
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, September 18, 1993                   TAG: 9309180268
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE: BRISTOL                                LENGTH: Short

BOUCHER SEEKS CABLE COMPETITION

Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Abingdon, accused some cable television systems Friday of using a new law "as an excuse for their largely unjustifiable rate increases."

He will seek a Federal Communications Commission requirement that rates be reduced to at least their levels before the 1992 Cable Television Act was passed in October.

That would reverse a recent round of rate increases, he said.

By raising rates now, Boucher said, the cable TV industry "is fueling a national outrage that will give impetus to my effort to create genuine competition by breaking up the cable television monopoly."

Boucher is offering a bill that would allow telephone companies to offer cable TV service. "Its passage is made far more likely by the recent round of cable TV rate increases," he said.

"Competition clearly works. In those communities which [have] more than one provider of cable television service, numbering approximately 50 altogether, the rates tend to be 30 percent below the national average," he said at a news conference.

He said he wants every community to have at least two cable providers.

Boucher said those systems that raised rates "are making a serious mistake. . . . Nothing in the 1992 law requires television operators to raise rates to any customer."

He said some operators have suggested otherwise, but "the decision to raise rates is one that is made entirely by cable television companies."

by CNB