SAN FRANCISCO HAS lousy, overpriced cable TV service. With cable becoming increasingly important for a lot more than TV, San Francisco needs to be taking a long, hard look at what it wants from its service provider, Comcast, and what it should demand when the 40-year franchise agreement expires at the end of this year.

Instead – in the continuation of a terrible pattern we've seen three times in the past decade – the city is preparing to extend the franchise for four more years in exchange for an $8 million cash settlement. The money's nice, but the process is all backward: Local media activists were just getting started on a needs assessment (a report on what the community is looking to get from a communications franchise) when the settlement came down.

The terms of the deal require Comcast to pay about $3.5 million directly to the General Fund and to pour another $4.4 million into new equipment and operating funds for public access, government, and educational channels. But in exchange, the city can't even begin to negotiate a new deal for four more years.

That's a bad deal for San Francisco. With the communications world vastly different than it was in 1975, the city needs to start from scratch. Comcast is selling not only cable TV but telephone and broadband service. Community facilities, schools, and low-income residents need cheap or free telecommunications services. The rates need to be tightly regulated, and in some cases, sharply reduced. Service needs to be upgraded (getting new cable TV or broadband installed is often a nightmare, with service "windows" of up to four hours, and late arrivals – or nonarrivals – are common).

We agree the city desperately needs new revenue, but this settlement could set the tone for another long-term franchise agreement – and it contains few of the things the city needs. The supervisors should reject it.