Phillip "It's Haunting Time for AT&T, Verizon and their good friends at Digital Society" Dampier

Imagine if you lived in a country where broadband competition actually delivered real innovation and savings, overseen by a consumer protection agency that made sure providers in a barely competitive marketplace actually delivered on their “highly competitive” rhetoric.

Australia’s National Broadband Network (NBN) will deliver exactly that, with a check and balance system that makes sure advertiser claims meet reality and that “robust competition” means… robust competition.

One industry-backed front group, Digital Society, doesn’t think that idea is fair to big telecom companies (like those funding its operations), and wants none of that here in the States.

Nick Brown doesn’t object too much to Australia’s plan to deliver fiber-to-the-home connections offering 100/50Mbps service to 93 percent of residents.  He just doesn’t want the Australian government overseeing how private providers use (and how much they can charge to access) the publicly-owned network:

Internet Service Providers in Australia will be forced to compete with each other via the “Competition and Consumer Commission”.  The problem with this is that a supposedly ubiquitous commission deciding what is and what isn’t competition and fair pricing stands a fair chance of not actually playing out in any other fashion than simply being a price fixing commission.

[…]Because the NBN will only act as a wholesaler and treat all ISP retailers equally, ISP’s no longer have the ability to develop their own unique contracts that would reduce costs to consumers.  All backhaul would be priced to all ISP’s at the same rate.  So realistically no company has a significant advantage over the other.  That does potentially create a good deal of choice, but that does not necessarily ensure competition.  This would be akin to going to the grocery store and on the shelf were 5 different brands of soft drink, but every single brand tasted exactly like Coca-Cola.  You would have a lot of choice in that situation, but there would be no real competition between those 5 brands, because taste is the competitive factor.  For the Australian, this means that ISP’s will likely be forced to start bundling services to gain advantages over one another.  Something that is not always considered attractive here stateside.

NBNCo is responsible for the deployment and installation of Australia's fiber to the home network.

Brown’s bitter-tasting public-broadband philosophy is based on the inaccurate notion that incumbent private providers are just itching to deliver state-of-the-art broadband service across Australia.  If the darn federal government didn’t get in the way and steal their thunder with a nationwide fiber network, Aussies would be enjoying world class Internet access over copper phone wires and usage-limited wireless 3G networks right now.  Even worse, the Australian government that will finance the entire operation also has the temerity to set ground rules for private companies reselling access to consumers and businesses!  How dare they oversee a network bought and paid for by Australian taxpayers (he objects to the funding as well.)

Brown must also still be living in Australia if he missed the parade of American providers repricing services to push people into “triple-play bundles” whether they want them or not.  And we don’t even get the fiber to go with it.  For most Australians, they no longer care whether it’s Diet Coke, Pepsi One, Cherry Coke, or even RC Cola for that matter — as long as it arrives on a fiber network built by and for their interests (instead of Telstra’s), it’s far better than what they have now.

In reality, broadband issues hold a front-and-center position in Australian politics, and the Labor Government which supports an aggressive national broadband plan that puts America’s proposed broadband improvements to shame was -the- issue that keeps that government in power today.  Why?  Because Australia is well behind others in providing broadband access at reasonable speeds and prices.  Australian private providers maintain a nice little arrangement delivering sub-standard, near-monopoly service at some of the highest prices around, all usage-limited and speed throttled. Despite years of negotiations with big players like Telstra, the privatized phone company, broadband improvement has moved at a glacial pace (too often by their design).

The development of the National Broadband Network for Australia was driven by private provider intransigence.  Even Brown recognizes the logistics of the proposed fiber network is “very smart and very common sense” for a country like Australia, which he considers a close cousin geographically to the United States.  Brown also admits the use of fiber straight to the home “‘future proofs’ Australian networks and would allow for easier improvement in the future.”

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/ABC Radio Battle of the broadband 8-11-2010.mp4[/flv]

ABC Radio National offered a comprehensive review of the competing plans from Australia’s political parties to address broadband issues as the country drops to 50th place worldwide in broadband excellence.  (9 minutes)

While Australia ponders a fiber future, today’s broadband picture across the country is less idyllic.

The minority of Australians receiving service over cable broadband, available mostly in the largest cities, continue to face usage-limited service and higher prices than American providers.

Most Australians get their service from DSL connections offered by Telstra and third party companies leasing access to Telstra facilities.  Telstra’s network is based almost entirely on aging copper wire that cannot deliver broadband to most rural populations.  Telstra’s long term broadband plan for Australia depends on milking every last cent out of those copper wires while raking in even bigger profits from usage limited and expensive wireless data plans.  Just last month, Telstra was fined $18.5 AUS million dollars for monopolistic behavior by impeding competitive access to its telephone network.  No wonder the country had enough.

Brown labeled the Australian government’s buyout of Telstra’s copper wire network a “negative,” as if they were stuck with a pig in a poke.  That suggests Brown does not understand the actual plan, which relies on reusing existing infrastructure like poles and underground conduit to install fiber at an enormous savings — both in billions of dollars in reduced costs and deployment time.  The alternative would require the government to obtain agreements with Telstra-owned facilities to share access or construct their own facilities from the ground up.  Telstra has no incentive to spend money to upgrade their networks, much less decommission them.  Logistically, the plan cuts through enormous red tape and guarantees Australians no one will be stuck waiting decades for the eventual retirement of copper phone wiring.

Call it Fiber Optic Broadband for Copper Wire Clunkers — the government has not nationalized the phone network — it wants to buy it a fair price, from a willing seller who will be able to use the new network to deliver some of its own services.

The horror show for groups like Digital Society is the thought private companies will actually be forced to deliver the competition and real savings they routinely proclaim in press releases, but never actually deliver to consumers.  The Australian people will own the fiber playground private companies will play on, so why shouldn’t they have the benefit of oversight to make sure the game is played fairly?

Australia’s Competition & Consumer Commission is equivalent to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the Federal Trade Commission, and a state Attorney General all rolled into one.  The ACCC is an independent statutory authority that works for consumers.  It promotes and enforces real competition and fair trade.

The ACCC’s involvement in broadband regulation includes: stopping false advertising, helping intervene and resolve disputes over access and billing issues, and being an impartial observer about broadband uptake and measuring how competition actually delivers better service and savings for consumers.

What Brown dismisses as “a price fixing commission” is in reality a consumer protection agency with enforcement teeth.  The ACCC has a solid track record.  For instance, the broadband industry in 2009 itself admitted the ACCC stopped a “race to the bottom” in wild advertising claims:

In August last year, we sat down with the CEOs of the major telecommunication providers, Telstra, Optus and Vodafone Hutchison Australia. They acknowledged that there was a problem, exacerbated by a “race to the bottom” by industry participants in their advertising practices. The CEOs showed a ready willingness to resolve the issue on an industry-wide basis.

After analysing complaints, the ACCC identified the 12 most prevalent types of potential misleading conduct made in telecommunications. Some of these included:

• use of terms such as “free”, “unlimited”, “no exceptions”, “no exclusions” or “no catches” when this is not the case;
• headline price offers in the form of “price per minute” for calls made using mobile phones and phone cards when there are other fees/charges which are not clearly disclosed; or
• headline claims relating to price, data allowances, total time allowances, speeds and network coverage, where the claims cannot generally be achieved by consumers.

The three industry leaders have provided a court enforceable undertaking to review and improve advertising practices so that consumers are better informed about the telecommunications products they purchase. They have undertaken that their advertising will not make these claims in circumstances where they are likely to be misleading to consumers.

Further the majors have also agreed that they will take reasonable steps to ensure that this commitment will extend to any other players with whom they have commercial agreements which allow them to control the advertising and promotion of goods or services.

Australians are starting to receive consent forms for free installation of fiber broadband in their homes.

I can see why Digital Society, a group partly funded by telecommunications companies, would object to the ACCC stopping Big Telecom’s ill-gotten Money Party-gains.

ACCC also put a stop to promotions that tricked consumers into signing up for mobile data plans that included “free” netbooks, high value gas gift cards, or cash rebates.  The Commission discovered these “promo plans” weren’t giving away anything at all — they simply added the retail cost of the “free” item to the plans’ charges.

The ACCC received a court enforceable undertaking from Dodo Australia Proprietary Limited for the advertising of some of their mobile plans. Dodo had advertised that consumers would receive either an Asus Eee PC, a fuel card or a cash payment when they signed up to a ‘free offer’ plan.

However, cheaper mobile cap plans that did not include the ‘free’ offers were comparable in value and services. After raising these concerns with Dodo, they promptly ceased publishing the ‘free offer’ advertisement and undertook to ensure the affected customers would receive the goods for free, either by way of cash refund or by reducing the monthly charges for the ‘free offer’ plans.

That mean and nasty ACCC, ruining all of the fun for providers delivering tricks and traps for their customers.  Caveat emptor, right?

But the most ludicrous claim of all comes towards the end of Brown’s piece, when he claims the National Broadband Network will leave Australians with even higher priced, usage-capped access:

Australia traditionally has had low bandwidth caps.  Even just five years ago while most Americans were enjoying unlimited bandwidth with their broadband connections, I was living in Melbourne, Australia and was limited to a 1GB cap per month via my Telstra connection.  The likelihood of seeing 100Mb uncapped connections is highly suspect.  Australians may enjoy these speeds, but they will likely be extremely expensive with low bandwidth caps or limited to high priced premium tiers.

Brown can’t blame the private company that delivered his abysmal Internet service without his “free market knows best” philosophy falling apart.  It wasn’t the Australian government that provided him a 1GB monthly usage allowance — it was Telstra, and five years later the company is still usage-limiting Australian broadband consumers.  The National Broadband Network was designed to tackle that problem once and for all.  Brown apparently doesn’t realize the last argument private providers have used to justify usage caps — insufficient overseas capacity — is being addressed by new super-high-capacity undersea fiber cables stretching across the Pacific.  The issue of “usage cap” abatement is among the top bullet points for constructing the NBN.

Brown would be right when he suggests that Australians may enjoy faster speeds, but with low usage caps and high prices — if Telstra was the only company providing the service.  The new network will provide speeds faster than most Americans enjoy, with enormously expanded capacity.  Providers like Telstra have an incentive not to deliver the unlimited service that fiber network can deliver, as it will reduce their profits.  But since any company can access the network and compete, Telstra’s loss in market power will also erode their pricing power.  When a consumer protection mechanism is added, Telstra won’t just be answering to their shareholders’ demands for greater value.  They’ll also answer to the ACCC and the consumers who will pay for and maintain the network.

That may not add up to mega-profits for Big Telecom, but it certainly makes a whole lot of sense to consumers and small businesses who will finally be able to get 21st century broadband at a reasonable price.

Even worse for Digital Society’s friends — AT&T and Verizon — who fund the group through its connection with Arts+Labs, it might provide a blueprint for how America’s broadband future should be built.

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/ABC TV National Broadand Network 8-15-10.flv[/flv]

ABC-TV (Australia) debated the merits of competing broadband plans from the incumbent Labor government, which supports a National Broadband Network delivering fiber to the home, versus a cheaper plan from the coalition opposition which promoted a private industry-favored initiative delivering improved broadband only to rural areas.  The Labor government initiative won the day when two rural independent members of Parliament, Rob Oakeshott and Tony Windsor announced they’d support Prime Minister Julia Gillard, giving her the 76 votes required to form a minority Labor government.  Windsor is an enthusiastic supporter of the NBN, telling Sky News “’you do it once, you do it right, you do it with fiber.”  Oakeshott said Labor’s plan to deliver real broadband for the 21st century was a major reason he backed the Labor government.  For the first time ever, fiber optic broadband was the key factor in determining who would govern a country.  (5 minutes)

Broadband for America is the product of the nation's largest phone and cable companies.

Broadband for America has begun assaulting the airwaves with a high-priced advertising campaign claiming that “broadband is leading the [economic] recovery” but is threatened by “1930s telephone regulations,” urging Congress to get involved to stop broadband reform.

The 30 second ads blanketed cable and several Sunday morning news shows yesterday.

What the ads don’t mention is Broadband for America is actually one giant front group backed by large phone and cable companies.  In a study released last fall, Stop the Cap! found virtually every single “coalition” member, including so-called “independent consumer advocacy groups,” do substantial business with, or have received significant financial contributions or board assistance from companies including AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast.

Well-financed by the telecommunications industry it directly represents, Broadband for America seeks further deregulation and wants Congress to stop the FCC from enacting broadband reforms ranging from “truth in marketing” and billing to Net Neutrality.

The “honorary co-chairs” of the group are Michael Powell, the same Bush Administration FCC chairman that badly bungled the FCC’s approach to broadband policy thrown out in the courts earlier this year, and former Congressman Harold Ford, Jr., who left public service for a very lucrative career in “dollar-a-holler” advocacy and working as a lobbyist for the economic-vampire investment bank Goldman Sachs (something Broadband for America left out of his online biography.)

[flv width=”640″ height=”500″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Broadband for America 30 sec spots.flv[/flv]

Broadband for America, a telecom-backed astroturf group, is running these advertisements promoting the agenda of AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast to try and stop broadband reform policies.  (1 minute)

Wendy

Pro-broadband reform groups continue to hit the telecommunications industry’s last nerve.  While the fight for more expansive broadband and Net Neutrality continues, some providers and their water-carrying friends are pulling out all the stops to keep broadband under the firm grasp of a phone and cable duopoly.  Both will say or do just about anything along the way to stop consumer-friendly reform.

Say hello to Mike Wendy.  He’s made it his personal mission to “expose” groups promoting broadband reform as “radicals” and “hardcore entrenched lobbyists.”  Using rhetoric that will resonate with angry talk radio listeners, Wendy is convinced broadband policies that enforce the public interest and Net Neutrality are akin to a Marxist takeover.  While Wendy calls on good Americans like himself to man the barricades protecting AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, and Time Warner Cable, he just doesn’t have time to mention he happens to work for a special interest group funded by Big Telecom.  Maybe it slipped his mind?

Wendy’s ironically named “Media Freedom” blog is chock full of attacks on “Free Press and the radical media reformistas [sic].”  Special guest stars include Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, Marxism, collectivism, and a whole slew of rhetoric that ultimately tells readers efforts to enact broadband reform are little more than a grand socialist conspiracy.

A real grassroots campaign is run for and by consumers. An astroturf campaign is bought and paid for by corporate interests to push their own agenda.

His visitors’ enthusiasm for such accusations might be diminished a tad had Wendy prominently disclosed his day job: Vice President of Press & External Affairs at the Progress & Freedom Foundation, a “think tank” that ingests money from Big Telecom and then spews forth their talking points.  Among the backers: AT&T, Comcast, the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, Time Warner Cable and Verizon.

That takes the wind out of the proclamation that Media Freedom is a bulwark against those who “threaten to quash speech and economic freedoms.”  Wendy isn’t working for Big Government.  He’s working for the interests of AT&T and Comcast.

Many of the companies supporting the Progress & Freedom Foundation have a vested interest in maintaining today’s barely-competitive broadband marketplace, avoid oversight, and stop reform regulation and legislation dead in its tracks.  They want Progress only on their terms and the Freedom to do whatever they please.

The real chutzpah moment came when Wendy claimed pro-consumer groups like Free Press and Public Knowledge were the ones running high-powered lobbying campaigns.  That’s a pot to kettle moment to behold, especially considering who paid to print Wendy’s business cards.  From a recent blog post:

The “public interest” lobby makes itself out to be the tireless, country-poor underdog for the downtrodden consumer.  But don’t be fooled.  In the technology space, three such groups – Public Knowledge, Media Access Project and Free Press – have few rivals.  Their humble appearance belies their take-no-prisoners, oftentimes shameless, below-the-belt approach to public policy formation and gamesmanship.  How do they do it?  They use all the tools, and then some, to make them every bit as sophisticated as the largest companies they’re trying to undermine.

Shameless and “below-the-belt” might better define Wendy’s last job: “Director of Grassroots” for the United States Telecom Association, a job title that literally defines astroturf-in-action. Who is on the board of USTA?  Among others, corporate executives and lobbyists for AT&T, Verizon, Qwest, and two members who shouldn’t be able to afford the annual dues considering their employers went bankrupt — Hawaiian Telcom and FairPoint Communications.

Wendy’s line of thinking is evident soon enough from his blog’s tag cloud, a regular cocktail of conspiracy:

The ironically named "Media Freedom" blog isn't media and its freedom is limited to carrying water for the nation's largest telecom companies.

• Al Franken (the broadband industry’s ‘Boogie Man’)
• Cyber-Collectivist (the secret link between broadband and Jean-Jacques Rousseau)
• Fairness Doctrine (guaranteed to perk up the ears of any conservative talk radio fan wandering through)
• First Amendment (for corporations)
• Freedom (for said corporations to abuse your wallet)
• Free Speech (for corporations)
• Hugo Chavez (the go-to-guy for lazy smear-by-association rhetoric)
• Marxist (chalkboard time)
• New Deal (broadband users sure want one)
• … and redistributionism (something overheard at the last session of the “Communications Comintern?”)

The rhetoric is two parts AT&T to one part 1970s Radio Tirana, Albania.  A Glenn Beck swizzle stick labeled “Marxism” is included to stir the overheated rhetoric into a hot mess for Verizon and the cable lobby.

All of the “isms” aside, we’ve created a convenient, handy-dandy chart you can use to see which team Wendy and his group really supports:

Distinctions With a Difference – A Telecommunications Issue Checklist

Citizens of Opelika, Beware!  Your city government wants to take over control of your appliances, censor and control the Internet, and plant the red flag of socialism at the new Kremlin building — the Opelika City Hall on South 7th Street.

Welcome to another classic battle against municipal broadband competition.  All of the usual players have assembled, and the opposition has a overstuffed bag full of tricks — many old, some new, to convince Opelika that bringing additional cable competition to the region is just the worst thing… ever.

The proposal: to spend $33 million dollars, financed by revenue bonds (not taxpayers), to build a fiber to the home platform to deliver 21st century broadband service and competition to incumbent, recently-bankrupt Charter Cable.  The city of Opelika itself would probably not get into the cable business directly.  It proposes to work with Knology, a credible cable overbuilder already providing cable and broadband services in Alabama, to manage the day to day operations and handle customers.

Why: (from the City of Opelika website) “For many years now – not only during Mayor Gary Fuller’s Administration, but during Barbara Patton’s Administration before him and even Mayor Freeman’s administration before her – numerous complaints were received from citizens about the high prices and poor service they were receiving, while others have complained that they can’t get any cable service in their neighborhoods at all.  After years of trying to get other cable/Internet providers to come into Opelika and give Charter Communications competition – to no avail – we decided that the best way to give our citizens competitive services was to offer competition ourselves.”  No surprises there.  Large cable operators have never challenged one another in their respective markets.  Why ruin a good thing by launching a price and services war?

The vote: A referendum on the question will be held this Tuesday, asking citizens to support the project.

Opposition to the project from some quarters has bordered on hysteria, especially from a so-called “consumer grassroots group” and a local website, Opelika’s Smart Grid, that has tried to scare residents into believing city officials are on the verge of taking control of residents’ air conditioners and ovens, unleashing Big Brother on a scale even the most paranoid haven’t even considered.

Stop the Cap! investigated the group claiming to represent the citizens of Opelika, and we came away with more questions than we originally asked.

The local media has accepted, without much challenge, the representations made by these groups opposed to the municipal project.  Few questions have been asked about who belongs to the groups and how they are financed.  As Stop the Cap! has seen over the past two years, opposition to municipal broadband projects usually comes from coordinated campaigns — a direct attack by lobbyists for the cable and phone companies, and efforts by political groups to demagogue such projects hoping to pick up citizen opposition on philosophical grounds.  If Americans for Prosperity, the Heartland Institute, Digital Society, or FreedomWorks is involved, you’ve got political astroturf in action.  Since many of these political groups are on the payroll of phone and cable operators, it’s just one more way to achieve the same thing — protection for America’s broadband duopoly.

Who is “Opelika’s Smart Grid” and the Concerned Citizens of Opelika?

Stop the Cap! has researched both “groups” and discovered they are essentially one and the same.  Some of the members of “Concerned Citizens” are also the authors, and primary participants on “The Opelika Smart Grid” website.  They are strongly anti-government, and their opposition to municipal services borders at times on the paranoid.  Neither group has more than a handful of loosely-associated members, but they do bring along those who share a common, mostly Libertarian/anti-government philosophy.  Think “tea parties against municipal broadband.”

Domain name records show the website was first registered July 4th, 2010 by William Mayfield who lives on 9th Street in Opelika.  Mayfield’s concern about the project’s capability to deliver “smart grid” technology to the local electricity provider prompted him to launch into some pretty far-out conspiracy theories about the implications of the project (taken from Google web cache):

The so-called smart-grid is a government controlled power and information distribution system that combines and monitors the activities of internet, phone and power usage of the customer.  This is the vision of socialists like Al Gore and would be a huge step forward for the watching “big brother”. We need to fight this very hard, very quickly.

[…]In government speak motivate = force. And if they determine that you are not worthy of receiving power for whatever reason, like being a reformed Christian, I can assure you they’ll find authority in the “Patriot Act ” to turn your lights out. While this may sound like borderline paranoid ramblings, keep in mind that history shows that the state always takes every chance to increase its power and ultimately uses that power against its own people. Let’s don’t give them the opportunity here.

Mayfield’s tentative writings on his Citizen 10/Limits on Government blog didn’t stay public for long.  That blog has since gone private and is now unavailable without an invitation.

Privacy is a major concern, not just for Mayfield, but for virtually all of these “concerned citizens” online.  Almost nobody is willing to divulge their real names.  In fact, very little about who backs and runs these groups has been disclosed.

Jack Mazzola claims to be a member of Concerned Citizens of Opelika and has become a de facto spokesman in the local press.  He claims he is “30 years old and have been a resident of Opelika for almost two years.” During that time, he evidently forgot to update his active Facebook page, which lists his current city of residence as Atlanta, Georgia.  Suspicious readers of the local newspaper did some research of their own and claim Mr. Mazzola has no history of real estate or motor vehicle taxes paid to Lee County, which includes Opelika.

The Smart Grid ‘Death Panels-Fear Factor’

Mayfield’s website spends most of its time scaring residents about the implications of municipal fiber as it relates to their electric bills, also ranting about the Kyoto Protocol, carbon footprints, government control of appliances, and socialism generally.  While appealing to anti-government and climate change skeptics, average residents pondering the mayor conspiring to turn off their air conditioners from his office might be a bit too over-the-top, so wild claims about spending increases and municipal broadband failures are included as well.

Most of the arguments made by “The Opelika Smart Grid” website and Concerned Citizens of Opelika obfuscate the larger and more important discussion about municipal broadband.  They have gained plenty of media attention with their claims and accusations, generating considerable controversy that has little to do with the actual proposal.  For cable and phone companies that oppose the project, that represents a gift that keeps on giving.  When city officials and proponents of the project are forced to spend time and energy debating and debunking some of the wilder claims, that’s time lost selling the project and successfully explaining it to constituents.  For many voters, demagoguery breeds doubt and delivers “no” votes.

Ultimately, for most Opelika residents, the real debate is over competition to area cable and phone companies, not whether Big Brother is going to tell you when you can use your hair dryer.

The Very Wrong Arguments Against Municipal Fiber

Mayfield’s website attempts to indict municipal fiber projects with a mix of incomplete storytelling, selective editing, and questionable sourcing.  The larger argument from the group is that municipal fiber projects always fail leaving taxpayers holding the bag.  But the examples provided tell a different story, ranging from ‘comparing apples and oranges,’ condemning systems facing the same financial challenges private providers are coping with during The Great Recession, or even attacking the viability of systems not even operating yet.

Some examples they mention and the part of the story they don’t:

• The systems in Provo and Memphis didn’t serve a single residential customer.  They were commercial service providers only serving business customers;
• The Burlington system got caught up in the banking crisis and is trying to restructure and refinance its operations;
• The attack on the Bristol municipal fiber system comes from The Heartland Institute, a classic political astroturf operation and an outdated 2007 piece from a political blog.
• The system in Davidson has been written about here before — it is not even municipal fiber.  It’s a formerly bankrupt Adelphia cable operation that required substantial rebuilding — spending the same sums Time Warner Cable and Comcast would have spent had they bought it.  The investment now has a chance to pay dividends… for residents, not Time Warner Cable, going forward.

The website even attacks a municipal fiber system in Salisbury, North Carolina that has yet to begin service.  Calling the project a failure is just a bit premature.  The “Smart Grid” folks were hard pressed to find credible sourcing for their attack on Fibrant, but finally settled for some fact-starved nonsense generated from, of all places, the John Locke Society.  What’s next — Atlas Unplugged: Ayn Rand’s Treatise on Synchronous Broadband?  The group attempted to downplay the connection to the John Locke folks by linking to a content aggregator– Scribd, instead.  Now that we’ve mentioned it, they could have credited us as well.

If you are suspicious about the viability of municipal fiber, simply ask yourself if they are such failures, why do phone and cable companies spend millions to lobby against them?  Why the blizzard of scare mailers, robocalls, astroturf opposition groups, and lawsuits — all to stop what many opponents continually claim are competitive and operational failures?

The answer is, most municipal projects, like co-ops and community owned utilities, are more than viable.  Ask the residents of Wilson, North Carolina who are enjoying the benefits of municipal broadband and cable service even if they don’t become customers.  Time Warner Cable didn’t raise rates on the residents of Wilson this year — the only place in the state not to face relentless rate hikes, all because of that community’s municipal provider keeping their competitors honest.  Those who do become customers enjoy far faster and more reliable broadband service than either the cable or phone company provides in the region.

Chattanooga, Tennessee is a lot closer to Opelika than Provo is, yet somehow “The Opelika Smart Grid” website missed the success story of EPB, a municipal provider delivering the fastest broadband service in the southern United States.  Folks in Lafayette, Louisiana have lots of nice things to say about their municipal provider — LUS Fiber, as well.

Who is Paying for All This?

One important clue that astroturf is being rolled over the municipal fiber debate is the lack of public disclosure about who is financing the muni-broadband haters.

Residents vaguely know the state’s cable companies are bankrolling some of the opposition in the media, taking out full page ads attacking the proposal in the local media “paid for by the ACTA.”  It’s up to readers to discern “ACTA” stands for the Alabama Cable Telecommunications Association, the cable industry’s lobbying group in the state.  Full disclosure that isn’t.

As far as “Opelika’s Smart Grid” website and the “Concerned Citizens” group, funding sources are more murky, if only because they go out of their way not to be specific.

Stop the Cap! posted a comment asking some questions about the website’s funding sources and backers as well as questioning some of their information.  Those questions have not been made public, much less answered, despite subsequent comments written after our own submission.  What are they hiding?

Another matter of concern come from the fact these “grassroots” groups have the ability to finance expensive radio ads.  They claim they are paid for by “concerned local citizens.”  That could easily include Charter Cable, the local phone company, or their representatives.  We don’t know because the owners of the website won’t say who those people are.  In a tight economy, would you be handing over hundreds, if not thousands of your hard-earned dollars to fight for Charter Cable and AT&T by paying for radio ads?  The cable and phone companies and their lobbyist friends sure would.

With no disclosure of real names, no direct statement that there is no industry money or involvement in these opposition websites, and way-too-convenient shared sourcing of “facts” with earlier industry “dollar-a-holler” movements, it would be a major mistake to simply give these “groups” or their arguments the benefit of the doubt.

As we’ve repeatedly uncovered in our own reporting, consumers do that at the peril of their wallets, learning only later they were suckered into opposing competition that could deliver significant savings and better service.

NNPA has direct and long-standing ties to AT&T

Sometimes it’s hard to tell real journalism from industry-backed “dollar-a-holler” hackery, but the National Newspaper Publishers Association, an organization of Black newspaper publishers, went way over the top and made it too easy.

Their “special correspondent” Yaounde Olu wrote a particularly nutty piece of paranoia in an article titled, “Free Press Targets Poor Blacks and Women for Net Neutrality Campaign,” attacking pro-consumer group Free Press for daring to work with the Harmony Institute to undo industry propaganda, astroturf group nonsense, and multi-million dollar corporate lobbying efforts to derail broadband reforms like Net Neutrality.

If this is what passes for “news,” newspapers should reconsider their NNPA membership unless they throw in some free iPhones from AT&T:

In a bid to ensure Net Neutrality, the Free Press has commissioned the Harmony Institute to develop a strategy that will target poor, rural African- Americans in the South and women to increase support for a Net Neutrality (NN) strategy. Net Neutrality is basically the principle that all Internet traffic should be treated equally. In other words, everyone has access, and all platforms, content, and sites are treated equally. The opposite concept is a system wherein there would be limited or possibly “tiered” access. This could impact small businesses and other individuals without the economic wherewithal to access all sites.

According to the Free Press, the core supporters of Net Neutrality are affluent whites, who, have easy access to broadband and understand the issues. Poor, rural African-Americans and women, however, are the demographic that must be influenced in order to build a secure NN support base.

The Harmony Institute, a self-identified nonprofit organization committed to applying behavioral science to communications, in response to the Free Press’ commission, has produced a manual for the purpose of achieving these ends entitled Net Neutrality For the Win: How Entertainment and the Science of Influence Can Save Your Internet. This 40-page document identifies poor, rural African Americans and woman as “persuadable” for Net Neutrality messaging, and lays out very specific strategies for accomplishing their end goal of manipulating this demographic.

[…]Prominent members of the African American community have expressed serious concerns about the strategy laid out in the Free Press document. Shirley Franklin, a former mayor of Atlanta, offered the following observation, “It troubles me that an organization would target women, African-Americans and other minorities on an issue of such importance as universal broadband services without basing their advocacy on access, affordability and relevance.”

Julius Hollis, Chairman and founder of the Alliance for Digital Equality (www.alliancefordigitalequality.org), an organization whose mission is to ensure accessible and affordable broadband to the unders erved and un-served, particularly to communities of color, also weighed in on the issue. He stated, “I am extremely disappointed in the Free Press, not only in its policies and tactics that they are attempting deploy in their strategy paper, but equally disturbing are its attempts to portray the African-American and Latino consumers as expendable in their efforts to promote Net Neutrality. In my opinion, this is going back to the tactics that were used in the Jim Crow era by segregationists. It’s no better than what was used in the Willie Horton playbook by Lee Atwater who, upon his deathbed, asked for forgiveness for using such political behavior tactics.”

[…]Danny J. Bakewell, Sr., Chairman of the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA), is taking the lead on fighting the Free Press’s NN strategy. He has this to say about it, “… I am outraged. And you should be too. I urge you to get out in your community and tell your friends, tell your neighbors, and tell those you meet at church and other groups about this appalling report. Most importantly, call and email Free Press and tell them you need a broadband connection to your house, not a subliminal message beamed into your subconscious.”

The Alliance for Digital Equality is directly backed by... AT&T

The NNPA and this “reporter” failed Journalism:101.  Let us count the ways:

For NNPA’s reporter, Balance is a nutrition bar, not an objective to strive for in this thinly-disguised hit piece against Free Press.  Last time I checked, Free Press was happy to answer their critics and share their own views on the subjects that concern the telecommunications industry and their specially-funded-friends.  Olu couldn’t find the space for the other side after all those “shame on you Free Press” quotes.

The portrayal of issue positioning and strategic messaging to reach various groups with a pro-Net Neutrality message is hardly an insidious, offensive plot.  In fact, unlike big telecom companies, the pro-Net Neutrality side has released their findings in public.  While the telecom industry marks their astroturfing and corporate lobbying strategies “top secret,” the pro-Net Neutrality side has nothing to hide.

But what would a newspaper association catering to African-American newspapers be doing in the middle of this fight in the first place?  As Stop the Cap! has seen and reported countless times before, when interest groups suddenly take an interest in supporting the telecom industry’s agenda items, telecom money is usually not far behind.

The most shameful part of the original article is the “reporter” couldn’t be bothered to be honest with readers and disclose the fact NNPA, the organization behind the article, has direct close ties to AT&T.  So do all of the quoted sources in the article.  The lack of disclosure is inexcusable, shoddy journalism — ultimately producing  just one more piece of industry propaganda.

“NNPA and AT&T Are Partners”

AT&T’s North Carolina President Cynthia Marshall was NNPA’s special guest at a corporate luncheon held by the group this past February, during their Winter Conference held in Charlotte, N.C.

Pharoh Martin, NNPA National Correspondent, covered the event and noted AT&T had “recently established a partnership with NNPA and the NNPA Foundation.”  Martin noted AT&T’s interest in broadband issues and reform are a top agenda item for the telecommunications company and the company ran an Internet Cafe during the event, exposing visitors to AT&T’s agenda.

The Center for Media and Democracy’s SourceWatch also notes NNPA has maintained strong ties with AT&T.

Shirley Franklin provides "dollar-a-holler" support for big cable and phone companies. (Black Agenda Report produced this montage image)

Shirley Franklin, quoted in the piece, was called a prostitute for AT&T by the Black Agenda Report.  After her stint as Atlanta mayor, she’s been an enthusiastic “dollar-a-holler” supporter for big cable and phone company interests.

Julius Hollis, chairman and founder of the Alliance for Digital Equality might be deeply disappointed with Free Press in his word salad of hyped outrage, but consumers should be even more upset that Hollis, too, is working for AT&T’s interests.  In fact his group is directly supported by AT&T.  Actually, calling the ADE a “group” might be a stretch.

As SourceWatch noted, “According to its 2007 tax return (Form 990), it had an operating budget of over $2 million, of which no money was allocated for fundraising, nor hiring of employees. In fact, the total compensation for board members exceeded the amount of all program-related expenses.”  That means loads of largesse for Hollis and the aforementioned Ms. Franklin, who “seems to be some sort of senior advisor to ADE,” according to the Black Agenda Report.

Mr. Bakewell’s admission that he’s taken a political position in this debate makes the NNPA just another player in the political arena.  They cannot call themselves impartial in this debate, nor should they be writing ostensibly unbiased news reports while also cheerleading AT&T and proclaiming a partnership with the phone giant.

Bakewell’s half-baked notions that AT&T will suddenly provide affordable broadband to most Americans while it continues to raise prices on broadband service (and in some cases limit its use), would simply be dismissed as naive if AT&T’s money wasn’t helping to feed the rhetoric.

The subliminal message beamed into the subconsciousness of NNPA’s readers is the one carefully crafted by AT&T to generate fake outrage and turn a telecommunications debate into another piece of raw meat for racial politics.  Once the puppet strings leading back to AT&T are revealed to readers, the real outrage should be reserved for the NNPA itself, cynically doing the bidding of a phone company and manipulating readers with false scandals and pointless side shows of distraction.

Obtaining universal access to affordable, high quality broadband service is not, nor has it ever been, a racial issue.  It’s an economic issue that has been exacerbated by companies that enjoy their current duopoly status and can afford to keep raising the prices on their customers, regardless of who they are.

Stop the Cap! is a pro-consumer group with no industry ties and no corporate money to hide.  We’re 100 percent consumer backed and consumer supported.  Too bad the NNPA, Ms. Franklin, Mr. Hollis and Mr. Bakewell cannot say that.