As we reported in August, the District is moving closer to ending Comcast’s virtual monopoly over cable television service in the city. Today the D.C. Office of Cable Television announced that a franchise agreement negotiated with Verizon for its fiber-optic service has been submitted to the D.C. Council for review.

Don’t go running to Comcast and telling them where they can shove their notoriously bad service, though. According to the press release, if the D.C. Council gives the go-ahead before the end of 2008, it will take as little as a year or as much as three years before any District neighborhoods are hooked up to Verizon’s all-in-one FiOS service. And even then, the service will be limited to a number of neighborhoods on opposite ends of the city — Barry Farm, Brightwood, Cleveland Park, Crestwood, Fort Stanton, Friendship Heights, Historic Anacostia, Petworth, Shepherd Park, Sheridan, Tenleytown, Van Ness and Woodley Park. (Talk about geographic and demographic extremes, huh?) Many of the District’s remaining neighborhoods may not see service until 2014, including Adams Morgan, Dupont Circle, Logan Circle, Shaw and the Southwest Waterfront.

A hearing before the Committee on Public Services and Consumer Affairs, chaired by Council member Mary Cheh (D-Ward 3), is to be scheduled before the agreement is submitted to the full council for a vote. We’re pulling for the agreement to be passed, not so much because we love Verizon, but because any type of competition in the District’s cable television market has to be a good thing. The question of the day is how many lobbyists Comcast might now send over to the Wilson Building to convince the Council either to sit on this or outright reject it.