The Triangle -- North Carolina

Just a few days after Gov. Bev Purdue declined to veto an anti-consumer, anti-community broadband bill sponsored by Time Warner Cable, the cable company announced the imminent availability of its Road Runner Extreme and Wideband products — made possible with an upgrade to DOCSIS 3 technology.

The newly available service is officially being rolled out across the Triangle, including the cities of Raleigh-Durham and Chapel Hill over the next several weeks.

“We are empowering our customers with pure online power to save time and boost productivity when multitasking with multiple devices,” said Christine Whitaker, area vice president of operations for Eastern North Carolina. “As customers expand their use of the Internet, our services are evolving to meet their needs.”

Time Warner noted it had spent $8.5 million to upgrade the region to DOCSIS 3 service, and has already rolled out the upgrade in the Charlotte area.  In the Triangle, the company also announced free speed upgrades for existing customers that took effect last week:

• Road Runner Turbo with PowerBoost 15 Mbps/1Mbps
• Road Runner Broadband with PowerBoost 10 Mbps/1 Mbps

North and South Carolina Time Warner Cable customers are among the last to get the speed upgrades Time Warner has completed in many of their service areas.  Some customers formerly received upstream speeds of 512kbps or less.  The cable company said recent fiber upgrades made the faster speeds possible, but DOCSIS 3 upgrades are responsible for allowing the cable company to offer its Extreme (30/5) and Wideband (50/5Mbps) products.

Despite the upgrades, Time Warner Cable still offers slower broadband service than many of its community-owned competitors, and the cable operator has made investments in broadband upgrades across most of its cable systems nationwide as a matter of course.

Purdue

North Carolina Gov. Bev Purdue today announced she will not veto H.129, Time Warner Cable’s special interest corporate welfare bill because there are too many votes available to overturn her veto:

Her statement:

“I believe that every school, household and business in North Carolina – no matter where they are – should have access to efficient and affordable broadband services.

There is a need to establish rules to prevent cities and towns from having an unfair advantage over providers in the private sector. My concern with House Bill 129 is that the restrictions the General Assembly has imposed on cities and towns who want to offer broadband services may have the effect of decreasing the number of choices available to their citizens.

For these reasons, I will neither sign nor veto this bill. Instead, I call on the General Assembly to revisit this issue and adopt rules that not only promote fairness but also allow for the greatest number of high quality and affordable broadband options for consumers.”

While we would have preferred she make the symbolic gesture of vetoing this horrible piece of legislation, by no means does this mean the battle for better broadband in North Carolina is over.

Stop the Cap!, along with other broadband proponents, will immediately begin our efforts to de-elect legislators who best represented the interests of Time Warner Cable and not their constituents.  Most are Republican, but many are Democrats.  They all need to feel the wrath of angry constituents.

It’s our view we had an uphill battle fighting this year’s bill for two reasons:

1. Big Telecom companies learned from their earlier mistakes;
2. The historic change of power to the very-corporate-friendly Republican Party in North Carolina.  Elections really do have consequences.

"I wish you'd turn the camera off now because I am going to get up and leave if you don't." -- Rep. Julia Howard

While not all Republicans are bad, and several rural North Carolina representatives expressed grave reservations about their areas going unserved, there are not enough good ones in office to offset the anti-consumer lockstep voting we saw on this bill.  Rep. Marilyn Avila, who we have consistently called the “Republican representing Time Warner Cable” is a case in point.  Time and time again, she demonstrated a complete lack of understanding about the technical nature of “her bill” and its implications on cities and towns across the state.  Indeed, a citizen activist even snapped photos of Avila hobnobbing with her cable lobbyist friends, who mopped up any goofs Avila made along the way.

Another major problem can be found in Rep. Julia Howard (R-Davie, Iredell).  She claimed her word is her bond, right before she broke it.  When the media pressed her on the $7000 in campaign contributions she received from Big Telecom and whether that connected to her support for H.129, she threatened to flee the interview if a Raleigh television station didn’t immediately shut the camera off.

There is a real classy example of standing up for your principles, whatever were that week.  The former realtor and appraiser helped foreclose North Carolina’s broadband future, handing it back to the near-exclusive control of Time Warner Cable and CenturyLink.

Appealing for less broadband competition under the guise of smaller government might be fine for some, but big and bigger cable bills are not, and that is what H.129 will deliver to every resident in the state.  We’ll prove it to you soon enough.

Two can play the legislative game.  We’ll be encouraging new legislation in the state to improve and expand competitive broadband opportunities for consumers and businesses.  Real conservatives should agree: competition is a great antidote to Internet Overcharging.

Gov. Purdue

If North Carolina Gov. Bev Purdue does not veto H.129, the cable industry-written bill to throw up roadblocks for community broadband, it will automatically become law at midnight tonight.

We need every North Carolinian on the phone this afternoon, even if you called her office before. Let the governor know that you expect her to veto this anti-consumer, anti-jobs, anti-development bill that will keep broadband out of rural areas and competition at bay.  Let them know you cannot be fooled: doing nothing is the same as signing it into law as far as you are concerned.

The Governor’s Phone Number: +1 919 733 2391

The open source community has joined the fight.  Community Broadband Networks shares the open letter sent to the governor, published on Rootstrikers.org, a community dedicated to fighting all the corruption in politics that allows massive companies like Time Warner Cable to buy legislation:

Dear Governor Perdue,

We are strong supporters of your leadership and your campaign, and we would like to be heard on the important issue of community broadband. I know you are not afraid to use your veto pen, and so I ask you to veto H129, a bill that will take the future away from North Carolina and put it into the pockets of cable company monopolists.

On Sunday May 15th you may have read about our latest investment in North Carolina, Manifold Recording. This was the feature story in the Arts & Living section, and the top right-hand text box on the front page. One of the most difficult and expensive line-items in this multi-million dollar project was securing a broadband link to the site in rural Chatham County. I spent more than two years begging Time Warner to sell me a service that costs 50x more than it should, and that’s after I agreed to pay 100% of the installation costs for more than a mile of fiber. As part of a revised Conditional Use Permit (approved last night), I presented to the Commissioners and the Planning Board of Chatham County data on the economic investment I made, and the fact that according to the statistics from the Rural Broadband Coalition, that such an investment was worth about $300,000 to the 100+ neighbors who live along the new fiber link that I paid for.

Such heroics should not be necessary, nor should they be so costly.

I spent 10 years in Silicon Valley, and I know how quick they are to adopt new technologies that help people start and grow businesses. Manifold Recording would have remained a pipe-dream without broadband. But not everybody can afford to pay $1000/month for the slowest class of fiber broadband. Community broadband initiatives reach more people faster, at lower costs, leading to better economic development. Take it from me: had I been able to spend the time and money on community broadband that I spent in my commercial negotiations, there would be more jobs in Chatham County today.

For more information, which I strongly encourage you to have someone on staff research, please review https://www.rootstrikers.org/#!/story/community-broadband/. There, you will see that “as goes North Carolina, so goes the nation.” We cannot afford to ruin either our own prospects for an economic recovery led by new technologies and new business nor the prospects for an America recovery.

Phillip Dampier

Stop the Cap! reader Angela sent us a print-out, by mail, of a recent guest editorial published by the online news site, the Lincoln Tribune.  White, who is 89 and lives in North Carolina was irritated by the piece, written by Kinston, N.C. mayor B.J. Murphy.

“B.J., who was all of 29 when he was elected in 2009, is the first Republican mayor in Kinston since Reconstruction, and after writing pro-cable company nonsense like he did in that [online] paper, he better be the last,” White wrote.  “My mother and father grew up with the same kind of monopoly these cable companies have today, only then it was the damn railroads.  How we ended up electing a mayor who wants us back in that era is beyond me.”

What caught my attention early on skimming the mayor’s views was a single passage early on in his piece:

Municipal broadband, also known as Government Owned Broadband Networks (GONs) is quickly becoming our state’s new enterprise service of choice for cities and towns.

Really?  GONs?  Now I’ve been editing Stop the Cap! since mid-2008, and we’ve covered North Carolina’s broadband landscape extensively, and this is the first time I’ve ever seen community-owned broadband referred to as “Government Owned Broadband Networks.”  A quick Google search reveals why: it’s a loaded term conjured up by corporate-funded, dollar-a-holler groups that oppose public involvement in broadband.  People don’t like “government” they surmise, so let’s relabel these networks accordingly.  Besides, bin Laden is dead and we can’t use him.

In this case, the acronym ‘GONs’ doesn’t even make sense — shouldn’t it be GOBN?  But that wouldn’t sound as demagogic as “gones,” would it?

Your cable dollars pay for consultants who cook up these silly labels, which are not even accurate.  Community-owned broadband need not be a “government-owned” enterprise it all.  Some are public-private partnerships, others are co-ops or run on a not-for-profit basis independent of government.  What they do have in common is the ability to offer better broadband than the “take it or leave it” service many cable and phone companies provide, if they deliver it at all.

After getting past the pretzel-twisted acronym, it’s clear Mayor Murphy is no fan of community broadband.

I believe we should refrain from the temptation to compete with private communications providers on services and infrastructure that we are not equipped to properly manage.

Kinston, N.C.

Who is “we” exactly?  The city of Kinston?  Mayor Murphy must not believe in the talents and abilities of his employees.  Is Mayor Murphy confessing he is in the ironic position of attacking local government while also being an integral part of it?

Most of Murphy’s editorial is a rehash of talking points already delivered by dollar-a-holler groups like the Heartland Institute or something called the Coalition for the New Economy.  The hypocrisy of both “small government” groups calling for more government regulation on certain broadband providers while exempting their corporate friends and backers is lost on them.

Murphy suggests municipal utilities are not well run, and the locals evidently complain regularly about the one serving Kinston.  Are the complaints about service in other towns about companies like Duke Energy and CP&L — private providers — any fewer in number?  Who exactly loves their local gas and electric company?

Murphy concedes “many cities and towns throughout the years have seen voids in service or infrastructure, not easily duplicated by the private sector.  Those areas of service tend to be water, sewer, and sometimes electricity.”

Our rural grandparents lived that life, waiting for electricity and telephone service that private companies refused to provide because it was simply not profitable enough for them to do so.  In fact, NC Public Power was created precisely because private companies wouldn’t deliver electric service in rural North Carolina.  Just 30 years ago, the state allowed municipal construction of generating plants because there were fears private companies lacked the resources to handle the growth in electricity demand.  The Three Musketeers: Mayor Murphy, the Heartland Institute, and the “Coalition” would prefer cities go dark waiting for private capital to show up?  And at what rate of return would they demand from a state in desperate circumstances?  Imagine the complaints rolling in over that.

And so it goes with rural broadband — a service still not reliably available throughout rural communities in Murphy’s state and 49 others.  The problem of rural North Carolina’s pervasive lack of consistent service is so bad, the Golden LEAF Foundation targeted rural broadband development in 69 North Carolina counties, most lacking more than the slowest speed DSL.  Lenoir County, which includes Kinston is not among them.  Perhaps Murphy’s myopic views apply in his local community, but they certainly don’t in large parts of the rest of the state.  Nobody is forcing the mayor to build Kinston a broadband network.  It would be nice if he didn’t advocate away that right for other less fortunate areas.

Golden LEAF Broadband Project (click to enlarge)

Golden LEAF’s initiative, which is just one of several projects in the state, has garnered more than 130 letters of support including approximately 70 from state, county and municipal officials and 12 from middle-mile and last-mile service providers interested in using the fiber network to reach consumers and small businesses.  Part of the project is being funded by federal tax dollars.  Many of the providers eager to connect to that network are private companies, who seem to have no problem hopping on board a fiber backbone paid for, in part, by taxpayer dollars.

Other projects are community fiber to the home networks, designed to support high bandwidth requirements of the digital, knowledge-based economy.  These community providers didn’t appear out of nowhere.  Communities built these networks after incumbent providers refused upgrade requests, repeatedly.  Some communities even open up their existing municipal fiber networks to residential use.

The hue and cry among those opposing community broadband usually begins when these new providers start selling service to the public.  Private providers don’t complain when public networks provide service only to schools, health care facilities, and public buildings.  But when anyone can sign up, the complaints rage from corporate-funded dollar-a-holler groups, the companies themselves, and certain politicians, some who take campaign contributions from the other two.  The talking points are remarkably similar.  Too similar.

Murphy

Mayor Murphy makes an unfortunate comparison in his editorial — to those railroads which made Angela’s hair stand on end.

“His only experience with that monopoly and the barons who ran it came from his American History class and he wasn’t paying attention,” she says.

Government better serves the people by creating the framework for private business to thrive, not by actually owning or competing with private, tax-paying businesses.  Rarely, if ever, will one see two railroad tracks side by side owned by different companies.  Yet, that is what would happen with broadband service in many communities. In many cases, GONs would essentially use taxpayer dollars to build Internet infrastructure on top of that which has already been put in place by private providers.

Uh…

Is the mayor actually promoting a monopoly for broadband?  I suggest the mayor read our earlier piece about the historical plight of Danville, Virginia — a community on the border with North Carolina.  He will learn that those one-railroad-towns desperately wanted a second or third railway serving their community, if only to escape the horrible and expensive service monopolies and duopolies provided in places without sufficient competition.  It took decades to break the railway monopolies up, and consumers and businesses overpaid millions of dollars to robber barons who fixed prices and the type of service communities would receive.  That kind of control could make or break the economy of a town or city.  So it will be with broadband.

Of course, the mayor could suggest we liberalize access to existing broadband infrastructure and allow competitors to sell services on every available network, or allow a community to build one giant fiber optic pipeline on which every provider can deliver service, but we know what his free market friends would say about that.

Boiled down, Murphy’s arguments come from a position of already having access to the broadband resources he needs, wants, and can afford.  That’s a classic example of “I have mine, too bad you don’t have yours”-politics.

That seals the fate of rural North Carolina to an indefinite future of never getting broadband service.

Copps

Federal Communications Commissioner Michael Copps believes that when private companies drop the broadband ball, local communities should have the right to pick it up and run their own community-owned Internet providers.

Copps delivered his remarks yesterday at the annual conference of the SouthEast Chapter of the National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors, a group representing the communications needs and interests of local governments and the communities they serve.

Copps told the audience in Asheville, N.C., broadband is no longer simply a nice thing to have.  It’s now an essential service for many Americans whose work, education, civic involvement, and entertainment increasingly depend on a fast, reliable, and affordable broadband connection.

According to the commissioner, the fact that many communities still don’t have it comes from the mistaken notion that private providers will deliver the service in areas where return on investment requirements are unlikely to be met:

As most of you know, I have been pushing municipal broadband for a long, long time.

When incumbent providers cannot serve the broadband needs of some localities, local governments should be allowed–no, encouraged–to step up to the plate and ensure that their citizens are not left on the wrong side of the great divide. So it is regrettable that some states are considering, and even passing, legislation that could hinder local solutions to bring the benefits of broadband to their communities. It’s exactly the wrong way to go. In this context, too, our previous infrastructure challenges must be the guide.

The successful history of rural electrification, as one example, is due in no small part to municipal electric cooperatives that lit up corners of this country where investor-owned utilities had little incentive to go. Those coops turned on the lights for a lot of people! You know, our country would be a lot better off if we would learn from our past rather than try to defy or deny it.

Copps is now the second FCC Commissioner to defend municipal broadband.  Commissioner Mignon Clyburn has repeatedly expressed similar concerns about private companies trying to restrict public broadband development.