Residents in mountainous western North Carolina have been frustrated by broadband availability maps from the Federal Communications Commission that suggest broadband service is plentiful and fast. But on the ground, customers trying to sign up for Internet access the FCC says is readily available is anything but.

The FCC’s National Broadband Map has been repeatedly criticized by broadband advocates for relying on voluntary data supplied by Internet Service Providers — data that has often proved incomplete, exaggerated, or just plain inaccurate.

Wally Bowen, executive director of Asheville’s Mountain Area Information Network (MAIN), wants to show the FCC its broadband map is out of touch with the real world. MAIN has announced a new website that will let western North Carolina residents test and report the real broadband speeds they are getting from providers to the FCC. If no broadband service is available at all, residents can report that as well.

“Based on our experience, we believe the FCC is underestimating the scope of this problem,” said Bowen, an advocate for Internet access in rural areas. “The FCC’s estimate is based primarily on data provided by the cable and telephone companies.”

With a growing amount of federal money available to wire unserved areas, phone and cable companies may have a vested interest exaggerating their coverage areas and Internet speeds to stop would-be competitors from entering their territories and building new networks. New providers could find a very enthusiastic customer base of more than 48,000 aggravated residents in 16 counties in western North Carolina that have no broadband options at all.

“This new website empowers citizens to compare their real-life experience with the FCC data, but more importantly, it dissects the broadband problem, provides ideas for solving it, and shows citizens how to add their voices to the policy debate,” said Bowen.

Bowen believes profit-minded private companies are unlikely to ever be enthusiastic about wiring rural communities when larger profits can be earned in larger cities.

“Solving this problem isn’t rocket science,” said Bowen. “We’ve seen this movie before. Seventy-five years ago, for-profit electric utilities left rural America in the dark, so Congress passed the Rural Electrification Act and allowed local communities to solve the problem themselves by creating nonprofit electric cooperatives.”

But federal funds are off-limits if another provider already claims to offer service in an area, no matter how poorly they deliver it. Many large cable and phone companies have also worked to ban community-owned broadband networks from ever getting off the ground with the passage of corporate-sponsored bills passed by state legislatures. That leaves rural residents waiting endlessly for the telephone company to get around to providing some level of broadband service.

Problems with Frontier Communications’ DSL in the region tells the story:

Paul Manogue lives in an area considered “served” by Frontier Communications. The phone company sold him 3Mbps service, but after installation, Manogue found Frontier locked down his DSL modem to 1.5Mbps, the fastest speed his telephone line could comfortably handle. Today, Manogue pays $60.98 for 1.5Mbps service that has since further degraded. Today his top speed is 1Mbps or less, even though his monthly bill remains the same. His broadband connection does not come close to the 4/1Mbps minimum speed the FCC expects from today’s rural broadband networks.

“We have been bluntly told [by Frontier] that the level of service we receive is what we pay for,” Manogue told MAIN. Manogue has no other options.

Bill Duffell of Burningtown thinks Frontier broke its promise to deliver broadband where Verizon, his old provider, refused. He is still waiting, along with a number of other residents, for even basic DSL.

“Frontier promised to bring high-speed Internet access to remote areas of western North Carolina within three years,” he said. “They have not done this and now tell me there are no plans to bring high-speed Internet to the area. Internet access via satellite costs me $129.99 per month with Exede/WildBlue and is weather dependent.”

Allen in Madison County says Frontier delivered tolerable service until six months ago, when his speeds began to drop.

“The breaking point was when I was going to upload a 30 minutes video and found out it was going to take over 13 hours to upload.” Allen says. “I called Frontier and they [told me I was] ‘in a high volume area.'”

Anyone considering launching a competitive broadband service to improve the online experience of Manogue, Duffell, Allen and others will not qualify for any federal assistance because Frontier, the incumbent provider, already provides DSL broadband. Frontier also receives significant aid from the Connect America Fund — up to $775 to extend broadband to each individual home or business it earlier deemed unprofitable to serve. Each additional connection risks slowing down every other connection in the immediate area if Frontier does not maintain regular upgrades.

Two of the largest phone companies in the country — AT&T and Verizon — have both refused CAF money altogether. AT&T sees a bigger financial opportunity disbanding their wired telecommunications networks in rural America and forcing customers to switch to more costly (and much more profitable) wireless data services.

“The refusal of Connect America funding by the big carriers, plus their plans to abandon their wired networks in rural areas, is a policy earthquake that’s been ignored by corporate media,” Bowen said.

A handful of Georgia state legislators have introduced a bill to ban community-owned broadband anywhere Internet service is available at speeds of at least 1.5Mbps — so slow it does not even meet the FCC’s new definition of “broadband.”

The so-called “Municipal Broadband Investment Act,” introduced Feb. 8 is just the latest in a series of anti-competition, corporate welfare bills designed to protect existing telecom monopolies and duopolies from facing any additional competition.

Introduced and co-sponsored by Reps. Mark Hamilton (R-Cumming), Don Parsons (R-Marietta), Ron Stephens (R-Savannah), Jay Roberts (R-Ocilla), Ben Harbin (R-Evans), and Jon Burns (R-Newington), H.B. 282 would only allow community providers to offer service where broadband is not available within a census block, a requirement that makes virtually all public broadband efforts untenable because of the patchwork of DSL service throughout the state.

Hamilton

Remarkably, the legislation also includes a penalty clause that will leave community providers liable for damages payable to corporate-owned Internet Service Providers if they dare compete with the state’s largest phone and cable companies. Local communities could even be on the hook for attorney fees paid by companies like Comcast, Windstream, and AT&T to make sure publicly owned ISPs never get off the ground.

Phone companies like Windstream are seeking federal funding from the FCC Connect America Fund that will defray up to $775 per home for new broadband hookups delivering at least 4/1Mbps service. But Georgia’s legislation will set a new standard for minimum broadband at a much slower 1.5Mbps, benefiting telephone companies like AT&T, CenturyLink and Windstream. All can claim their existing 1.5Mbps DSL lines are good enough for Georgia to consider an area “served” by broadband. That certification would make it impossible for a publicly owned provider to establish far faster service.

Stop the Cap! strongly urges Georgia residents to contact their state representative and ask that he or she vote no on H.B. 282, which is nothing more than another corporate-written and backed protectionism bill that will guarantee rural Georgia remains mired in a slow speed broadband swamp. The best way corporate ISPs can guarantee no community will rise up to compete is by providing 21st century broadband speeds and service to local residents.

The proposed bill is scheduled for its first hearing tomorrow afternoon at 4pm.

You paid for it, but you can’t access it.

Once again, taxpayers are underwriting expensive state-of-the-art fiber broadband networks that are strictly off-limits to residential and business customers living with substandard broadband on offer from the phone and cable company.

The Obama Administration’s big plans for broadband expansion have proved underwhelming for consumers and businesses clamoring for access across rural America. Local media reports deliver false promises about improved broadband access from new fiber networks under construction. But all too often, these expensive, high-capacity networks go underutilized and offer service only to a select few institutional users.

Case in point: Last week, the expensive Iowa Communications Network (ICN) went up for sale to the highest bidder.

At least $320 million taxpayer dollars have been spent on more than 8,000 miles of fiber connecting government buildings, schools, and healthcare facilities. Your tax dollars paid for this network, but unless your kids go to a school connected to ICN or you happen to work for a government agency, you are not allowed to use it.

One state legislator admitted even at the best of times, ICN never exceeded more than 10 percent of its available capacity. What an incredible waste of a precious resource!

In a recent public-relations effort, ICN has been used by military families videoconferencing with their loved ones serving overseas. But for the rest of Iowa, the network hasn’t done much of anything to improve Internet service in homes or businesses.

The Iowa Communications Network is off-limits to ordinary Iowans.

David Roederer, director of the Iowa Department of Management said the idea was never to let the state serve as an Internet provider, a fact that makes life wonderful for the state’s dominant telecommunications companies. But the decision has left rural Iowa in a broadband ditch.

“The vision was this would be something available in all 99 counties […] It would connect the schools and institutions in places that the private marketplace wasn’t,” Roederer told the Sioux City Journal. “We don’t buy satellite or cable television for everybody.”

But that is like arguing the state should only build roads and bridges for a select handful of government-owned or institutional vehicles, not those driven by the ordinary taxpayers who paid for it.

Too many politicians remain completely out-of-touch with what broadband really represents: critical infrastructure for the 21st century digital economy.

The city of Bettendorf only did marginally better, eventually allowing businesses on their fiber network while keeping local residents away. Capacity is hardly a problem: Bettendorf’s fiber network did little more than help the city manage traffic signals before they admitted a few business customers.

Butch Rebman, president and chief operating officer of Central Scott Telephone told The Quad City Times consumers don’t need fiber broadband speeds.

Apparently someone does. Bettendorf’s fiber network is now being upgraded to provide up to 10Gbps service, but it remains off-limits to local residents, raising questions about the commercial vendor that only sells to area businesses.

City administrator Decker Ploehn claims businesses use more broadband than residential homes (a ‘fact’ not in evidence), and that there were already companies specifically targeting the residential market. Those providers have performed so well that local citizens petitioned to access to the city network instead.

Think about that for a moment. A significant number of Bettendorf residents in red state Iowa preferred buying broadband service from the government, not America’s worst-rated cable operator Mediacom. So much for proclaiming private companies always do it better.

Meanwhile in Illinois, local officials are hurrying to spend $15.6 million in federal taxpayer funds on the Central Illinois Regional Broadband Network — another institutional network designed for the exclusive use of schools, local governments, and hospitals.

…but not people and businesses.

Scott Genung, director of telecommunications and networking at Illinois State University says the network’s leaders never planned to compete or undersell what other broadband servers are providing. Instead, their plan is to deliver high-capacity, high-speed broadband to rural Illinois. But taxpayers who are paying for the network are being bypassed, even when the fiber cable supplying the service hangs on utility poles in their front yards. Apparently, for the rural consumer, DSL from the phone company is plenty good enough.

In the community of Normal local officials admit they, like everyone else, are currently stuck with very slow DSL service. But Normal city manager Mark Peterson is celebrating CIRBN’s potential benefit to 52,000 local residents — which include connecting local fire stations, municipal swimming pools and the local water plant.

While those uses may be beneficial,  none of them are likely to boost the digital economy of Normal. There will be no entrepreneurial development of new online businesses that require a higher speed network than the local phone company will provide. Only the most limited at-home tele-learning courses will be available, and no improvements in broadband are forthcoming for home-based businesses and telecommuters. Local residents will continue to drift along at whatever snail-speed service is on offer from private companies that see more profit investing in larger communities.

Although these networks provide measurable benefits to the institutional users they serve, the fact remains they can be obscenely expensive on a per-user basis. Since our tax dollars fund these networks at a time of budget-busting deficits, would it not make better financial sense to open these networks up for public use? If a local community decides they want to provide better service than the local phone and cable company utilizing these networks, why not let them? If a community does not want to spend the money but a neighborhood agrees to pay for connectivity and wiring, why not allow them?

Restricted-use institutional fiber broadband has too often resulted in vastly oversized networks that go underutilized. It is time taxpayers have the right to use networks that they paid to build, particularly in rural areas where the only alternatives are stonewalling phone and cable operators who charge top dollar for bottom-rated service, if they provide service at all.

The Man from A.L.E.C. represents premiere members Time Warner Cable and AT&T.

The News & Observer has printed a rebuttal to a guest editorial from Christopher Mitchell and Todd O’Boyle accusing the two of misleading readers about the true state of North Carolina’s broadband.

The author, John Stephenson, is director of the Communications and Technology Task Force at the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). Considering North Carolina’s largest broadband providers — AT&T and Time Warner Cable — are both card-carrying members of ALEC, his response mouths their words.

Nearly 300 million Americans have access to at least one and, in most cases, two or three broadband providers. Moreover, wireless and satellite providers continue to invest in 4G wireless technology and new satellites that can now offer speeds rivaling wired broadband.

By contrast, government-owned broadband has demonstrated mixed results at best and abject failure at worst. Cities’ attempts to build and operate their own broadband networks have been marked by poor results, huge debts and accounting gimmicks that threaten taxpayers.

In North Carolina, broadband “consultants” persuaded cities like Salisbury and Mooresville to ignore basic economics and to compete against private providers. But the broadband networks recorded deficits and were forced to tap other sources of financing. Despite these losses, as many as three dozen North Carolina cities appeared ready to go down the same dangerous path.

Stephenson’s rebuttal regurgitates the usual Time Warner Cable and AT&T talking points — the same ones used to convince North Carolina legislators to ban community broadband (with contributions to their campaign coffers stapled to the back).

Fact: North Carolinians typically have at most two choices for broadband, the telephone and cable company. Only a few cities were lucky enough to construct community-owned alternatives before the hammer fell in the General Assembly. Stephenson’s alternatives include satellite broadband, which delivers slow speeds and a paltry usage allowance or wireless 4G broadband that will set you back a fortune. North Carolina’s largest providers AT&T and Verizon Wireless sell service with a starting monthly cap of 1GB. Anything more costs more. These are hardly comparable choices to wired broadband.

Fact: Community broadband in cities like Wilson and Salisbury dramatically outperform Time Warner Cable and AT&T and deliver a fair deal instead of temporary promotions and endless rate hikes from the cable/telco bully boys. Stephenson uses the case of Mooresville to trash community broadband, which is a weak example. That city bought a decrepit cable system from bankrupt Adelphia Cable and had to spend a fortune to rebuild it. It’s now on track to deliver for local residents. Those communities would have been better off with a fiber to the home system, but the rebuilt cable system still delivers more competition than Time Warner and AT&T ever gave one-another.

Stephenson also ignores the debts the cable and phone companies piled up when they first built their networks. It is the cost of getting into the telecommunications business. Cable companies needed 10, 20, or even 30 years to pay off construction costs. Community providers got into telecommunications with the knowledge it would take time to pay back the initial debt, but they hope to do it without gouging customers.

ALEC routinely pits community providers against private ones as “government funded unfair broadband competition.” But the group ignores the fact cities like Charlotte have doled out tax incentives and other goodies to Time Warner Cable for building its new headquarters there. AT&T is not doing too bad either, securing statewide video franchising and effective permission to drop its ugly U-verse cabinets on public easements all over the state.

The fact is, the only disruptive force in North Carolina’s broadband market comes from community-owned providers trying to break up the comfortable telco-cable duopoly that charges nearly the same prices for the same yesteryear service. That’s a story The Man from A.L.E.C. cannot afford to tell you.