AT&T will spend $9.7 million in annual public subsidies to bolster its cell tower network in South Carolina in part to expand its rural wireless broadband program. Perhaps services like mobile tower lease would come in handy.

The Federal Communications Commission approved the funding, which is expected to cost Americans nearly $10 million annually until 2020 to boost wireless coverage in 20 mostly rural counties in South Carolina to reach an estimated 12,000 new homes and businesses by the end of this year. Nationwide, the company is getting almost $428 million a year to extend access to 1.1 million customers in 18 states, the FCC says.

AT&T plans to spend the money to improve cell towers it already has in place for its mobile phone customers. The company admitted it will rely on existing infrastructure and won’t lay a single new strand of fiber optics. Instead, wireless broadband customers will share space with AT&T’s existing mobile customers on AT&T’s backhaul network.

“Because of the wireless aspect of it and the greater ability to deliver that last-mile connection, it does help to overcome any obstacles that may be in the cost equation,” Hayes said. “This initial build, with it being infrastructure that we have in place with these towers, that comes from years of investment.”

AT&T will also be able to promote its own products and offer customers discounts and free installation when they agree to sign up for other AT&T services. Hayes said the service will cost $60 a month for everyone else, along with a one-time installation fee of $99.

“Because of the wireless aspect of it and the greater ability to deliver that last-mile connection, it does help to overcome any obstacles that may be in the cost equation,” spokesman Daniel Hayes told The Post and Courier. “This initial build, with it being infrastructure that we have in place with these towers, that comes from years of investment.”

AT&T is treating the fixed wireless program, which offers up to 10Mbps service, as an alternative to wiring fiber optics in outer suburban and rural areas.

With taxpayer/ratepayer dollars financing a significant part of the cost, AT&T will have a de facto monopoly in its rural service areas where it has traditionally declined to offer or maintain DSL service or consider fiber optic upgrades, leaving these areas without broadband service until the subsidy program began.

Discovery Communications, occasionally left out of online video alternative bundles targeting cord-cutters, is preparing to retaliate with a $3-4 web-delivered bundle of channels featuring Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, TLC and other affiliated networks and possibly Scripps Networks’ bouquet of channels including HGTV, Food Network, and the Cooking Channel.

Discovery is one of two bidders (Viacom is the other) vying to take charge of Scripps Networks Interactive, one of the few remaining independent network owners not affiliated with a cable company or Hollywood studio.

Bloomberg News reports Discovery wants the networks to bolster its forthcoming inexpensive online video bundle, which will sell for $3-4 a month. While Discovery has advocated selling a sports-free package of networks in partnership with Viacom and AMC for under-$20 since April, those negotiations appear to be stalled, so Discovery is reportedly moving forward on its own.

Discovery Networks¹

If Discovery successfully snares Scripps, it will own five of the top 20 U.S. cable networks. That is likely to be important in future negotiations with cable and satellite providers at contract renewal time. Discovery, like most cable network owners, pitches cable companies bundles of networks sold at wholesale prices, whether a cable operator wants all the channels in that bundle or not. Discovery plans to avoid alienating cable and satellite providers by using them to market the bundle direct-to-consumers. A prospective customer would call their local cable or satellite provider to order the bundle of web-streamed networks, not Discovery. Cable operators would likely also handle billing and customer service issues.

Scripps Interactive Networks¹

This type of sales partnership is not unprecedented. Before the era of DirecTV and Dish Networks, home satellite dishowners using C band TVRO satellite dishes as large as 12 feet across often ordered satellite-delivered programming from cable companies, particularly those owned by John Malone’s Tele-Communications, Inc. (TCI) and sold through its home satellite programming division Netlink. Customers would be billed directly by the nearest TCI cable system on an ongoing basis, which irritated a lot of dishowners in the 1990s who sought satellite reception as an alternative to dealing with the cable company.

The practice did not come without problems. Many local TCI systems were baffled when their customer audits revealed they had customers in cities 100+ miles outside of their immediate service area. Many were accidentally disconnected after their subscriptions were purged from TCI’s systems in error. By 2005, TCI was five years out of the cable business and had sold Netlink to Echostar, which owns Dish Networks. That same year TVRO owners were informed they could no longer subscribe to a number of networks for their giant backyard dishes and were converted to Dish Network small dish service instead.

¹-Information sourced by Wikipedia and Stop the Cap!

Antenna tower operator Crown Castle International has announced it will buy privately held Lightower Fiber Networks for about $7.1 billion in cash to acquire the company’s extensive fiber assets across the northeastern United States that will be used to connect small cell 5G networks.

The acquisition will allow Crown Castle to market an extensive fiber backhaul network in large cities like New York, Boston, Washington, Chicago, Detroit and Philadelphia, as well as smaller cities particularly in upstate New York, Ohio, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and northern New England. Crown Castle, which already owns many of the cell towers where AT&T and Verizon place their equipment, will now be able to market fiber backhaul connectivity for AT&T and Verizon’s forthcoming 5G networks.

LIghtower’s fiber footprint.

Lightower’s fiber network was originally focused on major markets like Boston, New York City, the District of Columbia, and Chicago. Its partner, Fibertech — acquired by Lightower in 2015, focused on 30 mid-sized cities from Indiana to the west to Maine in the east. The network’s customers are large companies and independent ISPs. In Rochester, where Lightower maintains a Network Operations Center, Greenlight Networks relies on a fiber backhaul network originally built by Fibertech to connect its fiber-to-the-home broadband service. That fiber is likely to soon be shared with AT&T, Verizon, and potentially T-Mobile and Sprint to power any 5G buildouts in the region.

“Lightower’s dense fiber footprint is well-located in top metro markets in the northeast and is well-positioned to facilitate small cell deployments by our customers,” said Crown Castle CEO Jay Brown in a statement. “Following the transaction, we will have approximately 60,000 route miles of fiber with a presence in all of the top 10 and 23 of the top 25 metro markets.”

This acquisition marks Crown Castle’s first major diversion outside of its core market — leasing out the cell towers it owns or acquires.

(Image by Brad Jonas originally for Pando.com)

A shadowy group claiming to advocate for sensible online privacy is urging California’s legislature to ditch the California Broadband Internet Privacy Act (AB 375), introduced by Assemblyman Ed Chau (D-Monterey Park), claiming it will curb innovation, reduce competition, and hurt consumers.

“First, the proposal attacks a nonexistent problem,” complained Jon Leibowitz, a partner at Davis Polk & Wardwell and co-chair of the 21st Century Privacy Coalition. “Internet service providers have committed that they will seek permission from consumers before using sensitive personal information, such as health and financial data. Customers will have to affirmatively opt in before any such transaction could take place. So no one’s personal data is being sold.”

“Second, even if a problem exists, there are legal tools to combat it. In short, there is no legislative privacy gap,” he said. “The Federal Communications Commission has statutory authority to bring cases against internet service providers that fail to protect consumer privacy. In addition, the California attorney general can bring cases under the state Unfair Competition Law, which prohibits ‘unlawful, unfair or fraudulent business acts or practices.’”

Leibowitz seemed unusually concerned with how phone and cable companies would fare if the proposed bill becomes law.

Leibowitz

“The California proposal ignores the principle, almost universally accepted, that privacy should not be about who collects data, but rather what data is collected and how it is used,” Leibowitz said. “It would treat Internet service providers, a small subset of the Internet ecosystem, differently from every other company that collects consumer information online.”

Leibowitz told readers of The Sacremento Bee he hoped the legislature would “give this proposal the burial it deserves.”

The interest in state online privacy bills has grown because of the Republican-dominated FCC and Congress that tossed out federal internet privacy rules earlier this year. Consumers concerned about how their personal information and browsing habits are collected and sold are now largely dependent on whatever state laws exist to protect personal privacy and give consumers the right of informed consent for online information gathering and marketing.

While Leibowitz advocates for burying California’s effort to re-establish internet privacy, he has also attempted to bury his exceptionally close ties to the cable and phone companies that are responsible for almost all of his group’s funding.

The 21st Century Privacy Coalition, also co-chaired by former Republican congresswoman Mary Bono, is funded by Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, Time Warner Cable/Charter Communications, DirecTV, and their respective industry trade associations. The checkbooks are wide open, because the coalition has already spent nearly $2 million on lobbying, according to disclosure records. Most of that money has gone to hiring lobbyists from Mayer Brown and Ryan, MacKinnon, Vasapoli, and Berzok.

The group launched in 2013 and primarily concerned itself with federal online privacy issues, but since the Trump Administration came into office, there is little work to be done on the federal level, so their new mission appears to be hassling state legislatures who are unwilling to do the industry’s bidding.

Leibowitz is also a traveler through D.C.’s revolving door, serving as former Democratic chairman of the Federal Trade Commission. Today he collects accolades and more from the cable and phone companies.