Firm Seeks Cable Deal Similar to GTE’s

A month after filing a lawsuit in federal court charging that the city of Oxnard awarded a competing cable television firm an unfair franchise agreement, Jones Intercable has asked city officials to give it the same terms granted GTE Media Ventures.

“By law, they’re obliged to give us the same, equal playing field that our competition has,” said Steve Naber, general manager of Jones Intercable.

Naber said that in light of a “less burdensome” agreement granted to GTE, Denver-based Jones, which has 35,000 subscribers in Oxnard and has operated without local competition since 1985, will not be able to achieve a fair return on its investment.

“We’d like to see the modifications put in place and the terms stretched out to the 10 years they granted GTE,” Naber said.

On Thursday, Dennis Scala, an Oxnard management analyst, said he received a copy of the request but had not yet read it.

Jones wants to be relieved of having to provide public, educational and government access services, Naber said. In addition to being required to build a $500,000 facility to be used for the so-called PEG cable access, the company spent “hundreds of thousands of dollars” to support the operation, Naber said.

Instead of requiring a single cable television firm to provide facilities, Naber said, the two companies should share costs of equipment and personnel for such things as City Council meetings and shows that originate locally. That way, the facility and staffing issues would be left up to a third party--a college, perhaps, Naber said.

In addition, Jones officials want the city to begin paying a commercial rate for the institutional network that the company has been providing free of charge for some time. The school district uses the so-called INET, and it can also be used for videoconferencing and training.

“The value of the INET is upward of $1 million a year,” Naber said. “They did not require an institutional network from GTE at all.”

The company also wants the city to reduce its annual franchise fee, currently 5% of gross revenue.