Bankrupt Charter Communications Is joining the seasonal cable rate hike festivities, the Oregonian reporting that the company is raising rates in Oregon for some of the customers who can least afford it. Meanwhile, the San Gabriel Valley Tribune (California) reports how Charter is eliminating discounts for senior citizens in the region, raising bills as high as 26%. The irony of course, missed by the Tribune, is that the only reason these communities had senior citizen discounts in the first place, was because individual towns had made it a requirement if Charter wanted to service the local populace.Except the local franchise agreements didn't "expire," they were killed by telco lobbyists who convinced California -- and more than a dozen other states -- to pass video franchise "reform" legislation. Said legislation promised to speed up market entry for new competitors and lower TV prices by taking the negotiation authority out of individual towns and cities -- and putting into the hands of state lawmakers. State lawmakers of course are much easier to lobby than dozens of smaller towns and cities.

In actuality, as many states are now realizing after the fact, the reform bills were largely carrier wishlists eroding local authority, stripping eminent domain rights, and legitimizing the cherry picking of next generation services. Promised TV price reductions are nowhere in sight for any of the states who played along. Instances where states were supposed to investigate whether the legislation actually helped consumers, regulators conveniently never bothered to follow up.

In many cases the new laws eliminated consumer protections as well. In Wisconsin, a franchise reform bill lobbied for by phone companies eliminated state consumer laws that protected subscribers' rights to prompt repairs, ensured refunds for service outages, mandated notice of rate increases or service deletions, and forced carriers to provide a written notice of disconnection. In California, the law, which supporters crowed would "help consumers," now results in higher prices for state senior citizens.