Days after the citizens of Longmont, Col. turned their backs on an expensive lobbying and astroturf campaigned fueled (not by choice) by Comcast ratepayers, the so-called “community activists” opposed to the community using its own fiber network as it sees fit evaporated into dust, but not before one celebrating citizen took out a giant ad in the local Times-Call newspaper:

As Christopher Mitchell from Community Broadband Networks discovered, “citizen activism” has an expiration date when the industry money stops flowing:

If there had been a shred of local legitimacy among the “Look Before We Leap” group that was run by Denver-based strategists, it probably would have kept its website up for longer than a few days after the election. If I were them, I would want to keep a record for the future.

But they don’t. Because they were just a bunch of paid public relations people working a job. They didn’t oppose Longmont’s initiative, they didn’t know anything about it. They were collecting a paycheck.

And when the money ran out, the days of their website were numbered in the single digits.  The only thing left of lookbeforeweleap.org is a cached copy courtesy of Google.  (And by the way, Squarespace, the hosting company, wants the site owner to contact them.)

Americans for Prosperty's Phil Kerpen on Glenn Beck's show opposing Net Neutrality

Comcast’s propaganda campaign fooled no one.  Borrowing from the cable industry’s bag of old tricks, Look Before We Leap conflated Longmont’s fiber optic network with a few failed Wi-Fi projects run years earlier in concert with Earthlink in other states.

The editors at Times-Call had to respect Comcast and its merry band of dollar-a-holler followers for at least being bold.  After all, they tried to convince voters “that the city having control over its own property was somehow ‘risky.‘”  But of course the cable company would prefer Longmont stay out of the comfortable duopoly it has with phone company CenturyLink.

The newspaper had little time and patience for the antics of “Americans for Prosperity” either.  The hilariously misnamed group funded by large corporations to convince people to vote against their own best interests considers Net Neutrality and community broadband self-empowerment evidence of Marxism — at least that is what policy director Phil Kerpen said on Glenn Beck’s now defunct paranoia festival on Fox News Channel.

Longmont doesn’t put out the welcome mat for corporate influence peddlers.  Voters believe local government can be an effective steward of community resources, something Comcast subscribers don’t believe applies to a cable company that shovels hundreds of channels most people never watch and expects annual rate increases to help pay for them.

Times-Call’s Tony Kindelspire:

Ask a local businessperson how Longmont having its own electric utility is working out for them. We have some of the cheapest rates in the country.

It takes leadership to stand up against big business lobbyists to act on behalf of what you think is right, not what’s going to raise you the most amount of campaign cash the next time around. How very, very refreshing it was to see, and I hope it’s a lesson that spreads far and wide.

So do we.

This dollar-a-holler astroturf effort failed to impress Longmont voters, who turned back a Comcast-funded opposition campaign to open up the city's fiber network.

Longmont, Col. residents turned their backs on a Comcast-funded campaign to block the opening of the city’s 17-mile fiber loop to competing broadband providers in a strong vote of approval.

As of early this morning, 60.8% of voters approved Ballot Question 2A.  Just 39.2% opposed the measure.

Longmont’s fiber network, built in 1997 and paid for by the Platte River Power Authority, has heretofore been off-limits to the public.  Colorado’s 2005 corporate welfare laws guarantee that taxpayer or ratepayer-funded broadband networks are kept away from the public that paid for them, for the protection of companies like Comcast and CenturyLink.

This results in the construction of showcase institutional fiber optic networks open to government, public safety, hospitals, and libraries… and practically nobody else.  Once built, institutional networks often go underutilized.  In Longmont, at least two-thirds of the city’s fiber optic network still goes unused 15 years after it was built.

The city government hoped to open the fiber network in time to bolster their application to Google to construct a gigabit network for residential and business customers, but after Google selected Kansas City for its fiber project, Longmont wants to keep its options open.  Passing the ballot question does exactly that.

“I’m glad to see 2A won,” Mayor Bryan Baum told the Times-Call. “I think it shows that money isn’t the determinator.”

Longmont voters were subjected to one of the most expensive pushback campaigns they’ve ever seen, thanks to Comcast, who spent $300,000 and counting to get the public to turn against the fiber network ballot question.

George Merritt, a spokesman for the cable-funded group Look Before We Leap, claims the vote results show “the measure’s narrow margin of victory.”  Merritt’s group relied heavily on a highly-suspect 2006 case study by University of Denver professor Ron Rizzuto that claimed 80 percent of community-owned Wi-Fi broadband networks failed to make money.  But the group didn’t make any distinction between Wi-Fi and fiber optics, and more importantly they left out the fact Rizzuto was inducted into the Cable TV Pioneers in 2004 for service to the cable industry.  Rizutto’s “study” was a classic case of dollar-a-holler research on behalf of the New Millennium Research Council, a creature of the telecommunications industry.

New Millennium Research Council -> Issue Dynamics -> Comcast

In fact, the Council is a “project” of Issue Dynamics, Inc., a for-profit, high powered Washington lobbying firm. Issue Dynamics’ client list includes Verizon, Comcast, AT&T and the United States Telecom Association – the trade association for the telecom industry.  The direct relationship between Rizzuto’s findings, and cable companies like Comcast who paid for the research, never made it into the report (or onto the group’s website).

This is the second time Longmont voters have cast ballots on the issue of the city’s fiber optic network.

In 2009, voters faced another cable industry-funded astroturf effort, with $245,000 spent to successfully defeat a similar measure.  This time, thanks in part to public exposure of the companies pulling the strings behind the astroturf campaign, voters rejected the propaganda onslaught and passed the measure.  Cable bills have also increased several times since the 2009 measure, a reminder to the public why competition can make a real difference.

With the passage of 2A, the city can choose to leave the network exactly as it is today or partner with another provider to offer services to the public.  It’s now their choice, not Comcast’s.

You can look all over this astroturf group's website and never find the fact it's bought and paid for on behalf of Colorado's largest cable company -- Comcast.

The next time Comcast or CenturyLink wants to increase your rates because of the “increased costs of doing business,” you might want to ask them why they have collectively spent more than $300,000 on an astroturf campaign to stop the city of Longmont, Col. (pop. 86,000) from using excess fiber capacity to provide competition to the phone and cable company without raising taxes a penny.

Longmont voters are headed to the polls today with a simple question to answer: should the city be allowed to open their fiber network to all-comers to provide competitive video, data, and telephone services to city residents.  Longmont’s fiber network was constructed in the 1990s as part of its electrical infrastructure.  Some utility companies buried enormous amounts of fiber intending to use it to electronically collect usage data from ratepayers so meter readers could become a thing of the past.  Like in other cities, Longmont now has a fiber network that is woefully underused, and the city wants to open up the tremendous excess capacity for telecommunications uses.  They are even open to allowing Comcast and CenturyLink to use the network to help service their own respective customers, but the thought a new competitor (including a community-owned provider) might deliver service over that network has created an absurd $300,000 Hissyfit.

Comcast has been caught funding the majority of the opposition, the so-called “No on 2A” and “Look Before We Leap” projects, sponsored primarily by the Colorado Cable Telecommunications Association, which counts Comcast as a member.

But visitors to the campaign’s cheesy website never realize who is running the show because the effort hides its association with Big Telecom.

It’s a classic example of Astroturf Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt.  Scare residents into believing the city will raise taxes or go into financial distress.  Raise uncertainty by claiming important details are being left out.  Encourage doubt by comparing the advanced fiber network with anemic public Wi-Fi failures of the past involving Earthlink (remember them?).

But the No on 2A campaign is also willing to check themselves into a deluxe suite at the Hypocrisy Hotel, accusing city officials of hiding the names of their pro-fiber supporters and backers, including (gasp!) a company based in France!

The No on 2A website breathlessly relates the incriminating documents were unearthed from “previously secret emails just made public thanks to a Colorado Open Records Act.” They suggest a nefarious connection with Alcatel-Lucent because that company, which sells products and services related to fiber networks, communicated with the city in a handful of e-mail messages last summer.  You know those French, always up to something.

When it doubt, blame the French for being in on it.

The rich, buttery irony of a “group” secretly funded by the state’s largest cable company accusing others of keeping secrets is ignored at Kabletown.

But then I’ve received e-mail from Alcatel-Lucent (and Comcast) myself.  And I have a French last name.  Sacrebleu!

The website’s “opponents,” evidently gleaned from the few hundred residents that signed their visitor’s book, includes names like Joanna Crawford, “Garrett County,” and El Cordova, which we think could be the name of a Mexican pro-wrestler, we’re not sure.

City officials are stunned by the sheer amount of money being spent by cable and phone companies to keep competition far, far away.  So apparently is the local media, which has taken to identifying the “grass roots” opposition right down to their job title and name of the lobbying firm they work for.

Take Times-Call, which helpfully discloses “Look Before We Leap” spokesman George Merritt is actually a senior strategist for Onsight Public Affairs of Denver.  That’s a real nice way to say “lobbying firm hired to develop social media strategies to snooker influence public opinion on behalf of corporate clients.”

You know you’re not dealing with a neighborhood group lobbying to reduce road speeds in the neighborhood or sign a petition for improved trash collection when you read Leap’s financial disclosure reports:

• $120,913.64 to mass communications firm SE2 of Denver for a variety of services, including mail pieces, consulting, two television buys and ad production and design.
• $70,500 to Rocky Mountain Voter Outreach of Denver for “canvass, management rent and miscellaneous associates.”
• $37,500 to OnSight Public Affairs for consulting.
• $22,000 to Drake Research and Strategy of Boulder for polling.
• $15,776.84 to Zata3 for phone work.
• $12,260 to Holland and Hart of Denver for legal expenses.
• $8,000 to EIS of Grand Junction for consulting.
• $4,334.65 to Campaign Products of the Rockies, of Denver, for a voter file, mailing lists, stickers and yard signs.
• $2,500 to Mark Stevens of Denver for research.
• $743.75 to Tim Thomas of Boulder for general campaign work.

The whole dog and pony show of Big Telecom money has bemused Longmont mayor Bryan Baum, who supports the 2A measure and believes the distortion campaign has gone way over the top.

“It doesn’t really matter at this stage of the game,” Baum told the newspaper. “It’s going to the electorate. The electorate will vote. And we will know on Tuesday how they voted – if they believe a $300,000 ad campaign, or if they believe the people they’ve entrusted their votes to.”

Some of that $300,000 has also gone into vilifying a real grass-roots effort in support of the Longmont fiber initiative — Longmont’s Future.  Comcast’s front group tried to raise questions about where that pro-fiber group got their backing and money.  The newspaper discovered Longmont’s Future isn’t backed by any French conglomerate or nefarious outside interest.  It’s the work of Jonathan Rice, who operates the website all by himself, spending a grand total of $353 to fight Comcast’s $300,000.

“Every single candidate for office and every incumbent, in every race, supports this measure,” says Rice. “But Comcast and its friends are more interested in profit than progress, and continue to run a smear campaign to spread misinformation and outright lies – they recently posted Mayor Baum’s name as an opponent of 2A when he is actually a vociferous supporter.”

Community Broadband Networks has compiled a series of articles detailing the project and helping to expose the so-called “grassroots” opponents.  We encourage readers to become better acquainted with the underhanded tactics community broadband opponents will use to stop anything that resembles competition.

Phillip "Wants a High Fiber Diet" Dampier

Believe it or not, there are still some people out there who believe wireless broadband, as it exists today, is the future of high bandwidth communications in North America.  Forget DSL, forget cable, forget fiber optics, they say.  Technology like 4G and WiMax are “far superior” and cheaper.

To be fair, most of the people advocating the technology Sprint is in the process of abandoning have a vested interest in stopping fiber broadband projects.  That is because while Verizon continues to sit on its hands expanding its excellent FiOS fiber-to-the-home service, some of the most aggressive fiber projects in the country are being built by your local town, city, or village government.  It’s community-owned broadband, by and for the people in your own area.  Large telecom interests that have always refused to deliver fiber service (or pretend to by using the word ‘fiber’ while not bringing a single strand to your home) have it in for potential competitors that are willing to provide the advanced fiber technology they won’t.

So why aren’t big phone and cable companies providing this level of service?  In a word, money.  Their shareholders don’t like the initial cost of deploying fiber to the home service, even though the technology is superior to what reaches your home today, is infinitely expandable without stringing new cables across town, and can support money-making applications developers and providers have not even dreamed of yet.  With a pervasive lack of competition, there is nothing to overcome Wall Street’s conclusion that fiber doesn’t deliver fast enough profits to justify the initial expense.

When you take Wall Street out of the equation, especially in the telecom sector, the math works very differently.  While the phone and cable company is probably telling you “no,” companies like Google are saying yes in Kansas City.  So are municipally-owned rural co-operative phone and cable companies.  Communities deciding broadband is too important to leave to the phone companies that deliver half their residents 1-3Mbps DSL and call it a day are saying yes to fiber optics as well.

Overseas, fiber networks are being built in countries in Eastern Europe where the economics would never make sense by Wall Street standards, yet residents (and perhaps more importantly new digital economy businesses) are now getting Internet speeds of 100Mbps or better.  The next countries that could import good-paying American jobs might be Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Romania, and Bulgaria.

So what does it take to adapt to this reality in North America?  Providers that are willing to make a long term investment in fiber broadband — one that may take a few extra years to pay back, but will generate dividends like increased employment, capacity to provide better, faster service, more reliable networks, and earning a piece of the action powering North America’s new digital economy.  If they won’t listen, tell your elected officials to support policies that promote additional competition and back community broadband expansion that can make all the difference between 3Mbps DSL and 100Mbps fiber.

[flv width=”640″ height=”372″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Fiber is Better.flv[/flv]

Watch and share this video with friends and family to educate them about the infinite possibilities of fiber optic broadband and learn why it is superior to usage-capped wireless, slow speed DSL, satellite fraudband, or lopsided cable “High Speed Internet” broadband that delivers high speed in only one direction. (3 minutes)

The network envisioned with the help of a $30 million federal broadband grant, now in jeopardy.

A consortium of 15 rural north Florida counties awarded a $30 million federal broadband grant to provide a “middle-mile” wireless broadband network for the region has spent almost $7 million of its federal grant on consultants, design engineers, land acquisition and staffing without breaking ground on a single construction project.

In February 2010, the Obama Administration announced the broadband grant to deliver rural Florida residents a way to finally obtain high-speed access to the Internet within three years.  Now, a year-and-a-half later, not a single tower of the wireless network has been built, residents have been told they will never receive Internet service directly from the project, and one of the key members of the North Florida Broadband Authority charged with constructing the network has called one of the major contractors “incompetent.”

Last week, federal officials suspended the grant amid growing accusations of wasteful spending and lack of oversight.

NFBA was supposed to be building a wireless wholesale-access network across 15 counties that would deliver ISPs, government agencies, libraries, and other institutional users packages of 6, 12, 25, 60, 150Mbps or faster service, linked with fiber to Orlando and Tampa.

Although media coverage touted the project as delivering improved access to residential customers in Baker, Bradford, Columbia, Dixie, Gilchrist, Hamilton, Jefferson, Lafayette, Levy, Madison, Putnam, Suwannee, Taylor, Union and Wakulla counties, the NFBA project will not directly make broadband service available to consumers.  Would be residential customers will have to hope an incumbent Internet Service Provider chooses to participate and resells access to the network across the region.  Otherwise, those taxpayers will only be able to use the network they paid for at a local library.

That is, if the project ever gets completed.

To date, financial statements from the NFBA reflect the biggest checks paid to-date have gone to architecture and design consultants, which have received a total of more than $3.37 million dollars.  In contrast, NFBA has paid $0.00 for on-site construction and site work as of the end of the last quarter.  Money has also been spent on “Administrative and Legal Expenses” amounting to more than $863,000, and $1.54 million has been spent on property appraisal, acquisition, and expenses related to establishing rights-of-way.

When questions began to be raised about why the project had spent so much on so little, the fur began to fly, according to the North Florida Herald:

Christopher Thurow of Bradford County, accused [contractor] Government Services Group of being “incompetent.” Government Services Group answers to the Authority and is in charge of managing the project.

Then Rapid Systems, one of the project’s engineering companies, began making accusations of not getting paid. But GSG pointed to what it said was inadequate documentation by Rapid Systems and not following payment procedures.

Adding to the controversy was that GSG had been let go from managing the Florida Rural Broadband Authority (FRBA), a program similar to the North Florida Broadband Authority.

Multiple FRBA meetings were canceled, and the project was behind schedule, said Rick Marcum, chairman of FRBA.

“We felt like we needed to move in a different direction,” he said.

Since then, Government Services Group has filed a lawsuit against FRBA, saying there is a breach of contract.

At the North Florida Broadband Authority, some members allege a conflict of interest between GSG and Capital Solutions, which was contracted by GSG to oversee the administration of the grant money.

The apparent conflict comes from the accusation that Government Services Group CEO Robert Sheets is 25-percent owner of Meridian Services group, where Lisa Blair is CEO and president. Blair also is the CEO of Capital Solutions.

NFBA project members seem content to blame most of the problems on others, as well as on a sudden discovery their initial network design would not meet the performance requirements of potential wholesale customers.  That meant a wholesale re-design of the project into a “interconnected-ring network” design topology.  The rest of the delay, according to the NFBA, was because the project was sitting around waiting for government approvals:

This entire process (which included design re-evaluation, engineering services procurement, and network redesign) was carried out over a period of two to three quarters, which was the period of time designated in the original Baseline Plan for the turnkey link design phase as well as for subsequent equipment procurement, site acquisition, and pre-deployment activities. Additional variance from the Baseline Plan resulted substantial delays that were incurred awaiting wage-rate determinations (more than 3 months), awaiting a response to a waiver request to allow eligibility of Long term Operational leases (requested process in December, 2010, AAR submitted in April 2011, received in June, 2011); and comments from the Program Office on a Route Change Request (2 months).

That explanation did not pass muster with grant administrators at the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, the federal agency overseeing broadband grants.

“NFBA has experienced a number of external and internal delays on its project and, as a result, NTIA has serious concerns regarding the project’s long-term viability and, in the short-term, its ability to implement and deploy the proposed project during the grant award period,” the NTIA wrote in a statement.

As a result, the NTIA has suspended the program, ending all work, pending some sort of oversight agreement with the NFBA being concluded before Oct. 10.

The NTIA wants all invoices and disbursements from the $30 million grant approved directly by them before any more money is spent on the project.

To date, filings indicate the project has no signed customers of any kind, institutional, commercial or otherwise.  NFBA anticipates it will “outline service to 308 anchor institutions by project closeout,” with “outline” at this point defined as “offer.”

However, NFBA claims to have received a “Commitment Letter for a substantial monthly service commitment from one of our last mile partners, and we expect to receive additional Commitment Letters over the next quarter as we continue to actively engage last mile providers in the network region.”

Last-mile partners are the ones that will ultimately deliver service to residential and business customers.

Dixie County resident and Stop the Cap! reader Jimmy Dixon, who alerted us to the latest developments, calls it “a good government program hijacked by greedy consultants and incompetent local officials.”

“This was supposed to be about serving the unserved — we the people — and instead the project will only sell to government buildings and libraries, and whatever ISPs choose to buy access,” he writes. “But when an ISP won’t sell DSL to your home today, nothing about this grant will make them sell it tomorrow.”

Indeed, Dixon says the local phone company in his area continues to have no plans to wire his neighborhood for DSL, grant or no grant.

“They frankly told me it did not make economic sense to extend DSL here, and unless the government directly defrayed those expenses, they never will service us,” Dixon shares. “But I guess until recently it was just fine to line the pockets of consultants with millions in taxpayer dollars to not deliver service to anyone else, either.”

“We’re all in the same boat, and it’s sinking fast.”

Read the special investigative report published by the North Florida Herald here.