As we approach the 10th anniversary of 9/11, emergency responders promised a state-of-the-art emergency communications voice, broadband, and mobile network are still waiting, even though billions in taxpayer dollars have been thrown away in crony insider deals, incompetence, and faulty design work.

Findings from the original 9/11 Commission found radios that couldn’t receive public safety signals, an inability for different fire, police, and ambulance agencies to easily communicate with each other, communications failures when the Twin Towers fell, and nightmarish congestion on civilian cell phone networks often used as a backup when radios are overwhelmed with traffic.

After hundreds of public safety personnel died, the Commission recommended federal funding of a national communications network for emergency responders and other priority traffic.  That recommendation has never been implemented, and piecemeal funding of individual projects in its place on the state level have achieved only mixed success.

Now, legislation languishing to Washington to pay for a national emergency network is getting a renewed push from Democratic senators Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, and Rep. Peter King, a New York Republican.

The estimated cost of the new network is between $10-12 billion dollars, but before taxpayers foot the bill for a new voice/data emergency network, federal officials should learn from past mistakes that have wasted billions of dollars and have been delayed or worse by waste, fraud, and abusively bad planning.

Examples from just one state — the one worst impacted by the events on 9/11, provide numerous examples of bad decisionmaking and repeated mistakes that could cost taxpayers even more.

The New York Statewide Wireless Network – A Disaster Of Its Own Making

In the summer of 2004, New York State accepted bids to construct what it thought would be a $500 million-$1 billion dollar statewide wireless radio and data system to connect emergency responders together anywhere from Buffalo to Long Island.  The $1 billion dollar winning bid came from Tyco Electronics’ MA/COM division, which claimed it could do the job for one-third of the cost of the next qualified bidder Motorola, which put the price tag closer to $3 billion.

The wide disparity in bids created significant controversy, especially for Motorola which has years of experience in constructing emergency radio systems.

“There’s something wrong with this picture,” John McFadden, Motorola’s vice president of sales for the northern division of its North America Group told Urgent Communications magazine. “There shouldn’t be a massive gap in these prices.”

Indeed, M/A-COM and Motorola — the first vendors to deploy Project 25-compliant systems — often find themselves as bidding competitors, but their proposals typically are in the same price range, Motorola spokeswoman Pat Sturmon told the magazine.

“If we had lost by 10% or 15%, we would have packed our bags and moved on,” she said.

Then-state assemblyman David Koon (D-Fairport), also raised his eyebrows over the veracity of MA/COM’s bid.  He called MA/COM a “kind of unproven company” for its track record of successfully completing projects on time and on budget.  Koon said Pennsylvania’s wireless system, also being built by MA/COM, ran significantly over budget and was running late.

Four years later, MA/COM’s reputation took a hit when Lancaster County canceled their contract with the company for inadequate reception of fire ground communications.  By 2009, Pennsylvania’s statewide network was still suffering reception problems and remained incomplete, costing state taxpayers $500 million, when it was originally expected to cost $179 million.  Despite this, state officials involved in the original approval of MA/COM defended the company’s performance in the state, blaming mountainous terrain for reception issues and changes in the scope of the network.

In 2007, many of Koon’s fears about MA/COM’s eventual performance in New York were proven correct as costs for the billion dollar network more than doubled, and its construction ran considerably behind schedule.  In late 2007, a field test of MA/COM’s network in Erie County was called an abject failure.

Syracuse’s Post-Standard delivered the report card:

Buffalo’s fire commissioner said many radios had no reception in the western half of the city. And many radios that did get signals had poor sound quality. Problems surfaced, too, that pointed out the need for more effective training of the folks operating the network’s equipment.

[…] The Erie-Chautauqua leg of the network was supposed to be up and running by last June. It was on track to meet that target as late as December 2006, according to the state comptroller. Now, the state is hoping to see it working by April 2008.

It was not to be.  Citing 10 pages of the deficiencies that M/A-COM did not fix or remedy, then Gov. David Paterson canceled the contract in January 2009, and effectively sidelined the network.  In fact, state officials were seeking a refund of at least $50 million in wasted taxpayer dollars.

While New York and Pennsylvania were struggling with performance issues in rolling out MA/COM’s networks, MA/COM employees were testifying before the FCC, advocating the federal government adopt the kind of “end-to-end IP network” similar to what the company was building for New York.

But the controversies don’t stop there.  Several contractors hired to develop, administer, or deploy various projects have come under fire for their performance on various projects:

Hiding Projects from Public Scrutiny

In December 2010, New York’s comptroller rejected a $118 million contract to update New York City Transit’s communications system, citing the association of the engineering company involved in an alleged $80 million corruption scheme involving city payroll processing.  The government officials who supported the bid were under suspicion of ignoring the consultant fraud and money laundering alleged by federal prosecutors, perhaps to protect their own reputations.  Details of the project under scrutiny were carefully controlled and selectively released by the Office of Payroll Administration, the body in charge of the “problematic project.”  The executive director was suspended.  He later resigned and as of June of this year, New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg was demanding a refund of $600 million — all the money one of the project entities has been paid for the project under scrutiny since 2003.

In Monroe County, N.Y. county officials are under increasing state scrutiny over a project to convert the county’s fire radio system to a digital platform.  Questions have been raised about the establishment of a local development corporation — Monroe Security and Safety Systems, Inc. (M3SI) and a contractor — Navitech, which some believe are being used to avoid state oversight requirements.  The Center for Government Research suggested the cozy relationship between the county and the contractors might not be above-board:

[…] Navitech sought bids from only two vendors, Motorola and Harris RF Communications. After Navitech awarded a $30 million contract to Harris, Motorola cried foul, asserting that the bid lacked specific requirements and that the bid was uncompetitive in other ways.

Press and blog reports of the transaction suggest that personal ties among the County Administration and Navitech are involved. Whether allegations of “self-dealing” are true or not, by delegating the big money transaction to Navitech, M3SI appears to have violated the spirit of openness and transparency suggested by open meetings laws and the public bidding process. We accept the proposition that a private firm can operate more efficiently than a public entity. Perhaps complying with all of those laws would have resulted in higher cost. But that seems unlikely. Properly managed, a public bidding process that employs clear specifications and seeks bids from all comers will squeeze excess profit from prospective vendors, securing a better deal for the taxpayer. There is more to learn about how this bidding process was managed. But what we appear to know about the circumstances leaves open the possibility of self-dealing and corruption.

Communications System Upgrades Some Local Fire Officials Think Are Worse Than What They Have Now

In Ontario County, N.Y., some public safety officials understand the need for upgrades, especially a decade after 9/11, but the systems being promoted by some vendors who dazzle local and state officials with glossy presentations and help with federal and state aid don’t get the same glowing assessments by individual fire and police agencies that are forced to use them.  As the hilly Finger Lakes county contemplates a digital upgrade to its public safety networks, Naples Fire Chief Patrick Elwell said the new system could endanger firefighters, not help them.

“There have been numerous failures of the digital trunk communication system, which have contributed to the death of firefighters,” said Elwell.

Although digital systems open up more individual channels for police and fire agencies to communicate, the audio quality often leaves much to be desired.  Almost all sound worse than the average cell phone, with audio artifacts that can give a “watery” quality to voices.  Background noise, common at a fire scene, can actually be amplified by some digital systems, although “hiss and static” common to weak analog signals is eliminated.  Unfortunately, according to Elwell, digital communications systems do occasionally crash, which can disrupt all radio communications county-wide.

The Messenger Post newspaper elaborates:

Elwell provided supervisors with a packet of information included documented cases of radio failure that resulted in the death of firefighters. One took place on April 16, 2007, when a Woodbridge, Va., firefighter died in the line of duty. The Prince William County Department of Fire Rescue concluded that the county’s Motorola Digital Trunked radio system contributed to the tragedy. In another case, firefighters were using their cell phones to communicate when the digital system failed.

Elwell suggested the county reconsider its investment in the digital system and maintain the 400 MHz radio system.

“The financial burden will be less, and the 400 MHz system will assure clear communication on fire ground,” he said.

“Secure” Communications Network Easily Eavesdropped and Subject to Effective Jamming With $30 Children’s Toy

Among the most ubiquitous modern digital communications networks public safety agencies rely on is based on a standard called Project 25 (P25).  Many manufacturers can build equipment that can support this standard, which makes competition among different vendors possible.  P25 networks are increasingly common in cities around the country for law enforcement and fire communications. But recent revelations suggest P25, touted as secure and effective in public emergencies, isn’t as robust as its backers would have you believe.  In fact, new findings suggest eavesdropping on secure transmissions is easier than many thought, and anyone using a $30 children’s toy can effectively jam even the most sensitive law enforcement communications.

Scanner enthusiasts and the media have legally monitored public safety communications for decades, listening to fire and police calls and causing no harm.  But some agencies don’t appreciate the public audience, and have used digital radio systems to make listening more expensive (digital scanners cost hundreds of dollars) or encrypt even the most routine communications.

The Wall Street Journal reports findings from the University of Pennsylvania that suggest eavesdropping is still routine, even for encrypted, sensitive communications.

University of Pennsylvania researchers overheard conversations that included descriptions of undercover agents and confidential informants, plans for forthcoming arrests and information on the technology used in surveillance operations.

“We monitored sensitive transmissions about operations by agents in every Federal law enforcement agency in the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security,” wrote the researchers, who were led by computer science professor Matt Blaze and plan to reveal their findings Wednesday in a paper at the Usenix Security Symposium in San Francisco.

More disturbing is the fact P25 transmissions can be effectively jammed over a considerable distance with the use of a modified $30 children’s toy — the GirlTech IM-Me:

The GirlTech-based reflexive subframe jammer is able to reliably prevent reception from a nearby Motorola P25 transmitter as received by both a Motorola XTS2500 transceiver and Icom PCR-2500, with the jammer and the transmitter under attack both operating at similar power levels and with similar distance from the receiver. A standard off-the-shelf external RF amplifier would be all that is necessary to extend this experimental apparatus to real-world, long-range use. While we did not perform high power or long-range jamming ourselves (and there are significant regulatory barriers to such experiments), we expect that an attacker would face few technical difficulties scaling a jammer within the signal range of a typical metropolitan area.

After more than a decade of “beep, beep,” Time Warner Cable is retiring Geococcyx californianus, the ground foraging cuckoo better known as the Greater Roadrunner.

It’s all part of a “brand refresh,” Time Warner’s Jeannette Castaneda tells Fortune.  The idea is to “create excitement around the eye-ear symbol.”  For now, the “Road Runner” name will remain — just the mascot disappears.

When Road Runner was first introduced in 1995 in Elmira, N.Y., it was designed to be a localized high-speed online portal, originally called the “Southern Tier On-Line Community.” Portals were all the rage in the 1990s, designed to serve as a unified home page to help users find content more easily.  When the cable modem broadband service finally spread to other markets, it was branded ‘LineRunner.’

But Time Warner’s marketing people decided the company’s best strategy to convince users that paying at least double the price they were paying for dial-up was worth the investment when you considered how fast cable broadband service was, and how it would outperform any dial-up connection.  The cable company spent months negotiating with Warner Bros. to license the use of the roadrunner in the old Wile E. Coyote cartoons.  The company even changed the name of their broadband product to Road Runner to drive home the speed message.

Over the years, Time Warner has blanketed customers in postcard mailers, advertising, and billboards showcasing their broadband mascot, but no more.  While Time Warner Cable would not provide exact reasons for the brand change, we suspect there are several factors involved:

1. The cost to license the roadrunner character from Warner Bros.  In 1998, regional Time Warner representatives shared that the licensing agreement with Warner Bros. was costly and complicated.  Warner Bros. maintains strict control over their licensed characters and how they are used.
2. In the past, emphasizing speed was essential in convincing consumers to drop their old provider for the cable company’s alternative.  But broadband penetration in most of Time Warner’s markets has already reached a high level and most of those still refusing to take the service are not going to be convinced by speed arguments.  For these holdouts, lack of interest and the cost of the service are the most important factors, and the roadrunner character does not speak to these concerns.
3. 

   Canis usagecapus

   The telecom industry, notably cable, has spent years trying to retire the phrases “Internet access” and “Internet Service Provider.”  They don’t even like the word “broadband.”  For them – it’s High Speed Internet (HSI) or “High Speed Online.”  They have put the words “high speed” in the very term they use to describe Internet access.

4. Time Warner Cable believes in their unified bundling of services.  They aggressively pitch all of them together at a discounted price and have de-emphasized the branding that used to be associated with individual package components.  For example, Time Warner didn’t retire the name “LineRunner” when they rebranded their cable modem service Road Runner.  They simply re-used the name for their telephone service.  Time Warner tested LineRunner in the Rochester, N.Y. market before ditching the product for a Voice Over IP service they now like to call “digital phone.”  Today, most of Time Warner Cable’s most visible ancillary branding is done for their triple-play packages.  Remember “All the Best?”

Fortune thinks the retirement of the roadrunner may also have something to do with the company’s desire to implement an Internet Overcharging scheme:

TWC, like other big ISPs, is a leading proponent of imposing bandwidth caps on its Internet users. Imagine the possibilities for illustrating articles about this topic – Wile E Coyote (perhaps wearing a TWC ballcap) tripping up the Road Runner with piano wire, or finally getting his revenge and hurling the obnoxious bird off a cliff.

On Friday, the tech-wireless media was in a frenzy over news one of AT&T’s law firms accidentally posted an un-censored copy of “highly confidential information” regarding its merger proposal with T-Mobile on the Federal Communications Commission website.  Although nobody seems to have a complete copy of the notorious filing to share (it was quickly pulled down after Wireless Week — an industry trade publication — blew the whistle), it turns out if you are willing to plow through AT&T’s periodic publicly-available document dumps, you don’t really need “top secret” information to realize how AT&T is trying to sucker America into accepting its competition-busting merger deal with T-Mobile USA.

What AT&T is Telling the FCC’s Lawyers But Hiding from You

As part of the approval process, the FCC sent AT&T a significant homework assignment, demanding answers to some detailed questions about the justification for the merger, how AT&T intends to use both its existing and newly-acquired wireless spectrum from both Qualcomm and, presumably, T-Mobile, and what specific plans the company has to expand its next generation wireless data network to rural America.

Last week, we learned from the unredacted filing that AT&T will pay $39 billion for T-Mobile to expand a 4G network that AT&T refused to spend $3.8 billion dollars to build themselves.  You read that right.  AT&T says it can expand its own 4G network to an additional 55 million people for just under $4 billion, or buy T-Mobile for nearly $40 billion to accomplish the same thing.

And what exactly does AT&T get from T-Mobile?  A largely urban network running a 4G network that goes nowhere near the 55 million largely rural Americans AT&T claims it intends to serve if the merger wins approval.

So scratch AT&T’s claim that the acquisition of T-Mobile’s network will do anything directly for the rural Americans T-Mobile never directly served.

AT&T’s biggest selling point is that its acquisition of T-Mobile will allow it to reach “97 percent of America” with its improved 4G network:

Because of the spectrum gains and the overall economic benefits resulting from the transaction, senior management made a business judgment that the merger with T-Mobile USA allowed AT&T to expand its LTE build-out to 97 percent of the population. These economic benefits include incremental reductions in cost due to the addition of T-Mobile USA resources, greater scale economies, such as higher volume discounts on handsets and equipment, a larger customer base, and the expectation of a higher take-rate for its LTE service. In addition, the transaction will enable AT&T to re-purpose its existing capital budget allocated to spectrum acquisitions to be allocated for other uses. Overall, the scale and scope of the larger combined wireless business will permit the additional capital investment to be spread over a larger revenue base than would be the case absent the merger.

But the unredacted, “highly confidential” part of the same document exposes important facts AT&T didn’t want the public to know:

“AT&T senior management concluded that, unless AT&T could find a way to expand its LTE footprint on a significantly more cost-effective basis, an LTE deployment to 80 percent of the U.S. population was the most that could be justified,” wrote AT&T counsel Richard Rosen.

In other words, by collecting T-Mobile customers’ monthly payments, AT&T can utilize that additional revenue, earned mostly from T-Mobile’s urban customer base, and use it to pay for rural cell sites the company itself won’t spend the money to upgrade to achieve that 97 percent coverage.

You can read between the lines of AT&T’s public statements and come to the same conclusion Rosen made confidentially, but it helps when the company’s own lawyer says it out loud.

Karl Bode from Broadband Reports thinks there is something familiar about that 97 percent figure.  It just so happens to be Verizon’s existing 3G coverage area.  Verizon pointed to their more robust 3G coverage in a major ad campaign that began just prior to the Christmas shopping season in 2009.  It did enough damage to bring AT&T to court in an effort to stop the ads, and reacquainted America with Luke Wilson, who threw postcards on a floor map touting AT&T’s more robust, but considerably less speedy, last-generation EDGE data network.

Verizon completed their expansive 3G network without the benefit of a merger and is in the process of building their 4G LTE network on their own as well — capable of eventually reaching the majority of Americans without taking out the fourth largest wireless carrier in the country.  AT&T, on the other hand, spent its time in court and handing Wilson more postcards to throw  instead of investing appropriately in its network over the last three years.

AT&T’s Document Dump: More than 1 Million Documents Bury FCC and Justice Lawyers

Another important revelation that doesn’t require the accidental disclosure of redacted data is the fact AT&T is burying government lawyers at both the FCC and Department of Justice in virtual paper.  The company admits to sending at least 1.2 million documents to Justice alone.  Reviewing AT&T’s filings with the FCC exposes the use of the old legal trick of burying your opponents in paper, hoping they will miss important documents that could call into question the veracity of the company’s arguments.

With the FCC, AT&T’s lawyers love to use appendices and attachments as virtual dumping grounds, adding copies of virtually any company document that contain “key words” or “search terms” in response to the Commission’s questions.

Take this Q&A exchange:

FCC Question: Provide all plans, analyses, and reports discussing: (a) spectrum requirements for all band segments; (b) the average data transmission speeds that the Company expects customers will be able to obtain; (c) actual and forecasted traffic and busy hour analyses, (d) total data tonnage; (e) capacity utilization rate; (f) vertically integrated operations; or (g) other technical or engineering factors required to attain any available cost savings or other efficiencies necessary to compete profitably in the sale or provision of any relevant product or any relevant service.

AT&T’s Answer: To respond to this request, AT&T conducted key word searches of custodian files as detailed in the tables appended as Exhibit A. Documents responsive to this request are included in AT&T’s production.

It’s the equivalent of putting the phrase “data transmission speeds” into a search engine and then attaching every document that appears in the results and calling it “your answer,” relevant or not.

AT&T used the same approach in answering the FCC’s questions about how the merger would specifically bring improved 4G service to areas without service today, what impact the merger will have on roaming agreements and wholesale access to the combined AT&T/T-Mobile network, and even in response to a basic question about plans for targeting particular competitors, customers, or customer segments after the merger.

Reality: AT&T Doesn’t Care About T-Mobile’s Network

So what else does AT&T win from a nearly $40 billion investment in T-Mobile?  While the leak of confidential information continues to be largely protected by a trade industry publication that has not released it publicly in full, anyone versed in telecommunications can easily find plenty in AT&T’s public documents.

The most important point is that AT&T admits, publicly,  it has not determined exactly what it intends to do with T-Mobile’s most important asset — its network:

• “AT&T, however, will not be in a position to make any final determinations until it is able to obtain more detailed information about T-Mobile USA’s operations, which will occur later in the acquisition process.”
• “AT&T has not yet begun detailed integration planning efforts.”

Would you spend $40 billion to buy a cellular service provider and not have the first clue what you would do with it?

But it gets even sillier.  AT&T doesn’t even know, several months after the merger was announced, exactly where T-Mobile’s cell towers are and what kind of backhaul connectivity they have:

AT&T has not yet begun detailed integration planning and its knowledge of T-Mobile USA’s operations is necessarily limited at this early stage. The actual process of determining which specific T-Mobile USA sites to integrate and which to decommission will require substantially more data from T-Mobile USA regarding its network as well as a more thorough engineering analysis of each area’s characteristics and capacity needs, which could change by the time the Transaction closes. Consequently, AT&T has not yet determined the exact number or location of T-Mobile USA towers or other locations used for transmission of signals that will be integrated into the combined company’s network to increase network density.

Because AT&T has not yet begun detailed integration planning and its knowledge of T-Mobile USA’s operation is necessarily limited at this early stage, AT&T does not have documents regarding the integration of the two companies’ switching facilities and backhaul.

These facts have made it impossible for AT&T to be responsive to specific questions from the FCC about the impact of acquiring and integrating T-Mobile’s operations into AT&T’s.  That left the company answering the Commission’s questions with statements like this:

Q. Provide all plans, analyses, and reports discussing any possible modification by the Merged Company of the terms, including prices, for providing backhaul for unaffiliated mobile wireless service providers to new or existing towers.

A. AT&T has not yet begun detailed integration planning, and its knowledge of T-Mobile USA’s operations is necessarily preliminary at this early stage. Any consideration regarding potential modification of terms and pricing for backhaul has not yet occurred. Thus, AT&T does not have any documents responsive to this request.

Good to know… or not know.

So if AT&T isn’t dwelling on the details of T-Mobile’s network, what do they expect to obtain from its purchase?

Here are AT&T’s “assumptions.”  That’s right, AT&T isn’t actually promising to do any of this.  It just “assumes” it will based on earlier planning — the same kind of planning that was supposed to deliver 4G upgrades without T-Mobile in the equation, until company executives changed their minds:

• Utilize the parties’ combined scale, spectrum, and other resources to extend AT&T’s deployment of LTE services to over 97% of the U.S. population, extending service to an additional 55 million Americans;
• Integrate AT&T’s and T-Mobile USA’s wireless networks, including:

1. Integrate T-Mobile USA cell sites into the AT&T wireless network, resulting in a more robust network grid;
2. Combine AT&T’s and T-Mobile USA’s GSM networks, eliminate redundant GSM control channels and maximize utilization efficiencies;
3. Combine AT&T’s and T-Mobile USA’s GSM spectrum holdings, resulting in channel pooling efficiencies and improved coverage;
4. Optimize usage of the parties’ combined spectrum holdings and deploy additional spectrum to support more spectrally efficient network technologies; and
5. Decommission redundant cell sites and reuse radios and other equipment from decommissioned sites to enhance network efficiency and performance.

• Make AT&T rate plans available to T-Mobile USA customers, while preserving rate plans for T-Mobile USA consumers who wish to maintain their existing plan of choice;
• Make AT&T services, smartphones, and other devices available to current T-Mobile USA customers;
• Integrate retail outlets, dealers, and marketing efforts under the AT&T brand;
• Integrate billing, customer care, and other support services;
• Integrate certain functional units, including, but not limited to human resources, general & administrative, information technology, finance, procurement, and legal.
• Achieve savings in network infrastructure investment and network and customer equipment purchases; and
• Achieve efficiencies in interconnection and transport costs.

During AT&T’s periodic communications with shareholders, the company has spent most of its time talking about cost savings made possible from closing redundant retail outlets, integrating networks, and the always-vague savings from job redundancies (read that major layoffs).  In fact, AT&T has said they will save up to $10 billion dollars in infrastructure expenses with the merger.  At the same time, its public relations efforts promise the company will spend a veritable fortune — up to $8 billion, improving AT&T’s own network.

You can be certain to the uninitiated, eight billion dollars sounds like a lot of money.  It’s a dollar amount that is sure to razzle-dazzle plenty of people.  That is, until you realize during the same period of time, T-Mobile itself would have been spending up to $18 billion of its own money upgrading its network.  Eighteen billion minus eight billion equals the aforementioned $10 billion — the savings AT&T will realize from continuing to under-spend on both its network and T-Mobile’s.

More Fun Facts: AT&T Cares More About Counting Your Usage Than Measuring Network Capacity & Utilization

Wading through AT&T’s filings has revealed another important fact pertinent to Stop the Cap! readers: AT&T obsesses about measuring your wireless data usage but doesn’t have much of a clue about how much network capacity it has at different cell sites, nor the utilization rates at those sites.  No wonder AT&T drops calls.  If the company isn’t carefully measuring network utilization at a granular level, it can’t hope to find overcongested sites that badly need upgrades to stop the problem of dropped calls and slow speed data:

AT&T does not maintain in the ordinary course of business a nationwide list of all CMAs where its individual network is underutilized. With regard to the areas where AT&T’s and T-Mobile USA’s networks may be underutilized relative to each other, AT&T does not have this information on a CMA by CMA basis, nor does AT&T have engineering data that would provide this granular information for T-Mobile USA.

However, when the opportunity to engage in highly-profitable Internet Overcharging exists, measuring customer usage takes a high priority, as we learn from AT&T in response to another question from the FCC:

The .csv file in Exhibit 19-1 contains current (as of March 11, 2011) data usage for each UMTS site (by USID) measured in kilobytes, during the monthly busy hour, and separately for the uplink and the downlink. The .csv file in Exhibit 19-2 contains current (as of March 11, 2011) data usage for each GSM site, measured in Erlangs, combined for the uplink and downlink, for the monthly busy hour. At the Commission’s request, AT&T also provides an estimate of GSM data usage in terms of Kilobytes, using a formula that converts Erlangs to Kilobytes. ll Both exhibits identify the CMA associated with each site. The .xlsx file in Exhibit 19-3 contains usage projections that are currently used by the network engineers for each of AT&T’s 27 regional clusters in the ordinary course of business.

AT&T doesn’t lose any money when it drops your call from an overcongested cell site (unless you grow weary enough of it to cancel service), but can lose plenty if it doesn’t measure customer data usage in hopes of limiting customer use or charging them an overlimit fee when they don’t.

AT&T’s Mother-of-all-Disclaimers: AT&T Has Not Verified It Has Produced All Requested Documents

The most flippant part of AT&T’s document dump is the revelation that despite the million plus documents thrown at two government agencies, AT&T isn’t willing to affirm it actually produced copies of the relevant documents the government wants as part of the review process.  In a host of disclaimers and AT&T’s own descriptions of how it defines the meaning of the government requests, the company notes:

Pursuant to discussions with the Commission staff, AT&T is submitting its Response consistent with the following qualifications:

• Custodian files were searched covering the period from January 1, 2009 through March 21, 2011, except for certain custodians, whose files were searched through early May, 2011.
• AT&T has not verified that it has produced “all other documents referred to in the document or attachments,” pursuant to instruction 4.
• AT&T has not searched backup disks and tapes for documents.

Nothing to slip through scrutiny there, right?

One of the conditions Comcast had to agree to as part of its multi-billion dollar deal to acquire NBC-Universal was to throw a bone to some of America’s poorest households by offering discount Internet access for three years.  Comcast agreed and is rolling out low-speed Internet at a discount in time for the upcoming school year.

“Comcast Internet Essentials,” is the ultimate in bare-bones Internet.  For $9.95 a month, customers in Comcast service areas will get 1.5Mbps download speed and 384kbps upstream, with the usual 250GB usage limit Comcast applies to everyone.  But not just anyone can qualify.  Comcast has limited the program only to households with at least one child qualified to receive free (not discounted) school lunches under the National School Lunch Program.  So if your income-challenged household doesn’t include children, or you pay for your own school lunches, you are out of luck.

Comcast is also denying access to anyone who has had any level of Comcast Internet service within the last 90 days.  So if you’ve scraped enough money together to pay Comcast’s regular prices, the cable company is not going to give you a break.

If your kids graduate or are removed from the school lunch program, your inexpensive Internet service goes with it.

If you have been late on a Comcast bill, or owe the company for unreturned cable equipment, you also cannot receive the service.

The company will also provide vouchers for a “discounted laptop” for $150 — a computer that turns out to be a netbook.  At least it comes with Windows 7 (Starter Edition).

Comcast requires would-be customers to start with an application, available by phone, at 1-855-8-INTERNET (1-855-846-8376).  The merger approval agreement required Comcast to provide the service for three years.  Guess what happens to it when the requirement ends.  No matter — Comcast is turning the entire affair to its public relations advantage, showing up on various media outlets promoting the program as if Comcast thought it up on its own.  Not quite.  We have three questions:

1. How many consumers would sign up for the service if Comcast offered $9.95 1.5Mbps to anyone who wanted it?
2. How many might consider downgrading their current service for something less expensive, especially if they are only interested in occasional web browsing?
3. Will the “digital divide” Comcast decries today be magically gone at the end of three years, when they quietly drop the program?

[flv width=”360″ height=”290″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/KRIV Houston Comcast Internet Essentials 8-8-11.mp4[/flv]

KRIV-TV in Houston explores the various conditions Comcast places on its Internet Essentials program.  (2 minutes)

[flv width=”512″ height=”308″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/CNN Low Cost Internet 8-10-11.flv[/flv]

Comcast’s David Cohen appeared on CNN promoting Comcast’s Internet Essentials as a way to “bridge the digital divide” — a disparity of access American ISP’s originally created with their excessively high-priced Internet services. (3 minutes)

The Federal Communications Commission’s efforts to measure America’s real broadband speeds needs you.  The federal agency is looking for American volunteers willing to host a wireless router that can conduct occasional background speed tests and report the results to Samknows, the independent company contracted to manage the testing program.  Stop the Cap! has participated in the project for more than eight months and can report the tests are completely un-intrusive and the router has worked well amongst all of our other broadband and networking equipment.

Samknows will supply you with a Netgear WNR3500L Wireless-N router free-of-charge.  We’ve found the router a tad plasticky, but it has performed well with no serious performance issues, especially after the firmware was updated earlier this year.  The router comes pre-configured with the speed and performance testing protocol built right in.  It conducts various automated tests a few times daily — tests that we’ve never found bothersome while using our broadband service.  It reports results back to Samknows, and by extension the FCC. Once a month you will receive an e-mailed “report card” for your particular Internet Service Provider’s performance.

Time Warner Cable has received high marks from our Samknows router here in Brighton, N.Y.  But we know of plenty of cases where volunteers have successfully been able to call out their providers with less-than-stellar performance results.  Just ask Cablevision, whose dismal performance in the first broadband report from the FCC exposed an obviously oversold broadband network.  Cablevision hurried out press releases trying to deflect blame, but we suspect they are also quietly upgrading their network to ensure no repeat performance of their failing grade in the next report.

The program is a great way to do your part to fight for better broadband in the United States, and you walk away with a free wireless router when it’s all over.

There are some requirements to participate:

• You have a fixed line broadband Internet connection to your residence.
• You use a standalone device to connect to your broadband service (a cable or DSL modem or router combination with modem built-in).
• You have a stable broadband connection (i.e. it doesn’t disconnect frequently). Note that this is just referring to the connection – not the speed.
• You are not a heavy downloader. Our tests can only run when your line below a certain traffic threshold, therefore we would not be able to run any tests if your line is in constant use.
• You have a spare power socket near your existing router (or wherever you plan to connect the unit. Keep in mind that a network cable must run between the unit and your router though! We supply a 1m cable).
• You need to be on one of the ISPs that we’re measuring.
• You are not an employee or a family member of an employee of one of the ISPs being monitored.

With respect to being a “heavy downloader,” what Samknows really means here is that you are not running peer-to-peer file-sharing software 24/7.  They don’t mind if you spend a lot of time with Netflix or other online services.  If your provider delivers inconsistent service with frequent outages, I’d still apply.  The poor results will be reflected in the FCC report.

Participants also have to broadly agree with certain terms and conditions:

• Not to unplug the unit or your ISP’s router unless away for an extended period of time.
• Not attempt to reverse engineer or alter the unit.
• To notify Samknows if and when you choose to change ISPs.
• To return the unit to Samknows should you no longer wish to be involved (Samknows to pay reasonable postage costs).
• To connect the unit in the way described in the documentation.
• To keep Samknows updated with valid contact details (i.e. email and postal address).

In our experience, we can offer some clarifications here:

1. They don’t care if you unplug equipment during a storm or for other short-term periods;
2. They do allow you to run the equipment in “bridge mode,” meaning you can still rely on your primary router, leaving the Netgear Samknows router as an adjunct to your home network;
3. You are allowed to apply firmware upgrades, as available, so long as they retain the performance testing protocol.

Applying is easy enough.  Simply complete the online form and Samknows will contact you when the next round of routers is prepared to ship.  It typically takes several weeks between rounds, so don’t expect an immediate reply.  The router will be sent to you through UPS or FedEx, no signature required.  The testing program is scheduled to last up to three years.