Tehama Municipal Code Art. VI System Operation and Maintenance

A. General. Throughout the life of a grantee's franchise, and in addition to other service regulations adopted by the board, and excepting circumstances beyond the grantee's control, such as acts of God, riots and civil disturbances, and in providing the foregoing services, a grantee shall maintain all parts of its system in good condition and in accordance with standards generally observed by the cable television industry. The system must serve individual residents, but should, insofar as specified in the franchise agreement, also serve as a broadbased communications source for county government, other public facilities including hospitals, public libraries and schools, and industrial and commercial business users.

B. Service Reliability. Grantee shall, as well, retain sufficient employees to provide safe, adequate and prompt service for all such residential subscribers, institutional facilities and business users. Grantee shall limit failures to minimum time duration by locating and correcting malfunctioning as promptly as is reasonably possible.

(Ord. 1337 §8, 1986)

Grantee shall, at all times, install and maintain its wires, cables, fixtures and other equipment in accordance with the requirements of the county's building regulations, and in such a manner that they will not interfere with any installations of the county. The grantee shall keep and maintain in a safe, suitable, substantial condition, and in good order and repair, all its structures, lines, equipment and connections in, over, under and upon the streets, sidewalks, alleys and public ways or places of the county, wherever situated or located.

(Ord. 1337 §9, 1986)

Grantee's system design, construction, extension and/or upgrade shall be such that service shall be made available to all residential units within the grantee's service area, as defined in the franchise agreement, for the normal installation fee, with the exception that in those locations where the dwelling units per strand mile of system plant are less than the dwellings per mile figure stipulated in the franchise agreement, grantee shall provide cable service on a pro rata sharing of the installation costs with the potential subscribers. The pro rata sharing costs will be in accordance with a formulation set forth in the franchise agreement.

(Ord. 1337 §10.1, 1986)

Subject to such regulations as may be adopted by the board, the grantee shall provide cable television service to all persons making a timely and bona fide request for such service at any location within the service area. After the grantee shall have established service pursuant to a franchise in any area of the county, such service shall not be suspended or abandoned unless such suspension or abandonment is authorized or ordered by the board.

(Ord. 1337 §10.2, 1986)

A. A cable communications system, to be installed and operated pursuant to this chapter and a franchise granted hereunder shall, as a minimum, be operationally capable of relaying to subscriber terminals those television and radio broadcast signals for the carriage of what the grantee is now or thereafter authorized by the FCC, and distribute color television signals which it received in color, and provide channel capacity and basic equipment for program production in cablecasting public, educational and government access uses.

B. The system should have a minimum capacity of thirty five or more downstream video channels, and have twoway operational capability, the latter to be activated on a selective basis when technically and economically feasible, or as otherwise mutually agreed upon by the county and grantee.

C. The cable communications system(s) permitted to be installed and operated pursuant to this chapter may also engage in the business of transmitting original cablecast programming not received through television broadcast signals, and transmitting any satellitedelivered signals permitted by the FCC.

D. The system may also transmit television pictures, film and videotape programs not received through broadcast television signals, whether or not encoded or processed to permit reception by only selected receivers or subscribers.

E. The system may also transmit and receive all other signals, digital, voice and audiovisual, as permitted by federal and state authorities.

(Ord. 1337 §10.3, 1986)

The grantee shall provide and maintain access facilities and channels for the benefit of county residents, as set forth in the franchise agreement.

(Ord. 1337 §10.4, 1986)

A. With respect to local government access, the grantee shall provide, at the request of the board, and upon county reimbursement of grantee's actual production costs in excess of five hours a week, use of grantee's production equipment and technical services for production of live and videotaped municipal programming, subject to scheduling requirements of the grantee.

B. With respect to basic television service, the grantee shall provide one or more drops, as set forth in the franchise agreement, and all basic subscriber services, without cost, when the system passes such facilities, and as designated by the board, to public schools and community colleges within the county, and buildings owned and controlled by the county and used for public purposes and not for residential use.

(Ord. 1337 § 10.5, 1986)

The grantee may be required to provide interconnection to systems serving residential areas in the unincorporated area adjacent to the county. This and other possible system interconnections will be provided by grantee as set forth in the franchise agreement.

(Ord. 1337 §10.6, 1986)

A. The grantee may be required to design, construct and maintain the system in a manner to provide for a restricted video and/or audio override of all video and audio channels during emergencies. If a video override capability is provided, the system shall include a character generator for delivery of emergency messages to the communicatively handicapped.

B. Emergency power sources shall be provided at the headend, network distribution center, satellite earth station, processing hubs, and other system locations as may be necessary to reasonably ensure that in the event of a power failure on any part of the system, service will be maintained on the rest of the system.

(Ord. 1337 §10.7, 1986)

It shall be the right of all subscribers to receive all available services insofar as their financial and other obligations to the grantee are honored. Neither the county nor the grantee shall, as to rates, charges, service, service facilities, rules, regulations, or in any other respect, make or grant any preference or advantage to any person, nor subject any person to prejudice or disadvantage.

(Ord. 1337 §10.8.1, 1986)

Before providing cable communications service to any new subscriber, the grantee shall provide a written notice to the subscriber substantially as follows:

Subscriber is hereby notified that in providing cable television/communications service the Grantee is making use of public rightsofway within Tehama County and that the continued use of such rightsofway is in no way guaranteed. In the event the continued use of such rightsofway is denied to the Grantee for any reason, Grantee will make every reasonable effort to provide service over alternate routes. By accepting cable television/communiations service, subscriber agrees he will make no claim nor undertake any action against the County, its officers, or its employees if the service to be provided hereunder is interrupted or discontinued.

(Ord. 1337 §10.8.3, 1986)

The grantee shall maintain a conveniently located business office and service center with tollfree telephone numbers so that subscribers may report service outages or deficiencies at any time. The office shall maintain an adequate staff such that subscribers may transact all necessary business, including payment of bills, during regular business hours. Grantee's employees shall maintain a high standard of courtesy in customer relations at all times.

(Ord. 1337 §10.8.2, 1986)

In the event the grantee elects to rebuild, upgrade, modify or sell the system, or the county revokes or fails to renew the franchise, grantee shall ensure that all subscribers receive continuous, uninterrupted service in accordance with the provisions of this chapter and the franchise agreement. In order to ensure compliance with federal law in event of franchise revocation or nonrenewal, grantee's franchise will be extended as necessary to cover such operation.

(Ord. 1337 §10.8.4, 1986)

A. The monitoring of any subscriber terminal without specific written authorization of the subscriber is prohibited. Grantee shall be responsible for the protection of subscriber privacy, prohibiting the tapping and/or monitoring of cable, line, signal input device, or subscriber outlet or receiver, for any purpose whatsoever, except grantee may conduct tests of the functioning of the system where necessary in order to ensure proper maintenance of the system and to collect performance data for agencies regulating the quality of the signal. Where critical information requires private communication, electronic signal scrambling techniques must be used.

B. Listings of subscribers' names and addresses may not be sold or otherwise released for any purpose, other than purposes directly related to the lawful operation of the cable communications system, nor any list which identifies, by name, subscriber viewing habits, to any person, agency or entity, for any purpose whatsoever, without specific written authorization of the individual subscriber.

C. The grantee and the county shall maintain constant vigilance with regard to possible abuses of the right of privacy or other human rights of any subscriber, programmer or general citizen resulting from any device or signal associated with the cable communications system. The grantee shall not place in any private residence any equipment capable of twoway communications without the written consent of the residents, and will not use the twoway communications capability of the system for subscriber surveillance of any kind without the written consent of the subscriber.

D. No cable, line, wire, amplifier, converter or other piece of equipment owned by the grantee shall be attached to any residence or other property by the grantee without first securing the written permission of the owner or responsible occupant of any property involved. If such permission is later revoked, whether by the original or subsequent owner or responsible occupant, the grantee shall remove forthwith all of its equipment, and promptly restore the property to as near its original condition as possible, except for underground installations and internal wiring on private property.

E. No polls or other twoway responses of subscribers shall be conducted unless the program of which the poll is part shall contain an explicit disclosure of the nature, purpose and prospective use of the results of the poll. No commercial or other use of information of subscriber viewing habits or patterns may be made, and no release of such information shall be permitted without prior consent of the board, or pursuant to rules and regulations duly adopted by the county.

(Ord. 1337 §10.9, 1986)