By Linda Taaffe
The Los Altos City Council extended the city’s cable franchise agreement with AT&T another three months, until March 31. This is the fourth extension that the council has approved since beginning negotiations with AT&T in December 1999, when AT&T acquired the city’s cable service, TeleCommunications Inc.
The city has been working on a deal with AT&T over the past three years to bring high-speed Internet lines and sleeker cable connections to Los Altos.
City officials said negotiations were progressing, but were not expected to be completed before Dec. 31, when the previous extension was scheduled to expire.
Senior Planner Jim Mackenzie said city officials met with AT&T representatives Nov. 30. The city needs to negotiate some of AT&T’s “redlined comments on discussion drafts of a franchise agreement ordinance and a master ordinance regulating all cable and open video systems,” he said.
The delay could mean another temporary interruption of the city’s cable station, Access Los Altos, unless Mountain View’s cable studio agrees to extend its 12-month deal with Los Altos to provide a production facility to the cable station through March. The current deal expires at the end of January.
Mackenzie said the city has a contract in place with the Foothill-De Anza Community College District for continued broadcast services.
Los Altos Cable Channel 26 stopped broadcasting for one month last December after its 15-year studio lease expired at Foothill College, when the college relocated its broadcasting and production program to the De Anza campus in Cupertino. The city temporarily moved its production to Mountain View and its broadcast work to De Anza.
Los Altos can’t establish a permanent production facility until it reaches an agreement on its new long-term contract with AT&T.
The city has been pushing for a plan that will include a private Intranet for city hall, local schools and libraries.
The renewal negotiations stem from AT&T’s $70 billion acquisition of TeleCommunciations Inc., the city’s former cable power.
