New Orleans    When a delegation of members from ACTION United showed up with baloney sandwiches at the Pittsburgh City Council meeting, the Council asked them to address the body and expressed concern with them about the difficulty that low income families are having making Comcast’s promises of greater access to the Internet a reality.  The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette was clear that actions demanding accountability and access were now occurring in Houston, Little Rock, Shreveport, and Philadelphia (“Comcast’s Low-cost Internet Program Criticized”).

In Philadelphia members of ACTION United passed out 75 baloney sandwiches at the Comcast headquarters demanding the promised response from earlier meetings that indicated the company was considering improving its weak performance to date (“Activists Tangle Over Accessibility of Low-Income Program”).   Ironically, Comcast seems to have convinced some school principals to apologize in their behalf and accept responsibility for the limited outreach that should have been the company’s responsibility, not the public school that hoped to partner with them and benefit.  What a shell game?

There is no date for a reply in Houston yet?  The meeting in Little Rock is still “sometime” in the first two weeks of February.

The FCC had called Houston, Little Rock, and Philadelphia to ask for our permission to share the letters with Comcast and send our complaints to the company.  The Comcast lobbyist in Philly undoubtedly watched on his television as they read his email denying there were any complaints and begging the City Council to ignore our pleas.

Is the FCC trying to simply sweep this all under the rug and abandon their commitment to greater Internet access for lower income families by in effect pretending this is just Comcast’s “problem?”

Seems like we have no choice but to start having families file deceptive advertising complaints against Comcast with the FCC.  The FCC will have a harder time passing that buck back to Comcast.

This shell game has to stop.