If Comcast can’t answer the phone fast enough, my view is that the caller should hang up and call Dish Network or DirecTV, or another provider, writes Greenwood Village city council member Jerry Presley. (Elise Amendola, AP file)

Over the next few weeks and months, city councils throughout the Denver metro area will be asked to approve a set of customer service standards that will require Comcast, the largest metro area cable TV operator, to deliver a high level of customer service. I sit on the Greenwood Village City Council, and earlier this month I cast my vote: I held my nose and voted to approve.

Full disclosure requires me to acknowledge that I was directly involved in the Denver cable TV franchise war, promoting the interests of the winning bidder. I’m no longer in the cable business; now, my mission is to promote good public policy in Greenwood Village.

Cable TV franchises are granted by cities because the cable wires are strung throughout a city using easements, streets and other right-of-ways. Typically, a municipality grants a cable TV franchise to only one company, the same as it does to electricity and telephone service providers. Although a cable franchise is non-exclusive, in reality the right to string up a cable wire is a government-sanctioned monopoly.

In the early 1980s, cable companies had little, if any, competition. They thrived because they delivered a service that people wanted at a price people were willing to pay. And it was all appropriately regulated, including the rates, by the local governments.

In the 1990s, cities in the Denver metro area formed what is now the Colorado Communications and Utility Alliance, an organization representing 35 cities that collectively negotiates with local cable companies, primarily Comcast. This is good for both parties. The cities have more clout as a group and a cable company avoids the brain damage of managing 35 different agreements, all with different requirements. It is this organization which negotiated and developed the customer service standards that local city councils are now being asked to approve. The document is 17 pages long and includes many performance requirements.

The federal government has deregulated the cable industry, provided that marketplace competition exists for TV services. Cities now have less control over rates, programming, and enhanced services. Competition and the free market are the regulator.

But cities still have so-called police powers, which they can use to protect citizens. This authority includes the right to regulate many aspects of cable TV operations, like telling the cable company how quickly it should answer the phone.

OK, let’s assume a city has the right to protect its citizens by requiring a cable company to answer the phone quickly. My question is, should a city exercise that right? Where competition exists, my answer is “no.” A city’s role is to promote competition and then step out of the way.

This is a higher-level policy issue and it asks the philosophical question about the proper role of government and its relationship to free markets.

If Comcast can’t answer the phone fast enough, my view is that the caller should hang up and call Dish Network or DirecTV, or another provider. While the delivery vehicle, a cable wire, is still a monopoly, the TV services being delivered on that wire are not. I can watch 500 channels of TV on the smartphone in my pocket right now.

I am not defending Comcast and I don’t want to give the company any advantages or breaks. I want Comcast to succeed or fail in the marketplace based on its merit. What I really want is to promote good public policy that says the proper role of government is to encourage free markets, competition and fair fights.

Jerry Presley is a city council member in Greenwood Village.

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