our high speed
Internet access service, Road Runner, is already being
used by more than 20,000 customers in New York City. It
provides Internet access through the cable rather than
through phone lines at speeds of up to 50 times faster
than a traditional phone connection. Because Road Runner
is delivered through cable lines, customers' phone lines
are not tied up and our service is always connected. Our
customers avoid the uncertainty of dialing in each time
they want to go on line and use their computers.
We're proud of the progress we have made and
look forward to expanding the services we provide to our
customers very soon.
The proposed merger of Time Warner and AOL
can only speed innovation and consumer choice in
communication service and content.
On July 27, Jerry Levin, the Chairman and CEO
of Time Warner, Inc. and Steve Case, Chairman and CEO of
AOL, appeared before the Federal Communications Commission
to discuss the merger. I'd like to share with you a small
portion of Jerry Levin's comments regarding the benefits
that will flow from the merger, and I quote:
"First, as well as making traditional media
more accessible for on line and interactive applications,
our merged company will be a leader in developing new
services. This in turn will help accelerate our
competitors' efforts to innovate. Second, by actively
pursuing our marketplace-driven ISP policy, we'll insure
real consumer choice in our cable systems and provide a
catalyst for other cable companies to follow suit.
"Third, as we speed up deployment of
broadband capacity, we'll increase the consumer appetite
for broadband services and hasten deployment across
competing platforms, whether cable, DSL, wireless or
satellite, a critical FCC goal pursuant to Section 706 of
the 1996 Telecommunication Act," end quote.
I'd also like to publicly respond to a
question we had from the Comptroller's office this
morning, and give you an update on where the company is in
terms of its negotiations with other unaffiliated Internet
service providers. The company has reached an agreement
with Juno and is actively negotiating with three other
unaffiliated ISP's in addition to AOL.
Our New York City cable operation, which
began in 1966 in Manhattan, was an industry pace setter
and set standard for urban cable systems, years before
other major cities began to even examine the
possibilities. That commitment more than 30 years ago, to
bring diversity of programming, choice and innovation to
New Yorkers reflects the company's abiding commitment to
reverse all paradigms which limited the public's choices
to those selected by broadcast networks with a national
audience in mind. Even then, our system provided
alternative viewing choices, improved the quality of over
the air reception, and helped pave the way for the dynamic
growth of the cable industry. Time Warner's leadership in
expanding consumer choice in the television marketplace
ranges from CNN to HBO and locally to our own New York 1
News.
Our investment in the future has allowed a
dramatic expansion in the number of channels available,
not just from our shop, but from a wide diversity of
sources and here in New York City our channels reflect the
diversity of New York City residents and offer programming
in Russian, Arabic, Korean, Greek, Cantonese, Mandarin,
Spanish and Hindu, among others.
Our pilot system in Queens, called Quantum,
which we launched in 1991 with its unique fiber rich
network presaged our effort to bring broadband environment
for interactive communications across the national
landscape.
While our company is proud to have helped
accelerate the growth of the television universe to the
benefit of consumers, we're equally proud to be among the
first to recognize digital technology to bring new options
for high speed interaction services like video on demand
and data delivery. And today we're building a company
that helps take the Internet to the next level,
connecting, informing and entertaining people as never
before.
So what does this really mean for the
residents of New York City right now? The agreement
before you, which was negotiated over a number of months
and countless hours, represents a step for the future. It
provides consumer protections as we move into the Internet
world. The protection covers a wide range of issues, such
as service provision, billing and consumer privacy. As we
all know, consumer privacy as it relates to the Internet
is an important issue and is being addressed at many
levels of Government. It is noteworthy to add there's a
mechanism in this agreement to inform our customers of
both existing and new privacy policies which may emerge.
Foremost, with a keen awareness of the impact
of technology in education, this agreement brings high
speed Internet access to our schools. Time Warner Cable
has a proud tradition of supporting education in New York,
and New York City's public schools with programs such as
Time to Read, which is a literacy program for children and
adults, and Save the Music, an example of a successful
public/private partnership which restores music education
and puts musical instruments back into eager hands of
young children. So far over twenty public schools have
restored formerly eliminated music programs.
Our company in conjunction with VH1 has made
a joint commitment to contribute over $5 million over the
next five years to continue to enhance music curricula, a
factor which research has proven dramatically increases
reading and math scores. Further, our own scholarship
fund with over a half million dollars towards higher
education and services for graduating public high school
seniors is in existence.
We are today committing to providing a
significant number of Internet connections to every public
school in our franchise area. We have worked very closely
with the Board of Education and we've developed a model
that truly benefits the students at each school. These
students represent our future taxpayers, consumers and our
future work force and as for senior citizens, we'll
provide high speed Internet access to every senior center
under the auspices of the City of New York, as well as all
other municipal facilities identified in our franchise
agreement.
So I'd just like to conclude by saying your
approval of this franchise agreement will assure the
residents of New York City a rich array of innovative new
services, new choices for multiple Internet services
providers and consumer protections. It certainly reflects
the next step to move forward in what is a very changing
world.
Thank you.
I'll answer any questions you may have.
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