Feeling the pressure from Arvada city officials and residents frustrated with west-side cable performance, representatives from the area’s single cable provider say a turning point is near.
Years of cable customer grievances meant that when the city signed a 2013 franchise agreement with TDS Baja,
Roughly two months from a July 1 deadline, the city and customers still have a list of complaints around cable performance west of Indiana Street.
Outages, a stale cable experience, poor customer service, lack of requested information and service not matching that of east-side provider Comcast — a requirement under the franchise agreement — were cited at a recent city council study session.
“Let’s just say it’s clearly been the worst experience from a customer viewpoint,” said TDS Baja customer Harvey Bierman, a tech-industry veteran, in a phone interview.
TDS reps say they’ve dramatically increased broadband capacity and in mid-May will be launching Catch TV, which features improved DVR storage, whole home DVR, an improved customer interface along with TV on smartphones, tablets and laptops.
TDS field marketing manager Tony Bugher noted the difficulty of upgrading a network, which was purchased from Baja Cable in 2013.
“I’ll just stress that we understand there’s been some pain our customers have had,” Bugher said. “We’ve heard them and it’s definitely gained our attention. … We’re working very hard to make sure we’re proud of the service we’re providing.”
The upgrades still aren’t meeting required performance benchmarks, city officials say, and are missing a linchpin of Comcast: Video on Demand.
At the workshop, Ken Paker, the chief technology officer for TDS Telecom, answered a barrage of questions from irate council members who say they field a steady stream of complaints.
District 4 Councilman Bob Dyer wanted to know why, if TDS is supposed to be paying a per-subscriber fee and the workshop presentation showed yearly subscriber increases, was the city still getting paid for years-old subscriber numbers.
Other concerns included why TDS Baja hadn’t done required quarterly updates and what was being done to improve customer service.
The harshest words came from Councilman at-large Bob Fifer, who spent years in the telecommunications industry. Seven months after asking for a few bits of readily available information, he was still waiting.
“You have a tough thing to deal with, both the community and with us,” Fifer said. “If we’re going to do this dance, we need to at least see a marketing plan.”
Paker said a new marketing effort is in the works that will remove Baja from the TDS brand, and a turning point is near.
“We’re here for the long-term investment, we’re not looking to flip this network and not looking to do anything besides drive a competitive product across the triple-play product offering,” he added.
Cities often sign deals with cable providers allowing the companies to use publicly owned right of ways.
Arvada media services manager Rick Assmus said it’s still unknown what the city will do if TDS doesn’t meet the benchmarks.
“It would be huge to terminate a franchise cable contract,” Assmus said. “There’s the Cable Act law, we can get drug into federal court, sued. … It can go on and on and on.”
Austin Briggs: 303-954-1729, abriggs@denverpost.com or twitter.com/abriggs
