The city of Greenwood is asking for public comments as it prepares to negotiate an extension of its cable television franchise with Suddenlink.
The city’s current cable TV contract with Suddenlink expires in 2017.
The City Council will hold a public hearing Tuesday on the city’s agreement with Suddenlink at the beginning of its meeting at 4 p.m.
The city currently leases access to its infrastructure to Suddenlink. In return, the city receives a 5 percent franchise fee from the company for each customer in the city.
“If anybody has comments, questions or concerns, they can come at the beginning of the meeting,” said Thomas Gregory, the city’s chief administrative officer. “We’ll be taking that feedback into consideration when we head into negotiations with Suddenlink.”
Gregory said the city is hoping to get citizen feedback about outages, reliability and customer service as it prepares to negotiate a new agreement with Suddenlink.
“There was a 10-year agreement that will be expiring in 2017, so we’re being proactive about renewing this franchise agreement so we can have everything in place by the time the current agreement expires,” Gregory said.
Among the items that the city can’t influence when it negotiates a new contract, Gregory said, are the prices that Suddenlink charges and the channels the cable pro-vider includes in its packages.
Gregory said the franchise agreement with Suddenlink isn’t exclusive, meaning a second cable provider could still decide to offer service in the city. AT&T representatives had talked with the city about offering its U-Verse services in Greenwood last year.
Gregory said he hadn’t heard anything recently from AT&T and was unsure if the company was still considering expanding operations into Greenwood.
•Contact Bryn Stole at 581-7235 or bstole@gwcommonwealth.com.
