Earlier this month, a majority of voters in Emmetsburg supported a proposal to issue bonds to build a fiber network. Nevertheless, the measure failed because Iowa requires a 60% majority when general obligation bonds fund all or part of a proposed project.
Years ago, the community voted to establish a municipal cable communications or television system. Emmetsburg leaders feel the time is right to realize the community vision. The proposed project would have used revenue bonds in addition to general obligation bonds.
We reported on Mediacoms’ efforts to derail the vote with misleading lit drops across the community and we recently received new details on Mediacom’s propaganda. The literature does not contain a “Vote No” statement, which may have allowed Medicom to avoid reporting it as an election expense.
Both pieces read like a talking point primer for industry executives. The letter from Senior Vice President Dan Templin, suggests that Mediacom is already operating gigabit service over fiber in Emmetsburg and that they intend to expand that service to business clients. The letter does not suggest that their gigabit service is affordable or reliable, neither of which are terms commonly used to describe Mediacom’s services.
Mediacom was ranked last in a 2012 Consumer Report survey of 50,000 people. He, or rather his legal and marketing team, suggests the people of Emmetsburg and Mediacom “work together to leverage our [Mediacom’s] investment.” The people of Emmetsburg can begin working with Mediacom to “leverage” that investment by sending an email to a vague “info” email address.
Mediacom also wrote a letter from Delbert Witzke, a Mediacom employee and local resident. It contains the classic anti-muni talking points used by these big companies headquartered far from the communities where they want to preserve their monopoly. The letter aims to inflame fears of local taxes increasing and misleads readers by implying by citing an irrelevant FCC statistic (which itself is also quite flawed).
In our experience talking with people about their cable companies, few people are so consistently critical and vehement as those stuck with Mediacom. However, enough people were swayed by Mediacom’s campaign against competition in Emmetsburg to at least slow the prospect of a new network there.