Congressman Eric Massa’s proposed Broadband Internet Fairness Act helped drum up sufficient attention to the issue of usage caps, it helped postpone them, at least in some areas.

One of the reasons these stories recapping and documenting this entire Internet rationing debacle is important is to come to understand Time Warner’s strategy in trying to implement usage caps.  It was largely the same talking points wherever you went among the four impacted communities, and the reaction from customers was also always the same – outrage.

Local governments also rapidly learned they had their own problem – a complete inability to force the company to do what’s right for customers.  In fact, communities that experienced this experiment, which is likely to return at some point in the near future, should begin contemplating competitive alternatives starting today, and not wait for the next hammer to fall on residential and business customers the next time Time Warner wants to drop a tiered billing system with extremely high overlimit fees on the towns and cities it serves.

KVUE presented a well-balanced story here, and it was a news leader, complete with a live stand-up shot in front of Austin’s City Hall.

Wilson, North Carolina first got attention on the state level about two years ago when they were well on their way to constructing a municipally run fiber optic network to deliver fast broadband, television, and telephone services to area residents.  Time Warner, the incumbent provider, had bypassed Wilson for some of the highest speed upgrades.  This is a situation not unknown to StoptheCap! readers like those in Rochester who face their own slower speed Road Runner service.  Competition in nearby cities Buffalo and Syracuse have prompted Time Warner to upgrade speeds in those communities, but not in Rochester.

When Wilson city officials didn’t listen to the warnings from Time Warner officials, legislation introduced in the North Carolina legislature suddenly appeared which would essentially shut down Wilson’s project, and others like it, across the state.

The story below, from 2007, illustrates the divide, and the pro and con positions.  Now, two years later, the same issues are back, along with a new industry-sponsored bill to once again find a way to get rid of municipal networks in North Carolina.  Why StoptheCap! focuses on this issue is to help educate you about how this industry works, what alternatives are available, and give you the power to articulate to everyone why competitive, uncapped broadband service is essential to every community, at reasonable prices.  This isn’t a right or left issue.  It’s also one that should concern every person, no matter how much broadband service the use at the moment.

WRAL back again with another comprehensive and fair report.  This one is about two years old and focuses on the last round between Time Warner and the city of Wilson, North Carolina.  The exact same battle was renewed this spring, and we’re watching.

After skeptical reviews from the media (and online groups like ours) about Time Warner’s original proposal to create broadband tiers that ended up not saving any customer a penny, the company quickly announced a 1GB slower tier for the light user. San Antonio learned about the plan in a brief report, but no details about the fact that exceeding that 1GB tier would cost your 200 pretty pennies for each gigabyte that followed.

The Rochester Democrat & Chronicle produces some edgy video targeted to younger people who probably aren’t getting home delivery of their newspaper everyday (shame on you), but are still plugged in to high technology issues.  So it didn’t take long for the paper to track down two young entrepreneurs running small businesses in the area who would be directly impacted by usage caps and punitive overlimit fees.  One, Justin Kirby, has been well known in the telecommunications circles I travel in for a very long time.  He’s out in Albion, a small town in Orleans county northwest of Rochester.  Albion is served by Time Warner for cable service, and Verizon for telephone.  It will be several years before Verizon FiOS ever reaches into the smaller towns well outside of the urban/suburban communities Verizon now targets for fiber optic cable.  DSL would likely be the next best choice, assuming it is available.

In rural areas, the impact on small business and residential customers is even greater, because these are the communities most unlikely to see robust competition from multiple providers.