Pittsburgh Wins Benefits From At&t Cable Deal The City Will Get Intranets And Help With Its Public Access Channel. A Compromise Was Reached On Open Access.

The City of Pittsburgh has quietly reaped benefits of a compromise in an issue that elsewhere has pitted cable companies against Internet service providers, telephone companies and governments.

Pittsburgh and AT&T yesterday amicably reached an agreement on when AT&T would open its high-speed cable network to independent Internet service providers.

The City Council approved a cable TV franchise agreement with AT&T, that, while stopping short of requiring AT&T to open its high-speed cable network to competitors, did create a compromise. The pact mandates that if AT&T must open its cable lines to Internet service providers (ISPs) in any other community in the country, it must do so in Pittsburgh. AT&T is the only cable company in Pittsburgh.

Pittsburgh has also shown that communities can win "goodies" from their cable companies in franchise negotiations: It negotiated three community intranets and $5 million in funding to buy new equipment for its local public access channel.

Pittsburgh sought open access immediately from AT&T, City Councilman Dan Cohen said, but AT&T regarded it as a "deal breaker."

"This is as far as AT&T has gone with any municipality as far as open access," Cohen said. If the council had insisted on requiring it, "we would not have had an agreement with AT&T, and it would have meant losing a lot of other benefits that come with franchise renewal."

The Pittsburgh franchise agreement sets precedents on the open-access/forced-access issue, because AT&T voluntarily and publicly agreed to the conditions, the OpenNet Coalition said. The group, led by America Online, GTE Corp. and other phone companies and ISPs, is lobbying communities and legislatures to mandate that cable companies, like phone companies, share their networks with other ISPs.

But AT&T downplayed the significance of its agreement. "We did not reverse our stance on forced access whatsoever," said John Mellor, an AT&T spokesman. "These conditions are extremely consistent with what we have seen in other jurisdictions."

The voluntary agreement in Pittsburgh is in contrast to actions in other communities - such as Broward County, Fla., and Portland, Ore. - which mandated access nearly immediately. In both cases, the cable companies sued the communities.