ACT Seeks State Investigations of AT&T & PEG

American Community Television has asked Attorneys General in California, Connecticut, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, North Carolina, Ohio and Tennessee to investigate how AT&T delivers Public, Educational and Government (PEG) channels on its U-Verse video platform.

ACT, which advocates for PEG channels, says that the blind and vision-impaired can't access the channels through the on-screen menus and has complained about the issue before, as well as AT&T's PEG treatment in general.

"People who are blind or visually impaired shouldn't be denied a service they are already paying for in their cable bills," said John Rocco, president of American Community Television, who is visually impaired. "U-verse makes it impossible to access these channels without assistance..."

AT&T begs to differ.

"We are committed to carrying Public, Educational, and Government (PEG) programming over AT&T U-verse TV, having deployed the service in hundreds of cities with hundreds of PEG channels," the company said in a statement... "[O]ur PEG programming can be easily and quickly accessible, is high quality and offers many benefits."

ACT has also called for PEG commitments as part of any AT&T/T-Mobile merger.

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.