In the town of Red Bank, NJ Verizon has applied to operate a cable TV service over their fiber optic network, but not everyone is thrilled.

Town resident Tom L is lobbying town council to have three principles upheld in the deal they’re currently negotiating with Verizon:

1. A la carte cable service. Subscribers only pay for the channels they want instead being forced into bundles.
2. No opposition to a future municipal WiFi plan. Verizon has fought savagely to oppose municipal wi-fi plans in the past.
3. To obey the tenets of Network Neutrality and not implement a tiered internet access structure. Verizon and other telcos have been talking a lot lately about charging more to visit certain, higher bandwidth sites, like YouTube or Apple iTunes.

Read more at Tom’s blog he set up to track this important issue.

Red Bank is one of several pilot towns chosen for the new program. If successful, the same battle will be fought at the local level across the nation, unless of course Verizon gets its way with the federal government and eliminates its responsibility to negotiate with individual towns on cable franchises, as detailed in this Business Week article.

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