[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Bill Moyers How Big Telecom Increases Our Digital Divide 2-5-13.mp4[/flv]

Susan Crawford appears this weekend on Moyers & Company (check to see if it airs on a local public television station) to explain the real reason America has a digital divide with broadband have’s and have-not’s. The heart of the problem is America’s largest telecom companies, who are only interested in picking off the low hanging fruit — urban customers they can wire cheaply for service and demand monopoly or duopoly-style high prices. Rural America is being left behind, putting profit ahead of the public interest.

America has seen this before during the era of electrification, when power was denied to small towns and family farms. Then the country decided electric service was a utility and must be provided to all Americans. So it should be with broadband. Only the same ideology that argued rural Americans should pick up and move if they want electric service is back in force with broadband, where some argue companies should not have to spend money to provide universal service when they can sit back and reap enormous profits from the areas they choose to serve.

Check out this preview. (2 minutes)

The Kentucky Resources Council is appealing to Kentucky residents and elected officials to stop AT&T’s plan to abandon rural landline service in the state with the passage of a bill now before Kentucky lawmakers the company effectively wrote itself.

Tom FitzGerald, director of the non-profit group, has been bringing attention to AT&T’s agenda in the Kentucky media and through the organization’s website.

FitzGerald explains AT&T’s long term agenda is deregulation and eventual abdication of its basic responsibility to provide affordable, essential basic telephone service to every resident in the state who wants it.

In 2006, AT&T won deregulation of all services other than basic telephone service. The company promptly raised prices after the deregulation became law. Now the company is back asking the government to walk away from its oversight of basic telephone service. But even more concerning, in FitzGerald’s view, is that AT&T is prepared to walk away from their rural customers in the process:

In requiring that access to basic telephone service continue to be regulated, the General Assembly recognized that stand-alone basic telephone service is, for many Kentuckians, an essential service.

AT&T may believe, as it told the Federal Communications Commission in 2009, that “plain-old telephone service” is a “relic of a bygone era,” yet basic reliable wireline local exchange telephone service remains a lifeline for those who use it to convey medical monitoring information, for smoke and security alarms, and for voice service.

Basic local service is more than just “voice” service — it includes, by state law, reliable unlimited local exchange calling, 911 service, directory and operator assistance, and the ability to connect with other carriers.

AT&T is circulating a proposed bill that would deregulate basic local telephone services in the service areas of AT&T, Windstream and Cincinnati Bell in Kentucky. What would the bill do?

Unless you currently live in a household with fewer than 5,000 housing units in the telephone exchange, you will no longer be guaranteed access to basic local service as a stand-alone option.

For those smaller exchanges, AT&T could immediately cease providing the service if it offers an “alternative voice service.” Or, it could petition the state Public Service Commission to be relieved of the obligation by meeting certain criteria regarding other providers of voice service in the area. No new houses built in the service areas would have a right to a landline offering basic phone services on a stand-alone basis.

There is nothing in the draft bill that would require AT&T to seek PSC approval prior to ending the stand-alone landline phone service in exchanges where it or another provider offers wireless alternative voice service.

In addition, there is no requirement that AT&T demonstrate that the wireless service is of comparable reliability and consistent signal quality.

Deregulating basic local phone service based on the mere existence of a wireless “alternative voice service” provider that can be an affiliate, does not assure access for all customers to voice and other basic exchange services that are functionally equivalent, competitively priced and comparable to the currently regulated landline basic telephone services.

FitzGerald

AT&T’s characterization of its proposed legislation is that it will help shepherd in the transformation of the company’s old telephone network to a new modern network that can deliver broadband, telephone and television service. But AT&T’s network upgrades are reserved for urban areas only. Should AT&T have its way, it can simply abandon wired service in rural areas and tell those customers to purchase AT&T wireless phone service instead, at significantly higher prices and with no guarantee of service quality or reliability.

Customers in rural areas who have cellphones can already share stories about poor reception, dead spots, and garbled phone calls. Should AT&T win approval of its deregulation bill in Kentucky, rural residents may find that cellphone their only link to 911 and the outside world. FitzGerald wonders if that is sufficient for rural Kentucky.

“Before an telephone company is relieved of the obligation to offer reliable stand-alone basic service under regulations that guarantee nondiscriminatory access, the PSC must be empowered to determine whether there is sufficient competition in the provision of the full array of reliable basic phone services from other carriers on a stand-alone basis,” FitzGerald writes.

“It must also ensure that it will remain available to low-and fixed-income Kentuckians and those more costly to serve because of their location. Ending the obligation in Kentucky, without an assurance that comparable services will be available in a deregulated marketplace for those who are most in need of and least able to afford such services, is not in the public’s interest.”

The Internet Innovation Alliance this week unveiled its 2013 Broadband Guide to the 113th Congress, outlining recommendations for a better broadband future that just so happen to fall in step with AT&T’s lobbying action agenda, guaranteeing near-total telecom deregulation and abandoning rural America’s wired telecommunications networks.

That should come as no surprise, because the IIA’s principal backer is AT&T, along with a host of public interest and non-profit groups that have received significant contributions and backing from the phone giant.

The IIA’s chief recommendation: allow phone companies to abandon wired landline networks in favor of all-IP-based technologies that escape most regulatory requirements and are not subject to much oversight by local, state, or federal officials.

The IIA guide unintentionally illustrates that AT&T’s largest service area in the central and southern U.S. has some of the lowest broadband rankings in the country.

In order for consumers to enjoy the speed and bandwidth capacity of IP networks and to take advantage of the programs and services (including education, gaming, entertainment, social media) that require fast and robust data transmission, the United States should encourage the upgrade to a digital, all-Internet Protocol (IP) broadband infrastructure. Current legacy wired networks fail to meet the FCC’s definition of broadband, yet outdated laws essentially assume that incumbent telephone companies continue to maintain and operate these slow, antiquated networks, even as incumbents invest and deploy separate IP infrastructure and fewer and fewer consumers rely on the outdated voice-only networks.

Requiring incumbent telephone providers to maintain costly antiquated networks siphons investment away from deployment of advanced, high-speed next-generation IP-based networks that consumers prefer. Reforming antiquated 1930s regulations designed for monopoly providers in a copper-wire, analog era will encourage the private sector investment needed to upgrade non-IP-based facilities with newer and faster broadband infrastructure, creating jobs and growing our economy.

In addition, today’s 4G LTE wireless networks are IP-based, but the spectrum required to fuel consumers’ advanced wireless devices on these networks is becoming severely congested. Releasing more spectrum, the radio waves that carry everything from television to texts to mobile video, is necessary to maintain and improve service quality on wireless networks. The government controls the allocation of spectrum and should reallocate more of it for consumer use in order to sustain the increasing public demand for data and continue the benefits offered by the mobile revolution.

Nowhere in IIA’s guide does the “Alliance” disclose its largest backer is AT&T, one of the “telephone providers” IIA talks about as if it was a third party that had no direct connection to the group.

IIA’s guide takes care not to come down too hard on its benefactor for not upgrading rural telecommunications networks to support next generation broadband. In fact, AT&T has dragged its feet providing even ordinary DSL service in many of its rural service areas. The IIA is also careful not to disclose AT&T’s real plan: not to upgrade existing networks to fiber but rather abandon them altogether in favor of its high-profit, high revenue wireless service. That assures everyone deemed unworthy of wired broadband investment will be relegated to the company’s high-cost wireless platform with paltry usage caps and speed throttles.

At the start of 2013, we are witnessing exciting changes enabled by mobile broadband: an app economy that didn’t even exist five years ago now employs more than 500,000 Americans, according to Economist Michael Mandel; the inexorable shift to the cloud and its more efficient information storage; proliferating creative tools that are transforming consumers’ business and personal lives; rapacious appetite for faster speeds, greater bandwidth opportunity and more capacious storage; overwhelming competition with 90 percent of consumers able to choose from at least five different providers, as reported by the FCC; and accelerating innovation cycles where tomorrow’s technology is invented today. The future of broadband is bright and the benefits to consumers and our nation could be boundless. To realize these benefits we need only to let our innovators innovate, our entrepreneurs compete, and ensure our consumers have the knowledge and freedom to make the most of the technology available to them.

…and let AT&T do whatever and charge whatever it wants, while depriving rural America of a wired broadband future.

The IIA hopes its message gets through to members of Congress. Helping make that happen are two former Washington, D.C. insiders that have bipartisan support for AT&T’s agenda.

“We love technology here and believe in its power to change the country, the world, and that it’s a non-partisan issue,” gushes Bruce Mehlman, IIA’s founding co-chairman and former assistant secretary of commerce for technology policy in the George W. Bush Administration.

Mehlman was recognized by Washingtonian Magazine as one of the city’s top lobbyists and is a founding partner of his own lobbying firm. Mehlman is considered an expert in running issue campaigns and “developing advanced lobbying strategies that achieve impactful policy outcomes.” At least AT&T hopes so.

Mehlman’s D.C. lobbying firm promises “we get things done in Washington.”

“It’s critical that policymakers be well-informed as they make decisions affecting the Internet in order to promote and encourage the expansion of Internet investment, access and adoption,” echoed IIA honorary chairman Rick Boucher, a former Democratic member of Congress from the state of Virginia.

Boucher has never strayed too far from AT&T money either. AT&T was his third largest contributor overall from 1989 until he lost re-election in 2010. Today, Boucher is a partner in the law firm of Sidley Austin, which has represented AT&T’s interests for over 100 years.

North Carolina has achieved a new low. It is now tied with bottom-rated Mississippi as America’s least-connected state, at least in terms of broadband adoption.

Christopher Mitchell and Todd O’Boyle add up the cost to the state’s economy from years of broadband neglect from dominant providers like Time Warner Cable, AT&T, and CenturyLink.

Although the largest cities in the state do reasonably well, suburban and rural North Carolina continue to suffer with slow or no service at all, thanks to last-generation cable and spotty DSL service that has not kept up with other states.

Mitchell and O’Boyle blame much of the problem in their editorial in the Charlotte News & Observer on two factors: a lack of competition and a legislature that cozied up to corporate dollars to pass an anti-competitive community broadband ban in 2011.

After state legislators collected more than $1 million in campaign donations from Time Warner Cable and AT&T, the General Assembly passed a law in 2011 that effectively barred communities from building their own networks. These corporations are members of the American Legislative Exchange Council, a national organization that drafts business-friendly “model bills” to push a corporate agenda in statehouses across the country.

The impetus for that effort was the city of Wilson’s decision to build its own network after existing providers declined to improve their services. The city’s globally competitive fiber optic network offers Internet connections far faster than possible on DSL or cable – and it is far more reliable.

Because it is owned by the city, the Wilson network keeps its prices affordable. And because locals now have a choice, Time Warner Cable priced its services more competitively in Wilson than in nearby towns without meaningful competition.

Time Warner Cable, AT&T and CenturyLink waged a multiyear lobbying campaign to secure the 2011 bill. They claimed it encouraged fair competition, but their real goal was to eliminate consumer choice, as documented in a new report by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance and Common Cause: “The empire lobbies back: How national cable and DSL companies banned the competition in North Carolina.”

As a result, although Time Warner Cable has invested in a data center and billing operation in the state (and received taxpayer-funded tax breaks in the process), average consumers are still receiving service that lags far behind community-owned fiber networks in cities like Wilson and Salisbury.

AT&T’s response to a call for investment was news it told 75 of its Greensboro-area workers to either move to Alabama or start looking for work somewhere else.

Both authors argue that North Carolina’s state legislature has decided to outsource the state’s broadband future to a handful of out-of-state corporations that have been able to increase rates, trickle out service improvements, and keep true competition at bay.

Christopher Mitchell works for the Institute for Local Self-Reliance and Todd O’Boyle is affiliated with Common Cause.