Fox Cities municipalities sharing cost to pipe Time Warner's access channel into AT&T's U-Verse

Neenah, Appleton, Green Bay and both the Town and the City of Menasha are all chipping in for the equipment necessary to service public access programming to AT&T U-Verse customers.

The Post-Crescent reported this weekend that the five municipalities are throwing together a combined $3,650 for the initiative, with Brown County possibly also pitching in a share.

The state's cable act requires a provider to carry the communities' access channel, but it does not require them to bear the cost necessary to uplink the signal to the system.  Time Warner Cable has long operated a community access channel in the area, but until now it was only seen by their own customers.

The plan, according to minutes from the Finance & Personnel Committee in Neenah, involves UW-Fox Valley, which produces City Council television broadcasts.  The University is taking the analog access channel feed from Time Warner and converting it to digital using an encoder to be purchased using the newly appropriated funds.  The University is also donating a surplus router, to the tune of $1,500, to the project.  The remaining funds are going toward the necessary wiring to take the digitized video feed to the nearest AT&T connection point.

The necessary equipment should be in place in about a month.

It is unknown if Time Warner is participating at all in this process, or if any changes to the channel or its operation are planned.  Time Warner currently brands their access channel TWCT -- or Time Warner Cable Television.  Also unknown is where AT&T plans to place the programming, how it will operate and whether they plan to offer any public access programming on-demand, as Time Warner currently does.

Source: 

Post-Crescent

Related Links: 

City of Neenah Finance & Personnel Committee Minutes (pdf)