Sinclair Broadcasting is threatening to pull 33 television stations in 21 cities from Time Warner Cable customers on January 1st if the cable company doesn’t agree to demands to pay around 20-25 cents per month per subscriber for each of the stations, primarily Fox and MyNetworkTV affiliates.

It’s just the latest in a series of retransmission rights battles underway between broadcasters and cable companies over cable carriage agreements.

Sinclair is a major group owner of television stations, and the impact on viewers in places like western New York, Dayton, Ohio, Greensboro, N.C., San Antonio, Tex., and Pittsburgh, Pa., won’t be missed because these markets have multiple Sinclair-owned or programmed stations involved in the dispute.

As always, the dispute is about money.  This week, viewers of affected stations, including our readers Lance and Andrew, started being annoyed with repeated warnings scrolled at the bottom of screens about the potential loss of their “favorite stations.”  In the case of WUHF, viewers might have thought a serious weather warning was being issued as text crawled against a distinctive red background.

So far, the dispute has not infected Sinclair’s local newscasts, which have often been used as a sounding board for the company’s past retransmission consent fights.  But then, many Sinclair stations have abandoned producing local news themselves over the past few years as a cost-savings measure.  However, many of the stations involved have put the dispute high on their home pages, as a too-cute-by-half link: “Learn About Time Warner Cable’s Plans to Drop Carriage Of This Station.”  Sinclair leaves no doubt about who they blame for the debacle.

Stations Impacted

• AL  Birmingham — WTTO (CW)
• AL  Birmingham — WABM (MyNetworkTV)
• FL  Pensacola — WEAR (ABC)
• FL  Tallahassee — WTWC (NBC)
• FL  Tampa — WTTA (MyNetworkTV)
• KY  Lexington — WDKY (Fox)
• ME  Portland — WGME (CBS)
• MO  Girardeau — KBSI (Fox)
• NC  Greensboro — WXLV (ABC)
• NC  Greensboro — WMYV (MyNetworkTV)
• NC  Raleigh — WLFL (CW)
• NC  Raleigh — WRDC (MyNetworkTV)
• NY  Buffalo — WUTV (Fox)
• NY  Buffalo — WNYO (MyNetworkTV)
• NY  Rochester — WUHF (Fox)
• NY  Syracuse — WSYT (Fox)
• NY  Syracuse — WNYS (MyNetworkTV)
• OH  Cincinnati — WSTR (MyNetworkTV)
• OH  Columbus — WSYX (ABC)
• OH  Columbus — WTTE (Fox)
• OH  Dayton — WKEF (ABC)
• OH  Dayton — WRGT (Fox)
• SC  Charleston — WTAT (Fox)
• SC  Charleston — WMMP (MyNetworkTV)
• PA  Pittsburgh — WPGH (Fox)
• PA  Pittsburgh — WPMY (MyNetworkTV)
• TX  San Antonio  —  KABB (Fox)
• TX  San Antonio — KMYS (MyNetworkTV)
• VA  Norfolk — WTVZ (MyNetworkTV)
• WI  Milwaukee — WVTV (CW)
• WI  Milwaukee — WCGV (MyNetworkTV)
• WV  Charleston — WCHS (ABC)
• WV  Charleston — WVAH (Fox)

Sinclair’s website warns viewers negotiations with Time Warner Cable are not promising:

Sinclair (or in some cases the licensees of the television stations not owned by Sinclair) and Time Warner are in the process of negotiating a renewal of the current agreement between Sinclair and Time Warner Cable which is scheduled to expire on December 31, 2010. Without a renewal, Time Warner Cable will no longer have the right to carry the broadcast of the television stations covered by this expiring agreement. Unfortunately, based on the status of the negotiations Sinclair does not believe we are going to be able to reach agreement on an extension of the deal. As a result, Time Warner would no longer be carrying the stations covered by the agreement with Sinclair beginning on January 1, 2011. Although some might try and characterize this as a dispute, in the end it represents nothing more than the failure of two companies to reach a business agreement, something that happens in the business world thousands of times a day.

Taking a cue from News Corp., Sinclair claims Time Warner Cable is stalling, hoping the Obama Administration will intervene and prohibit signal blackouts while negotiations are still underway.  Despite the claim the cable company is the one with the plan to drop stations, Sinclair informs viewers it is giving them early warning to help them make arrangements with alternative providers like Verizon FiOS, AT&T U-verse, or satellite companies to “avoid interruptions” in programming.

Time Warner Cable recognized the seriousness of the Sinclair dispute and has given it top billing on their Roll Over or Get Tough website.  So far, the cable company has rolled over in every dispute, eventually caving to programmer demands.  But the cable company would claim it has at least reduced the rates being demanded, or won concessions that allow subscribers to catch shows on-demand as part of its TV Everywhere project.

Because the cable industry has so far been dealt the weaker hand in these disputes, they are spending an increasing amount on lobbying the issue in Washington, right down to creating a front group that claims to represent viewers.  The s0-called “American Television Alliance,” has a mission statement that, on the surface, doesn’t wade too deep into actual solutions:

The ATVA’s mission is a simple one – to give consumers a voice and ask lawmakers to protect consumers by reforming outdated rules that do not reflect today’s marketplace.  We are united in our determination to achieve our goal: ensure the best viewing experience at an affordable price, without fear of television signals being cut off or public threats of blackouts intended to scare and confuse viewers.

The overwhelming majority of the interests represented by the ATVA are giant cable and phone companies (and two groups willing to play along when sharing common interests: Public Knowledge and the New America Foundation.)

The group filed comments petitioning the Federal Communications Commission to modify retransmission consent policy to give cable and phone companies additional tools to battle with intransigent broadcasters.  The most important, and one we agree with, is an end to the ban on importing distant network signals from nearby cities to replace those from local stations who simply dump “take it or leave it” offers on operators who then raise rates to cover ever-inflating programming costs.

As it stands now, cable systems cannot grab network stations from other cities to at least restore network programming, because FCC rules prohibit it, even if the nearby station doesn’t mind.  While that might not help Time Warner viewers in cities like Rochester, where the nearby Fox affiliates in both Buffalo and Syracuse are also owned by Sinclair, the cable operator’s extended reach made possible serving all three major upstate cities might still deliver relief by grabbing further distant Fox stations like WYDC in Corning, WFXV in Utica, or WFXP in Erie, Pa and distributing them across all three affected cities.

Unfortunately, the Fox TV network has also made it clear stations could risk their affiliation deals with the network if they were to grant retransmission consent to providers that effectively undercut other Fox affiliates.

The ATVA also wants providers to retain the right to continue carrying disputed signals so long as good faith negotiations are ongoing, and has also suggested binding arbitration as another alternative reform.  Broadcasters have rejected both.

Some of the ATVA’s proposals are worthy of merit to benefit consumer interests, but consumer groups might do better creating their own group to fight this issue, if only to keep broadcasters from dismissing the group as heavily stacked with cable and phone companies with a biased, vested interest in the outcome.

Just reviewing the FCC petition left a bad taste when they quoted everyone’s favorite “dollar-a-holler” group — the League of United Latin American Citizens, which continues to amaze with its omnipresent Zelig-performance in just about every telecommunications policy debate involving LULAC’s benefactors.

More than a few politicians are likely to accept broadcaster arguments, which would ultimately weaken the effectiveness of any reform effort.

Netflix accounts for 20 percent of all broadband activity in the United States during prime time evening hours.  As expected, “Internet experts” that are really little more than paid lobbyists for the broadband industry have started to feed the media scare stories about the great Internet traffic crisis soon to befall the Internet.

Just a few years ago, it was peer-to-peer traffic responsible for Internet “brownouts,” but now Netflix offers an even better, more convenient scapegoat — especially for the broadband providers that compete with it.

Fortune magazine provides a handy dandy needle to pop the balloon of BS from the broadband industry bully boys:

Just for fun, try to guess the year in which the following warnings about the Internet’s impending meltdown were issued:

No. 1: “Over the coming six to 12 months, computer users around the planet are likely to experience the Internet equivalent of the Great Blackout, or at least frequent brownouts, as our information infrastructure staggers and struggles under the heavy onslaught of new users and new demands.”

No. 2: “Internet access infrastructure, specifically in North America, will likely cease to be adequate for supporting demand within the next three to five years.”

No. 3: “Will Netflix Destroy the Internet?  American broadband capacity might not be able to keep up.”

The answers: 1997, 2007 and this week—and that’s just a small sampling from the past 20 years. Such predictions of the Internet’s breakdown are always premised on  the arrival of a scary new device or application that will send lots of digital bits over the Net.  Back in 1995, when Internet sage Bob Metcalfe tried to explain why he foresaw “the Internet’s catastrophic collapse,” he cited a wave of new “Internet appliances,” in particular the dangerous Sony Playstation, which for the first time had Internet access!

[…]What the chicken littles often miss are the clever ways in which Netflix movies and other content get delivered.  Like most major companies that move lots of Internet traffic, Netflix contracts with companies whose job it is to deliver lots of bits, fast and cheap.  Netflix relies mainly on industry giant Akamai, which runs 77,000 servers with big hard drives that it has placed in every nook and cranny of the Internet.  When a college student downloads “Dexter Season 1” from Netflix there’s a good chance the show is already stored on campus on an Akamai box.

“That video is growing rapidly and going to be huge is true,”  says Akamai co-founder Tom Leighton. “But there’s tons of capacity out at the edges of the network….plenty of capacity in the last mile to your house.”  That capacity, he says, combined with smart delivery of Netflix content from nearby servers, means the Internet can handle Netflix just fine.  If all that traffic had to travel closer to the center of the Internet then many larger peering points would be overwhelmed, Leighton adds. (There’s reason to trust Leighton’s numbers on both counts: he’s also a professor of applied mathematics at MIT.)

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/KOCO Oklahoma City Netflix Crashing The Internet 11-4-10.flv[/flv]

Check out KOCO-TV Oklahoma City’s “Internet Panic” story, delivering the broadband industry’s talking points about Internet traffic jams in just 30 seconds.  (1 minute)

A telecom industry mouthpiece claims candidates lost at the ballot box because of Net Neutrality.

Scott Cleland, a paid mouthpiece for the nation’s Big Telecom companies, claimed last week’s election results were a national referendum on Net Neutrality broadband reform, and Americans ran to the polls to defeat it.

“So the best available national proxy vote gauging political support for [that] vision of net neutrality lost unanimously 95-0,” Cleland said, referring to 95 Democratic candidates who pledged to “protect network neutrality,” all of whom lost.

Cleland, who chairs the cable and phone company-financed “Netcompetition.org” website, thinks Americans hurried to polls to deliver a message against broadband reform policies at a time when the country continues to face nearly 10 percent unemployment, tight credit, poor housing values, concerns about government spending, and a continued sour outlook things will improve anytime soon.

The Net Neutrality pledge came from the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC), a liberal group trying to elect like-minded legislators to office in a year that saw major losses for Democrats, especially in the House.  The 95 signers were mostly candidates challenging open or Republican seats, often in conservative districts.

Take Ann Kuster, who sought office in New Hampshire’s conservative 2nd district.  Won by Democrat Paul Hodes in the Democratic “wave election” of 2006, Hodes relinquished the long-standing Republican seat to run for Senate (and lost).  His immediate predecessor, Charlie Bass, a “Republican Revolution” victor swept into office in 1994, held the seat for a dozen years.  Bass ran to reclaim his old seat against newcomer Kuster, who faced considerable criticism in the Democratic primary for her lobbyist ties to Big Pharma.  Despite Kuster’s alienation of the Democratic party base because of her prior career lobbying against drug pricing reform, she lost the election last week by just a single point.

One issue definitely not in contention in the 2010 election in New Hampshire’s Second District was… Net Neutrality.  In fact, the last time the issue flared up in a significant way in western New Hampshire was in 2006, when Bass was criticized for his pro-telecom industry views opposing the broadband reform policy.

Charlie Bass recaptures his seat in Congress

Bass did not even make Net Neutrality an issue this year.  Even Kuster gave short shrift to the issue on her campaign website, putting her telecommunications policy views at the bottom of a list that emphasized jobs, the economy, foreign policy, and health care.

PCCC co-founder Adam Green noted Cleland’s political allies, including Bass, kept their mouths shut about the issue during this year’s elections.

“The only significant thing about Net Neutrality in 2010 is that 95 Democratic challengers felt confident enough to actively tell voters they support this pro-consumer position,” Green observed.  “Zero candidates across the country felt confident enough to actively tell voters they opposed Net Neutrality for the obvious reason that opposing the free and open Internet would be a ridiculously stupid political move.”

Net Neutrality is still an obscure topic for many broadband users, unaware of its meaning or the implications of having net protections swept away by broadband providers intent on boosting profits.

One thing is certain — as a result of last week’s elections, Republicans in the House and Senate, who have almost universally opposed against Net Neutrality, will almost certainly be able to block legislative efforts to enact such reforms into law for the next two years.

Telecom-focused Heavyweight Faces Surprising Loss

Boucher

In the House, the surprising loss of Rep. Rick Boucher (D-Va.) in last week’s election will have a major impact on telecommunications policies.  Boucher, first elected in 1982, is a veteran of battles between consumer groups and big cable and phone companies.  Boucher championed home satellite dish-owner rights at a time when major cable companies were attempting to lock down competition from 10-12 foot backyard satellite dishes. Boucher also fought for net privacy regulations, rural telecommunications services, and supported broadband expansion.  His loss means uncertainty for telecommunications policy, as he gives up his leadership of the House Communications, Technology and the Internet Subcommittee.

“I was saddened to learn of the electoral loss of Representative Rick Boucher in the House,” Federal Communications Commission member Michael Copps said in a statement praising Boucher for nearly three decades of public service. “He has been an extraordinary public servant and a great leader across the whole gamut of telecommunications issues.  His dedication to broadband, his leadership to reform Universal Service to make sure the wonders of advanced telecommunications are available to all our citizens, and his uncommon ability to bring contesting parties to the table to forge workable compromises are the stuff of legend.”

Virginia's largely rural 9th District encompasses the western third of the state

Boucher’s loss could have dramatically negative results on rural Americans with respect to telecommunications services.  Boucher advocated heavily for the telecommunications challenges faced in rural areas like his own 9th District, located in western Virginia bordered by West Virginia, Kentucky, North Carolina, and Tennessee.  Inside his district, broadband service has been challenging to provide in many areas.  The city of Bristol decided to build its own broadband service, a fiber to the home network constructed by Bristol Virginia Utilities.  The network has been so successful, the southern half of the city — actually located in Tennessee — is following Virginia’s lead.  Boucher was a strong advocate for such community networks.

Boucher’s replacement is expected to be either Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) or Ed Markey (D-Mass.), both of whom serve more urban districts.

But did Boucher go down because of his strong advocacy of Net Neutrality?  Not even close.  The Bristol Herald Courier reports just one issue was almost certainly responsible for Boucher’s loss: Cap and Trade, legislation that would regulate carbon dioxide by capping total emissions and allowing polluters to trade credits among themselves.  Boucher favored the policy, his opponent opposed it.

Back to the Future Under GOP Leadership

Republican tech policy, potentially under the leadership of congressmen like Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Florida), is expected to be “Back to the Future,” a return to a more hands-off policy advocated under the former Bush Administration.

The result will be a tech agenda legislatively frozen in place.  Republicans will be unable to pass deregulation bills or block any surprise moves by the FCC to flex its regulatory muscles, thanks to Democrats in the White House and Senate.  Democrats will be unable to enact any broadband reform policies because of “majority-rules”-roadblocks in the Republican-controlled House.  The FCC, already frightened by Congressional dissent, may be less willing than ever to declare a firm position… on anything.  That’s particularly likely with issues considered “hot buttons” on Capitol Hill.

Republicans may even seek to end spending on broadband expansion and other publicly funded projects, assuming there are any funds yet to be allocated.  It is much easier to block annual re-authorizations than to cancel funding already appropriated.

New Consumer Champion Emerging in Senate from Connecticut?

Richard Blumenthal: New consumer champion?

One potential piece of good news for pro-consumer forces is the election of Sen. Richard Blumenthal, the former state attorney general.  Blumenthal’s highly aggressive investigations into wrongdoing by technology firms are likely to continue in his new role as Connecticut’s newest Democratic senator.  Blumenthal has taken aim at privacy violations at Google and prostitution advertising on Craigslist in the past, and his interest in telecommunications consumer protection could be a big help.

For issues like Net Neutrality, all eyes are turning back to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, perhaps the only man in Washington with the power to deliver a free and open Internet for at least the next two years.  Will he act?

Yet another telecom industry-backed front group claiming to represent the interests of small businesses managed to get its very-predictable opposition to Net Neutrality published in this morning’s Washington Post.  That is a small achievement considering the newspaper’s editorial page that increasingly promotes Big Telecom’s agenda.

This time it was the AT&T-sponsored “Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council,” which the Post claims is a “nonpartisan advocacy and research organization dedicated to protecting small business and promoting entrepreneurship.”  Hardly.  More on that later.

Karen Kerrigan is president, chief executive — and head regurgitator of the same false talking points AT&T and others have used to oppose Net Neutrality from the start:

The Federal Communications Commission is poised to impose new rules on the Internet using an outdated regulatory regime originally designed for the monopoly telephone system of the 1930s.

[…]Essentially, government regulations and bureaucrats would now direct how traffic over the broadband Internet flows rather than privately managed networks — they would also dictate what type of speeds, services and prices consumers should have (one size fits all) rather than let the market and innovators determine those things.

[…]Net neutrality rules would give the FCC new powers to micromanage the operations and pricing and service levels of the privately owned and financed broadband networks that are the physical heart of the Internet. This is a strategy for chasing away the billions of dollars that broadband network operators (principally the telecom and cable companies) plan to invest in broadband infrastructure and new technology.

Kerrigan

Of course, the “outdated regulatory regime” we’ve heard about from AT&T repeatedly is not coming along for the ride in broadband reform… only the authority to provide an effective checks-and-balances system for the marketplace duopoly most Americans find when shopping for Internet access.  Nothing about Net Neutrality dictates speeds and prices consumers pay for broadband.  Considering the United States continues to lose ground in broadband rankings, all of the innovation the SBE claims would be lost was never here to lose.  It has been in South Korea, Japan, and increasingly eastern Europe.

Net Neutrality does not micromanage operations, pricing, or service levels.  In fact, it is the most simple, easy to understand government proposal around.  It states simply that broadband providers will treat all websites equally, will not run toll booths to extract extortion payments from content producers to guarantee their material won’t be artificially slowed down or blocked, and guarantees no provider censorship.  The industry’s claims that Net Neutrality will harm investment is phoney-baloney from the phone and cable companies.  They’ve earned fat profits in a Net Neutral-world for a decade.  But now decreasing interest in landlines and cable TV service means they’re trolling for more revenue, and they think they’ve found an untapped goldmine setting up toll booths on the Internet.

In Kerrigan’s world view, not allowing AT&T and Verizon to install paywalls, speed throttles, and establish paid special relationships with big businesses harms small businesses.  To prove her case, Kerrigan quotes Evelyn Nicely, president of Springfield-based Nicely Done Kitchens:

“Small businesses such as ours depend on every tool we can use to succeed. Undoubtedly, our strongest ally in terms of client communication, marketing, and product specifications comes from the use of broadband and the Internet. It has given us the ability to compete with anyone, even the larger and better-funded players in our industry, through our Web site and its innovative tools, which enable us to effectively market our services to the public.”

Of course, nothing in Nicely’s comments opposes Net Neutrality.  In fact, such important broadband reform preserves the strongest ally her business has — a free and open Internet that lets her compete with far larger players on an equal, level playing field.  The biggest threat to that level playing field is not passing Net Neutrality.  It would allow companies like Lowes or Home Depot to become paid, preferred content partners with broadband providers who could direct Ms. Nicely’s potential customers not to her website, but to them.  Large companies who can afford the price will find their ads splashed on broadband provider-home page portals that deliver customized web searches, preferred partner online ads and error redirection pages that can send customers who may mistype Nicely’s business name to her direct competitors.

How Nicely could ultimately manage to keep her business open in a broadband world where special favors can be bought and delivered should be a major concern for her and every other small business.

Kerrigan's Small Business Survival Committee was dedicated to serving the interests of Big Tobacco companies like Philip Morris.

It’s no concern of the SBE, whose corporate backers keep this front group up and running.  But then it’s not the friend of small business it claims to be, and it’s hardly a “council.”

Before discovering the money that can be made parroting talking points for big cable and phone companies, Kerrigan was shilling for Big Tobacco, getting substantial contributions for her Small Business Survival Committee (a/k/a Small Business Survival Foundation) which received more than $100k from Philip Morris, hardly a small business at the time.

The SBE knows how to attract media attention through catnip-like “scorecards” that rank elected officials based on just how friendly they are to SBE’s benefactors.  The group and its leaders are darlings of conservative political media.  Their views see Communism anywhere individuals collaborate on their own in a way that costs big business profits.  Its chief economist even saw Borg-socialism in the concept of “open source” software:

“In the software universe, something similar to the Borg from ‘Star Trek’ seems to be at work,” declared SBE’s Raymond J. Keating. “It’s called open source software distributed under an agreement known as General Public License (GPL). If you recall, the Borg are ‘Star Trek’ bad guys. They’re basically evil bureaucrats with skin problems, who assimilate every species they come in contact with throughout the universe. Societies are wiped out. Individual thought and creativity are extinguished as individuals are absorbed into a collective. Something similar could be said of GPL-based open source software.”

An impartial, fair observer of telecommunications policy for small business the SBE is not.

Unfortunately, the Washington Post, whose parent company owns cable operator Cable One, has little incentive to see through the SBE’s haze of telecom industry-inspired talking points.

The Free UTOPIA website reports that a provider-backed front group is once again trying to pack meetings with their members to oppose UTOPIA – Utah’s municipal broadband network.

Several UTOPIA member cities are gearing up to start taking votes on the new Utah Infrastructure Agency designed to help fund new construction of the network. The Utah Taxpayers Association is trying to get people to show up at these meetings to protest the UIA and try and kill it. In their effort to do so, they continue to distort, twist, and outright lie in their efforts to rile people up.

First off, the UIA bonds are not an unconditional loan. They are funds that will be secured by payments from subscribers. If there aren’t enough subscribers to secure repayment, the money doesn’t get touched. You would think that such an arrangement would be acceptable to an organization that purports to represent taxpayers as it clearly shifts the burden from the taxpayers as a whole to the subscribers. Attempting to characterize the UIA as a big grab-bag is a big lie.

UTA claims UTOPIA is currently running a $20 million deficit, but Free UTOPIA points out part of that “deficit” may include the original seed money required to construct the network, which came in the form of bonds.  Like any start-up venture, UTOPIA’s initial infrastructure costs create operating losses until those costs are paid back.  A financial feasibility study prepared by Design Nine and released last week projects UTOPIA could report positive net income by 2018, with revenue increasing dramatically going forward.

UTA receives financial support from both Comcast and Qwest.

As fiber advocates have noted, start-up costs and the time it takes to pay them off are one reason why so few commercial providers want to invest in fiber.  Commercial providers often demand a return on investment within five years, while many municipal projects consider fiber a longer-term investment that can pay additional dividends for communities that may not always appear on a balance sheet.  Dividends like high technology start-ups, better paying jobs, better health care and education, and eventually additional revenue for the community that stays in the community.

The UTA has repeatedly claimed the UTOPIA project is veiled in secrecy, yet the project’s feasibility study is published on UTA’s own website.  What is secret is exactly how much money Comcast and Qwest pay UTA and its president Howard Stephenson.  Neither company will disclose exactly how much they have spent on UTA beyond contributions directed to Stephenson himself, documented here.

Provider-backed front groups like UTA routinely misinform their members about the benefits of municipal broadband, often to the point of demagoguery not supported by the facts.  Free UTOPIA reports broadband evangelism can make dramatic inroads among opponents of such public works projects:

The Utah “Taxpayers” Association thought it would get an upper hand with a BBQ in Orem just before the city council voted on a new construction bond. Unfortunately for them, the plan backfired when UTOPIA made a surprise appearance at the event with their “mobile command center” and started actually talking directly with the meeting attendees, many of whom had no opinion of UTOPIA yet and came to get more information. According to my sources, about half of the 250 or so attendees ended up registering their interest in UTOPIA services, a major coup for the network that upstaged their most vocal opponent.

Apparently what convinced a lot of the undecideds was the UTA’s refusal to disclose who pays their bills. That lack of transparency translated directly into looking like they have something to hide (hint: it’s Qwest and Comcast dollars) and left many looking at their fantastic claims skeptically. I’d like to say that there were some talking points to address, but an eyewitness account called it so much kool-aid drinking, a series of incomprehensible rants filled with insinuation, innuendo, insults, and no concrete addressable facts. In contrast, UTOPIA discussed their new business plan with individual residents and offered demonstrations of how well the service can work. Truth has power and it wasn’t on the UTA’s side.

Judging from comments left on UTOPIA’s website, the most controversy seems to be why it takes so long to extend service to more neighborhoods:

“Please finish laying fiber in Orem! We live virtually a quarter mile from the cutoff. We are stuck with Comcast’s horrible routing, and inconsistent speeds, Qwest’s DSL which doesn’t work due to damaged lines they are unwilling to repair, or wireless that never works. Please save us. I have been waiting for years.”

Utah fiber advocates are strongly encouraged by Free UTOPIA to repeat earlier successes and attend upcoming town meetings to present a more informed view about the benefits of fiber networks.

Centerville meets tonight (October 19) at 7PM, Orem is October 26 at 6PM, and Payson is October 27 at 6PM.

All meetings are at the city halls of each respective community.