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Suber criticizes city's new AT&T deal School board president wants company to wire city's public schools with high-speed cable Thursday, November 25, 1999 By Timothy McNulty, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
The president of the Pittsburgh Board of Public Education isn't happy with the 10-year cable television deal the city announced this week with AT&T Corp., saying it does not require the company to directly wire city schools with high-speed cable, possibly cutting city students from better computer technology.
Ronald Suber, school board president, sent Mayor Murphy a letter yesterday asking the agreement be changed to require the direct wiring. Otherwise, Suber wrote, the district won't have enough money to connect to the high-speed system, which would "prohibit the school district from building this essential infrastructure for our students."
Murphy announced yesterday that the city and AT&T had reached a cable franchise agreement that will allow the company to start installing $40 million in fiber optics lines and other upgrades citywide.
The upgrades, which will take up to 2 1/2 years to complete, will spread high-speed fiber optics cables in all 88 city neighborhoods and give AT&T customers cable television, Internet and local and long-distance phone service at home through existing cable lines.
The agreement, reached after months of negotiations, is subject to Pittsburgh City Council approval by Dec. 31, when a 15-year-old agreement with Tele-Communications Inc. expires. AT&T bought TCI earlier this year for $54 billion.
Pittsburgh City Councilman Dan Cohen, one of the negotiators of the deal, said earlier this week that AT&T had agreed to wire the schools directly with the cable. But school district officials yesterday disagreed, saying the company had instead agreed only to string the wire to the closest utility pole, leaving the cost of stringing it farther to the school district.
It may not seem like a big deal, said school district information officer John Barry, but directly equipping scores of school buildings is much less costly for AT&T than it is for the district, since the company doesn't have to adhere to the same building code requirements that the district does.
The district can apply for federal funding for computer equipment to log into the high-speed system, Barry added, but that funding cannot be used to connect the cable.
Cohen said he and Murphy administration officials plan to meet with school district officials next week to discuss the agreement. The agreement could be introduced to council Tuesday.
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