'If you give us exactly what we want, we might wire your town with fiber optics. If not, there is always Wisconsin.'

The Trojan Horse of the 2000’s apparently comes in the form of spools of fiber optic cable.  Verizon assumes the attractive notion of FiOS, fiber to the home for broadband, telephone, and video programming, is worth sacrificing local oversight.  The company has made it known it does not enjoy what they consider a cumbersome franchising application procedure in Massachusetts.  In a public relations push, Verizon has suggested that giving them quicker approval will guarantee state residents the golden promise of fiber optics.  If the company doesn’t get what it wants, maybe Wisconsin or another state where Verizon is deploying FiOS will:

Ellen M. Cummings, a spokeswoman for Verizon, said that with the struggling economy, the company has to choose where to commit its financial resources. Therefore, it is looking for the quickest return on its investment.

“Here in Massachusetts, it puts us in a predicament. If the company is trying to decide how to deploy money, and Massachusetts is vying against other states, like Wisconsin, where the wait is as little as five days, it definitely puts Massachusetts at a disadvantage,” she said.

Every wired provider is subject to local community licensing, in the form of a franchise, which permits companies to string wires through towns and cities, on poles as well as underground, in return for oversight and a small piece of the action.  Local governments justify franchising to regulate companies tearing up local streets and neighborhoods to maintain their networks, as well as making sure that all citizens within a community are served equitably and that the community benefits from the service.

The cable industry has lived under the franchise system since its inception.

Verizon decided it can’t be bothered dealing with individual municipalities in Massachusetts, and last year tried,  but failed, to replace the local franchising system with a single statewide franchise.  This year they’ve returned with a Verizon-friendly bill that would dramatically tip the scales in their favor, limiting local oversight and reducing their public service commitments.

The companion bills, (S. 1531) by Sen. Steven Panagiotakos of Lowell in the Senate, and House bill (H. 3765) by Rep. Michael Rodrigues of Westport, would mandate that each municipality limit consideration of Verizon’s franchise applications to no more than 90 days, and opens up a number of loopholes that Verizon could use to do an end run around a community and run the clock out, assuring quick approval without making concessions.

At worst, a provision in the bill setting a strict 90 day window for consideration of a franchise application, even if incomplete, ties the hands of municipalities.  Language that restricts the right of municipalities to deny applications gives the upper hand to Verizon, and the back of the hand to consumers.

One of the most common promises local communities extract from any wired provider is a guarantee they will establish wiring policies to equitably reach people throughout the franchise area, not simply the wealthiest neighborhoods, or easiest to wire.  While it has never been practical to insist on 100% wiring coverage, particularly in more isolated, rural communities, most franchise agreements insist on a uniform policy that says if there are a certain number of homes within an area, it must be wired.  Without that assurance, prior experience has shown operators would often “redline” communities, wiring prosperous streets while ignoring others.  Municipalities in Massachusetts want to guarantee that Verizon doesn’t engage in that kind of behavior, particularly after witnessing the company jettisoning “undesirable” customers in three nearby states — Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine, which were sold off to FairPoint Communications.  No FiOS for them.

In general, more competition is good news, especially when Verizon comes to town with FiOS, which is sure to give the incumbent cable operator a real headache.  But Verizon’s complaints ring a little hollow when considering the company has managed to already obtain franchises in 93 communities across the state, and is literally obtaining new agreements faster than wiring crews can get into communities and start the upgrades.  While there may be a few towns that drag their feet for a variety of reasons, customer demand for FiOS is sure to light fires under elected officials to get a move on.  Doing it fast is not necessarily the same as doing it right.  As our readers are coming to learn, promises made by telecom providers that at first glance sound consumer-friendly turn out to be anything but.

One more reason to believe that:  the state’s incumbent cable operators are also opposing the bills, claiming they extend special benefits to Verizon that they, themselves, have never received. Cable companies on the same side as municipalities on questions of competition?  Of course most of the state’s cable operators are already past the franchising process, and merely return every decade or so for perfunctory rubber-stamp renewals, so green-lighting Verizon’s proposed bills would only expose them to FiOS competition sooner.

Paul R. Cianelli, the president of the New England Cable and Telecommunications Association, which represents the cable companies Comcast, Charter Communications, Time Warner and Cox, but not Verizon, said, “We oppose this legislation.”

“It’s another attempt by Verizon to get a special deal. They are pushing for legislation that would give them an advantage over existing cable providers. And they are attempting to chip away at the authority and powers of the municipalities to grant franchises,” he said.

In the end, we believe Ellen Cummings at Verizon who said it best: “[Verizon] is looking for the quickest return on its investment.”  Unfortunately, that’s not always compatible with the best interests of consumers.

We have continued to make some adjustments to our new theme to accommodate readers and believe we have swatted most of the bugs, particularly those related to images and buttons not functioning properly on certain browsers.  We have also made some changes to help make the site look better for those using lower resolution settings.  Even most netbooks should be seeing some improvement.  We still have work to do on the mobile browsing side, and will be working on that behind the scenes during this week.

I believe the two column format is an improvement for Stop the Cap! and my writing style, so we will be sticking with it going forward.

Readers will notice the right column contains a new “donate” button.  I have been considering how to help defray the expenses of maintaining this site, and what expenses we are likely to have going forward, especially when the Cap ‘n Tier issue rears its ugly head once again.  I intend to begin preparing information for elected officials I can share with them offline, and build our infrastructure and organization to more effectively reach out to affected communities.  That takes some money, which I am spending out of pocket myself at the moment.  If you feel comfortable in helping to defray these kinds of expenses, you can use the donate link which will connect you through Paypal to a donation processing page where you can securely use a credit or debit card.  I will be updating our contact page this week as well with our contact details so one can contribute by mail as well.

The alternative was advertising, and while I don’t have a problem with programs like Google Adsense which don’t pollute the page with all sorts of screen junk, the fact is, I know for certain the contextual advertising programs would throw ads at you for Internet service providers, many on our “naughty list.”  There is no way I am going to promote any provider that is engaged in anti-consumer behavior.  I think it’s important for us to maintain credibility and integrity.  We are an all-consumer group, with no industry or political ties.  Anything that could color or shade that perception is a detriment to our goals.  Therefore, voluntary contributions seems to be the way to go for now.

The “cap” issue has been quiet for the last week or so, and the quantity of new content has dropped a bit here, but that does not mean the issue is at all dead.  I have been working on several projects behind the scenes and laying some additional groundwork to prepare us for the battles to come.  You will see a number of articles coming here which, at first glance, may seem to be slightly off point.  But trust me when I say they are not.  A lot of things written here will connect right back to our issues, and it has been effective to be able to explain to an elected official that we’ve got a track record of following these issues that we can later connect the dots on.

Starting this week, you will see a considerable amount of attention on two issues:

1. The debacle of FairPoint Communications, an independent telephone company that took over telephone/broadband service for a large part of rural New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine from Verizon.  They botched it, and are now receiving their own bailout.  FairPoint is a private company that promised wonderful things for a captive population in the upper northeast, and they’ve alienated three states.  The anti-municipal network crowd whines about taxpayer money going to what “should be” a private marketplace.  As we bring you the whole sordid story, we’ll show you why the private sector should never be given a monopoly or a free reign in an uncompetitive marketplace, especially in rural America. Many lessons may also apply to other Verizon customers about to become Frontier customers.
2. Following the money.  Jay Ovittore is following who got what for what in North Carolina.  This is a lesson every reader here will find easy to learn.  When an elected official suddenly takes an active interest in proposing or supporting legislation against the best interests of voters, there is always a reason for it.  More often than not, that reason comes in the form of a check with a lot of zeros on it.  On our issues, for too long, names have not been named and elected officials have gotten away with it because they figured the voters back home wouldn’t find out.  Those days are over.  We will name names, list amounts, and remind voters come election time who did the right thing, and who didn’t. There are good Republicans, Democrats, and independents on our issues, and there are bad Republicans, Democrats, and independents.  Political parties make no difference — voting records do.

Municipal networks and broadband remains a powerful response for any municipality facing an abusive telephone or cable provider.  That’s why we support them.  Since the majority of them aren’t interested in the game of Cap ‘n Tier for big profits, they are a solution for capped broadband.

Finally, there are a few other story tips we’ve gotten in e-mail that we are also following.  If you are interested in writing something for Stop the Cap! please use the contact form and volunteer.  We welcome new authors here!

Have a great week.

One of the biggest anti-consumer disasters of the last 15 years was President Clinton’s signing of the 1996 Communications Act.  This bought and paid for legislation deregulated a major part of the telecommunications sector with the idea that the “free market” would somehow provide sufficient checks and balances to protect against media concentration, monopoly abuse, and locking out technological advancement wherever robust competition was unlikely.

How’s that working out for you?

Consolidation and corporate control of broadcasting, telephony, broadband, and other communications services has been rampant and largely unchecked by the Federal Communications Commission during the last 10+ years.  The result is a handful of players controlling the services we all depend on in our daily lives.  Usage caps and overpriced tiered billing is just the latest example of market concentration.  Companies realize consumers have few options for equivalent services, so they can dictate the terms and conditions with almost no oversight or control.  Local and state governments confronting this issue have come to realize their hands are tied, because telecommunications deregulation without assurances of a competitive marketplace always equal monopolistic behavior.

Net neutrality has also been a victim of a hands-off regulatory authority that is supposed to foster competition, equity in access, and prohibit abusive behavior.  The Federal Communications Commission has failed on every front.

… Continue Reading

While the vast majority of comments have welcomed the new theme we’ve adopted here, I have heard from a handful who are having problems with the theme or layout.  Upon further investigation, I have uncovered most fall into one of these categories:

• Internet Explorer 6.  You -must- upgrade your browser.  Internet Explorer 6 is no longer supported and represents a serious security risk in today’s online world of browser exploits and malware.  I wouldn’t feel safe using IE6 to do any secure tasks these days.  Functionally, there are several features here which will not work with this browser properly.  If you are using this browser, you will see a security warning at the top of your screen prompting you to update effective today.  You don’t need to rely on Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.  In truth, the majority of our visitors here access this site using Firefox, Mac users prefer Safari (and there is a Windows version available as well).  I use Firefox myself.  It’s free and will import all of your bookmarks, so it’s painless.  You’ll also enjoy a lot of the new features and faster browsing.  The truth is, a lot of web pages are going to look strange using IE6, not just ours, and that will increasingly be the case as more and more sites drop support for this ancient browser version.  At the very least, if you like Internet Explorer, upgrade to at least version 7.  You’ll find it on the IE update page referenced above in the lower right corner.
• Screen Size.  If you are running at less than 1024×768 screen resolution, things are probably looking mighty squished.  I understand this, and the “busy-ness” it creates.  I have been waiting for the theme author to release his next update which will fix some of this.  In the meantime, I think the best choice for us will be to try switching to a two-column format.  You’ll see the articles appearing in 66% of the space, with the right side column containing the featured articles, recent comments, and some other stuff.  I have temporarily disabled some of the items that were in the center column to give people more white space.  Tonight, we’ll try expanding the layout.  However, as the vast majority of our visitors here arrive using a minimum of 1024×768 resolution, that will be the minimum resolution that I will be developing this site to work best with.
• Mobile Browsers & Netbooks: I am testing some plug-ins and add-ons to greatly improve options for those using these devices.  Hang in there.

I also strongly urge people who want to participate in our comments to register for an account here so they aren’t bothered with having to enter their name and e-mail address each time they want to leave a comment.  It literally takes seconds, because we don’t have a bloated sign-up procedure.  Your temporary password will be e-mailed to you (and after that you can change it), so make sure you use a valid e-mail address.

We are working on the comments editor bug reported over the weekend, which allows some Firefox users to find their comment text spilling beyond the right margin of the editor.  I am not seeing this happen myself, and I use Firefox, but we’ll be double checking the code.

The About Us section here has been completely redone.  It contains a list of our team members, a revised Mission Statement, and our new Privacy Policy.  It’s part of my effort to overhaul the information that I haven’t had time to work on since April.  The alternative provider section will be the nightmare.  I really need help from folks outside of Rochester to help me develop appropriate information for other cities.  It is far easier for me if you are willing to work within our own online editor to develop this instead of sending me a lot of text in e-mail.  The editor is very simple to work with.  All you need is a registered account here and I can extend editor access to you.

The cities drop-down menu was not designed to be “comprehensive” going-forward.  Over time, if/when additional cities become hotbeds of capping, that format will be reconsidered.

Jay Ovittore is our first Issues Coordinator, for North Carolina.  We seriously need additional coordinators, especially for Texas which is a hotbed of capping.  The requirements are simply your willingness to develop content for Stop the Cap! and to be enthusiastic and engaged in fighting back.  We can use multiple coordinators in Texas because of the various cities involved.  Use the contact form if you are interested.

There are a few additional side projects I am also working on, particularly for e-mail notification of new content/calls to action and mobile access issues.

Keep an eye out for more new things, and some adjustments to our look going forward.