Stop the Cap! will shortly launch a new Terms of Service Tracker for the nation’s largest Internet Service Providers.  Born from an idea from the Electronic Freedom Foundation, our new tracker will check several provider websites every day looking for any changes to the content of Subscriber Agreements, Terms & Conditions, and any other legal notices that could impact your broadband Internet service.

Many Internet Service Providers don’t time stamp changes — they simply quietly replace one agreement with another, and too often fail to notify customers about what changed.

Most customer agreements have language that permits them to change their terms on a whim, even if they fundamentally change service descriptions, pricing, and try to sneak in usage caps, tiered pricing, bandwidth throttling, and other anti-consumer provisions.  Worse yet, customers under “price protection” or “term contracts” are often only given 30 days to “opt out” before the new terms automatically apply to their accounts.  Customers learning of changes too late to opt out are often stuck paying hundreds of dollars in early termination fees to escape a company that is no longer acceptable to them.

When a company changes any provision in a Subscriber Agreement, all existing customers should be notified by e-mail and on their bills about any changes, and given ample time to react without penalties or traps.  Until the nation’s ISPs begin to consistently provide that notice, we shall.

We’ll have more details shortly, and anticipate allowing our readers to subscribe to automatic updates, informing them about any changes that could impact their service and their wallets.

I’m a big cable or telephone company and I just caught the smell of broadband stimulus money… hundreds of millions of dollars worth of taxpayer dollars I want for myself and my investors.  Why spend their money when I can spend yours?  Stop the Cap! warned readers that parties with a vested interest in cashing in on taxpayer funds to construct broadband networks would be sniffing around the Broadband Stimulus package looking for their piece.  Broadband Reports, Public Knowledge, and The Wall Street Journal caught a big whiff of telecom trolling for your taxpayer dollars, this time to ostensibly “map” broadband penetration in the United States.

Using a group called Connected Nation, whose board is packed to the rafters with telecom employees and those serving them (including AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon), telecommunications special interests want the contract (worth $300+ million) to complete the national map.  In addition to collecting the nice tidy sum that represents, these companies have a vested interest in keeping broadband looking perky, fast, and available everywhere to forestall regulatory review, municipal broadband initiatives to serve the under served, and hide the fact broadband in the United States is not very competitive, and not very available outside of population centers.

The history of this group has demonstrated it has an interest in keeping specifics to a minimum, and inflating broadband penetration levels into the stratosphere.  As Broadband Reports wrote, a perfect example is in the state of Kentucky.  When independent mapping was completed, it exposed Kentucky had a problem — just 60% of the state had broadband available.  Those low numbers might prompt a review of why incumbent telecom companies are not spending some money to wire their less urban customers for service.  But with the magic of Connect Kentucky, a sort of regional chapter of Connected Nation, that number jumped to 95% in just five years in a study called dubious, if not outright “methodological malpractice” by Consumers Union.

Broadband Reports writes the 95% penetration rate is “hysterical” in their communications with Kentucky residents and Internet Service Providers.  But with a 95% penetration figure, why investigate if there “isn’t a problem?”  Of course, you could always pay us (AT&T, Comcast, Verizon, etc.) to improve those networks, also out of taxpayer funds.

Public Knowledge has its own bone to pick with the organization, claiming it demands to keep data general, and often proprietary:

State governments, working months before the stimulus package was conceived, are ramping up their own programs to map deployment of broadband, and are finding they are already increasingly running into conflicts over the type of data they will receive. Some states want comprehensive, granular data. However, they are finding that the telecommunications industry, often represented by Connected Nation (CN), doesn’t want to give it to them. The result is a clash of policy objectives and politics that’s taking place across the country, in states ranging from North Carolina to Alabama, Colorado and Minnesota. Connected Nation’s board of directors is dominated by representatives of large telecom carriers, as CN positions itself as the best choice for states and the Federal government to spend millions of stimulus dollars on broadband mapping.

In North Carolina, the dispute is being played out in a most public way, as Connected Nation, at the behest of a powerful state legislator, has set up a parallel mapping operation to that of the e-NC Authority, a state agency that has been working since 2001 to bring Internet connectivity to rural areas through mapping and through public-private partnerships with telephone companies. While normally Connected Nation can charge hundreds of thousands of dollars for mapping, it is doing the North Carolina map at no cost to the state after a move by the chairman of e-NC’s board to have that organization pay for part of the industry mapping cost failed.

As with all of its mapping, e-NC depends on information from incumbent providers. Through last year and this there was a struggle more prolonged than usual, and the end result was a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) that greatly restricted what the e-NC maps would be able to show.

Proprietary, non-specific data allows a group to suggest that any speed above dial-up is broadband, and as long as it passes near your neighborhood, you have broadband access (even if you don’t.)  That’s precisely the kind of access pointed to by elected officials like Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kansas) who claim broadband is plentiful and will become more so if the government stays out of it.

To resolve broadband penetration problems, improve competition, and to prevent broadband backwaters served by companies doling out slow, heavily capped access at high prices and calling it a day, truly representative map data must be produced to allow everyone to understand what is currently available at what speeds.  Allowing a group like Connected Nation to swipe taxpayer dollars currently used by state officials for honest assessments is a travesty.  No company or organization with a vested interest in the outcome should ever be allowed to control a study of this importance.  If they do, they’ll find broadband under an anti competitive, slow, and expensive Cap ‘n Tier system is just wonderful for all of us, assuming you even have access to it.

Thanks to Thomas Hawk for the photograph of the fox and “comecloser” for the hen house photo.

Stop the Cap! reader Jeremy received a reply to a communication he sent to his senator, Sam Brownback (R-Kansas).  Brownback has signed on for big telecom’s “nickle, dime, and dollar subscribers” project and thinks it’s great news for an Internet controlled by profit leveraging corporations charging top dollar while promising to expand services later.

Full text of letter from Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kansas) (click to enlarge)

As you may know, several groups have sought legislation to regulate or even prohibit fees that may be sought by broadband companies from content providers for the high-speed transmission of content over the Internet. I believe that this so-called ‘network neutrality’ legislation would be anything but neutral, punishing broadband access providers for innovation and competition.

In fact, it is due to the absence of heavy-handed government regulation that the Internet has grown and innovated freely and rapidly.

Moreover, broadband access providers – our nation’s telephone, cable television, and wireless companies – are spending billions of dollars to deploy broadband, and have plans to spend billions more on the next generation of broadband networks.

These investments include new technologies that will greatly improve everyone’s Internet experience, further empowering our ability to use it for entertainment, political, religious, and educational purposes. Given the investment by broadband providers in creating and maintaining Internet infrastructure, it is reasonable for them to request that content providers pay their fair share for the services they use.

Brownback is confusing the broader argument about Net Neutrality, allowing data equal access on a network, regardless of its source, affiliation, or potential competitiveness with a provider’s own products and services, with the bandwidth Cap ‘n Tier problem Jeremy wrote about.  But Net Neutrality and Cap ‘n Tier are effectively kissing cousins: they go hand in hand.  As we’ve seen in Time Warner Cable’s Subscriber Agreement, they exclude their own Digital Phone product from Cap ‘n Tier while subjecting other competitors to it, if/when implemented.  They also reserve the right to throttle speeds, limit consumption, or impose overlimit fees for exceeding usage allowances.

Sen. Brownback (R-Kansas)

We’ve also seen a direct link between the growth of online video, the cable industry’s concern they will lose cable TV subscriptions to online free video, and attempts to charge higher prices and/or limit use of the net as a way to address the online video “problem.”  Scaring subscribers away from watching online video without fear of overlimit fees is a fine way to “keep the lid on.”

What America has come to discover in the last year is that free market competition is fine, but the absence of common sense oversight and regulation means runaway profiteering and customer abuse, often in markets that lack competitive choice on equal terms.

Brownback may also not realize that cable companies often have an ownership interest in the content producers, and they have a vested interest in retaining control over that content. Unlike content producers like Hulu, who do not charge any fees to access their content, the broadband provider itself does, raking in billions in profits using today’s broadband model.  Consumption based billing with paltry tiers of service simply guarantees a Money Party of even higher profits, leaving consumers with unaffordable broadband, limited access to innovative online content, and vague, potentially empty promises to perform those revolutionary upgrades Brownback writes about, ‘sometime later.’

Brownback, despite events in the news showing telecom companies throwing rural customers under the bus (Verizon in particular), still believes the only way rural Kansans will obtain broadband is letting the providers do whatever they want:

We must keep the Internet free of unnecessary government regulations.  Our current approach of allowing market forces to operate has benefitted all Americans with rapid broadband deployment, and Internet speeds that were unimaginable just several years ago.  The Congress and the Federal Communications Commission should not harm progress by allowing the government, rather than the competitive market, to choose business models.  Keeping the Internet free of the heavy-hand of government promotes innovation and broadband deployment by giving our nation’s cable, telephone, and satellite companies much needed flexibility to invest in their networks and meet the demands of consumers.  It is this approach that will bring broadband to rural communities and will ensure that all Americans have the best online experience possible.

Kansas is hardly the cutting edge of America’s broadband.  In Brownback’s own state, broadband backwaters are common with very slow speeds, heavily capped and expensive providers like Sunflower in Lawrence, or an attitude in most of the state’s cities that “this is good enough, they don’t need more.”  Large swaths of the state remain stuck with dial-up.  If this is the broadband celebration Brownback is throwing for his own constituents, voters should just remember he spends most of his time in Washington, which does fine online, with several competitive choices and very fast speeds.

Perhaps at the next election, should he not revise his position, voters may want to see to it that Sen. Brownback spends a lot more time at home in Kansas with 1.5Mbps DSL for $44 a month, and find someone else to represent their interests.

I have had a few reports that something on the site is causing a few browser crashes for Safari users, and I am trying to track down what it might be.  If you are experiencing a browser crash while visiting this site, please let me know on our Contact Form, especially including what you were doing at the time your browser crashed (loading the front page, viewing a video, etc.)  I will continue to track it down by switching a few articles on and off until I find where the problem is.  Some features may appear and disappear temporarily as I explore this.

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UPDATE 6/2: I believe I have tracked the browser crash issue in Safari to the introduction of our new Flash video player.  It may throw an error message your way, but it should no longer crash your browser.  Please continue to report any errors you see.  You can append them as a comment.  I am going to try and make changes to the Flash player to fix this.  If you cannot play the videos, please let me know, and also check to make sure you are running the latest version of Flash.

Relax today because the work begins again tomorrow.

Starting this week, we will begin some carefully coordinated pushback against Time Warner Cable’s changes to their Subscriber Agreement, because despite company claims that they’ve not implemented any Cap ‘n Tier system at this time, the writing is on the wall in 1000pt type, readable from space.  No company changes their legalese “just because,” and CEO Glenn Britt’s public statements late last week make it patently obvious which way this road is heading.

Here are the things YOU need to do today so you are prepared to act when we need you:

1. Bookmark this site and check it daily.  A Call to Action is most effective when everyone starts moving on it around the same time.  It’s less helpful to arrive here a week after the fact.  Everytime an article is posted here, our Twitter channel sends out a tweet.  You can follow us on Twitter from the stopthecap channel.  Just insert the text stopthecap in the box on that link and you’ll find us.  I am still working on finding a good e-mail notification system that will let you subscribe and be notified in e-mail when new items are published.
2. You will be asked to write, phone, and e-mail elected officials.  In all such communications, remember the three P’s rule: Be polite. Be persistent.  Be persuasive. I will, when time allows, provide you with sample letters or talking points to use.  Elected officials are wise to pre-formatted, automated contact campaigns, so I do not use them here.  You will always be expected to communicate in your own words, because elected officials will pay attention to those.  They toss out those online petitions, automated pre-written letters, and other communications that look automated.  It will literally take less than five minutes to follow through on most Calls to Action.  If you leave it to someone else, and they leave it to you, nobody picks up the phone or writes the letter.
3. Get educated.  A great deal of information and background material is already here.  You can follow specific company actions, cities, or policies from the menu options along the top of the screen, as well as in the search box.  If you have a question about an article, write it in the comment section.  I try and read and reply to many of them, along with others here.
4. Continue to pass along news tips, suggestions, or other pertinent material through our Contact form.  I try and credit people as often as possible, and some story ideas may appear later on, so don’t be discouraged if yours doesn’t turn up as an article in short order.
5. If you find value in what we do, consider making a contribution.  I am going to begin crediting our contributors (first names by default) here to thank them.  Your contributions pay for server expenses, a post office box, software expenses (this WordPress theme for example), and will also go towards mailing and printing expenses as we start educating elected officials on our issues.  Telecom companies just spent nearly a half million dollars in North Carolina alone to stop municipal broadband there through campaign contributions.  We have to rely on actual facts and a substantially lower budget to fight back!