We had a lengthy discussion with Mayor Anthony Minniti recently about various topics affecting Cinnaminson. The first of those centers around Fios.
This has been a common question for residents over the past 10-plus years who are fed up with the service, or lack thereof (at times), that Comcast offers.
“Every committee that I’ve been a part of since 2002 has held the belief that competition is good for our residents. We want them to obtain the best product at the lowest possible price. The township has never erected a barrier to companies coming here to create competition.”
According to Minniti, cable providers need to go through a bit of a different process compared to other companies when entering a town.
“Any cable provider has to go through a franchise fee-process no matter what township they want to operate in,” Minniti explained. “This allows them to run infrastructure and operate. If Fios came to us to operate in Cinnaminson, they would be subject to the same franchise fee.”
There is a law governing how cable companies can go about installing their services in the state of New Jersey.
“To prevent Fios from abandoning urban areas or otherwise low-income towns beneath a certain threshold, after installing so many percent of households in a demographic area, you must do a certain percent in a lower demographic area.”
“A lot of times, what you’re seeing is, Fios has to go into low-income areas legislatively. If they go below a certain ratio, they cannot do anymore installs in higher-income areas until they catch up.”
Minniti knows that Comcast has saturated the market here in Cinnaminson, even with the presence of some satellite dish companies.
“Right now, Comcast probably has 95-97 percent saturation in town. Everybody is wired and hooked up to Comcast. If Verizon looked at the town of Cinnaminson they would have to put out a tremendous amount of infrastructure costs in the hopes of pulling customers away from Comcast.”
“It would make more sense for Verizon to go to sparsely populated areas that have less saturation than to come to Cinnaminson. It would take a long time to recapture the investment.”
Minniti said that he wasn’t the first person to originally speak with Verizon about coming to Cinnaminson, but has done so in the past.
“We would welcome Verizon with open arms, but discussions with them have never gone anywhere. They’ve explained to us why they are not here. They are not looking to come here, not even to Delran. This area is too dominated by Comcast already. Their focus is wiring developing communities first. It’s different when a house is already built and you have to dig up someone’s lawn. It’s a tremendous undertaking.”
“Fios is underground, but all utilities have to be underground now anyway. It’s not like Comcast where they go up on a telephone poll and run the wire to the house. It’s an underground utility. They would have to reach some sort of agreement with the Sewer Authority, which is not affiliated with the township.”
Part two of our conversation with Mayor Minniti, centered around liquor licenses in Cinnaminson, comes your way tomorrow.
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