comcastxfinityIt didn’t take Comcast much time to revise its new 10-year franchise agreement with Seattle after city officials demanded more benefits for low-income residents.

The city announced today that it reached a new tentative deal with the cable giant that includes additional benefits for low-income seniors and an extra $450,000 in digital equity grant money.

As we reported on Friday, the Seattle City Council was set to vote on the original agreement with Comcast this week — but that was before city officials saw what the company did in Philadelphia.

This past Thursday, Comcast inked a 15-year franchise deal with Philadelphia city officials that included agreements like offering its Internet Essentials service to more low-income households and senior citizens.

Seattle skyline and Rainier at sunset

In response, Mayor Ed Murray and Councilmember Bruce Harrell backed out of their agreement and demanded more benefits.

The two sides worked together through the weekend and Comcast came up with a revised agreement for Seattle that will offer more discounts to low-income seniors and increases a five-year digital equity grant from $50,000 to $500,000 (paid over five years).

Comcast, which serves nearly 150,000 customers in Seattle, will also now partner with the City to help “housing-insecure youth” receive devices like laptops to help them access the Internet.

The City Council will vote on the revised agreement this afternoon.

[Update: At Monday’s City Council meeting, councilmembers Nick Licata and Tim Burgess expressed worry that the newly-added benefits are not part of the actual franchise agreement, but rather included in a separate letter. “There is some risk that, without consideration, Comcast could change these benefits,” Harrell admitted. Given this, the new benefits cannot be enforced by the city, unlike the mandated requirements in the franchise agreement. Even though the city’s law department approved this method, several councilmembers weren’t comfortable approving the new agreement without something more enforceable. The council pushed back the vote to next Monday, Dec. 14.]

“Digital equity is central to my administration and I remain committed to ensuring that all residents have the resources to access essential services and opportunities,” Mayor Murray said in a statement. “Today’s revised agreement reflects our efforts to get a better deal from Comcast. After extensive conversations over the weekend, Comcast agreed to do more for the residents of Seattle, including seniors, low-income residents, and housing-insecure youth.”

Harrell added that “this is an unprecedented community benefits package for Seattle.”

“We fought hard to the very end to increase benefits for our seniors, youth, low-income households, and all of our residents,” Harrell said in a statement.

In a news release, the city said that the revised agreement is closer to what Philadelphia received from Comcast “while providing Seattle with greater flexibility in how to best increase digital equity.” From the release:

For example, the City may use the digital equity grant and possibly franchise fees to assist more eligible households in navigating and enrolling in discount programs from Comcast and others, expand access through increased Wi-Fi availability, or provide direct subsidies to a limited number of low-income individuals.

The proposed franchise agreement would take effect on Jan. 21 of next year and last a decade. Comcast signed its current deal in 2006.

seattlebroadbandWe’ve reached out to Comcast for comment, and will update this post when we hear back.

Comcast competes with Wave Broadband and CenturyLink in Seattle, which both have similar franchise agreements with the city. Last month, the City Council voted against a $5 million municipal broadband pilot program, preventing local Internet from being treated like a public utility akin to electricity.

In June, a city-commissioned study showed that building a municipal gigabit fiber network in Seattle would cost $480 million to $665 million — less than past projections, but still too much for the city to take on without outside financing or a major partnership.

The proposed franchise agreement “has no impact on our broadband plans,” City of Seattle CTO Michael Mattmiller told us last week.

“It would not preclude our ability to be a municipal broadband provider in the future, should it become financially feasible to build such a system,” he said.

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