American Community Television Calls For PEG Commitments In AT&T/T-Mobile

American Community Television (ACT) has called for a commitment to public, educational and government (PEG) channels as part of any AT&T/T-Mobile merger.

The group pointed to Comcast's "willingness" to make PEG access commitments in securing Federal Communications Commission approval of its deal to join up with NBCU, and wants the AT&T/T-Mobile meld to include PEG provisions on AT&T's U-Verse video service. Comcast pledged not to move PEG channels to digital until a community was ready or its system went all-digital, and to "safeguard the continued accessibility and signal quality of PEG channels on its cable television systems and introduce new on demand and online platforms for PEG content." ACT has complained that the channels on U-Verse, which is already digital and so has no migration issues, are hard to find and suffer from bad transmission quality. They also complain that AT&T charges communities for the cost of transmission, pointing to a March 2008 video they said illustrated the problems.