Richard Miller from the Capitol Fax blog spent the weekend at the Illinois State Fair and might as well have left his AT&T cell phone at home, because the wireless giant’s network collapsed with an overload of traffic.

“Both days, after 5 o’clock in the afternoon, AT&T’s mobile phone service wouldn’t work,” Miller writes. “Calls in or out were sporadic at best, and texts took numerous attempts to work, if ever. Internet? Fugetaboutit. And when the nightly concert started, everything completely shut down. No calls, no texts, no nothing.”

How to improve AT&T service? Remove the rules that require them to provide it.

Miller reported friends attending the fair with him had no difficulties using Verizon Wireless, Sprint, or T-Mobile, so Miller concludes the problems were AT&T’s to own.

“There’s no excuse for the giant corporation’s lousy service,” said Miller.

Attendees with missing children or needing to make emergency calls were plain out of luck. Pay phones are long gone. The only alternative was finding someone with a phone not served by AT&T.

“[People] pay good money for the service and they have a right to expect that they can use their expensive communications devices at large annual events, where people get separated all the time,” said Miller.

Ironically, the Illinois Farm Bureau (IFB) received at least $20,000 from AT&T in 2012 and is for wholesale deregulation of AT&T. The Illinois Partnership for the New Economy & Jobs, a front group for AT&T Illinois, noted that the farm bureau is all for “updating” Illinois state laws that take the hook off AT&T’s responsibility to serve every resident in the state. A preview of what that looks like was experienced by Miller and others at the state fairgrounds.

Phillip “It worked for Qwest so why not community broadband” Dampier

While doing research on another story, I recently uncovered a fascinating legal case that set an important precedent on whether it is right for a community to hold a referendum before authorizing a new telecommunications provider to offer service in a community.

Opponents of community-owned broadband networks routinely claim such services are “undemocratic” because they can exist without the majority support of the community they propose to serve. In 2001, Qwest (now CenturyLink) ran into just such a “majority-rules” provision in Boulder, Colo. that companies like AT&T and Time Warner Cable advocate should be a law everywhere.

A provision in Boulder’s Charter required that voters in a municipal election approve any cable franchise before it was granted by the city. Wishing to avoid the cost of such an election, Qwest sued the City of Boulder and asked for summary judgment to declare the policy unlawful. Chief Judge Lewis Babcock found Qwest’s argument compelling enough to invalidate the city’s mandatory referendum provision.

Qwest argues that the language in [U.S. Federal Law] 47 U.S.C. § 541 regulating franchising authorities is in direct conflict with [Boulder’s] § 108’s mandatory election provision. I agree.

First, the Act provides guidance to, and restrictions on, “franchising authorities.” Section 541’s requirements are directed toward franchising authorities. See 47 U.S.C. § 541(a)(1), (3), (4). Under the statute, a “franchise” is “an initial authorization, or renewal thereof,” issued by a franchising authority to construct or operate a cable system. 47 U.S.C. § 522(9). A “`franchising authority’ means any governmental entity empowered by Federal, State, or local law to grant a franchise.” 47 U.S.C. § 522(10) (emphasis added).

Here, Qwest approached City officials to seek franchise approval. The City granted a revocable permit to Qwest, and agreed to “grant a cable television franchise authorizing [Qwest] to provide cable television service within the City for a term of years” once an affirmative vote by the qualified taxpaying voters occurred. There is no evidence that the City negotiated the franchise in any manner, or put any additional restrictions or caveats on the franchise beyond voter approval. City officials follow the will of the voters with no additional scrutiny or decision-making. Thus, the City has abdicated franchising authority to the City’s voting citizens. These voters cannot, by the plain terms of the statute, be a “governmental entity empowered by Federal, State, or local law to grant a franchise.” 47 U.S.C. § 522(10). Therefore, direct conflict between the federal and local laws exist, as it is impossible for the franchise to be granted by a governmental entity as required by the Act, and simultaneously granted by the voters as required in § 108.

Second, § 541 imposes numerous and specific requirements on franchising authorities. The statute forbids exclusive franchises, see § 541(a)(1); unreasonable refusals to award additional competitive franchises, see id. at (a)(1); requirements that have the purpose or effect of prohibiting, limiting, restricting, or conditioning the provision of a telecommunications service by a cable operator, see id. at (b)(3)(B); ordering a cable operator or affiliate thereof to discontinue the provision of a telecommunications service, discontinuing the operation of a cable system by reason of the failure of a cable operator to obtain a franchise or franchise renewal, see id. at (b)(3)(C)(i)-(ii); or requiring a cable operator to provide any telecommunications service or facilities as a condition of the initial grant of a franchise. See Id. at (b)(3)(D).

A franchising authority has affirmative requirements as well. It must assure that access to cable service is not denied to any group of potential residential cable subscribers because of the income of the residents of the local area in which such group resides, see id. at (a)(3); and allow the applicant’s cable system a reasonable period of time to become capable of providing cable service to all households in the franchise area, see id. at (a)(4)(A).

However, by allowing voters unfettered and unreviewed discretion to grant or reject a franchise, § 108 is in conflict with virtually every provision in § 541. Because only WOWC has received a franchise, voters could effectively grant WOWC an exclusive franchise simply by refusing to vote affirmatively for a second operator. See id. at (a)(1). Voters could unreasonably refuse to award an additional competitive franchise, as they could deny a franchise for any reason or for no reason. See id. Qwest correctly argues that § 108 “provides voters with the unfettered and unreviewable discretion either to grant or deny a cable television franchise for any reason, or for no reason at all.”

In brief, the judge found cable franchises are granted or denied at the municipal level by local government, not through referendums. The City of Boulder was effectively abdicating its responsibility under federal law to manage the franchising process itself. There is no provision in federal law that allows citizens to directly vote a cable franchise agreement up or down, although voters can use the ballot box to remove local officials who do not represent the will of the majority.

More importantly, the judge recognized that turning the process over to local citizenry could unintentionally hand an incumbent provider a monopoly just by voting down any would-be competitor. Why would local citizens oppose competition? As we’ve seen in the fight for community broadband, incumbent providers will spend millions to keep would-be competitors out with a variety of scare tactics and propaganda. Providers have suggested community networks are guaranteed financial failures, will result in yards being torn up to install service, might result in local job losses, and will raise taxes whether residents want the service or not.

Judge Babcock also found that laws that could limit effective competition to incumbent cable companies are in direct conflict with the 1992 federal Cable Act:

The legislative history clearly supports the proposition that Congress was focused on fostering competition when passing the 1992 Act. The Senate Report regarding the Act states, “[I]t is clear that there are benefits from competition between two cable systems. Thus, the Committee believes that local franchising authorities should be encouraged to award second franchises.”

[…] Given the clear intent of Congress to employ § 541 as a vehicle for promoting vigorous competition, I conclude that § 108 is in conflict. Section 108 serves only to provide a significant hindrance to the competition that Congress clearly intended to foster. It forces the potential franchiser to spend money, time, advertising, and logistical support on an election. Thus, § 108 “stands as an obstacle to the accomplishment and execution of the full purposes and objectives of Congress.”

Perhaps the time has come to raise similar challenges in states where legislatures have passed community broadband bans or placed various impediments on providing service. If Qwest can successfully argue that such rules are designed to limit competition, local communities can certainly argue the panoply of anti-competition laws that were written by and for incumbent cable and phone companies deserve the same scrutiny.

Referendums are an inappropriate way to approve the entry of new competitors.

Powell

You and I may think America can do better providing fast and inexpensive broadband service. But a former chairman of the FCC now representing industry interests waved shiny keys of distraction to explain away why cable companies are still delivering Internet speeds slower than those found in Romania, Latvia, South Korea and Japan.

Michael Powell, the poster child of D.C.’s “revolving door” problem gave a well-compensated, rousing (yet fact-lacking) defense of an industry he was supposed to oversee in the public interest as the Bush Administration’s FCC chairman from 2001-2005.

“America is home to the world’s very best Internet companies,” said Michael Powell, chief executive of the National Cable and Telecommunications Assn. at the annual Cable Show in Washington, D.C. “We have worked hard to reach everyone, and now offer service to 93% of American homes. Despite our success, many people like to denigrate U.S. broadband by painting false comparisons to other countries. There are some nations doing very well, but it is foolish to compare countries like Latvia and France to the United States of America.”

Powell’s response is hardly a fact-filled defense for cable company broadband that still delivers slow speeds at high prices. Instead of attempting to call the statistics inaccurate, he tried to explain away the discrepancy by complaining people are ignoring the size of the country and its population.

In denial

Powell’s arguments might have some merit if the cable industry did not make a point of bypassing vast rural areas that do not meet Return on Investment tests. It is difficult to claim cable companies cannot deliver comparatively fast service in rural Iowa when they don’t offer any service at all.

The People’s Republic of China’s population is far larger than our own and is now a vital market for fiber optics manufacturers and suppliers. While some of America’s cable industry CEOs repeatedly argue America does not need fiber broadband or gigabit broadband speeds, the Chinese government has insisted that every new housing development be pre-wired with fiber that will easily and inexpensively supply those speeds in the near future.

Powell is correct to say speeds are improving in the United States, but there is growing evidence they are improving even faster overseas, especially in countries that are basing their primary telecommunication infrastructure on fiber optics, which can support enormously fast Internet speeds. As those fiber networks are lit, America will fall even faster in broadband rankings as long as cable operators continue to insist there is no demand or interest in the next generation of high-speed service. At the prices they charge, they may just prove their own “no demand”-argument, at least in this country.

Powell himself helped lay the foundation for America’s broadband duopoly by deregulating the industry with one hand while ignoring the need for competitive checks and balances with the other. At the end of Powell’s tenure, his greatest achievement was constructing an industry-friendly personal resumé to win lucrative employment as a telecommunications lobbyist.

Who better to speak with “authority” on telecommunications matters than a well-connected former FCC chairman that does the industry’s bidding? The NCTA hired him to deliver just the kind of defense cable operators hope Americans will believe.

Those that are aware of what broadband is like abroad don’t.

AT&T is seeking freedom from regulation, oversight and the right to abandon its landline network with the assistance of Connecticut legislators who modeled a state deregulation measure on recommendations from the corporate-funded, AT&T-backed, American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

The legislature’s Energy and Technology Committee voted 20-4 to approve the bill, which would eliminate service and oversight requirements and allow the phone company to raise rates. AT&T has lost most of its landline customers since assuming control of service in Connecticut. Today, only 28 percent of homes in the state choose AT&T for their home phone service. The Office of Consumer Counsel suggests AT&T’s poor performance in the state may have had a lot to do with that, citing the company’s slow job of restoring phone service after a series of storms affected the state.

AT&T wants the power to drop telephone service altogether in areas considered unprofitable to repair or continue to serve. A trio of company-backed bills in the state legislature would hand them that right.

House Bills 6401, 6402 and Senate Bill 888 are all measures that would deregulate the phone company and open public lands for placing cell towers, limit regulator oversight and cut reporting requirements that let regulators track telephone rates.

None of the measures have been introduced on a whim, contend critics. The Connecticut Citizen Action Group released a report showing links between corporate-written model bills produced by ALEC and the current legislation before the Connecticut General Assembly.

HB 6401: House Bill 6401 strips the Public Utilities Review Authority (PURA) of their ability to regulate Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) telephone services. An emerging market, this bill creates deregulation for the sake of deregulation.

HB 6402: House Bill 6402 eliminates the right of regulators to oversee AT&T to make sure it has some form of accountability to the public. The section on annual audits has been gutted, making it impossible to protect the public from rate-fixing. More importantly, it includes a provision to allow AT&T to end service to any customer it wants upon 30 days’ written notice.

SB 888: Senate Bill 888 has an ALEC-drafted provision that allows cell phone towers to be built on public lands on a presumption that the will of telecommunications companies is in the interest of the public good.

“If AT&T is allowed to drop service in unprofitable areas at their sole discretion, if they’re allowed to let service outages drag on for weeks with no consequences, if they’re allowed to jack up rates — of course they will,” Daniel Ravizza of Connecticut Citizen Action Group said in a statement. “‘Trust me’ is not a good enough guarantee for Connecticut consumers.”

ALEC and AT&T’s Legislative Chorus

• Rep. Debra Lee Hovey of Monroe and Newtown and Sen. Kevin Witkos of Simsbury, Avon, and Torrington serve as ALEC’s chair people for the state;
• Rep. John Piscopo is currently serving as ALEC’s National Chair;
• Rep. Lonnie Reed (D-Branford), chairwoman of the state legislature’s Energy and Technology Committee defended the measures saying they would give certainty to the telecom industry which would attract more investment in broadband and phone services. But she admitted once consumers learned of the proposed bills, things got heated quickly. “Some of this stuff is radioactive,” she told The Hartford Courant. “It’s hard even if you change the language to convince people otherwise;”
• “The arguments by opponents of HB 6402 have been shown to be without merit so now they’re resorting to desperate measures and innuendo,” said AT&T spokesman Chuck Coursey. “The fact is modernizing our telecom rules this year will help encourage private investment, job growth and consumer choice at a time when Connecticut needs it most;”
• John Emra is AT&T’s chief lobbyist in Connecticut. Emra was behind last year’s attempts to advance similar deregulation. Emra serves as the Executive Director of External Affairs for AT&T and as the chair of ALEC Connecticut.

“This is part of a national strategy by ALEC to advance a pro-corporate agenda at the expense of consumers,” James Browning, regional director of state operations for Common Cause, said in a statement. “We’ve seen the destructive impact these measures have had in other states. AT&T should not be allowed to get away with it here in Connecticut.”

The New Haven Register notes Browning said the three bills — SB888, HB6401 and HB6402 — closely resemble model legislation ALEC’s legislative template used in 20 other states where telecommunications regulatory overhaul has occurred. In 17 of those 20 states, telecommunications rates have increase, and in some cases, the cost of service has doubled.

Connecticut consumers can share their feelings about the bills through e-mail with their elected officials.

Wheeler

Note to Readers: Tom Wheeler’s blog (mobilemusings.net) was taken offline in late November, 2014. You might still find it archived at archive.org. Because the blog has been taken down, we have removed all of the original links that were originally contained in this piece.

Tom Wheeler has had a blog.

The presumptive leading candidate for America’s next chairman of the Federal Communications Commission also has a major conflict of interest problem, with at least 30 years of working directly for the business interests of the cable and telephone companies he may soon be asked to oversee in the public interest. Wheeler is the former president of the National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA) — the nation’s largest cable industry lobbying group and past CEO of the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association (CTIA) — the AT&T and Verizon-dominated wireless trade association. Today Wheeler serves as a managing director at Core Capital Partners, a Washington, D.C.-based venture capital firm that invests in these and other industries.

In more than 60 articles in the last six years, Wheeler has written of his trials and tribulations with federal regulators who simply refuse to see telecom industry wisdom on spectrum management, the legacy telephone network, obstinate broadcasters, outdated regulations, mergers and acquisitions, and the amazing story of private Wall Street investment and its wisdom to naturally shape America’s telecommunications landscape by “letting the marketplace work” unfettered by oversight and consumer protection laws.

Almost entirely absent in Wheeler’s writings is any interest in the plight of ordinary consumers that do business, often unhappily, with the companies Wheeler used to represent. America’s love of many-things Apple and Google, two runaway success stories heavily invested in the digital economy and well-regarded by more than a few consumers, are scorned by Wheeler as part of the “Silicon Valley mafia.”

Wheeler is the consummate Washington beltway insider, a lifelong lobbyist well-positioned to walk through the perpetually revolving door between the public and private sector. Even worse, he has maintained warm regards for not one, but two telecom industry lobbying giants — the cable and wireless industry trade associations that have daily business before the FCC. Whether Wheeler can stand up to his former best friends is open for debate. Wheeler wrote in one blog entry he remains in awe of AT&T’s chief lobbyist, Jim Ciccioni, who he called “one of the smartest and shrewdest policy mavens in the capital.”

Wheeler’s blog makes it clear he would have supported the 2011 attempted merger between AT&T and T-Mobile, with a few temporary token pre-conditions. He heaped scorn on antitrust regulators for missing an opportunity the merger approval could have had on reshaping the American wireless marketplace. Less is more in Wheeler World.

D.C.’s perpetually revolving door keeps on spinning.

Like outgoing FCC chairman Julius Genachowski, Wheeler is a longtime Obama loyalist and was involved in Obama’s 2008 election campaign.

Wheeler relays to C-SPAN’s Brian Lamb in a 2009 interview that who you know in Washington can mean a lot. After Obama entered the 2008 race, Wheeler connected to Obama through a friend — Peter Rouse, who had recently accepted the position of Obama’s chief of staff.

“I picked up the phone one day and there was a message from Barack Obama that he wanted to talk about some issues related to technology,” Wheeler described. “Things began to develop. We got really interested in the potential of this person and the opportunity that he represented for a transformational moment in American history, and we decided that Iowa was the place.”

Wheeler and his wife Carol (employed by the National Association of Broadcasters, itself a lobbying group) had the financial resources in place to put their D.C. jobs on hold and spend six weeks in the Region 2 Obama election office in Ames, Iowa.

After Obama won the election, Lamb predicted Wheeler might find himself at the FCC. Instead, Obama’s college friend and money-bundler Julius Genachowski won the position.

Wheeler’s chances of succeeding Genachowski improved dramatically in mid-April after receiving the written support of several public policy advocates. One of them was Susan Crawford, whose recent book, Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly in the New Guilded Age, railed against many of the policies supported by the largest telecommunications companies Wheeler professionally represented in his roles at the NCTA and CTIA. Some consumer groups wrote President Obama directly, strongly recommended a change from the ‘business as usual’ revolving door:

During his election campaign, President Obama pledged “to tell the corporate lobbyists that their days of setting the agenda in Washington are over.” Yet the president is reportedly considering a candidate for the next FCC chair who was the head of not one but two major industry lobbying groups. After decades of industry-backed chairmen, we need a strong consumer advocate and public interest representative at the helm. It’s time to end regulatory capture at the FCC and restore balance to government oversight.

Those consumer groups have plenty to worry about if Tom Wheeler becomes the next head of the FCC. Stop the Cap! has found several quotes from his blog which paint a picture of a potential FCC chairman devoted to industry interests:

Close Wireless Retail Stores to Save Money and Kill Jobs: “Sprint announced plans to close eight percent of its over 1,500 company-owned retail outlets. Why stop there? Why does it make sense for wireless carriers to operate more stores than Sears and Macy’s combined?”

Wireless network redundancy is a waste of money — an interesting sentiment in light of major wireless network failures during Hurricane Sandy and insufficient capacity during the terrorist attack on the Boston Marathon last week: “The history of the U.S. wireless industry is a network-centric history that wasted untold billions of dollars building duplicative networks and advertising ‘mine is better than yours.’”

The failed merger of AT&T and T-Mobile represented a missed opportunity in Wheeler’s view.

WiMAX is King of the World?: “Back in the mid-1990s new digital technology called Personal Communications Service (PCS) was forecast to be the death knell of the cellular industry. It seemed all anyone could talk about was the “smaller, cheaper, lighter” handsets that would perform feats beyond the capabilities of analog cellular. Now in the mid-2000s the differentiator is speed and throughput and WiMAX is the new hot technology.”

Who needs free over the air television when only 10-15 percent of the country watches?: “What is the purpose of continuing the local TV broadcasting model when between 85 and 90 percent of American homes are connected to cable or satellite services?”

AT&T and Verizon will save us from the Great Recession, except for the fact they laid off “redundant” workers: “In the midst of the first shrinking of global economic growth in almost 70 years, the wireless industry represents what must be the largest non-governmental stimulus program in the world. Wireless is an economic recovery triple play.”

Those mooching broadcasters got their spectrum for free when Verizon and AT&T had to pay real money: “The setting for these theatrics is the digital conversion for which broadcasters lobbied so hard for. Yes, they won new spectrum – which they got for free while all other were paying billions – but getting what they asked for also brought something no one ever imagined. Broadcasting ceased to be broadcasting. Going digital meant that what used to be about moving atoms is now about moving bits.”

We need to verify broadcasters use their spectrum the way we define it or we might take it away: “But threatening a shootout at the OK Corral in order to ‘hang on to every last hertz of spectrum’ is an invitation to irrelevance and proof that the spectrum needs to be assigned to parties that think digitally and see themselves as a part of the solution to the spectrum crisis. Opportunity is knocking for the broadcasters; we’ll see if anyone is at home.”

Cicconi

Reduced quality of service is worth it, even if it means shutting down wired telephone service or increasing interference for wireless users: “It is time to abandon the concept of perfection in spectrum allocation. The rules for 21st century spectrum allocation need to evolve from the avoidance of interference to interference tolerance. We’ve seen this evolution in the wired network; it’s now time to bring the chaotic efficiency of Internet Protocol to wireless spectrum policy. What the FCC’s TAC is proposing is that we officially wean ourselves from the old wireline switched circuit world to embrace the reality of IP and its benefits. It’s time to start down the same road with spectrum allocation.”

Did you know your mobile bill is lower than ever and sending data wirelessly costs next to nothing? How much is your limited data plan costing you again?: “As wireless rates have plunged for both voice and data such regulation has less impact than it did in the wireline era anyway. When each connection required an analog circuit, the cost of such a connection, and the return on that investment was a more logical nexus than today’s digital networks where the incremental cost of a packet of information approaches zero.”

AT&T’s propaganda supporting its attempted merger with T-Mobile was brilliant. Those pesky consumer groups and their meddling, truth-telling agenda ruined everything. When Americans think of rural wireless broadband, the first company that comes to mind is T-Mobile, right?: “The most important times in any merger approval process are the first two weeks when the acquiring company gets to define the discussion and the last four weeks when the concerns raised by others and the analysis by the government congeals to define the issues to be negotiated in the final outcome. AT&T shot out of the blocks brilliantly, framing their action in terms of the spectrum shortage and President Obama’s desire to provide wireless broadband to rural areas. Over the coming months those who were caught by surprise, as well as those who would use the review process to gain their own advantages, will have organized to present their messages.”

Wheeler sends a Hallmark card to AT&T’s most powerful lobbyist: “AT&T’s recent negotiations with the FCC on the Net Neutrality/Open Internet issue provide an insight into how the company deals with such a complex issue. Jim Cicconi, AT&T’s Senior Executive Vice President, is one of the smartest and shrewdest policy mavens in the capital.”

What do they know about it?

AT&T’s Jim Cicconi is the go-to-guy for determining future wireless policy, not the FCC: “Randall Stephenson may be channeling Theodore Vail, but Jim Cicconi sits astride a process that could determine the future of wireless policy, first for AT&T and then by extension for everyone else. Quite possibly the result of this merger decision will be far wider than the merger itself. At the end of the day we may be talking about a new era of wireless policy based on the Cicconi Commitment.”

The Justice Department just proved it does not understand regulatory concepts governing relentless corporate telecom mergers because it decided Americans should have at least four wireless companies to choose from, not three: “Thus, the long-term impact of the Justice Department’s decision would appear to be the growing irrelevance of traditional telecommunications regulatory concepts on mobile broadband providers.”

Wheeler lacks the realization wireless providers are moving to usage pricing for fun and profit, not because of spectrum shortages: “Having walked away from taking the easy money, will the Congress remain as committed as they were to selling spectrum? What will be the light at the end of the tunnel for wireless carriers who see their spectrum capacity being consumed by huge increases in demand? Will the resulting shortage mean that usage based mobile pricing becomes a demand dampening and profit increasing tool?”

We don’t need free over the air television. Just tell free viewers to subscribe to cable like everyone else: “I’ve been mystified why broadcasters have declared jihad against the voluntary spectrum auction. Getting big dollars for an asset for which you paid nothing while still being able to run your traditional business over cable (the vast majority of its reach anyway) and maintain a broadcast signal at another point on the dial seems a pretty good business proposition – unless you really are serious about providing new and innovative services and need all that spectrum.”

You don’t deserve free Internet access either, because it hurts the corporate business plans of other providers: “Competition among networks for customers has put the consumer in the enviable position of being told they won’t have to pay for access to Internet services. “Free It,” the advertisements of British network operator “3” proclaim to promote their unlimited data plan, for instance. The policies that created wireless network competition have trapped operators between holding market share and giving away capacity for ever-increasing data demands. So long as there is one carrier willing to offer its capacity at a low price (or for free), the other carriers must play along thus bringing those who run networks to loggerheads with those who use the networks.”

(Image courtesy: FCC.com)

Google and Apple are privacy invaders that collect your personal data as part of a great Silicon Valley mafia: “If wireless carriers are truly going to become “operators” participating in the broader ecosystem their focus needs to shift from running networks to managing the information created by the 21^st Century’s digital networks. The Silicon Valley mafia hijacked that information, but they could quite possibly be in the process of blowing their escape with the goods by exposing what they were really up to.”

We need a “voluntary” auction of the public airwaves with a subjective standard for what represents their “best use” (ie. the way the wireless industry defines it): “For almost four decades I have listened to businesspeople tell government policy makers to “let the marketplace work.” There is no more effective marketplace than a voluntary auction where everyone is free to decide whether to sell, how much to sell, and at what price to sell. The marketplace for wireless spectrum has spoken through its explosion; now it’s time for the marketplace to be able to decide the best use of spectrum. There is no doubt that some broadcasters will opt to use their spectrum in innovative ways [my firm, Core Capital Partners, has invested in such a belief]. Bully for the broadcast entrepreneurs! The FCC should be encouraging and rewarding of entrepreneurial initiative. Just as clearly, however, some broadcasters will choose other options. It is essential that we get on with offering that option quickly so we can nip the spectrum crunch in the bud, spur innovation, stimulate investment, create jobs, and continue American leadership in wireless services.”

Coming Clean: Wheeler ran astroturf operations that pretended to represent the interests of consumers but actually were little more than corporate sock-puppetry: “In the early days of cable television a cabal of Hollywood and broadcast interests combined to convince the Federal government to deny cable its competitive advantage of more channel choices for consumers. Corporate lobbyists told Congressmen and Senators how cable would mean the end of “free TV” unless it was stopped or controlled. Then these same groups recruited real people – the so-called “grassroots” – to back up their claims. Such lobbyist-organized grassroots efforts were the Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) of political organizing – I know because I used to do it.”

The alliance between Verizon and a cabal of cable companies selling each others’ products is pro-competition: “A TV subscription service like the one Apple is proposing is the heart of what cable is all about. And whatever Google is doing, they aren’t in every TV just for the heck of it. The Mongols of Silicon Valley have been behaving just like their 13^th and 14^th century predecessors. Using new technology to their advantage, the Mongols of the Middle Ages sent invasions in every direction. Soon they had the largest contiguous empire the world has ever seen.  Sound familiar? It may be a case of “my enemy’s enemy is my friend,” but a cable-wireless alliance is an exceedingly logical response to the impending attack. Cable operators have program distribution rights (or leveraged access to them) and Verizon has the high-speed wireless network to deliver to the growing number of mobile devices. Both these players can help each other confront the coming onslaught.”