HomeMy WebLinkAbout6A - Mediacom
CITY COUNCIL AGENDA REPORT
September 17, 2001
6A
Frank Boyles, City Manager
AGENDA ITEM: Presentation: Mediacom (Bill Jensen)
DISCUSSION: The City Council requested the presence of one or more Mediacom
representatives at the August 20th meeting to discuss various issues related to
cable television. I sent Mr. Jensen the attached letter identifying the issues the
City Council wanted them to address. Attached is a response from Mr. Jensen
dated August 16, 2001. Since Mr. Jensen was unable to be present at the August
20th meeting, and the Council at the meeting stated it did not believe the letter
was responsive to their concerns, Mr. Jensen was asked to attend tonight's
meeting.
Since August 20th, a series of emails have been exchanged addressing various
topics. I have attached an emailfrom Wes and Mr. Jensen's response. I have
also attached an email which Mr. Jensen sent me. Councilmembers received the
revised channel line-up cards with their Update packet last week.
Mr. Jensen has indicated that he will be present this evening to address the
Council.
16200 Eagle Creek Ave. S.E., Prior Lake, Minnesota 55372-1714 / Ph. (952) 447-4230 / Fax (952) 447-4245
I:\COUNCI L \AGNRPTS\200 1 \MEDIACOM2. DQ~EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYER
August 13, 2001
Mr. Bill Jensen
Regional Manager
MEDIACOM
2381 Wilshire Boulevard
Mound, MN 55364
Re: Report to Prior Lake City Council
Dear Mr. Jensen:
The City Council would like to invite you to its August 20, 2001 regular meeting beginning at 7:30pm to
;sort on t,he following items:
\)t,\, ~.~ustomer Service Report which was not provided/available as of your last presentation to the
City Council. .
{~-4\;\ ij.(){ 2. An explanation as to why there was an interruption of service and the live broadcast of the
~~ ~ August 6, 2001 City Council meeting was not possible.
RJ...Il~~ ~ ~a ?our intended actions to correct the inaccurate cable line-up sheet dated August 7, 2001.
'" ~\\-c.1 \\..0 .' The reason for the crawler message on some channels that the signal is weak because of the
~~\~ digjtql,upgrade.
}\o tow~,i 1k 4t1~16'^' .
't,~ have placed you first on the agenda so I expect that this item will be before the Council at 7:45pm.
Sincerely,
Frank Boyles; "t
16200 Eagle Creek Ave. S.E., Prior Lake, Minnesota 55372-1714.1 Ph. (952) 447-4230 / Fax (952) 447-4245
AN EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYER
2381 Wilshire Blvd.
Mound, MN 55364
Email: b;ellsen({i)mediacomcc.com
Phone: (952) 472-6764
Fax: (952) 4i2-7153
Bill Jensen
Re!!ional Mana!!er
August 16, 2001
Mr. Frank Boyles, City Administrator
City of Prior Lake
16200 Eagle Creek Avenue Southeast
Prior Lake, Minnesota 55372-1714
Dear Mr. Boyles,
Unfortunately, both Tom Bordwell and myself have a previously scheduled commitment and
will not be able to present the information in person before the Prior Lake City Council on
Monday August 20, 2001. I'd be more than happy to provide any additional information or
discussion as needed at a later date.
However, first let me convey to you the excitement that Mediacom has had in the successful
deployment of our digital services. As promised, Mediacom now has a viable competitive
product to satellite dishes. t;)ue to our recent digital cable launch in Prior Lake, our customers
now enjoy hundreds of digital services. Using state of the art broadband technology,
Mediacom has migrated its premium services to a digital platform that rivals any other
operator in our industry. Prior Lake customers have responded to this option as well. Almost
700 customers that previously did not elect any premium services in the past have now
chosen this popular option. Additionally, we have been successful at converting existing
"analog" premium customers. This is nothing more than great news for the City of Prior Lake.
The increased revenue potential of our digital services and our previously unavailable pay-
per-view services indicate an expected growth of the City's 5% franchise fee collected on its
behalf.
A quick look at the past year of operation also shows several other areas of improvement that
might shed some light on how important Prior Lake is to Mediacom. The active participation
in community events by our employees and our financial participation in community activities
and events differentiates Mediacom from past operators. Those activities have ranged from
sponsorships of school and athletic awards and banquets, Chamber and Rotary events,
Lakefront Days, and many others. Most importantly, this community involvement helps us
deliver the commitment Mediacom made to you, the City Council and our customers: being
an active partner in Prior Lake.
Page Two, Mr. Frank Boyles
August 16, 2001
Let me also address the items in your letter of August 13, 2001.
1. Customer Service Report. The 2001 second quarter customer service reports indicate a
reduction of trouble calls comparable to the same time period last year. The detailed
report of the trouble calls~ mailed under separate cover. Again, the installation of
our digital services and removal of the old premium "traps" accounted for much of the
activity. Our busy signal rate has also improved over the same time period. We have
experienced some peak levels on a few days that are out of the ordinary and are
attributable to off-air broadcasters operating at lower signal strength (see #4 below), the
roll-out of new digital services and the introduction of pay-per-view. Customer education
is a big part of our service representative training and with the introduction of these new
services our average time per telephone call has increased. The good news is that
although the average time per call has increased, the nature of the calls have shifted
greatly to questions regarding the improved services. We are talkin~ about how to use the
on screen programming guide and r a - er-vi ws as 0 osed to problems
ith s stem pe ormance. ,
2. Interruption of servl e Council Meeting on August 6. This was a simple fix resetting
lbe modulator level and was accomplished on August 7.
3. Correct listing of the Prior Lake Public Access channel. We have placed ads and used
the text messaging capabilities of our system to alert customers of this change. In
addition, ~ne-ups will be mailed to each customer
4. Crawler message regarding digital upgrade. This message is not generated, nor is it in
the control of Mediacom. The local broadcasters in our area are in the process of
installing equipment to deliver their signals in an upgraded digital format. Some are
currently operating at less power while this work is completed. It is expected to continue
for several more weeks.
5. Missed construction meetings. Mr. Barry Paulson has been hired to manage our Cable
_Construction and can be reached at 952-472-8589._
6. Internet Update. 8s ynll ::Ire alA/are, the Cit~' dOj:>~ nnt rf~gulate the Internet portion of our
business. Because you share our desire and excitement for the delivery of this service,
Mediacom has been providing the City with updates on this portion of our business.
Currently all equipment needed to deliver the service has been installed and is awaiting
needed @Home certification. As you may know, @HOME is our Internet provider but
requires data circuits from Owest to access the internet. Unfortunately, Owest competes
with us in many markets for Internet customers so we're obviously at a competitive
disadvantage on this topic. Every Mediacom person associated with these projects, from
our Chairman to technical field personnel, have completed the tasks needed to deploy
cable modem services as soon as the certification is completed. This could occur literally
within days, or weeks. Rest assured that you'll be one of the first to know when we
activate Mediacom~Home in Prior Lake.
Thanks again for your patience.
Frank Boyles
From:
Sent:
To:
Cc:
Subject:
Bill Jensen [bjensen@mediacomcc.com]
Sunday, August 26,2001 5:22 PM
Wes Mader
Frank Boyles; Tom Bordwell
Re: PRIOR LAKE SAVAGE AREA LINE UP
Dear Mayor Mader:
No.. .hopefully you're not missing anything!!! I covered the access channel
listing with Frank Boyles late last week however, here's where we are:
1) We're having "updated" channel line-up cards printed for our Prior Lake
customers, to be mailed separately by mid September.
2) We've instructed TV Guide to implement the following changes to both their
analog .guide listing (channel 69) and the digital interactive guide:
IS-Prior Lake Govt. Access
IS-Savage Govt. Access
For the digital interactive guide, we'll have to share the listing which is
limited to 30 characters (including spaces) to read:
IS-Prior Lake Govt/Savage Public
I read the Prior Lake American newspaper article from this past week. I was a
bit surprised to see the paper didn't even call us for our comments. I
certainly can appreciate your concerns but I would've hoped to have reviewed
this separately.
My review of the Prior Lake franchise file shows the City Council pushing for
"broadband" services like digital and cable moderns yet, now that we've begun
the rollout the council still isn't happy. We visited all of our existing
premium subscribing households (1,024) in Prior during the digital rollout
and converted 908 of them to digital (88%). An additional 214 digital
converters were installed as second and third outlets. Granted, when you
flood a market like we did there's bound to be some problems and turmoil. We
had more than our fair share of it however, we corrected the sales personnel
on the spot. Needless to say, we were a bit surprised by all of the
unauthorized premium connections (40% of our Prior Lake households). Now with
the premium services on the digital platform, only those who subscribe will be
able to receive these services. This is a plus for our paying customers as
well as the franchise fees we pay to the City of Prior Lake.
Before you ask, the modern rollout is just around the corner. We decided not
to deploy both technologies at the same time because "frankly speaking", we
didn't and don't believe that's the prudent thing to do because of the impact
on our customer base and customer service. If all we had were revenues on our
mind, we would have deployed moderns months ago.
Regarding cable moderns: Although our franchise agreement with the City of
Prior Lake doesn't require our deployment of moderns, we have provided the City
with dates that we felt all along would/could be met. Unfortunately, we have
no control over what our competitors (Qwest and Hickory Tech) do or don't do
to prevent the activation of data circuits on which our modern traffic must
travel. We ordered many of these circuits dating back to December of 2000.
I'm sure the City Council is aware of all of the ISP's (internet service
providers) and DSL (digital subscriber line) providers that have gone under
due to soft market conditions. In fact, the local telephone company in Prior
Lake can't or is limited on its DSL service. Where we've had data circuit
capacity in Minnesota, we've averaged 20 modern installs per day, days per
week. There's no doubt our customers are subscribing to Mediacom@Home in
large numbers.
1
Thanks for your time, and thanks for giving us advance notice for the upcoming
City Council Meeting for September 17th @ 7:00 p.m.
Cordially,
Bill Jensen, Regional Manager
Mediacom
952-472-6764 (w)
612-669-3448 (c)
Wes Mader wrote:
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I really want to believe that you guys are trying to service our community
in addition to increasing your revenue-but what good is an access channel
that nobody knows about. Am I missing something?
Wes Mader, Mayor
-----Original Message-----
From: Frank Boyles
To: BILL JENSEN (E-mail)
Sent: 8/6/01 11:14 AM
Subject: PRIOR LAKE SAVAGE
AREA LINE UP
Bill, I received the cable channel line up at home as did other cable
suscribers. Unfortunately it is wrong. The line up does not show the
Prior Lake Government access channel but does show three Savage access
channels. As you know the franchise requires both a government and a
school access channel. I brought this misprint to your attention about
two months ago when I signed up for digital. You said it would be
corrected. I am asking that you make the correction and remail as
quickly as possible. I am very dissapointed since this inaccuracy
undermines our effort to establish and maintain a strong, usable
government access channel. Please let me know your plans as soon as
possible.
2
Frank Boyles
From:
Sent:
To:
Cc:
Subject:
Bill Jensen [bjensen@mediacomllc.com]
Wednesday, August 22,2001 12:12 PM
Frank Boyles
Tom Bordwell; Corey Poffenberger; James Morehead; Kraig Kaiser
Prior Lake Government Access Channel Listing
Good Morning Frank:
Just a quick note to inform you we've requested changes to our TV Guide
channel line-up "listings" for the Prior Lake and Savage areas. These
will take 3-5 days to be fully implemented and will be changed as
follows:
1) On the "analog" TV Guide Channel (#69), channel 15 will be listed
twice; one line for Prior Lake Government Access and the second line for
Savage Public Access.
2) The "digital interactive" TV Guide Channel is a bit more challenging
because we can't list two channel 15's. Therefore. channel 15 will be
listed as Public Access-Savage/Government Access-Prior Lake. Each
channel is separate for the community it serves.
Channel line-up cards are being updated to reflect the aforementioned
listing and will be distributed in a separate mailing to our customers.
Keep an eye out for the changes and share your thoughts with me on such.
Cordially,
B.Jensen
612-669-3448 (c)
952-472-6764 (w)
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