The only one Gigabit broadband service currently available in the United States for residential and business customers is in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Meet people who live and work in one of the smartest cities in the country: what services do they embrace today, what is their vision for the future, and what kind of culture do they think makes this all possible.  New jobs are moving into Chattanooga every day, and existing companies are learning to take advantage of the new business opportunities gigabit broadband delivers.  You may be surprised to learn America’s best Internet access comes from a publicly-owned utility that works hard every day for its customers, not investors and banks living a thousand miles away.  (6 minutes)

The Republican takeover of the North Carolina legislature in 2010 was great news for some of the state’s largest telecommunications companies, who successfully received almost universal support from those legislators to outlaw community broadband service in North Carolina — the 19th state to throw up impediments to a comfortable corporate broadband duopoly.

Dialing Up the Dollars — produced by the National Institute on Money in State Politics, found companies including AT&T, Time Warner Cable, CenturyLink, and the state cable lobby collectively spent more than $1.5 million over the past five years on campaign contributions.  Most of the money went to legislators willing to enact legislation that would largely prohibit publicly-owned competitive broadband networks from operating in the state.

North Carolina consumer groups have fought anti-community broadband initiatives for the past several years, with most handily defeated in the legislature.  But in 2010, Republicans assumed control of both the House and Senate for the first time since the late 1800s, and the change in party control made all the difference.  Of 97 Republican lawmakers who voted, 95 supported HB 129, the corporate-written broadband competition ban introduced by Rep. Marilyn Avila, a legislator who spent so much time working with the cable lobby, we’ve routinely referred to her as “(R-Time Warner Cable).”

Democrats were mostly opposed to the measure: 45 against, 25 for.  Stop the Cap! called out those lawmakers as well, many of whom received substantial industry money in the form of campaign donations.

The Institute for Local Self-Reliance pondered broadband speeds and value in North Carolina and found commercial providers lacking.  (3 minutes)

*AT&T’s total includes contributions from BellSouth in 2006 and 2008 and AT&T Mobility LLC. **CenturyLink’s total includes contributions from Embarq Corp.

According to Catharine Rice, president of the SouthEast Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors, HB 129 received the greatest lobbying support from Time Warner Cable, the state cable lobbying association — the North Carolina Cable and Telecommunications Association (NCCTA), and CenturyLink.

Following the bill’s passage, the NCCTA issued a press release stating, “We are grateful to the members of the General Assembly who stood up for good government by voting for this bill.”

CenturyLink sent e-mail to its employees suggesting they write thank you letters to supportive legislators:

 “Thanks to the passage of House Bill 129, CenturyLink has gained added confidence to invest in North Carolina and grow our business in the state.”

http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/CenturyLink Frustration.flv

A CenturyLink customer endures frustration from an infinite loop while calling customer service. Is this how the company will grow the business in North Carolina?  (1 minute)

Consumers Pay the Price

In North Carolina, both Time Warner Cable and AT&T increased prices in 2011.

After the bill became law without the signature of Gov. Bev Purdue, Time Warner Cable increased cable rates across North Carolina.  CenturyLink’s version of AT&T’s U-verse — Prism — has seen only incremental growth with around 70,000 customers nationwide.  The phone company also announced an Internet Overcharging scheme — usage caps — on their broadband customers late last fall.

Someone had to pay for the enormous largesse of campaign cash headed into lawmaker pockets.  For the state’s largest cable operator — Time Warner Cable — another rate increase handily covered the bill.

In all, lawmakers received thousands of dollars each from the state’s incumbent telecom companies:

• Lawmakers who voted in favor of HB 129 received, on average, $3,768, which is 76 percent more than the average $2,135 received by the those who voted against the bill;
• 78 Republican lawmakers received an average of $3,824, which is 36 percent more than the average $2,803 received by 53 Democrats;
• Those in key legislative leadership positions received, on average, $13,531, which is more than double the $2,753 average received by other lawmakers;
• The four primary sponsors of the bill received a total of $37,750, for an average of $9,438, which is more than double the $3,658 received on average by those who did not sponsor the bill.

Even worse for rural North Carolina, little progress has been made by commercial providers to expand broadband in less populated areas of the state.  AT&T earlier announced it was largely finished expanding its U-verse network and has stalled DSL deployment as it determines what to do with that part of its business.

In fact, the most aggressive broadband expansion has come from existing community providers North Carolina’s lawmakers voted to constrain. Salisbury’s Fibrant has opted for a slower growth strategy to meet the demand for its service and handle the expense associated with installing it.  Wilson’s Greenlight fiber to the home network supplies 100/100Mbps speeds to those who want it today.

In Upside-Down World at the state capitol in Raleigh, community-owned providers are the problem, not today’s duopoly of phone and cable companies that deliver overpriced, comparatively slow broadband while ignoring rural areas of the state.

Key Players

Some of the key players that were “motivated” to support the cable and phone company agenda, according to the report:

Tillis collected $37,000 from Big Telecom for his last election, in which he ran unopposed. Tillis was in a position to make sure the telecom industry's agenda was moved through the new Republican-controlled legislature.

Thom Tillis, who became speaker of the house in 2011, received $37,000 in 2010–2011 (despite running unopposed in 2010), which is more than any other lawmaker and significantly more than the $4,250 he received 2006–2008 combined. AT&T, Time Warner Cable, and Verizon each gave Tillis $1,000 in early-mid January, just before he was sworn in as speaker on January 26. Tillis voted for the bill, and was in a key position to ensure it moved along the legislative pipeline.

The others:

• Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Berger received $19,500, also a bump from the $13,500 he received in 2008 and the $15,250 in 2006. He voted for the bill.
• Senate Majority Leader Harry Brown received $9,000, significantly more than the $2,750 he received in 2006 and 2008 combined. Brown voted in favor of the bill.
• Democratic Leader Martin Nesbitt, who voted for the bill, received $8,250 from telecommunication donors; Nesbitt had received no contributions from telecommunication donors in earlier elections.

The law is now firmly in place, leaving North Carolina wondering where things go from here.  AT&T earlier announced it had no solutions for the rural broadband challenge, and now it and other phone and cable companies have made certain communities across North Carolina don’t get to implement their solutions either.

What You Can Do

1. If you live in North Carolina, check to see how your elected officials voted on this measure, and how much they collected from the corporate interests who supported their campaigns.  Then contact them and let them know how disappointed you are they voted against competition, against lower rates, against better broadband, and with out of state cable and phone companies responsible for this bill and the status quo it delivers.  Don’t support lawmakers that don’t support your interests.
2. If you live outside of North Carolina and we alert you to a similar measure being introduced in your state, get involved. It is much easier to keep these corporate welfare bills from becoming law than it is to repeal them once enacted.  If you enjoy paying higher prices for reduced service and slow speeds, don’t get involved in the fight. If you want something better and don’t appreciate big corporations writing laws in this country, tell your lawmakers to vote against these measures or else you will take your vote elsewhere.
3. Support community broadband. If you are lucky enough to be served by a publicly-owned broadband provider that delivers good service, give them your business.  Yes, it may cost a few dollars more when incumbent companies are willing to slash rates to drive these locally owned providers out of business, but you will almost always receive a technically superior connection from fiber-based providers and the money earned stays right in your community. Plus, unlike companies like CenturyLink, they won’t slap usage caps on your broadband service.

http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Time Warner Cable -- Fiber Spot.flv

What do you do when your company doesn’t have a true, fiber to home network and faces competition from someone that does?  You obfuscate like Time Warner Cable did in this ad produced for their Southern California customers. (1 minute)

[Stop the Cap! has written extensively about the pervasive influence some of the nation's largest cable and phone companies have on telecommunications legislation in this country.  On the state level, one group above all others is responsible for quietly getting company-ghost-written bills and resolutions into the hands of state lawmakers to introduce as their own.]

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is the latest corporate response to campaign finance and lobbying reform — a Washington, D.C.-based “middle man” that brings lawmakers and corporate interests together while obfuscating the obvious conflict of interest to voters back home if they realized what was going on.

ALEC focuses on state laws its corporate members detest because, in many cases, they represent the only regulatory obstacles left after more than two decades of deregulatory fervor on the federal level.  State lawmakers are ALEC’s targets — officeholders unaccustomed to a multi-million dollar influence operation.  The group invites lawmakers to participate in policy sessions that equally balance corporate executives on one side with elected officials on the other.  Consumers are not invited to participate.

ALEC’s telecom members have several agendas on the state level, mostly repealing:

• Local franchising and oversight of cable television service;
• Statewide oversight of the quality of service and measuring the reliability of phone and cable operators;
• Consumer protection laws, including those that offer customers a third party contact for unresolved service problems;
• Universal service requirements that insist all customers in a geographic region be permitted to receive service;
• Funding support for public, educational, and government access television channels;
• Rules governing the eventual termination of essential service for non/past due payments;
• Local zoning requirements and licensing of outside work.

But ALEC is not always focused on deregulation or “smaller government.” In fact, many of its clients want new legislation that is designed to protect their position of incumbency or enhance profits.  Cable and phone company-written bills that restrict or ban public broadband networks are introduced to lawmakers through ALEC-sponsored events.  In several cases, model legislation that was developed by cable and phone companies was used as a template for nearly-identical bills introduced in several states without disclosing who actually authored the original bill.

ALEC specializes in secrecy, rarely granting interviews or talking about the corporations that pay tens of thousands of dollars to belong.  Corporate members also enjoy full veto rights over any proposal or idea not to their liking, and aborted resolutions or legislative proposals are kept completely confidential. More often than not, however, legislators and corporate members come to an agreement on something, and the end product ends up in a central database of model bills and resolutions ready to be introduced in any of 50 state legislatures.

Many do, and often these proposed bills are remarkably similar, if not identical. That proved to be no coincidence.  In July 2011, the Center for Media and Democracy was able to obtain a complete copy of ALEC’s master database of proposed legislation.  The Center called it a stark example of “corporate collaboration reshaping our democracy, state by state.”

National Public Radio takes an inside look at the American Legislative Exchange Council and how it works to help major corporations influence and change state laws. (October 29, 2010) (8 minutes)
You must remain on this page to hear the clip, or you can download the clip and listen later.

ALEC’s Corporate Telecom Members

ALEC defends itself saying it does not directly lobby any legislator.  That is, in fact true.  But many of its corporate members clearly do.  AT&T is one of ALEC’s most high profile members, serving as a “Private Enterprise Board” member, state corporate co-chair of Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas (all AT&T service areas), a member of the Telecommunications and Information Technology Task force, and “Chairman” level sponsor of the 2011 ALEC Annual Conference (a privilege for those contributing $50,000).

AT&T’s lobbying is legendary, and is backed with enormous campaign contributions to legislators on the state and federal level.

But AT&T isn’t the only telecommunications company that belongs to or supports ALEC:

• CenturyLink (also including Qwest Communications), “Director” level sponsor of 2011 ALEC Annual Conference ($10,000 in 2010)
• Cincinnati Bell
• Comcast, State corporate co-chair of Georgia, Minnesota, Missouri and Utah and recipient of ALEC’s 2011 State Chair of the Year Award
• Cox Communications, “Trustee” level sponsor of 2011 ALEC Annual Conference ($5,000 in 2010)
• Time Warner Cable, State corporate co-chair of Ohio, “Director” level sponsor of 2011 ALEC Annual Conference ($10,000 in 2010)
• Verizon Communications, Private Enterprise Board member and State corporate co-chair of Virginia and Wyoming

ALEC supporters among trade groups and astroturf/corporate-influenced “non profits”:

• National Cable and Telecommunications Association, ALEC Telecommunications and Information Technology Task Force member
• Free State Foundation (think tank promoting limited government and rule of law principles in telecommunications and information technology policy)
• Heartland Institute, Exhibitor at ALEC’s 2011 Annual Conference, Telecommunications and Information Technology Task Force member, Education Task Force member, Commerce, Insurance and Economic Development Task Force, Financial Services Subcommittee member and Energy, Environment and Agriculture Task Force member

ALEC’s Ready-to-Introduce Legislation

The two most pervasive pieces of legislation ALEC’s telecom members (especially AT&T) want as a part of state law are bills to strip local authority over cable systems and hand it to the state government and the elimination or excessive micromanagement of community broadband networks:

This model bill for increased cable competition strips most of the authority your community has over cable television operations and transfers it to under-funded or less aggressive state bodies. Although the bill claims to protect local oversight and community access stations, the statewide video franchise fee almost always destroys the funding model for public, educational, and government access channels.

These municipal broadband bills are always written to suggest community and private players must share a "level playing field." But bills like these always exempt the companies that actually wrote the bill, and micromanage and limit the business operations of the community provider.

Legislators: Bring the family to Mardi Gras World on us, sponsored by America's largest telecommunications companies.

WHYY Philadelphia’s ‘Fresh Air’ spent a half hour exploring who really writes the legislation introduced in state legislatures. When ALEC gets involved, The Nation reporter John Nichols thinks the agenda is clear: “All of those pieces of legislation and those resolutions really err toward a goal, and that goal is the advancement of an agenda that seems to be dictated at almost every turn by multinational corporations.” (July 21, 2011) (32 minutes)
You must remain on this page to hear the clip, or you can download the clip and listen later.

Unfortunately, state lawmakers are not always sophisticated enough to recognize a carefully crafted legislative agenda at work.  National Public Radio found one excellent example — the 2010 Arizona immigration law that requires police to arrest anyone who cannot prove they entered the country legally when asked.  America’s immigration problems remain a major topic on the agenda at some ALEC events, curious for a corporate-backed group until you realize one of ALEC’s members — the Corrections Corporation of America — America’s largest private prison operator, stood to earn millions providing incarceration services for what some estimated could be tens, if not hundreds of thousands of new prisoners being held on suspicion of immigration violations.

CCA was in the room when the model immigration legislation, eventually adopted by Arizona’s legislature, was written at an ALEC conference in 2009.

Bring the Kids, Stay for the Corporate Influence

Getting legislators to attend these seminars isn’t as hard as it might sound.

In January, we reported members of the North Carolina General Assembly, who showed their willingness to support telecom industry-written bills when it passed an anti-community broadband initiative in 2011, were wined and dined (along with their staff) by ALEC at the Mardi Gras World celebration in New Orleans.  Rep. Marilyn Avila (R-Time Warner Cable), who introduced the aforementioned measure, brought her husband to Asheville to enjoy a special weekend as the featured guest speaker at a dinner sponsored by North Carolina’s state cable lobbying group:

The North Carolina Cable Telecommunications Association reported they not only picked up Marilyn’s food and bar bill ($290 for the Aug. 6-8 event), they also covered her husband Alex, too.  Alex either ate and drank less than Marilyn, or chose cheaper items from the menu, because his food tab came to just $185.50.  The cable lobby also picked up the Avila’s $471 hotel bill, and handed Alex another $99 in walking-around money to go and entertain himself during the weekend event.  The total bill, effectively covered by the state’s cable subscribers: $1,045.50.

Rep. Avila with Marc Trathen, Time Warner Cable's top lobbyist (right) Photo by: Bob Sepe of Action Audits

ALEC makes it easy because it pays the way for lawmakers and families to attend their events through the award of “scholarships”:

The organization encourages state lawmakers to bring their families. Corporations sponsor golf tournaments on the side and throw parties at night, according to interviews and records obtained by NPR.

[...] Videos and photos from one recent ALEC conference show banquets, open bar parties and baseball games — all hosted by corporations. Tax records show the group spent $138,000 to keep legislators’ children entertained for the week.

But the legislators don’t have to declare these as corporate gifts.

Consider this: If a corporation hosts a party or baseball game and legislators attend, most states require the lawmakers to say where they went and who paid. In this case though, legislators can just say they went to ALEC’s conference. They don’t have to declare which corporations sponsored these events.

Reporter John Nichols told NPR ALEC’s focus on state politics is smart:

“We live at the local and state level. That’s where human beings come into contact more often than not,” he says. “We live today in a country where there’s a Washington obsession, particularly by the media but also by the political class. … And yet, in most areas, it’s not Washington that dictates the outlines, the parameters of our life. … And so if you come in at the state government level, you have a much greater ability to define how you’re going to operate.”

Resources:

• ALEC Exposed: Access a database of more than 800 corporate ghost-written bills and resolutions intended to become state law in all 50 states. Sponsored by the Center for Media and Democracy.
• ALEC’s Database Revealed: A more general indictment of ALEC and its coordinated agenda to allow corporate influence to hold an increasing role in public policy.
• Protestors Demand End to Verizon’s Involvement in ALEC: In Albany, N.Y., protestors turned up in front of Verizon demanding the company end its association with ALEC.
• California Lawmakers Enjoy Free Trips to Hawaii, Europe: California’s state politicians are under fire for lavish travel arranged by ALEC.

Fibrant, a community-owned fiber-to-the-home provider in Salisbury, N.C., has discovered the importance of redundancy. A major service outage knocked out phone and broadband service for several hours Monday, due to a fiber cut between Concord and Salisbury.  Fibrant’s provider, DukeNet, restored service after four and half hours by rerouting around the cable cut, but the incident left Fibrant looking for a backup provider to reduce the chance such a service outage will occur again.

City Manager Doug Paris, who was instrumental in getting Fibrant up and running in Salisbury, said the incident underlined the need to have redundancy to keep customers online.  While the city asks DukeNet for an explanation of the most recent service outage, Salisbury is taking bids for backup service.

Redundancy is a lesson virtually every service provider learns — commercial or otherwise.  What company has not suffered a significant service outage from an errant backhoe or construction crew severing a vital fiber link? Without a backup provider, service fails and customers howl.  Those companies experiencing multiple outages soon learn having a second provider can keep service disruptions to a minimum and more importantly make them invisible to customers.

Salisbury is located northeast of the city of Charlotte, N.C.

Paris told the Salisbury Post the city’s intent to contract with a second supplier has its benefits. A large educational institution has now signed up for service, with several potential new business customers considering Fibrant as well.

Fibrant has won a 13% market share in Salisbury, supplying phone, Internet, and cable TV to more than 1,700 customers.  Fibrant offers the fastest broadband service in the city and competes primarily with Time Warner Cable.  It also faces perennial opposition from anti “government broadband” critics, many nipping at the provider for political reasons.

Opponent John Bare has compared Fibrant to welfare, opposing it because it is not operated by the private sector.

But Fibrant has kept its competitors on their toes, forcing both the local cable and phone company to offer cut-rate deals for new customers and those threatening to switch.  Those low prices and retention deals have cut into Fibrant’s projected share of business in the community, but city officials note the customers who do sign up stay with the provider.  Fibrant has a 99% customer retention rate.

Fibrant’s biggest challenge remains its start up costs and debt.  The provider spends nearly $1,350 for each residential installation, for which it charges customers nothing unless they depart within a year of signing up.  Fibrant recoups installation and network construction costs from customers over time.  But the company does have plans to more aggressively market its service to Salisbury’s 34,000 residents in light of competitive offers from cable and phone companies.  Fibrant manages to win around 30 new customers a week.

Salisbury’s fiber network does not pitch customers “teaser rates” that rise considerably after the promotion expires. It prefers to market its superior speeds and service, and notes all of the revenue earned by Fibrant stays in the local community instead of being pocketed by Wall Street banks and investors.

If you are customer of Charter Cable, chances are you are paying a lot more than $60 a month for a complete package of cable television with a DVR box and 30Mbps broadband, price locked for two years.  But Charter is selling precisely that package to customers in Monticello, Minn.  Why do they get a deal you can’t have?  Because your town probably doesn’t have a community-owned broadband provider delivering competition.

Charter’s website offers new customers a six-month cable/broadband promotion for $64.98 a month, but that does not include a DVR box and delivers half the speed Charter pitches to the chosen few in Monticello.  After six months, the deal ends. A package including what Charter sells in Monticello for $60 a month costs more than twice as much elsewhere — $145 a month for customers in Rochester and Duluth.

"For the BEST prices in town, you must call your 'In-Field' representative," the flyer declares, including the name and number of a local Charter representative.

The cable operator is keeping the two-year special offer quiet as much as possible with the use of door flyers hand-delivered to potential customers. If Charter’s five million customers nationwide find out, they may wonder why they are paying dramatically more for the exact same service.

The city of Monticello already knows why.  The local community decided the incumbent providers — TDS Telecom and Charter Communications — were not giving the city the attention it deserved, so it built its own 21st century fiber to the home system to bring faster broadband to the region.  Now the incumbent commercial operators appear to be stopping at nothing to put FiberNet Monticello out of business.  Charter’s pricing takes fat profits from customers in nearby Minnesota cities and appears to cross-subsidize the heavily discounted service on offer in Monticello.  While that delivers short-term savings to customers in Monticello, other Charter customers are helping cross-subsidize those low rates on their own high cable bills.

If you are a Charter Cable customer, why can’t you have the same deal residents in Monticello are getting?  Why not call Charter at 1-888-438-2427 and ask them?

Sen. Linda Runbeck, a dues-paying member of ALEC, a corporate funded pressure group that advocates for legislation advantageous to ALEC's corporate sponsors.

Rural Minnesota is facing a full frontal assault on community broadband, courtesy of a state representative so proud of her involvement in a corporate front group, she’s actually a dues-paying member.

State Sen. Linda Runbeck (R-Circle Pines) introduced HF 2695, a bill to prohibit publicly-owned broadband systems:

A bill for an act relating to telecommunications; prohibiting publicly owned broadband systems; proposing coding for new law in Minnesota Statutes, chapter 237.

BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF MINNESOTA: Section 1. [237.201] PUBLICLY OWNED BROADBAND SYSTEM; PROHIBITION.

(a) Notwithstanding section 475.58, subdivision 1, other state law, county ordinance, or any authority granted in a home rule charter, a city or a county may not use tax revenues raised within its jurisdiction or issue debt to construct, acquire, own, or operate, in whole or in part, a system to deliver broadband service.

(b) Notwithstanding sections 123A.21, 123B.61 to 123B.63, 125B.26, and 475.58, subdivision 1, no school district or service cooperative may use state revenues, tax revenues raised within its jurisdiction, or issue debt to construct, acquire, own, or operate, in whole or in part, a system to deliver broadband service.

(c) For the purposes of this section, “broadband service” means a service that allows subscribers to access information from the Internet by means of a physical, terrestrial, non-mobile, or fixed wireless technology.

(d) This section applies to a system to deliver broadband service whose construction begins after the effective date of this section, but does not apply to:

1. the city of Minneapolis, St. Paul, or Duluth; or
2. the maintenance or repair of a system delivering broadband service whose initial construction began before the effective date of this section, provided that the geographical area in which the system delivers broadband service is not expanded as a result of the maintenance or repair.

EFFECTIVE DATE. This section is effective the day following final enactment.

The public broadband option delivers the most bang for the buck, which is why some providers want to see it banned.

Runbeck is a dues-paying member of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a secretive corporate front group that lobbies lawmakers to introduce business-friendly legislation, often on the state level.  Runbeck told the Minnesota Independent via email that she paid $100 for a two-year membership in the organization, and says she’s never used ALEC’s “model legislation,” bills that are sometimes written by corporate members of the group and that pop up in state capitols across the country.

But Runbeck’s sudden interest in banning community broadband coincides with similar efforts in states like Georgia and South Carolina backed by big cable and phone companies.  Runbeck’s bill would directly target rural Minnesota, where broadband is the least robust, while exempting Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Duluth (and incumbent phone and cable companies) from the bill’s provisions.  Runbeck’s bill also constrains existing public broadband services from expanding, an important matter for providers still rolling out service to additional neighborhoods in their communities.

Community broadband is already hampered in Minnesota by laws that make such projects difficult to approve and build.  When projects do break ground, incumbent providers do everything possible to throw up roadblocks to delay or abort the progress being made.  In Monticello, TDS Telecom filed nuisance suits against that city’s public broadband network before finally deciding to upgrade service themselves.  Mediacom and Charter, two major Minnesota cable operators, have objected to public broadband projects that don’t even serve communities they’ve wired.

When the networks are in operation, providers like Charter work to undercut them by selling service at prices so low, they’re predatory.  But when competitors are driven out, prices rise… quickly.

 Runbeck’s $100 membership in ALEC is paying dividends, if you are a big incumbent cable or phone company. Consumers will pay much more than that if broadband competition is curtailed.

Consumers and community leaders across Georgia can now rest a little easier knowing AT&T’s plans to throw up roadblocks against community broadband have gone awry.  SB313, a custom-written corporate welfare bill designed to protect cable and phone companies from competition, has reportedly been turned into a “study bill” — a graceful way to kill bad legislation without hurting too many feelings.

It wasn’t just the fact incumbent phone and cable companies wanted to stop community broadband projects from wiring communities they’ve ignored for years.  It wasn’t even the absurdity of the bill defining Georgia’s “broadband” speeds at just 200kbps (later ‘generously’ amended and increased to 758kbps).  This bill died because of consumer and community outrage — local officials working hand in hand with woefully under-served Georgians asking their elected officials why they seemed to care more about AT&T’s interests than those of the people who elected them to office.

Specious political arguments about “government/taxpayer involvement in broadband” and a sudden blitz of campaign contributions for the bill’s backers simply couldn’t overcome the reality of broadband-challenged rural Georgia.

According to the National Broadband Map, Georgia ranks 20th in the nation for broadband access. According to the forward of a report by Rich Calhoun, Program Director of the Georgia Technology Initiative, “As I traveled through the state to talk with leaders in municipalities, counties and community anchor institutions, I found that many places throughout Georgia indicated that they did not have access to affordable or sufficient broadband services. Telecommunications firms who have made significant investments in Georgia indicated that in some areas of the state the return on investment would not qualify for further investment at the present time.”

As Stop the Cap! exposed to our readers, AT&T isn’t interested in serving the broadband needs of rural Georgia and doesn’t want anyone else serving them either.

We exposed the well-financed propaganda campaign that maligned some of Georgia’s past experiences with municipal broadband, many projects derailed not by government ‘failure’ but through political interference and the private sector.  We showed readers how to follow the money to see the connection between campaign contributions and the sudden interest in effectively banning community broadband.  We exposed the fact this is a coordinated, nationwide effort by a corporate backed lobbying group (ALEC) that pays to wine and dine lawmakers and then sell them on a catalog of bills ghost-written by some of the nation’s largest telecommunications companies.  Legislation that hamstrings competition and protects monopoly profits, while always conveniently exempting incumbent providers from the terms of the bills they effectively wrote.

But the real victory goes to readers who picked up the phone or sent e-mail letting Georgia legislators know you were watching them and paying attention to this obvious corporate welfare bill.  You made it more expensive for lawmakers to vote with AT&T, despite their campaign contributions, than to vote for -your- interests.  The next election is never too far away.

Why We Fight: These are the minimum speeds needed by some of Georgia's most important institutions. While state lawmakers have 100Mbps access in Atlanta, some are content to define 758kbps "broadband" as just fine for the rest of the state.

We also applaud the Institute for Local Self-Reliance.  Their Community Broadband Networks project was able to educate, coordinate, and rally local governments who may not have been aware their broadband future was about to be indefinitely held ransom by AT&T and Comcast.

We never underestimate AT&T’s power and money.  But they continue to underestimate us and the communities they are supposed to be serving.

Common sense prevailed in Georgia.  South Carolina may be a different story.  Their own anti-broadband measure is still alive and kicking.  We’ll be holding additional “calls to action” on this bad bill shortly.

Stay involved in the fight.  The better broadband you protect may be your own.

While incumbent phone and cable operators often try to directly block community broadband projects, sometimes politics and special insider interests also get in the way.  One of our loyal readers shared a piece with us published in Fierce Telecom that outlines the trouble spots:

Gov. Bobby Jindal Blows It for Louisiana; Wife’s Foundation Heavily Supported By AT&T

Jindal's wife's charity is a recipient of AT&T money.

The U.S. Dept. of Commerce awarded $80.5 million to help drain Louisiana’s broadband swamp with a new statewide fiber network linking the most rural and poor areas of the state, including schools, libraries, hospitals, and universities.  Users could have obtained service from 10Mbps-1Gbps, but not if Jindal had his way.  He preferred AT&T (and the state’s cable operators) handle everything the same way they have traditionally handled telecommunications in the state — service in big cities and next to nothing everywhere else.  In addition to directly supporting the governor, AT&T contributes substantially to a charitable foundation founded by Jindal’s wife.

Jindal never openly blocked the project.  Instead, his administration “dithered and bickered” over the fiber network and ran the clock out.  Last October, the Commerce Department revoked the grant, leaving Louisiana’s Broadband Alliance with little more than a plan they’ll never be able to implement as long as Jindal occupies the governor’s office.  Stop the Cap! covered the mess back in November.

Public Service Commissioner Foster Campbell:

“We want to know what the heck happened; we’re the only ones in the country that dropped the ball,” Campbell said. “I meet with people in every parish, and the number one priority by far is high-speed Internet, and how do you lose $80 million coming from the federal government to do that. How do you drop the ball, and if they did drop the ball was it because someone whispered in their ears, ‘it’s going interfere with big companies?’”

AT&T-Backed Astroturf Operation Scandalizes the Mayor’s Office and Ruins A High Tech Training Program

Marks

As Stop the Cap! wrote last fall, a scandal involving AT&T and the mayor of the state capital of Florida ultimately cost the city of Tallahassee a $1.6 million dollar federal broadband grant to expand Internet access to the urban poor and train disadvantaged citizens to navigate the online world.

Mayor John Marks never bothered to inform the city he had a direct conflict of interest with the group he strongly advocated as a participant in the grant project. The Alliance for Digital Equality (ADE) is little more than an AT&T astroturf effort — a front group that did almost nothing to bring Internet access to anyone. Mayor Marks was a paid adviser.

After the media got involved, the mayor’s office hoped the whole project would just go away. And it did, along with the $1.6 million.

Wisconsin Republicans <Heart> AT&T, Even When It Means Forfeiting $23 Million for Better Broadband

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is a close friend of AT&T.  So close, when the phone company was threatened with the loss of revenue earned from the institutional broadband network it leases to the state, Walker and his Republican colleagues intervened, literally turning away $23 million in government stimulus funding.  Walker alone has accepted more than $20,000 in campaign contributions from AT&T.  Stop the Cap! covered this story in detail in February 2011.

Governor Walker (R-AT&T)

The decision to return the money had a direct impact on 380 Wisconsin communities, 385 libraries, 82 schools, and countless public safety offices across the state.  Namely, being stuck with AT&T’s outdated and expensive network the state leases in successive five year contracts.  Since broadband stimulus funding requires the construction of networks designed to last 20 years, not five, Walker’s insistence on sticking with AT&T made the stimulus funding off-limits.  But what are friends for?

AT&T has historically had no trouble getting its phone calls returned by Republican state lawmakers, who have cheered most of AT&T’s proposed legislation through the state legislature.  Today, Wisconsin takes a “hands off” approach with the state’s cable and phone companies, passed a statewide franchising bill that stripped oversight away from local communities, and AT&T’s landline network faces little scrutiny in the state, especially in rural communities.

The state university is now attempting to bypass Walker with its own $37 million project, but it will never serve Wisconsin consumers.  The institutional network will target schools, hospitals and first responders.

As Fierce Telecom notes, other communities could face the loss of their stimulus funding if they do not get busy building the projects they promised.  The Rural Utilities Service, part of the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, has put several projects on notice they could forfeit broadband stimulus funding if they fail to meet project deadlines.

Not a problem

Who knew America’s largest cable and phone companies were in the broadband shortage business?

Broadband evangelist Craig Settles has been as outraged about this year’s crop of anti-broadband legislation as we have here at Stop the Cap!

He wrote about the implications of allowing state laws to be changed in favor of the big cable and phone companies in a piece published by GigaOM that details where these anti-community Internet bills are coming from:

This push is brought to you by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a group of corporate lobbyists who ghostwrite state bills behind closed doors that their pocket legislators then push on the floor. This “model” of anti-muni broadband legislation contains wording that is replicated in these latest bills and newspaper op-eds that attack community broadband.

Many of the nation’s largest phone and cable companies funnel funds into ALEC, and even sponsor wine-and-dine trips for state legislators and their families as part of a comprehensive effort to get their foot (and later proposed legislation) in the door.

Download this archive of ALEC-written and sponsored state legislation/policies affecting telecommunications and IT.  (16mb .zip file)

Few state legislators fully realize the implications of some of these measures, which can hamstring their state’s broadband networks into “good enough for you” broadband, as determined by Comcast, AT&T, Time Warner Cable, Verizon, and others.

ALEC’s dog-and-pony show opens with its corporate backers enhancing their campaign contributions to legislators likely to support their agenda.  ALEC’s lobbyists can then provide “boilerplate” templates for legislation that can be slightly modified and introduced at the state level for consideration.

With a significant increase in campaign contributions targeting friendly legislators, community broadband suddenly becomes a hot topic at the statehouse.

Legislators do not work alone to pass these measures.  As we’ve seen in other states, industry-backed lobbying firms deliver a comprehensive set of support services for the campaign to stop community broadband competition:

1. Talking points for legislators and others opposed to municipal Internet;
2. Professionally produced mailers that can be distributed to every home in a community bashing community networks;
3. Sample letters to the editor intended for local newspapers and easy-to-send letters to legislators asking them to support anti-broadband legislation;
4. Help from seemingly “independent” outside groups that criticize such networks, without disclosing their funding comes, in part or whole, from the cable or phone company.

Settles

Being hoodwinked by the companies that want these kinds of bills passed leave your community’s broadband needs entirely in the hands of providers that have performed so poorly in some cities, local governments have decided they have to provide the service themselves.  Settles illustrates the obvious:

This isn’t about unfair competition by local government. When Wilson’s 12-person IT department can plan, build and manage a network that can deliver speeds (up to a gig) 20 times faster than the best Time Warner Cable offers, that’s competing with superior technology. When Comcast customers switch to Chattanooga’s gig network because of their public utility’s better customer service, that’s competent competition. When tiny Reedsburg, Wis. refuses to compete against the large cable company on price, but beats competitors by offering greater value such as a better selection of Internet services, they compete based on local credibility.

So U.S. communities have to ask themselves, are they going to stay stuck on the train or will they be zipping along at warp speed?

Providers and their industry friends will always argue that you don’t need gigabit broadband speed — what you get from your cable or phone company today is “fast enough.”  Some go as far as to argue current providers are equipped to deliver whatever service customers need, but the demand “just is not there.”

Big Problem.

But as we argued on GigaOM ourselves, the nation’s largest telecom companies have already proven they apparently cannot meet the demand that exists today.  That is because an increasing number of them have started to slap arbitrary usage caps and other limits on their customers’ broadband usage.  Customers don’t want these Internet Overcharging schemes, yet they persist because of what providers effectively admit is a broadband shortage on their networks.

So for a city like Chattanooga, Tenn., which of the following providers should be punished (and potentially even banned) for being in the broadband business:

1. AT&T, which delivers around 6-7Mbps DSL in suburban Chattanooga or up to 24Mbps on its U-verse platform with 150GB/250GB usage limits respectively;
2. Comcast, which delivers up to 50Mbps over cable broadband with a 250GB usage cap;
3. EPB Fiber, which delivers up to 1,000Mbps over fiber optics with no usage cap.

If you are AT&T or Comcast, clearly the provider that must be stopped is #3 — EPB Fiber.  After all, you can’t be in the broadband shortage business when the competitor next door offers a broadband free-for-all made possible from an investment in a superior network that exists to serve customers, not shareholders and investment banks.