Davey D

It’s gratifying to know we are not alone in recognizing the parade of minority interest groups on the dole of big telecom companies who are only too willing to parrot their talking points to strike down pro-consumer broadband reform.

Davey D, a journalist, educator, columnist and Hip Hop activist originally from the Bronx who now lives and works in Oakland where does a daily radio show – Hard Knock Radio (KPFA 94.1 FM) is pondering why so many groups are so willing to sell out their constituents:

One of the strategies used by AT&T was to go to communities of color, find Civil Rights organizations and in my humble opinion and pay for their silence or advocacy. The list ranged from LULAC to the Urban League which filed briefs siding with the FCC. It makes no sense why organizations which have long spoke about not having voice their voices heard and a seat at the table would go along with any sort of policy that strip that away from the average person who found such an opportunity via the Internet.

Was having sponsorship dollars for the next awards banquet payment enough? Or a some computers for an after school program payment enough? We’re talking about intelligent people here. It would be absolutely trifling to sell out for something that low and glaringly obvious.

Stop the Cap! exchanged views last week with one such “coalition of the willing to take the check” that claims to represent the interests of Latinos, but won’t answer basic questions about how much they got and from what phone or cable company.

Sylvia Aguilera, representing the Hispanic Technology and Telecommunications Partnership, which itself is made up of several groups cashing AT&T’s checks, chided me for my earlier remarks, “HTTP supports reasoned dialogue on the issues and remains dismayed by those, like you, who stoop to categorizing esteemed minority organizations as “astro-turf’. You will gain no allies in our communities with this strategy.”

Our response was to ask Aguilera to come clean on whether HTTP was also getting AT&T money and how much.  No response.  That speaks volumes, of course.  Aguilera makes the mistaken assumption that groups that actually represent consumers are interested in allying themselves with “dollar a holler” advocacy groups like those that make up the HTTP.  Latino readers of Stop the Cap! wondered where HTTP was when Time Warner Cable was testing Internet Overcharging schemes on their Road Runner service in Austin and San Antonio, Texas.  Unlike so many Net Neutrality foes in the not-for-profit community, Stop the Cap! doesn’t take industry money and is 100 percent supported by individual consumers.

Our contention is reasonable dialogue is impossible on telecommunications issues when some of that speech is bought and paid for by AT&T.  In other words, HTTP and its coalition members’ views on this specific issue are nothing more than astroturf and won’t carry much legitimacy in the eyes of consumers as long as AT&T is still cutting them checks.  Return the money, refuse to accept contributions that represent a conflict of interest on public policy debates, and then the reasoned dialogue can actually begin.

Now does this mean these kinds of groups do no good?  Of course not.  I’m sure they have projects that are valuable and important to their respective community interests.  But having come from the non-profit sector myself, I am also well aware of what some groups are willing to do to raise funds, and they aren’t fooling me for a second, nor should they you.

Davey D sums it up:

Below is a list of Civil Rights orgs that submitted files to the FCC saying they wanted to have the internet DEREGULATED. When your s*it starts slowing down, your message filtered or censored, your music hard to access and more importantly your fees go up, give these esteemed organizations and people a call and ask them how they intend to correct what will go down as a egregious error. Maybe they can let you use their accounts cause I’m certain in exchange for siding with these big telecoms they got a few perks including unfettered and fast lane access.

Here are recent anti-Network Neutrality filings by organizations of color

(There are more and I will post them later.)

Urban League Chapter

Click to access 7020408309.pdf

Click to access 7020400790.pdf

Click to access 7020400568.pdf

Click to access 7020408157.pdf

Click to access 7020400510.pdf

National Lesbian and Gay Chamber of Commerce

Click to access 7020408718.pdf

Hispanic Federation

Click to access 7020408716.pdf

LISTA

Click to access 7020408720.pdf

Latino community Foundation in San Francisco

Click to access 7020408354.pdf

Native Americans

Click to access 7020408711.pdf

Click to access 7020408291.pdf

Click to access 7020408712.pdf

Click to access 7020408709.pdf

Click to access 7020408717.pdf

Click to access 7020408708.pdf

Click to access 7020408713.pdf

NAACP in California

Click to access 7020408307.pdf

Rainbow Push

Click to access 7020408211.pdf

Texas State Rep. Robert Alonzo

Click to access 7020408179.pdf

MANA, A National Latino Organization

Click to access 7020400566.pdf

100 Black Men of South Metro

Click to access 7020400798.pdf

100 Black Men of Mobile

Click to access 7020401015.pdf

100 Black Men of Greater Mobile

Click to access 7020401015.pdf

ASPIRA

Click to access 7020400339.pdf

100 Black Men of Tennessee

Click to access 7020400506.pdf

100 Black Men of Orlando

Click to access 7020400502.pdf

HTTP

Click to access 7020400970.pdf

Hispanic Interests Coalition of Alabama

Click to access 7020401020.pdf

SER: Jobs for Progress

http://fjallfoss.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/view?id=7020400060

NAACP Mar-Saline Branch

Click to access 7020399888.pdf

Japanese American Citizens League

Click to access 7020399819.pdf

Organization of Chinese Americans

Click to access 7020399334.pdf

Asian Pacific American Institute for Congressional Studies

Rep. Yvette Clarke

https://ecfsapi.fcc.gov/file/7020399667.pdf

(The Liberal Party is sponsoring an online town hall meeting this afternoon at 3:30PM EDT on the issue of expanding broadband in rural Canada.  Why not join in and demand that Michael Ignatieff commit to reforming the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, which has landed Canada in a real broadband mess filled with Net Neutrality violations and Internet Overcharging schemes like usage caps and consumption billing.  The CRTC has been so submissive to Canadian telecom, they might as well be their trade association.

Tell him rural broadband expansion doesn’t do much good if the existing providers, which got Canada into this mess, are still in charge of running it.  Real broadband reform requires a government committed to universal broadband that works for Canadians and doesn’t simply profit from them.  Demand Net Neutrality commitments from the Liberal Party and an end to overcharging schemes.  Universal broadband doesn’t mean much to Canada if Canadians can’t use it without fear of overlimit fees and enormous bills at the end of the month. — Phillip Dampier)

Ignatieff announces the Liberals' rural broadband plan at Contact North in Thunder Bay, Ont.

The Liberal Party of Canada has promised rural Canadians they will not be left behind the digital online revolution, unveiling a promise Tuesday to deliver universal broadband access to all Canadians within three years of taking office.

Michael Ignatieff, Liberal leader made the commitment as part of a series of planks the party introduced under its “Rural Canada Matters” platform to attract support from rural Canadians, who tend to vote Conservative.

“Too many rural communities can’t get access to essential services, because we don’t have the digital infrastructure to deliver them,” said Ignatieff. “That’s why I’m committing a future Liberal government to 100 percent high-speed Internet for every rural, remote and Northern community in our country.”

According to Ignatieff, using proceeds from a 2011 wireless spectrum auction, a Liberal government would invest to achieve an interim target of 100 percent high-speed Internet connectivity of at least 1.5 Mbps. A Liberal government would also seek to set a more ambitious goal for 2017, Canada’s 150th anniversary as a country.

The Liberals blasted the incumbent Conservatives for breaking their promise to deliver rural broadband to Canadians.

In 2006, Canada’s Telecommunications Review Panel recommended the federal government achieve 100% high-speed Internet connectivity by 2010. This goal was not achieved under the Conservative government.  According to the CRTC, in 2009 close to 800,000 Canadian households still did could not access high-speed Internet – or 20% of all rural Canadians. At the turn of the century, Canada ranked second in the world in Internet connectivity, but has now fallen to tenth place.

Ignatieff announced the plan in Thunder Bay, Ontario at an Internet access center run by Contact North.  He characterized the current state of broadband in Canada as threatening the country’s economic competitiveness and quality of life for rural residents.

“While railways and highways were the essential infrastructure of the 20th century, fiber optic lines, satellites and wireless towers, are the digital infrastructure needed to connect our communities and strengthen our economy in the 21st century,” said Liberal Rural Caucus Chair Mark Eyking, “In all regions of Canada, families and businesses depend on access to the Internet and mobile phone coverage.”

New Democratic Party (NDP) MP Bruce Hyer (Thunder Bay-Superior North) praised the Liberal plan.

The Liberal Party is trying to capture an increased share of traditional Conservative Party supporters with a rural-focused agenda

“Obviously, country-wide broadband is a good idea,” Hyer told The Chronicle-Journal newspaper in Thunder Bay. “And there should be virtually no community of any size in Canada, and nowhere along the Trans-Canada, for sure, that we don‘t have high-quality mobile phone access and service. The United States has those things, and we should have them, too.”

But NDP MP John Rafferty (Thunder Bay-Rainy River) told the newspaper he’s heard it all before.

“Liberals have been talking about rural broadband access for a decade now,” he said. “The interesting thing is that he says rural Canada matters. But clearly it hasn’t mattered to Liberals for a long time, or else we would’ve had broadband.  They had a chance to do this. What they’re doing is regurgitating old promises.”

Rafferty said the Liberals first brought it up in 2001, and said then it would cost $4 billion.

“I’m not sure where he comes up with ($500 million).”

Another concern for the Liberal Party plan is the fact it relies entirely on private providers to deliver the service, something they have refused to provide many rural Canadians thus far.  In effect, the government would transfer $500 million dollars earned from large telecommunications companies buying additional spectrum and then hand it all back to those same companies to construct slow speed broadband services they can then profit from.

While many Canadian officials blame Canada’s large rural expanse for the digital divide, others blame Canada’s broadband providers who have engaged in usage-limiting schemes, increased prices, and throttled the speeds of certain broadband services.

Lauderback

Establishing a free and open marketplace for competitive broadband is impossible unless the Federal Communications Commission asserts its authority and enacts strong Net Neutrality protections.

Those are the views of self-proclaimed libertarian-leaner Jim Lauderback who runs Revision3, an Internet-based television network.

Penning a column in today’s Forbes, Lauderback strongly believes broadband services should be reclassified as a Title II common carrier service, and should be regulated by the Federal Communications Commission.

I fundamentally believe that customers should have unencumbered access to any service they wish to use or run, up to the bandwidth limits that they have purchased. The big broadband companies should be prohibited from granting favored bandwidth and quality of service preference to any site or application.

Why? Because Verizon, AT&T and Comcast are for-profit companies, and without restrictions they could–and probably would–grant preferred network access to their own services. Imagine the power Comcast could wield to promote its own video networks, particularly if the NBC merger is approved. Why wouldn’t Comcast ensure that NBC, G4, Syfy and MSNBC look great when streamed over its broadband network, while simultaneously throttling YouTube, CBS’ TV.com, movie and sports streams from Netflix and Major League Baseball, along with any other non-company owned video services (including those from my company, Revision3)? Comcast, Verizon and AT&T are in business to make money, and anything that will make their owned and operated networks more successful is just good business. It works for them, but not for their customers.

Lauderback declares today’s broadband marketplace a oligarchy — one cable and one phone provider.  With the increasing prevalence of term commitments, bundling, and other contractual obligations, many of today’s providers are successfully locking their customers in place.

“Service bundling gives these two even more power over their customers and makes it even harder to switch,” he writes. “I discovered this first hand last week, when I tried to move from AT&T’s increasingly spotty DSL service to Comcast. Comcast was happy to take my money, but it would have cost me almost twice as much unless I also shifted my TV and local phone service to Comcast.”

Those who support open hand-to-hand competitive combat in a free market understand that healthy competition cannot exist when a handful of players get to control how the game is played.

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski wins the Cowardly Lion Award for reports he's set to sell out American consumers for corporate interests

The Washington Post this morning reports FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski is preparing to sell out a free and open Internet by adopting a provider appeasement policy that would abandon consumers and broadband users to the whims of big telecom companies.

In an extraordinarily disappointing move by the Obama Administration, which promised to adopt Net Neutrality and better broadband service for consumers, political expediency and typical Democratic party cowardice are likely to derail any hope for adopting consumer protections for the Internet.

Three sources at the [FCC] said Genachowski has not made a final decision but has indicated in recent discussions that he is leaning toward keeping in place the current regulatory framework for broadband services but making some changes that would still bolster the FCC’s chances of overseeing some broadband policies.

The sources said Genachowski thinks “reclassifying” broadband to allow for more regulation would be overly burdensome on carriers and would deter investment. But they said he also thinks the current regulatory framework would lead to constant legal challenges to the FCC’s authority every time it attempted to pursue a broadband policy.

Genachowski is living in a dream world — the non-reality-based community — if he believes for a second the nice telecom industry will happily go along with his plans for better broadband while leaving the current anti-competitive duopolistic framework of deregulation in place.

Telling a multi-billion dollar broadband industry to keep their paws off content and preserve an open and free network would be burdensome… for Stalin.  It should not be for AT&T, Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Verizon.  If it is, that is why we are supposed to have checks and balances to protect Americans from a corporate oligarchy.  But money talks, and despite all of the repeated promises from President Barack Obama to preserve an open Internet, once the political pressure gets applied and the Money Party of corporate contributions gets going, you can always count on these people to cave in the end. “What Net Neutrality promise?”

Stop the Cap! supporters, with the help of a few “get it done” elected officials and other consumers who stood up and said “no more” to Time Warner Cable and the North Carolina legislature, managed to beat back Internet Overcharging experiments and corporate-friendly legislation to ban municipal broadband networks.  We accomplished both in a matter of weeks last year.  What was our secret?  Integrity.  We’re not behest to corporate lobbyists and industry-funded think tanks who hold the keys to post-administration job opportunities with super-sized salaries.  The Obama Administration and its appointed FCC chairman seem utterly impotent to do what a regulatory agency is supposed to do — regulate.  We might as well have Neville Chamberlain as FCC Chairman, because consumers are starting to feel a bit like 1938 Czechoslovakia, about to be sold out for peace inside the Beltway.

Readers, we will not be Julius Genachowski’s Tylenol.  To the contrary.  Chairman Genachowski appears exceptionally naive to believe he can enact any of his broadband policies over lawsuit-happy big telecoms that will promptly have them tossed out in court rulings.  If you and I already know this, why doesn’t he?  We need bold action, not policy capitulation.  Perhaps it’s time to replace the chairman with someone who isn’t afraid to do the job.

It always shocks me when we elect an administration to lead on the issues it pursues during an election, and then cowers in fear and abandons the American people the moment some lobbyists turn up the heat and start handing out checks.  Even when the overwhelming majority of Americans want a free and open Internet, somehow a handful of bureaucrats in Washington are too afraid to actually get the job done.

“The telephone and cable companies will object to any path the chairman takes,” said Art Brodsky, a spokesman for Public Knowledge, told the Post. “He might as well take the one that best protects consumers and is most legally sound.”

It’s too bad that is considered the radical solution in a lobbyist-infested Washington.  It looks like we’re going to need to start counting the money and making it clear in no uncertain terms that abandoning consumers means we’ll abandon them at the next election.

Marvin Ammori, a CyberLaw Advocate:

If the Post story is predictive, there is almost no list of “horribles” that are not fair game. I’m listing ten. Most of these “horribles” have actually happened as business practices where the carriers got their way. And media companies are believed to refuse ads or stories that criticize them or oppose their position.

Comcast (or AT&T or Verizon or Time Warner Cable) could do any of the following and the FCC could do Big Fat Nothing:

(1) Block your tweets, if you criticize Comcast’s service or its merger, especially if you use the #ComcastSucks hashtag.

(2) Block your vote to the consumerist.com, when you vote Comcast the worst company in the nation. No need for such traffic to get through.

(3) Force every candidate for election to register their campaign-donations webpage and abide by the same weird rules that apply to donations by text message.

(4) Comcast could even require a “processing fee,” becoming the Ticketmaster of campaign contributions.

(5) Comcast could reserve the right to approve of every campaign online and every mass email to a political party’s or advocacy group’s list (as they do with text message short codes).

(6) If you create a small online business and hit it big, threaten to block your business unless you share 1/3 or more of all your revenues with them (apps on the iPhone app stores often are forced to give up a 1/3 or more; so are cable channels on cable TV).

(7) Block all peer to peer technologies, even those used for software developers to share software, distribute patches (world of warcraft), distribute open source software (Linux). In fact, Comcast has shown it would love to do this.

(8) Block Daily Kos, Talking Points Memo, Moveon.org (and its emails), because of an “exclusive” deal with other blogs. Or alternatively, block FoxNews.com because of a deal with NBC and MSNBC.

(9) Monitor everything you do online and sell it to advertisers, something else that some phone and cable have done, with the help of a shady spyware company.

(10) Lie to you about what they’re blocking and what they’re monitoring. Hell, the FCC wouldn’t have any authority to make them honest. The FCC couldn’t punish them.

<

p style=”text-align: center; padding-left: 30px;”>

New Apple iPad 3G owners launched a small controversy over the weekend about their discovery that certain video streaming services are showing lower resolution video (or no video at all) when using Apple’s new iPad 3G over AT&T’s wireless 3G network.

A range of sites pounced on the news.  It’s not easy to sort through who broke the story first, but by the end of the weekend, it developed a small life of its own.

iLounge was among the first to note serious video quality degradation when using the iPad over a cellular network, while it worked just fine over Wi-Fi:

…some video delivery applications act differently over the 3G network than they do on Wi-Fi. The iPad’s built-in YouTube application strips both standard and HD videos to a dramatically lower resolution over the cellular data connection, something that iTunes Store video previews notably do not do, instead staying at a higher quality and consuming a greater amount of data. Other third-party applications, such as the ABC Player, refuse to work at all over the cellular connection, producing a notification pop-up that states, “Please connect to a Wi-Fi network to use this application. Cellular networks are not supported at this time.”

YouTube streamed over AT&T's 3G Network on an iPad defaults to very low resolution. (Image: iLounge)

Electronista also jumped on the story, at first speculating AT&T may have had a hand on the speed throttling noting Sling Media ran into a similar blockade with AT&T before the wireless company relented and the software became available from the App Store.  PC Magazine quoted from the Electronista story (before Electronista’s editors modified their original piece) to build on the story.

By the end of the weekend, Electronista pulled back on some of their language in their original report and included a cryptic denial from AT&T, which claimed it was “a question for Apple.”

Stories of reported throttling and content walls will not take long to reach the public policy debate over Net Neutrality.  Is this an example of AT&T throttling Apple iPad customers and blocking them from accessing web content?

The answer, based on current evidence, is probably not.

There are technical issues behind the scenes which play a larger role here, but let’s begin with the average consumer and how a 3G network impacts on their “user experience.”

When designing a device like the iPad, engineers have to factor in usability and the overall impression customers will have using the product with a wireless network.  For many original iPad owners reliant on a Wi-Fi connection, pages render quickly, videos play properly, and applications that require higher bandwidth generally work fine.  Unfortunately, for those who lined up outside of Apple stores looking for the 3G wireless mobile broadband version of the iPad, the same may not always be true using AT&T’s 3G network.

AT&T promotes its 3G network as fast and capable of handling most any web application, including video.  But even the best 3G experience from AT&T is often much slower than a wired or Wi-Fi connection.  Despite the PR from AT&T, its 3G network frustrates many customers, especially in areas where cell sites are jammed with traffic or signals aren’t great.  Apple made sure larger-sized, streamed multimedia content seemed to work equally well on wireless by using adaptive video quality that can sense the speed of a connection, and reduce the quality of a video in order to make it play properly.  The theory is that a consumer using a handheld device probably wouldn’t notice the quality reduction on a small screen and would appreciate quick, uninterrupted playback.  Without such technology, a high quality video file can take longer to send over AT&T’s 3G network than it will take you to watch it.  That triggers the annoying “buffering content” pauses you see on slower networks.

AT&T officials told inquiring media “it’s a question for Apple,” which seems to confirm the reduced video quality is a function of the video player trying to adapt to AT&T’s speed.

Even with this in mind, some accused AT&T of employing social engineering to get customers to instinctively rely on Wi-Fi connections for higher bandwidth applications, reducing the demand on AT&T’s 3G network.

There is no need for a conspiracy theory like that when the simple, naked truth is far easier to grasp — AT&T has inadequate capacity and needs to upgrade their wireless networks to handle more traffic and sustain the speeds customers expect from a 3G-capable network.  AT&T is not purposely throttling the speeds of iPad 3G owners — their insufficient capacity results in a de facto speed throttle for all of their customers.  Unfortunately for those outside of the United States, the implications of AT&T’s slower 3G network can impact them as well.  Jesse Hollington in Toronto noted:

Unfortunately, these limitations don’t seem to be triggered by AT&T’s network, but rather in the iPhone OS or apps themselves, and the restrictions (at least on the iPhone) exist in every country where the iPhone is sold. There’s a general feeling outside of the U.S. that Apple’s kowtowing to AT&T’s “requirements” is actually ruining the experience for the rest of the world.

For instance, I can perhaps understand why YouTube videos need to be downsampled on AT&T’s slow 3G network, which even at peak performance is only 1.8mbps in most places.  As I noted above, however, Rogers up here provides 7.2mbps just about everywhere and provides better 3G performance than I get on some Wi-Fi networks. Yet we have to live with the same 3G restrictions as AT&T users do because they’re built into the iPhone OS.

That prompts the question what limits would have been “built-in” had AT&T’s own 3G network consistently delivered 7.2Mbps performance across its service areas.

As for ABC, and certain other content producers that restrict iPad owners to Wi-Fi viewing, that turns out not to be clear cut either.  ABC’s video streaming evidently exceeds a speed threshold that triggers the player to tell the user to use a Wi-Fi connection instead.  Licensing restrictions may also prevent the content from playing across a 3G network.

One of the most common arguments Net Neutrality opponents use to argue Net Neutality’s “unintended negative consequences” comes from bans on such adaptive speed controls.  Providers claim that by prioritizing or favoring certain traffic, they can maximize a consumer’s online experience so that they can use high bandwidth applications, as long as an intelligent network shaped the delivery of that traffic.

So one might ask, because adaptive video quality lets people watch their favorite online videos over AT&T’s 3G network, wouldn’t a ban on speed throttles make it difficult or impossible to provide a customer with access to that video?  Isn’t Net Neutrality a bludgeon that kills intelligent traffic management tools?

There is no shortage of techie-speaking, industry-funded Net Neutrality opponents that argue it regularly.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.

Net Neutrality does not ban software that can sense the speed of your connection and request an appropriate web stream that will assure uninterrupted playback.  Even ancient RealPlayer technology can adaptively adjust streaming quality based on what your connection will support, if the content producer supports it.  Such technology directly benefits the consumer (who can also often shut it off), whereas the kinds of traffic shaping providers advocate really only benefits them.

That’s an important distinction.  Too often, the kinds of “intelligent networks” providers speak of are designed to protect providers from “costly upgrades” and opens up new revenue streams by manipulating or limiting traffic and then charging users and producers to be exempted from them (for the right price).