Last November, residents in Morgan County, West Virginia became so exasperated with Verizon’s unwillingness to provide high speed DSL service in this rural region of the state, residents took to the streets holding signs proclaiming “Verizon neglects rural West Virginia” and “Honk for Broadband Internet.” A website called Abandoned By Verizon was launched to highlight the problem.

The problem? Verizon is spending its time, attention, and money on rewiring America’s larger cities with advanced fiber optic networks while selling off their rural customers to independent telephone companies.

Last year, Jennifer Carpenter-Peak and her husband Bob organized a public protest after being strung along by Verizon for more than three years for DSL broadband service. Each time they inquired about availability, they were told it was coming sometime later. Last fall, they were told to wait until sometime this year.

Of course, if the Peak family and their neighbors wanted service any quicker, they could always pony up the $10,000-100,000 the company wanted to wire their neighborhood, or opt for a slow T-1 commercial service line for around $500 a month.

Bob Peak told The Morgan Messenger it has been impossible to e-mail his photos and graphic designs from home. He takes his laptop and drives to town or to Cacapon State Park to send files.

“It’s become increasingly difficult to do business because all of my clients and vendors expect it,” Peak said of high-speed internet.

The Carpenter-Peak family also relied on some map data produced by Connected Nation’s ‘Connect West Virginia’ which broad-brushed Morgan County in April 2008 with lots of broadband service in the western and northern parts of the county. Of course, such service is not consistently available in all of the areas ‘Connect West Virginia’ claims, which is another reason why groups like this, well-connected with telecommunications industry players, should not be drawing maps for anyone.

One didn’t need a map to find area residents who agreed with the Peak family’s predicament:

Jim Hoyt said Frontier Communications had made a big effort to provide DSL to its telephone customers in the western end of the county. He wondered why the U.S. 522 Business Park didn’t have DSL.

Angela Petry said a lot of people are working from home and have a need for high-speed internet. It will keep dollars in the county, she said.

Bibi Hahn said one family in their subdivision would spend more time here if they had DSL.

“We need it. We need leadership to get it. We need commissioners and the governor demanding it,” Hahn said.

Getting high-speed broadband internet access throughout the county is the highest priority, said County Administrator Bill Clark.

Broadband was the top issue at the county’s Economic Development Authority summit and is of great importance locally, Clark said.

Clark has been working with all county providers to try and make headway, but it’s just not happening as fast as everyone would like it to, he said.

“It takes infrastructure,” Clark said.

Verizon has expanded its internet presence in the county and Frontier has DSL in some fairly isolated places, he said.

It will take people like last week’s protestors as well as petitions and surveys to get high-speed internet to more county areas, he said.

A new telecommunications committee is also trying to get a handle on the problem, Clark said.

What the Peak family probably didn’t realize is that Verizon was hard at work on a plan of a different kind:  to throw the state of West Virginia, and the Peak family themselves, under the proverbial bus by selling off their operations and getting out of the Mountain State. That’s because Verizon doesn’t consider West Virginia worth the effort to rewire with the advanced fiber network it deploys in other larger states, so why spend millions of dollars when they can let the company that buys those assets deal with it?

On July 2nd, Verizon announced it was going to offer DSL service to another 1,800 lines in Morgan County, expecting to reach parts of the following areas: Route 522, near the Morgan County Business Park; Route 9 East in the River Road and Clone Run Road areas; the Johnsons Mill Road area that includes parts of Highland Ridge, Duckwall, Spriggs and Rupenthal roads; Great Cacapon, including the Maidstone and Cacapon River Meadows communities; Spruce Pine Hollow area, including Chestnut Grove and Spruce Pine Hollow communities, plus parts of Burnt Mill, Potter, Michael’s Chapel and Victory Lane roads; the River Road area, including Sleepy Creek Farms community and parts of Rover, Householder, Crone Lane and Poole roads; parts of Pious Ridge, Culp and River roads; Mountain Run Road area, including New Hope Acres and Deer Run Woods communities, and parts of Mountain Run, Shades Lane, Swaim Lane and Duckwall roads; Winchester Grade Road in the area of Sleepy Creek Forest community and parts of Virginia Line, Highland Ridge, Posey Hollow and Barnes Lane roads; and Spohrs Cross Road area, including areas along Route 9 and parts of Spohrs and Potomac roads.

Verizon’s entry-level DSL service offers speeds of up to 1 Mbps (megabits per second) downstream and 384 Kbps (kilobits per second) upstream. Consumers who want faster speed can order Verizon’s offering of up to 3 Mbps downstream and 768 Kbps upstream.  No guarantee for customers actually achieving those speeds is provided, however.  Providing service at speeds better than that will be up to the new owner of West Virginia’s telecommunications future.

That company will be Frontier Communications, if a deal can be approved by state regulators.

Frontier Communications is aggressive about deploying DSL broadband service to its mostly-rural customers. That’s because broadband is one of the company’s growth areas. Frontier wired telephone line customers are declining as customers switch to competitors or rely on their mobile phone for telephone service. But broadband service is a bright spot for Frontier, as it’s often the only player in town beyond incredibly cumbersome and expensive satellite broadband services in rural areas.

Will Frontier bring DSL to the Peak family and their neighbors if the deal is approved? Almost certainly, eventually. For West Virginia, the question of what kind of broadband service Frontier will provide is an entirely different, but equally important question.

Frontier continues to rely on increasingly dated ADSL standard service across most of its service areas. It’s a technology more than a decade old, with plenty of limitations and little room for growth. Frontier should be willing to provide at least ADSL 2+ service in less populated areas, and either VDSL service or fiber-to-the-home in more populated town and city centers. Both DSL “standards” are improvements over the original, and can often provide substantially faster speeds and room for growth well into the future. It also creates the potential for equity of access for rural and more urban consumers, or at least something approximating it.

In rural areas, standard DSL speeds often don’t exceed 1.5Mbps, and are sometimes even slower. Installation costs can be substantial, along with the monthly subscriber fees, taxes and surcharges, and modem rental costs. The further away one lives from the telephone company central office, the slower and less reliable the service becomes. Some customers living more than 18,000 feet from a central office will not be able to obtain the service at any speed.

Additionally, Frontier Communications continues to define an acceptable amount of residential broadband usage at a paltry 5GB per month. Although the company has not enforced that limitation to date, nothing precludes them from cutting customers off who exceed that minuscule amount of usage, or charge them overlimit penalties and fees for exceeding it down the road. That puts Frontier in a league shared only by wireless data providers like Verizon Wireless, AT&T Mobility, and Sprint. No other wired provider of note “limits” consumers to that tiny amount of usage. We continue to call on Frontier to delete the entire reference to “5GB” of usage from their Acceptable Use Policy, particularly if the company truly intends not to enforce it.

Should rural residents find themselves with Frontier as their only broadband service provider, the kind of broadband service they will endure, without revolutionary upgrades, could be essentially suspended in time while the rest of the nation marches forward with ever-increasing speeds and potentially lower pricing as a result of competition. It’s a phenomenon known as establishing a “broadband backwater,” where consumers are trapped with sub-standard service with onerous limits, slow speeds, and high pricing with little or no competition.

Although companies like Verizon have the financial resources to rewire even the smallest states with advanced broadband networks, even if they are currently unwilling to do so, smaller providers could find themselves in a reverse position – wanting to deploy advanced networks but lacking the financial capacity to do so.

The unnerving part about all of this is the Obama Administration is set to spend billions of taxpayer dollars to improve and enhance broadband networks, particularly in rural areas across states like West Virginia. Telecommunications companies nationwide are hiring consultants and grant specialists to tailor-write grant applications to receive public funds to build out their broadband networks. It would be a terrific shame if public money went to providers building networks based on yesterday’s technology, with paltry usage limits and high pricing for consumers, with some or most of those costs to construct the networks paid by taxpayers like you and I. That’s having your broadband cake and eating it too.

No telephone company should ever be given public money to construct broadband networks that cannot meet the need for increased speeds and consistent levels of service for every customer, today and in the future, regardless of whether they live in the largest city or a small mountain town in West Virginia. No sales transaction transferring assets from one phone company to another should be granted unless the needs of consumers are given first priority, not the afterthought they were given with some prior deals (FairPoint, Hawaiian Telecom, etc.) No public money should ever be handed over to a broadband provider that wants to establish Internet Overcharging schemes like paltry limits and tiers either, especially in non-competitive areas where consumers have just one choice.

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This article was published originally on ConsumerTel, our new pro-consumer website protecting the interests of telephone company subscribers.

[Update: July 14/12:27am — Our sharp eyed readers contested the accuracy of the speed chart shown below almost immediately after publication.  Eric, who pens for Photography Bay we linked to below, replied to my inquiry about the data.  His reply:  “The speed estimates come from Verizon. I was more concerned with the upload figures; however, now that you mention it, it looks like Verizon may have the 80% calculation on the wrong side of their equation for the download portion of the chart. The upload chart looks right with FiOS at 10x faster than cable; however, the download chart shows a 20% speed increase when it should show a 5x speed increase. Nice catch.” I suppose we should let Verizon know. Thanks to our readers who caught the math error.  Hopefully their billing is more accurate.]

With the announcement by Rogers that their particular implementation of DOCSIS 3 would bring speeds of 25-50Mbps for downloads, it was curious that the company elected to only make incremental increases in upload speed.  Maxing out at just 2Mbps for uploading, Rogers continues the mindset that broadband subscribers don’t care about upload speed — just download speed.

That may have been true in the past, but today’s broadband consumer is woefully underserved with slow upload speeds, which hamper uploading pictures, home movies, and other content to share with friends, family members, or like we do here, the rest of the connected world as a whole.

In Rochester and many other Time Warner Cable cities, upload speed has remain unchanged for standard service customers for more than a decade — just 384kbps.  Paying $10 more for Turbo service, if only to get 1Mbps (which isn’t exactly “blazing fast” these days either), is the only alternative.

Fiber to the home services like Verizon FiOS and some municipally run fiber systems are changing the paradigm for upload speeds, providing customers with substantially faster service — typically far more than telephone company DSL or broadband service from the local cable operator.  A “speed test” from New York from a FiOS customer illustrates the capability:

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For photographers, among many other net users, upload speed is critically important in managing their photograph collections.

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The Photography Bay blog compiled a chart illustrating the dramatic differences upload speeds can have on your time and patience:

Here comes the Astroturf

Deborah Taylor Tate, a Bush-appointed ex-commissioner on the Federal Communications Commission is now earning her paycheck regurgitating telecommunications industry talking points of behalf of the astroturf group, the Free State Foundation.

In an editorial in today’s Washington Times (thanks to reader Mitchell for alerting us about it), Tate perfectly falls in line with the talking points Stop the Cap! readers can repeat in their sleep, right down to ripping off AT&T’s “grandmother” analogy from several weeks ago.  Her employer, the Free State Foundation, has a long history of advocating pro-industry positions in opposition to consumer interests.  Having a former credentialed FCC official doing the industry talk is designed to impress.

Tate, who was never impressive as an FCC commissioner and maintains her ongoing unimpressive credentials at FSF, phones it in with a fact-free piece entitled, “Paying for Use is Fair,” in which she directly advocates for Internet Overcharging schemes, attempting to convince readers it will somehow save them money on their broadband service.

Her efforts to tell the story of “paying for what you use” will be comical to those in the communities where such “experiments” were conducted, because Tate either doesn’t know or care about the details of the market experiments she writes about.

Most broadband consumers would be astounded that some members of Congress want to block our ability to pay for broadband Internet use in precisely the same way we now pay for other commodities: Pay more if you use more; pay less if you use less.

Most consumers would be astounded an ex-FCC commissioner got the basic facts wrong about the basis of such pricing schemes.  No broadband provider has ever offered a “pay for what you use” pricing scheme.  They have only offered “pay MORE for what you use, and a lot more if you use more than you thought.”

This comes on the heels of Time Warner’s rapid retreat from a pilot test of pay-for-use broadband pricing, bowing to congressional pressure and protests from consumer groups. Studies have indicated the top 25 percent of users have consumed 100 times more bandwidth than the bottom 25 percent. So, what is fair about one-price-fits-all if someone uses 100 times more than you do?

At least Tate barely acknowledges another basic truth about these pricing schemes: the overwhelming majority of Americans do not want this kind of pricing model, and more than half would leave their existing provider if they tried to force them into one.

The “studies” Tate writes about do not exist.  They are claims by the providers themselves, which have never allowed for an independent review of the raw data the companies claim to base their findings on.  Nor does it account for the industry’s “need” to increase every consumer’s broadband bill with overcharging schemes based on limited consumption allowances and credit card-like overlimit penalties and fees.  Indeed, this is an industry with profits well into the billions of dollars whose costs are actually declining, along with their willingness to invest in growing their networks.  One need only review quarterly and annual financial reports issued by the providers’ themselves to learn the truth.  These companies are not hurting for profits.

Even where monopolies exist, pricing has generally been based on the notion that customers are charged more if they consume more and less if they use less. Obviously, beyond basic necessity, they could exercise some self-control, and could even save money through metering that measured consumption. This is especially true in an environment where consumers have options for providers of broadband, cell phones and now, in many cases, electricity.

Broadband pricing has been flat rate since the service was launched by phone companies providing DSL and cable operators launched cable modem service in most areas of this country.  That’s because broadband has been cheap, capacity plentiful, and profits high.  Absolutely nothing has changed in that equation, except a desire by broadband providers to dramatically grab additional profits, reduce demand with threats of overlimit fees or service being cut off for overuse, and attempts to invest less in their networks.  Controlling online video is critical for most of the providers who find that a competitive threat to their television service business model.

Tate doesn’t bother to contemplate increased competition, seeming happy enough to acknowledge monopolies do exist and then moving on to something else.  That mimics the FCC’s position over the past eight years, so that comes as no surprise either.

Whether run by local co-ops, governments or profit-making firms, any network has substantial capital costs to build out infrastructure, provide service, expand capacity and meet higher demand, particularly at peak periods. The same network cost issues also apply to Internet service providers. Expanding bandwidth and capacity for the exponential growth of Internet traffic is expensive. Updating security applications to prevent cybercrime are increasingly necessary for government, business and individuals, driving up costs even further. The supply of fiber optic cable and computer servers is not infinite, and we are already facing network constraints. We have all experienced the network being slowed by periods of heavy usage. Broadband providers — just like wireless providers — should be allowed to use a consumption model without government interference as long as consumers know and understand what they are paying for.

To date, there has been a surprising uniformity in billing for broadband Internet service. But why should a grandmother who checks e-mail once a day or makes an occasional purchase online be charged the same monthly rate as a researcher downloading massive data files or teenagers watching full-length movies every day? Why not provide consumers the freedom to monitor and control their own use — and to benefit from volume-based rate packages?

AT&T should consider legal action against Tate for plagiarizing their talking points.  In fact, her entire argument is part of the grand Re-education campaign we’ve written about since Time Warner Cable temporarily shelved their overcharging scheme back in April.  The “exaflood” nonsense, the “it’s expensive to spend money to upgrade our networks” whining, and the hissyfit over consumers using their service just as these same providers marketed them are all in there.

Deborah Taylor Tate: The Marie Antoinette of Internet Pricing

At least Tate is consistent — she never cared about consumers like you and I during her stay on the FCC, and she still doesn’t care about consumers by doing the bidding of groups like the Free State Foundation.

What do Washington Times readers think?  Not much of Tate or her positions.  Among them:

“Wow, did you just pull a page out of the telecom’s lobbyist manual to come up with this article?  They are doing this to prevent new technologies from making them an antiquated model, and they are doing it to get more money out of the customer. I promise it has nothing and I mean nothing to do with saving your grandma a single cent.”

“Are you being paid by the cable co? Seriously. Do you even realize with the utter lack of competition and the fact that the cable company enjoys a monopoly in most all of their markets, pricing for use is utterly bad for consumers.”

“Bill is right, you’re just reading talking points at this point, and not looking at the actual economics or technology behind it.”

“Deborah, Please take a moment to think for yourself instead of shilling for an industry. Metered billing has nothing to do with customer choice, please don’t pretend that it does. This is about making more money off of existing usage, while avoiding upgrading of networks and services.”

“So for instance, using the same logic and same company, when I call for traditional phone service, they are quick to sell me an “Unlimited” minute plan for $40.00/month.”

“Metered usage is nothing more than a money grab by the content providers. Their current business model is being threaten by media content being available via streaming services.”

In the end, consumers like you and I pay part of our monthly broadband bill to providers that are cutting checks to astroturf groups to advocate against consumer interests.  Imagine if they spent some of that money on their network upgrades, and a little less funneled to inside-the-beltway hackery written by underwhelming ex-officials-turned-insider-special-interests.

Phillip Dampier

I have been following the Canadian hearings on Net Neutrality and Canada’s widespread use of bandwidth throttles and usage limits on broadband access.  It has been an issue confronting customers of the largest telephone and cable providers across Canada for at least a year.  Now that these practices have spread to wholesale accounts, which directly impact independent Internet Service Providers, it has created a major hullabaloo across the country.

The Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) has decided to address these two issues together during the week-long hearings.

Unfortunately for Canadians, there is considerable division about how to manage Internet traffic, based on a premise from the largest providers that they do not have the capacity to provide everything to everybody.  Of course, getting providers to cough up raw data and allowing an independent group to verify it is like trying to feed your dog a head of lettuce.  You always have a fight on your hands.

Everyone attending has an agenda, and more than a few are willing to throw each other under the bus if it means getting what they want.  Some pro-content groups who also claim to be pro-consumer, but receive money from private businesses want no bandwidth throttles and suggest usage based pricing is the better option.  Some wholesale ISPs would prefer to put up with peer-to-peer usage throttling and “equal” throttling of other Internet applications if it means no usage based pricing for their wholesale accounts.

Consumers don’t want either one, and cannot understand why an industry raking in such enormous profits can’t simply make the investments required to rake in even more profits, especially if they create their own new products and services to take advantage of the broadband marketplace they are helping to create.

Canada’s largest providers have enjoyed the fight, and have managed to take advantage of the divisions created by groups willing to sacrifice each others’ interests for their own sake: they imposed BOTH usage based pricing and bandwidth throttles.  Oh, and raised your broadband bill by at least 10% for good measure.

This comes as a result of the myopic “only my interests matter” agendas some of these groups bring to the hearing room, and Commissioners obviously realize it, based on some of their challenging questions back to those testifying.

No hearing on these issues should ever rely on an unproven premise: the great exaflood, the clogged pipes, the torrent of data is upon us and we cannot survive without imposing limits, rate increases, and try to control usage.  Bring in an independent auditor and provide full access to raw usage data, consider how much investment companies are making in their networks compared with the profits they extract from them, and then consider whether we have a problem and examine possible solutions to it.  These third party astroturf groups releasing bought-and-paid-for “independent research” and equipment manufacturers with an agenda are not suitable for the task either.

Just as we’ve seen providers attempt to custom-draw their own maps for broadband penetration, providers are only too happy to release their own massaged data, but won’t allow anyone outside of the company to do so, ostensibly for privacy and competitive reasons.  Sorry, that’s not even close to being acceptable.

Stop the Cap! opposes Internet Overcharging schemes, which include usage based pricing and limits.  But we also oppose bandwidth throttles, free passes for provider-owned content while everyone else faces some “meter,” and companies that believe in “this is fast enough for you” broadband speeds which are far slower than those in more competitive markets.  We support Net Neutrality.  We support public investment in broadband development, as well as private investment.  We’re happy to support a deregulated framework for broadband when it works for consumers.  But we want oversight and regulation where competition is insufficient or non-existent.

As we’re watching events unfold to our immediate north, it’s clear other pro-consumer organizations and those that want to claim to represent consumers must also be on the same page so we don’t make the same mistakes.  We cannot be willing to throw in the towel on Net Neutrality if it means no Internet Overcharging, and we should never support Net Neutrality alone if it subjects consumers to enormous Internet bills because of some rationing plan that subjects people to overlimit fees and paltry usage allowances.

The only real choice is fast, affordable, reliable broadband service.  If private companies can’t or aren’t willing to provide it, than it’s time for municipal or public sector projects to build the infrastructure necessary to guarantee it.

Is this worth $350 million of your taxpayer dollars?

North Carolina residents should be outraged at Rep. Bill Faison, the Democratic chairman of the state House Select Committee on High-Speed Internet Access in Rural Areas.  He’s set to do for North Carolina broadband what Hurricane Katrina did for urban renewal in New Orleans.  Faison, along with some other cronies, are examples of what is wrong with broadband stimulus planning when certain elected officials open their doors on big special interests, and slam them on the fingers of actual consumers.

Eight years ago, the North Carolina legislature commissioned the state to produce accurate, detailed broadband maps, depicting who has access to what broadband services, if any, across the Tar Heel State. e-NC, an organization of excellence recognized worldwide, set about not only doing broadband mapping, but also advocating for consumer and business interests across the state by pushing for higher quality and faster service.  e-NC’s mapping standard has been recognized by the European Commission, Microsoft, and IBM for its detailed, accurate depictions of broadband service.

e-NC has had its work cut out for it.  AT&T and other North Carolina telecom providers have stonewalled the group since day one, refusing to disclose “private company information.”  Where e-NC could obtain agreements, they came with ludicrous non-disclosure agreements that were the equivalent of ‘here is the information you requested, but you cannot use it in your maps.’

That’s where Faison comes in.  He sends out an invitation to the media to announce North Carolina finally has a broadband map available, and then proceeds to slam e-NC because it produced maps that, at one point, he compared with “swiss cheese.”  Faison is fully aware that e-NC had been complaining about provider stonewalling, and he did nothing to stop it.  But then he did something even worse: he praised the very providers who did the stonewalling and are now in charge of producing the “detailed maps” that the providers want the legislature to see.

Faison said, “In the face of legislation recommended by the Committee which would have required the providers to disclose precise information to the Legislature for our staff to generate a detailed map of availability, the providers have come together and collectively decided to provide the information through Connected Nation, to not only provide the “street address” map but also to make the map both accessible and interactive through the internet. Special recognition should be given to AT&T, Embarq, Sprint, Time Warner Cable, The Cable Association, the Telephone Co-op association, and Alltel for their work on this matter.”

Shameful.

Of course, Faison’s anti-consumer efforts on behalf of his good friends in the telecommunications industry are no secret to our North Carolina readers.  Faison was one of the proponents of the anti-consumer nightmare legislation S1004, which was hand-crafted by big cable and telephone companies to stop municipal broadband projects across the state.  Faison is a menace for consumer interests in North Carolina.

Faison doesn’t care, of course.  He has his eyes on some of that $7.4 billion in broadband stimulus money he hopes to grab for the state AT&T, Embarq, Sprint, Time Warner Cable, and any other provider that will try and use their own maps to “qualify” for the tax dollars you and I are going to hand over for broadband development.

Faison said: “North Carolina will be one of only six states with a detailed “street address” interactive map of broadband availability. It positions us advantageously to obtain a portion of $7.4 billion in Stimulus money available for broadband deployment. A map, such as ours, is now a precondition for obtaining this portion of the Stimulus money. The collaborative work of the Committee and the providers has now postured North Carolina in the most favorable of positions to not only obtain this portion of the Stimulus money, but also to advance broadband deployment for our people.”

In other words, by replacing reality with the telecom industry’s own version of reality, they hope to sneak through applications that look good on paper, whether or not they accurately depict the real “on the ground” state of broadband in North Carolina.  If I were a grant application reviewer with this kind of “detailed” conflict-of-interest map work, I’d disqualify the entire state from getting one penny.

As the excellent investigative piece by Art Brodsky points out over on Public Knowledge (thanks Stop the Cap! reader Michael for showing the way):

AT&T stiffs the state, and then makes up its own map, which state legislators accept. There is no transparency, no verification, no nothing. (But it is interactive.) The only way in which this can not be a total conflict of interest is to recall the (perhaps) apocryphal story of the Maryland state legislator who also owned a liquor store. He introduced a bill to help liquor stores and was asked if this bill was a conflict of interest. “How does this conflict with my interests,” he was said to have replied. Exactly.

Meanwhile, the oh-so-aptly named (well-)Connected Nation, packed to the rafters with big cable and telephone company lobbyists, is busily doing its part to flush $350,000,000 of taxpayer funding down the drain with its own “broadband maps” which resemble the crayoning work your 1st grade son brought home from school.

Connected Nation, a creature of AT&T, spent $7 million dollars of your taxpayer money to commission Connect Ohio, an affiliate, to map broadband availability in that state.  The result was a map you could have drawn yourself during a TV show commercial break.  I think I’ll use Light Pink myself.

Connect Ohio's "Broadband Map" for Summit County, Ohio

No, the blue speckles are not from blueberry pie stains.  Those are bodies of water.  What exactly does Connect Ohio’s map say?  Not a whole lot.  Basically, it claims the areas in beautiful pink are locations where broadband service is supposed to be available.  The whitish areas are outta luck.

Seven million well spent dollars there!

Meanwhile, here is a map from Strategic Networks Group, a company that was never eligible for federal mapping grant money:

Map from Strategic Networks Group, that didn't cost taxpayers a cent

Which map would you prefer to rely on?  The $7 million dollar boondoggle from Connect Ohio or the zero taxpayer dollar map from Strategic?

Why didn’t Strategic get the contract?  Because Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois custom wrote language into the Broadband Data Improvement Act, that specifically defined who received the award money.  Basically, it came down to only those well-connected politically with state governments (Connected Nation) getting the lion’s share.  No merit-based mappers need apply.

Strategic’s maps were apparently too good. Take a look at this exceptionally detailed map they produced for just western Akron, Ohio (and notice this is page four of a series of detailed maps):

Unlike Connected Nation's maps, you WILL have to click to enlarge!

Stop the Cap! stands with Art Brodsky and Public Knowledge regarding this travesty:

The government notice setting out the terms for the mapping grants was sadly deficient. Even if one grants that Connected Nation was wired in under the terms of a misguided bill, the agency notice of funds availability had no conflict-of-interest safeguards. There are no requirements for transparency or for verification of information. There are no standard data sets to make sure all the maps measure the same things. Instead, there are what appear to be protections for “confidential” information that could render the process useless.

Perhaps some of these deficiencies can be cured at the program moves forward. Perhaps not. In either case, these cautionary tales are getting a bit tiresome. Jury-rigged RFPs, no-bid contracts, hot-wired legislatures and state agencies are no way to run a program as important as broadband.

The stimulus broadband mapping program is set up for massive failure unless changes are made. Congress has to allow more competition for grants. The Durbin argument that private, for-profit companies shouldn’t do public work like broadband mapping, while non-profits should, falls apart when one considers the advantages of an independent company vs. a compromised non-profit. The agencies responsible need more detailed criteria to protect the public investment. Consistency, transparency, public verification and less protection of information are needed. Maybe then can an #epic fail can be avoided.