Telecommunications providers have convinced the Commerce Department to stop asking too many questions about the Internet service their customers receive, including the fees providers charge and the speeds provided, because the information is “proprietary” and “useful to our competitors.”

It’s all a part of the federal government’s broadband mapping project — to create detailed maps showing who has access to what types of broadband, at what speed and at what price.  Those areas deemed underserved would be eligible for substantial broadband stimulus grants, paid for by taxpayers, and likely will be received by many of the same ISPs who are telling the government to butt out of their private business affairs.

In lieu of the detailed customer information the Commerce Department had been seeking, Verizon, Comcast, and AT&T have agreed to provide generic data about prices charged on a per-block basis and will also clue in the government as to the maximum speeds marketed to consumers, even if those speeds are not actually provided to individual customers.

Consumers Union was not happy with the Commerce Department’s decision, likening it to a cave-in.

Because the federal government will not allow the public to learn about the actual speeds achieved by customers, companies can continue to market and charge for an Internet service that doesn’t come close to achieving the speeds promised in advertising, according to Joel Kelsey, a telecommunications policy analyst for the consumer watchdog.

ISPs, particularly telephone line-based DSL service, routinely advertises speeds “up to” a certain level, but never guarantees those actual speeds will be achieved by customers.  DSL service is sensitive to the quality of the telephone line and the distance of the cable between the customer’s home or business and phone company facilities.  Longer distances always mean lower speeds, often much lower.

Cable companies rely on a shared bandwidth model, which means every home in a neighborhood shares a set amount of bandwidth.  The more users on the system, the slower the maximum speed.  In areas where cable companies have not upgraded service, or split neighborhoods up to reduce the number of residents sharing one “node,” speeds can dramatically drop at peak usage times.

“The actual speeds delivered to particular areas simply doesn’t match up,” Kelsey said. “The government gave a lot and received very, very little in return.”

ISPs complain that revealing these details will be useful information for competitors, and have steadfastly refused to provide it, despite the potential for those same companies to enjoy taxpayer dollars in the form of grants to finance specific broadband projects.

Since the federal government will rely heavily on the broadband mapping project to determine what projects have merit and meet an immediate need, who controls the map will have major influence on what projects will appear most eligible for stimulus money.

Public Knowledge continues to criticize the broadband mapping project as already being overrun by telecommunications special interests.  Connected Nation, a group tailor-made to be granted approval for statewide mapping initiatives, has a board heavy with telecommunications corporation representation.

Art Brodsky, communications director of Public Knowledge, has implied the telecommunication ‘fix’ is already in, but conceding even more to the telephone and cable industry threatens to turn the broadband stimulus program into a creature of big telecom.

“The whole mapping exercise is already on its way to being substantially corrupted as the telecom industry’s creation, which exists to prevent data from being public, is collecting mapping contracts right and left through the efforts of their lobbying and influence. There is absolutely no reason for the National Telecommunications & Information Administration (administering the data collection process) to concede on the data collection. NTIA and its supporters in the Administration and in Congress should realize that if agency backs down on this assault from the industry, there will be that much less of value worth saving,” Brodsky wrote.

“At the end of the day, somebody is going to be in control of the mapping. It will either be the public, and the public interest, as represented by NTIA, or the industry,” he concluded.

The cable and phone companies declared victory.  The American Cable Association, which represents smaller independent and rural operators which stand to receive a substantial amount in stimulus taxpayer funding, applauded the decision saying the government backing down would “improve and expedite the mapping effort,” said ACA president Matthew Polka.

Surprisingly, Larry Landis, a Republican-appointed Indiana utility regulatory commissioner and chairman of the federal-state group that will be responsible for the mapping project, also applauded the Commerce Department’s flexibility on getting access to detailed information.

Landis has past ties, albeit on the periphery, with AT&T through his former employer:

From 1985 through 1991, Landis was Vice President/Account Planning at an advertising firm informing the agency’s creative direction for clients such as Indiana Bell (now AT&T Indiana), at Handley & Miller, Inc.

The Center for Public Integrity graded the state of Indiana with a “C” for disclosure of utility commissioner outside ties in 2005.  No apparent direct ties to telecommunications interests were found in Landis’ 2004 disclosure, the last one available from the Center.

Up to $350 million taxpayer dollars will be earmarked for the mapping program, tainted as it might be according to critics.  The final map will be vital to determine what recipients will qualify for the $7.2 billion dollars in available funding for grant-worthy broadband projects.  The money will be awarded to for-profit and non-profit groups, typically those that can best tailor their funding request to the requirements specified in the grant application process.

Daryl Kramp, MP for Prince Edward-Hastings, announcing broadband initiative in eastern Ontario

Daryl Kramp, Member of Parliament for Prince Edward-Hastings, on behalf of John Baird, Canada’s Transport and Infrastructure Minister, and the Honourable Leona Dombrowsky, Minister of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs for Ontario, announced that the construction of a 21st century broadband network is a step closer in Eastern Ontario. The Government of Canada and the Province of Ontario have together set aside up to $110 million for the project.

“Our Government is delivering on investments that help create jobs and build sustainable communities,” said MP Kramp. “The construction of a broadband network in Eastern Ontario will help to expand and improve local businesses and their services, and significantly boost our regional economy.”

“Delivering broadband to Eastern Ontario is a critical infrastructure investment that will bring more industry to the region and create the jobs that will help our towns and rural communities prosper,” said Leona Dombrowsky, Ontario Minister of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs.

“Today’s announcement marks a major step forward in helping to secure the future prosperity of Eastern Ontario. Having a high-speed, high-capacity broadband network is one of the most important assets that we can utilize to assist us in unlocking the ingenuity and creativity of our people and businesses. We are extremely grateful to both the federal and provincial governments for their tremendous financial support for this project,” said Ron Emond, Chair of the Eastern Ontario Wardens’ Caucus.

The governments of Canada and Ontario will each set aside up to one-third of total eligible costs of the project, to a maximum contribution of $55 million. Eastern Ontario Wardens’ Caucus (EOWC) Incorporated and private sector partners will provide the remaining funding, with EOWC Inc. contributing up to $10 million. The total eligible costs of this project are estimated to be $170 million.

Once completed, the network will provide broadband service to the residents and businesses in many of the counties of Eastern Ontario (Hastings, Peterborough, Renfrew, Northumberland, Haliburton, Frontenac, Lanark, Prince Edward, Lennox & Addington, the United Counties of Stormont, Dundas & Glengarry, the United Counties of Prescott & Russell and the United Counties of Leeds & Grenville) as well as the City of Kawartha Lakes.

Many of these areas already have rudimentary broadband service in the form of DSL and limited cable television penetration, but many DSL accounts are speed limited to 1-3Mbps, which the EOWC has determined to be woefully inadequate for broadband applications of the near future.

Canada’s broadband initiatives outside of the most rural communities are starting to define the bare minimum network speed at 10Mbps for downloading if the network is to sustain viability in the future.  With a goal of reaching up to 95% of eastern Ontario with broadband service in the next four years, a variety of technologies are likely to be considered depending on the population being reached.  Those living in the most rural areas are likely to find wireless service the most viable option, delivered with a form of WiMax.  Rural enclaves or neighborhoods outside of community centers may continue to be served by DSL service for some time.  But those in suburban and more urban community centers should have access to advanced forms of DSL, fiber optics, or high speed wireless service.

Many public Wi-Fi “hotspots” will be established at community gathering points, accessible to visitors at no charge.

The Government of Canada’s 2009 Economic Action Plan is accelerating and expanding the existing federal investment of $33 billion in infrastructure across Canada with almost $12 billion in new infrastructure stimulus funding over the next two years.

Through the 2009 Ontario Budget – Confronting the Challenge: Building Our Economic Future – the province is investing $32.5 billion in infrastructure for the province of Ontario over the next two years, including a $5 billion contribution from the federal government that will support more than 300,000 jobs and strengthen Ontario’s economy.

Every Time Warner Cable division has different policies for installations, service calls, and disconnect requests.  Some charge for technician visits, some do not.  In southern California, Time Warner Cable is trying to reduce the expense of “truck rolls” — technicians visiting customer homes, to handle Road Runner installations.

The company announced Wednesday it would provide free Easy Connect self-install kits for broadband service.  Mailed at no cost to customer homes within 24-48 hours, the kit contains a cable modem, connectors, and instructions on how to set up and configure Road Runner service.

Time Warner Cable technicians will continue to install Road Runner for a $19.95 installation fee.  Company officials believe many customers will be able to hook up service themselves, which will ultimately save the company time and money assigning a technician to do the installation.

A Broadband Reports reader from Zephyrhills, Florida was invited by E-Rewards, an online focus group, to give views on some new names and pricing for higher speed Road Runner tiers.  “Molitar,” a customer of Bright House Networks, which also markets broadband service under the Road Runner name, reports being asked impressions about new speed tiers, including faster downstream speeds of 30Mbps or more and one offering 5Mbps upload speed.

At least five different names were offered, with consumers invited to give their impressions.  Among the names: Road Runner Flash, Road Runner Extreme,  and Road Runner Lightning. “Molitar” preferred Road Runner Extreme.

Also asked: what kind of pricing customers would be willing to pay for the new premium speed services.

Assuming the facts were as the reader reported, this would likely impact residents in New York City first, where DOCSIS 3 upgrades are well underway. As upgrades begin in other cities, presumably such speed tiers would also be introduced. Those reported speeds would not likely be offered in areas where upgrades have not taken place.

Time Warner Cable has been one of the more stingy providers with upstream speeds. Many cities, including Rochester, New York have never seen a speed increase for standard Road Runner service since the product was introduced more than 10 years ago. At just 384kbps, uploading large files has been painfully slow. Road Runner Turbo, a $9.95 monthly add-on, is coveted for uploaders if only for the increase in upstream speed to 1Mbps, at least in Rochester. But many other Time Warner Cable markets offer Turbo upload speeds of 2Mbps.

Roscoe P. Coltrane and "Flash"

Speed based tier pricing is welcomed by Stop the Cap! We are supporters of providing customers with the choice of different pricing levels of service based on different speeds. “Heavy downloaders” and other “extreme” users of broadband service will gladly pay premium pricing for better service, providing enhanced revenue for operators like Time Warner Cable and bringing positive goodwill from customers who are anxious to see speed increases and are willing to pay to get them.

What we oppose, of course, is Time Warner Cable introducing consumption-based billing which curtails innovation, punishes subscribers for using the service as it was marketed to them in the first place, and sets up scenarios for massive profit-taking from consumers subjected to overlimit fees and penalties.

Time Warner Cable’s latest investor conference call featured company executives touting their initiative to give Time Warner customers access to as much content as they want, when they want, and where they want to see it. If they intend to honor that commitment, punitive consumption-based pricing denies customers the ability to access as much content as they want, makes them think twice about getting it out of fear of running over their “allowance,” and will drive customers to look elsewhere for broadband service, if not also taking their video and telephone business to another provider as well.

As for me personally, I’m not thrilled with any of those product names. Road Runner “Flash” does nothing for me at all, except reminisce about Roscoe P. Coltrane’s lazy basset hound with that name from the TV series Dukes of Hazzard (Friday night in our household growing up didn’t provide me with remote control privileges). Road Runner “Extreme” is already overused as a concept, and I frankly thought it was already in use. Road Runner “Lightning” reminds me of Frontier Communications’ older name for DSL service: Lightning Link.

I suppose Road Runner Max might be better, perhaps supplemented with the download speed as a suffix. Road Runner Max 30 for 30Mbps downloading, and so on.

Share your ideas in the comments section. Maybe we’ll offer it to them if they promise to honor the fact gas gauges belong on automobiles, not on broadband service.

Earlier this year, some Stop the Cap! readers in North Carolina who attended the hearings on a pro-telecom (actually it was written by them) piece of legislation designed to stall statewide municipal broadband competition encountered strange protests from conservative groups arriving on buses.  They were there to stop “Obama’s government takeover of the Internet.”  The communities of Wilson and Salisbury, which have municipal broadband projects in progress, also encountered resistance from outside groups.  Salisbury residents even began receiving biased phone polls that turned out to be sponsored by a conservative political action group that was also involved in the conservative “tea party” movement.

"Critics say .... it appears that the group was a 'mouthpiece' for hire." -- St. Louis Post-Dispatch

These groups loaded mostly retirees, recruited from talk radio and websites, onto buses and sent them to the state capital with generic anti-government talking points and signs.

FreedomWorks, which is currently in the news for organizing protests at town hall meetings over what they call “Obamacare” health care reform, has also been busy adopting the industry-friendly position of opposing government involvement in broadband.  They oppose anything resembling regulation, any government involvement in the pricing or availability of broadband service, and recite industry talking points about the free market assuring Americans of the world’s best Internet service.  Unfortunately, these talking points come at the same time the United States slips further and further behind in international broadband rankings, and true competition in most markets is limited at best.

FreedomWorks’ position on broadband policy will sound eerily familiar:

The broadband market is dynamic and fast paced; new FCC regulations could hamper this growth and reduce the vital capital investments required to expand the nation’s broadband networks.  Rather than attempting to apply old monopoly based models to today’s competitive markets, the FCC should focus on removing barriers to competition, implementing competitive solutions to policy questions, and allowing the private sector to more effectively allocate scarce broadband resouurces [sic] to the most highly valued uses.  In addition, efforts to establish “net neutrality” should be avoided, because they threaten the ability to manage dynamic networks effectively.

That is paraphrased directly from the talking points the industry has presented about broadband policy for years.

Now many of these groups are attempting to recruit those who dislike the current administration to provide free shilling services for the broadband industry’s agenda, supporting positions that are directly opposite  consumers’ best interests.

FreedomWorks is hardly new at this.  Back in 2006, Fiona Morgan, writing for the Independent Weekly (North Carolina), covered another bandwagon of protesters who showed up at an arcane meeting of the North Carolina House Revenue Laws Study Committee, all wearing FreedomWorks t-shirts:

The details of telecom legislation like this are wonky, complicated and jargon-filled. But that hasn’t dampened the passions of citizens fed up with the de facto monopoly of TimeWarner, with its astronomical rates for “packages” of unwatched channels. Dozens of people from across the state showed up to a meeting in April of the House Revenue Laws Study Committee wearing T-shirts for FreedomWorks, a group clamoring for the proposed state franchises. FreedomWorks, which is connected with the anti-tax conservative group Citizens for a Sound Economy, is funded by telephone companies pushing for the bill–what you might call an Astroturf (phony grassroots) organization, but the passion of its members is very real.

With astroturfers like FreedomWorks, deregulatory principles that might garner legitimate debate and consideration are tainted when it turns out that advocacy is bought and paid for by directly connected business interests who have a dog in the fight.  That’s why FreedomWorks hardly represents the “grass roots.”  It’s an astroturfer that has a corporate-sponsored agenda, but hides behind good American conservative citizens who find themselves proverbially loaded onto buses and taken for a ride.

Those consumers had a right to be fed up with paying for unwatched cable channels, but their appearance at that meeting was the lowest form of manipulation, because the legislation under review had nothing to do with the issue those people were concerned with.

Instead, their presence was used by the telecommunications industry as illustrative of consumer discontent, and de facto support for their real agenda, which was removing oversight of the video service franchising process from local government and turning it over to an industry-friendly state body.  That would have created statewide cable and “telco TV” franchises that take away local control and oversight.

Chad Johnston of the People’s Channel, Chapel Hill’s public access station said all the passion around TV service is being used to mislead the bill’s supporters. “It’s funny, because many of the comments that the FreedomWorks folks brought up in this meeting were things that aren’t even included in this bill, like being able to chose your channel lineup–that’s a whole different issue,” Johnston says. “This notion that it’s going to bring us gobs of choices and lower prices it totally false, based on everything we know about deregulation and the telecom industry.”

Heartland Institute: "By not disclosing our donors, we keep the focus on the issue."

Now, another astroturf group that shares “researchers” with FreedomWorks, the so-called Heartland Institute, has an Op-Ed Tuesday in the conservative Philadelphia daily The Bulletin.  Of course, the Heartland Institute also has close ties not only to big telephone companies, but is a dependable friend of big cable as well.  Those close ties are, predictably, omitted from the article.

A typical horror story involves an ISP, at peak usage hours, gently slowing down a tiny number of bandwidth hogs so the vast majority of its customers can surf the Web and send emails at the speed they expect. Insisting such a policy is unfair is not only counterintuitive, it’s counterproductive to demand the government stop it.

The Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2009 is poorly named because it would do nothing to preserve freedom. HR 3458 would strip ISPs of the right to manage traffic on the networks they have spent billions to build, market and manage. In their place would emerge a cadre of detached government bureaucrats—hardly an improvement on the status quo.

The takeaway word from the first section is “story,” as in fiction, because that is what that talking point represents.  Once again, the Us vs. Them strategy reveals itself, with stories of some guy next door sucking the neighborhood Internet lines dry downloading.  The true horror is some providers continue to earn healthy profits on their broadband revenue, complain about the growth of traffic on their networks, and actively reduce investment to expand that network.  That, of course, helps build the case for “controls” when consumers notice the slowdowns created by those neglectful policies.

The Heartland Institute advocates the provider be given the enviable role of the fox guarding the hen house.  Providers manage profits quite effectively, and just as some try to tweak pricing models to extract extra revenue from consumers, you can count on those same providers creating new revenue streams from “premium” prioritization of Internet traffic, for a price, while leaving everyone else in the slow lane.  Their own products and services carried on those lines will enjoy beneficial priority for free while direct competitors find they can’t obtain that level of service at any price.

The so-called “cadre of government bureaucrats” is anything but.  The truth is, there will be one set of clearly defined standards that will protect the level playing field the Internet deserves.  The piece makes it sound like there will be a government court to render judgment on every policy and practice, which is false.  The only thing Net Neutrality protects IS the status quo, a free and open Internet.

Today, if a broadband customer does not approve of the way an ISP manages Web traffic, he can readily switch to a competitor more to his liking. ISPs have an enormous financial incentive to retain existing customers and attract new ones, so the free market encourages best practices.

Tell that to Canadians who are enduring not only Internet Overcharging schemes like usage caps and consumption billing, but also throttled speeds that artificially reduce (by up to 99%) the advertised speed for certain applications, all for “good network management.”  Don’t like the throttle from Bell on your DSL line?  Switch to Rogers Cable and get more of exactly the same thing.  A free market cannot truly exist from the monopoly most rural residents face for broadband, and the duopoly most of the rest of us endure.  The current market doesn’t encourage “best practices;” it encourages informal collusion by providers who learn not to rock the boat, especially on competitive pricing.

ISPs have an enormous financial incentive to find ways to increase profits, which is precisely what Internet Overcharging is all about.

But under HR 3458, if a broadband customer is not satisfied, what near-instant recourse will he have? None after government forces every ISP to operate “equally” by replacing market-based incentives with bureaucratic mandates. This would ensure an inevitable slide to “equally” shoddy service.

One would assume a provider would want to make their service as robust and up to date as possible, yet in a world without codified Net Neutrality protections — the free market at work under today’s reality — we’re seeing continued evidence of price increases and a decline in investment in networks, and some providers continue to drag their feet on upgrades.  The only market based incentive at work here is the demand from Wall Street for greater revenue and return from providers, who face challenging times in their video and telephone businesses, but can always leverage the success of the broadband division.  Broadband continues to maintain customer loyalty, and the potential for greater return from price increases and forcing costs down by limiting service.

Net neutrality advocates want the government, not “the public,” to control the fate of the Internet. The ordered chaos of market forces may scare those who don’t understand it. But the market is efficient, quickly responsive to the needs and wants of consumers, and—in the proper sense of the word—free.

Actually, Net Neutrality advocates want the government to protect the “chaos” of the online world as it exists today.  Those who want to “organize” or “order” the online world aren’t Net Neutrality advocates, they are providers who don’t want people using “my pipes for free,” or cable interests who want to “organize” online video around a model they own and control, or who simply want to throw a Money Party by inventing new ways to charge people more money for exactly the same service they get today.

The claim that the market is “quickly responsive” to the needs and wants of consumers is demonstrably false for any consumer living in Wilson or Salisbury, North Carolina, where a duopoly of providers refused to provide the level of broadband service consumers and small business clamored for, so local municipalities finally threw up their hands and decided to build networks themselves.  Residents of Rochester, New York are threatened with a broadband backwater because the incumbent telephone company Frontier Communications has shown little interest in providing a fiber optic based 21st century broadband platform similar to one being constructed in virtually every other city of size in New York.  Customers even signed petitions begging Verizon to overbuild the Flower City to provide the service Frontier will not.

In April, Time Warner Cable “responded to the needs and wants of consumers” by attempting to ram an Internet Overcharging experiment down the throats of customers in four American cities, where not one consumer either needed or wanted such massive price increases.  Over a period of weeks, this provider did everything but respond to customer needs, until a wholesale consumer revolt erupted and Congress intervened.

The free market is working well for groups like FreedomWorks and The Heartland Institute, who enjoy healthy support from the telecommunications industry.  In return, finding where the telecommunications industry positions end and FreedomWorks’ positions begin is like staring into a mirror and trying to ascertain the differences between the reflection and yourself.