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North Carolina has achieved a new low. It is now tied with bottom-rated Mississippi as America’s least-connected state, at least in terms of broadband adoption.
Christopher Mitchell and Todd O’Boyle add up the cost to the state’s economy from years of broadband neglect from dominant providers like Time Warner Cable, AT&T, and CenturyLink.
Although the largest cities in the state do reasonably well, suburban and rural North Carolina continue to suffer with slow or no service at all, thanks to last-generation cable and spotty DSL service that has not kept up with other states.
Mitchell and O’Boyle blame much of the problem in their editorial in the Charlotte News & Observer on two factors: a lack of competition and a legislature that cozied up to corporate dollars to pass an anti-competitive community broadband ban in 2011.
After state legislators collected more than $1 million in campaign donations from Time Warner Cable and AT&T, the General Assembly passed a law in 2011 that effectively barred communities from building their own networks. These corporations are members of the American Legislative Exchange Council, a national organization that drafts business-friendly “model bills” to push a corporate agenda in statehouses across the country.
The impetus for that effort was the city of Wilson’s decision to build its own network after existing providers declined to improve their services. The city’s globally competitive fiber optic network offers Internet connections far faster than possible on DSL or cable – and it is far more reliable.
Because it is owned by the city, the Wilson network keeps its prices affordable. And because locals now have a choice, Time Warner Cable priced its services more competitively in Wilson than in nearby towns without meaningful competition.
Time Warner Cable, AT&T and CenturyLink waged a multiyear lobbying campaign to secure the 2011 bill. They claimed it encouraged fair competition, but their real goal was to eliminate consumer choice, as documented in a new report by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance and Common Cause: “The empire lobbies back: How national cable and DSL companies banned the competition in North Carolina.”
As a result, although Time Warner Cable has invested in a data center and billing operation in the state (and received taxpayer-funded tax breaks in the process), average consumers are still receiving service that lags far behind community-owned fiber networks in cities like Wilson and Salisbury.
AT&T’s response to a call for investment was news it told 75 of its Greensboro-area workers to either move to Alabama or start looking for work somewhere else.
Both authors argue that North Carolina’s state legislature has decided to outsource the state’s broadband future to a handful of out-of-state corporations that have been able to increase rates, trickle out service improvements, and keep true competition at bay.
Christopher Mitchell works for the Institute for Local Self-Reliance and Todd O’Boyle is affiliated with Common Cause.
Other stories of interest:
- Making a Difference: We’re Making Progress on NC’s Anti-Community Broadband Bill
- Anti-Community Broadband N.C. State Rep. Marilyn Avila’s Fun Weekend in Asheville: Did You Pay?
- Wilson, North Carolina Builds Its Own Municipal Fiber Optic System When Others Didn’t Step Up
- Big Cable Tries to Squash Municipal Competition: Round One
- N.C.’s Fastest & Cheapest Broadband Comes from Community-Owned Networks Some Want to Ban
Every AT&T, CenturyLink, and Time Warner Cable customer in North Carolina should be ashamed of both their providers and their state politicians for not wanting to allow communities to build their own broadband network in North Carolina very severely.
I feel that Randall Stephenson with AT&T, Glen Post with CenturyLink, and Glenn Britt with Time Warner Cable, and all of the state politicians are trying to be way too big being like the Wal-Mart’s, the Clive Davis’s when he was at Columbia Records in the 1970′s, the Neil Bogart’s of Casablanca Records fame of the 1970′s disco era, the Trinity Broadcasting Network’s, the David Smith (one of the Smith brothers from Sinclair Broadcast Group), the Harry Pappas as part of the Pappas Telecasting Companies, the Bernard Madoff’s, the Enron’s, the Worldcom’s, the Adelphia’s, the Tyco’s, the Martha Stewart’s, and the Jill Kelley’s of the 2000′s by letting greed get out of control so all of the head employees and bosses at AT&T, CenturyLink, and Time Warner Cable to be able to enjoy carefree lavishly spending to support carefree lavishly lifestyles with luxurious homes, luxurious yachts, luxurious jets, luxurious cars, join luxurious clubs, go to luxurious conventions, go to luxurious hotels, go to luxurious casinos to do gambling, throw luxurious parties, and have other luxurious items just to make them very happy then trying and willingness to improve the quality of all of their employees and making the customers very happy as well.
I hope and I wish that AT&T, CenturyLink, and Time Warner Cable goes out of business for their unwillingness to care for their customers and their employees. I feel that Randall Stephenson with AT&T, Glen Post with CenturyLink, and Glenn Britt with Time Warner Cable are trying to bribe like the General Tire/RKO General of the 1960′s and 1970′s by not being very honest of not only the customers and also on themselves.
I hope and I wish that the FCC would allow all the television and telephone providers with internet broadband that has never ever impose usage caps to the internet broadband customers be allowed to purchase and acquired customers from AT&T, CenturyLink, and Time Warner Cable and are being required to make a real big concession that they would promised not to have any difficulties with all the internet broadband providers competitors and their customers by not imposing usage caps and meters and raising prices for them to put them out of business sooner and without any interference for 12 straight whole years.
I feel that Randall Stephenson with AT&T, Glen Post with CenturyLink, and Glenn Britt with Time Warner Cable, and all of the state politicians are way too big being way too busy being the PSY Gangham Style, the Carly Rae Jepsen Call Me Maybe, the Nicole Westbrook It’s Thanksgiving, the Rebecca Black Friday, the Double Take Hot Problems and the Guns N Roses Axl Rose as well as trying be act like the Jerry Sandusky’s as the assaulters, the Jodi Arias’s, the Casey Anthony’s, the Charles Manson’s, the Lyle and Erik Menendez’s, the O. J. Simpson’s, the Scott Peterson’s, and the Drew Peterson’s as the greedy murderers, the Lindsay Lohan’s as the drunks and the drug abusers, the Rodney Dangerfield’s, the John Belushi’s, and the Chris Farley’s as the comedians, the Gordon Gekko’s, the Victoria Grayson’s, The Victor Newman’s and the Jack Abbott’s, the J. R. Ewing’s and the Cliff Barnes’s, the Charles Montgomery Burn’s, the Homer and Bart Simpson’s, the Peter Griffin’s, the Garfield cat’s, the Cookie Monster’s, and the Miss Piggy’s, of the television, telephone and internet broadband industry of preferring to let customer service suffer by not allowing communities to build their own broadband networks in North Carolina.
I feel that Randall Stephenson with AT&T, Glen Post with CenturyLink, and Glenn Britt with Time Warner Cable, and all of the state politicians are trying to turn into the 1919 Chicago White Sox’s baseball team and the Southern Methodist University football of the 1980′s to force all the customers to accept whether or not the customers will be willing to deal with AT&T’s, CenturyLink, and Time Warner Cable customer service and making them deal with just poor customer service in North Carolina. I urge all the AT&T, CenturyLink, and Time Warner Cable customers in North Carolina to boycott Randall Stephenson with AT&T, Glen Post with CenturyLink, and Glenn Britt with Time Warner Cable, and all of the state politicians including those in the House and Senate right now for making all the customers suffer from having to deal with poor service for their internet broadband needs and not allowing communities to build their own broadband networks in North Carolina.
I’m commented in response to all AT&T, CenturyLink, and Time Warner Cable customers who are very sick and tired of all the ways Randall Stephenson with AT&T, Glen Post with CenturyLink, and Glenn Britt with Time Warner Cable, and all of the state politicians to make sure that communities don’t build their own broadband networks and have fears to see AT&T, CenturyLink, and Time Warner Cable internet service deteriorate very much rapidly in a heartbeat in North Carolina.
I gracefully would support all community internet broadband providers and would want all of them to be able to be allowed to provide the fastest internet speeds of up to 1GB very fairly by the communities being allowed to build their own fiber optics cable lines without interference from Randall Stephenson with AT&T, Glen Post with CenturyLink, and Glenn Britt with Time Warner Cable, and all of the state politicians with the fact that AT&T, CenturyLink, and Time Warner Cable is already providing very limited internet broadband service at way less broadband speeds to all of their own customers.
I hope and I wish that Randall Stephenson with AT&T, Glen Post with CenturyLink, and Glenn Britt with Time Warner Cable, and all of the state politicians is willing to allow all the communites to build out their own fiber optic cable networks for their superior mega fast internet broadband service that beats out AT&T, CenturyLink, and Time Warner Cable internet service and speeds to all of their own customers in North Carolina.