Draft legislation to make life difficult for community broadband in South Carolina has resurfaced this week in the state Senate Judiciary Committee.  The legislation, H. 3508, would hamstring communities from setting up fiber networks that are attracting hundreds of millions of dollars of new investments from digital economy businesses like Amazon.com in the nearby state of Tennessee.

Lobbyists from AT&T are aggressively pushing the measure, and no doubt Time Warner Cable will also deliver its support.

The protectionist legislation, which delivers all of the benefits to status quo providers like AT&T inside the Palmetto State, guarantees local officials cannot pitch advanced, community-owned fiber networks to companies like Amazon, Google, and other billion-dollar businesses that are expanding across the southern United States.

The implications are so dire, the South Carolina Association of Counties and the Municipal Association of South Carolina vociferously opposed the legislation last year.  On the ground in rural Orangeburg County, administrator Bill Clark understands first hand the implications of broadband scarcity.  He was shocked to discover the bill considers any connection that achieves the woeful speed of 190kbps would qualify as “broadband,” no doubt to allow AT&T to claim its 3G wireless broadband service already “well serves” the state of South Carolina.  If AT&T can demonstrate it delivers at least 190kbps service in South Carolina, even if capped to just a few gigabytes of usage per month, the company can claim South Carolina does not have a broadband problem.

Stop the Cap! readers inside South Carolina regularly complain about the state’s lousy broadband on the ground.  Our regular reader Fred in Laurens is stuck between a broadband rock and a hard place, navigating poor service from Frontier Communications, AT&T, and bottom-rated Charter Cable.  He can’t wait for a community provider to set up in South Carolina.

Unfortunately for Fred and other South Carolina residents, special interests in the telecommunications industry have gone out of their way petitioning state government to set up obstacles to community broadband while providers do little or nothing to upgrade broadband in the rural corners of the state.

Back to push more special interest legislation to keep community-owned broadband from taking hold.

Now AT&T is back to push for even stronger restrictions, and as Chris Mitchell from Community Broadband Networks wrote during last year’s tangle, this legislation will effectively make any local government ownership of telecommunications facilities impossible:

The bill is blatantly protectionist for AT&T interests, throwing South Carolina’s communities under the bus. But as usual, these decisions about a “level playing field” are made by legislators solely “educated” by big telco lobbyists and who are dependent on companies like AT&T for campaign funds. Even if AT&T’s campaign cash were not involved, their lobbyists talk to these legislators every day whereas local communities and advocates for broadband subscribers simply cannot match that influence.

We see the same unlevel playing field, tilted toward massive companies like AT&T, in legislatures as we do locally when communities compete against big incumbents with their own networks. Despite having almost all the advantages, they use their tremendous power and create even more by pushing laws to effectively strip communities of the sole tool they possess to ensure the digital economy does not pass them by.

South Carolina’s access to broadband is quite poor — 8th worst in the nation in access to the the kinds of connections that allow one to take advantage of the full Internet according to a recent FCC report [pdf].

Some of the provisions on display are remarkably transparent for AT&T’s own interests:

No reasonable provider will invest in expensive broadband infrastructure in an unserved area if it must stop providing communications services within 12 months of a Commission finding that a private provider has begun to offer at least 190 kilobits per second to more than 10 percent of the households in the area.

Public sector entities will be subjected to “the same local, state, and federal regulatory, statutory, and other legal requirements to which nongovernment‑owned communications service providers” are held. This is similar language we see in North Carolina and other states, betraying the total lack of ignorance on telecommunications policy among legislators and their staff.

Requiring public communications providers to comply with all applicable local, state, and federal requirements would be appropriate, but requiring them to meet the same requirements that non-government entities must meet would be tremendously time-consuming, burdensome, and costly for public entities. It would also lead to endless disputes over which requirements public entities should comply with and how they should do so. For example, incumbent local exchange carriers, competitive local exchange carriers, Internet service providers, cable companies, private non-profit entities, and other communications providers are all subject to different requirements.

Requiring public communications providers to comply with all requirements that apply to private communications providers will not achieve a “level playing field” unless private providers are simultaneously required to comply with all open records, procurement, civil service, and other requirements that apply to public entities.

Call to Action: Contact these members of the South Carolina Senate Judiciary Committee right away and let them know you oppose H.3508:

(click names of individual members to obtain direct contact information)

Points to Share:

• While South Carolina ponders another bill tying the hands behind the backs of our community leaders, Tennessee’s community fiber network in Chattanooga just helped that state score thousands of new jobs for an Amazon.com distribution center.  Amazon is investing hundreds of millions in the state and local economy, creating new high quality jobs.  They chose Chattanooga because it had the digital infrastructure at a price that made that community too attractive to ignore.  Meanwhile, AT&T and other companies do not offer this level of service without a huge upfront commitment and lengthy delay to provision facilities.  That’s time for companies to look to states like Tennessee instead, where they can get the right service at the right price in days, not months.
• South Carolina delivers the country’s 9th worst broadband.  What high tech company will consider coming to our state when broadband service is so lacking?  Since private providers have had ample opportunity to deliver service themselves, and failed to do so, why can’t local communities decide what is best for themselves, free from special interest interference from big companies like AT&T.
• Why is AT&T setting the broadband bar so low in South Carolina when other states are enjoying fiber to the home service at lightning fast speeds?  The bar is set so low at 190kbps, it leaves South Carolina in the dust.  Our schools, public safety networks, health care facilities, and economy deserve better and could get a major economic boost from construction of networks similar to that in Chattanooga.  If it doesn’t make sense, communities won’t build it. If it does, why are we letting AT&T effectively make the final decision?
• Public broadband does not have to risk taxpayer dollars.  Successful fiber networks are being built in communities across the country at no risk to taxpayers.
• South Carolina must compete in the high tech economy.  We cannot do that with low speed wireless networks and DSL.  H. 3508 is corporate protectionism at its worst and will leave South Carolina without the flexibility to compete with states like Tennessee for future private sector investment.  What is more important — protecting AT&T’s incumbent copper wire facilities or attracting hundreds of millions of dollars in investment from private companies like Google and Amazon?

Chattanooga’s investment in community fiber broadband is beginning to pay dividends as the city benefits from an increase in high-paying, high-technology jobs.  Unfortunately for cities like Knoxville, Chattanooga’s gains are their loss.

“In a lot of places, you can get the same kind of high speed service as Chattanooga.  The difference is the price,” Dan Thompson of Knoxville-based IT company Claris Networks told Knoxville TV station WBIR.  “Connectivity there for us is about eight to ten times cheaper in Chattanooga than it is versus Knoxville or other cities.  That’s a huge deal when you’re comparing $100 a month or $800 a month.”

As a result, Claris is skipping the pricey service on offer from AT&T and Comcast and is moving jobs down I-75 to the city of Chattanooga, where publicly-owned EPB Fiber has invested in a fiber-to-the-home network that beats the pants off the competition.  Claris has found gigabit broadband in Chattanooga that can be installed in days at a fraction of the price charged by the companies they deal with in Knoxville.  Now Claris can invest the savings in bigger data centers and the jobs that come with them.

“Here in Knoxville and other cities, you may have to pay a premium to get speeds fast enough to support that,” Thompson said.

While companies like AT&T, Time Warner Cable, CenturyLink, and Comcast have had Chamber of Commerce support opposing community broadband in other states, Chattanooga’s local Chamber knows a good thing when it sees it.  Garrett Wagley, vice president of policy and public relations for the Knoxville Chamber, tells the Knoxville station investment in infrastructure is important when recruiting new businesses to town and keep existing ones growing.

Investment in high technology networks is an important topic for the evolving economies of the mid-south region.  Formerly dependent on tobacco farming, textiles, and manufacturing, states like Tennessee and the Carolinas are now investing to compete for high-technology, digital economy jobs.  Public investment in broadband comes as part of that effort, and typically only after appeals to existing commercial providers fail to bring necessary upgrades.

That “other places first” upgrade mentality continues to this day in states like South Carolina, which waited years for Time Warner Cable and local phone companies to deliver broadband speeds states further north have been receiving for several years.

For companies like Google and Amazon.com, the choice of where to locate regional data and distribution centers is often dependent on available infrastructure.  Chattanooga is in a strong position to argue it already has a broadband network in place that can meet the needs of any high-tech company, at prices too low to ignore.  Economic investment, jobs, and tax revenues follow.  Even better, much of the revenue earned by EPB Fiber stays in Chattanooga, paying off network construction costs and allowing the public utility to invest in smart-grid technology, which could benefit electric ratepayers as well.

Christopher Mitchell at Community Broadband Networks notes Chattanooga is not alone seeing significant job gains from investment in public broadband.  Just 100 miles to the northeast is Bristol, Virginia, another city that is transforming itself to support 21st century knowledge economy jobs.  Bristol’s public fiber network delivers service across most of southwestern Virginia, across an area long ignored or under-served by larger commercial providers.

For cities stuck with whatever AT&T, Comcast, and Time Warner Cable decide to offer, the trickling job migration to better-wired cities could eventually become a fast-running stream.  That’s why WBIR-TV questioned Knoxville city officials about why they abandoned consideration of their own public fiber network.

The City of Knoxville’s chief policy officer, Bill Lyons, told 10News there has been some discussion about constructing network infrastructure in the past.

“We did discuss this general topic very briefly early in the last administration and did not pursue it,” wrote Lyons.  “There was no systematic assessment, but rather a sense that the associated investment in infrastructure was not needed given the service that was already available.”

[…] “The question we as citizens need to ask is this something we’d be willing to spend money on,” said Thompson.  “I think you’d have to ask if you built this kind of network would more businesses come here.  And if they would, do the tax dollars [gained by attracting news business] offset the cost that we as citizens would have to pay.”

Good-enough-for-you broadband at take-it-or-leave-it sky high prices has been the state of broadband across the mid-south for years.  Unfortunately for Knoxville and other cities in Tennessee and the Carolinas, high-tech businesses are quickly discovering they don’t have to take it anymore.  What cities like Knoxville lose, Chattanooga gains.

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WBIR Knoxville Chattanooga Fiber Attracts Jobs 12-27-11.mp4[/flv]

WBIR in Knoxville explores Chattanooga’s success in broadband, which is now starting to come at the expense of other Tennessee cities who don’t have the infrastructure to compete.  (3 minutes)

Customers of some of the largest cable, phone, and satellite companies will pay an average of 3-6 percent more for service in a series of rate increases taking effect between now and the end of February.

AT&T U-verse

If your introductory offer has expired, expect to pay more for just about everything as of Feb. 9.

Cable TV:

• U-family will increase from $54 to $57,
• U100 will increase for some from $54 to $59 and for others from $59 to $64,
• U200 will increase from $69 to $72/U200 Latino will increase from $79 to $82,
• U300 will increase from $84 to $87/U300 Latino will increase from $94 to $97,
• U400 will increase from $109 to $114,
• U450 will increase from $117 to $119/U450 Latino will increase from $127 to $129.

For high speed Internet customers who ordered their current speed before June 12, 2011, effective with the February 2012 billing statement, the monthly price for Basic will increase from $19.95 to $25, Express will increase from $30 to $33, Pro will increase from $35 to $38, Elite will increase from $40 to $43, and Max will increase from $45 to $48. If you are paying a monthly high speed Internet equipment fee for the Residential Gateway, the amount will increase from $4 to $6.

For Voice Unlimited, effective on February 1, 2012, the monthly price will increase from $33 to $35.

AT&T blames increased programming costs and “the cost of doing business” for the rate increases.  AT&T is increasing broadband pricing despite enjoying further cost reductions from their Internet Overcharging scheme implemented in 2011.

Comcast

Comcast implements rate increases at different times of the year throughout its national service area.  But a preview of what is forthcoming can be seen in south Florida and Minnesota, where Comcast’s new rates for 2012 have increased an average of 5.8 percent.  That comes after a 2 percent rate hike last year.  It’s a bitter pill for many customers to swallow, because Comcast has also been moving popular cable channels like Turner Classic Movies into the more expensive Digital Preferred package.  The price of that full basic package will now run just short of $85 a month. Customers in Minneapolis are staring down these new rates:

• Basic 1: no change in most franchise areas.
• Digital Economy: increases from $29.95 a month to $34.95 a month, or 16.7 percent.
• Digital Starter: increases from $62.99 a month to $66.49 a month, or 5.6 percent.
• Digital Preferred: increases from $80.99 a month to $84.49 a month, or 4.3 percent.

Comcast blames increased programming costs and upgrade expenses associated with its now completed DOCSIS 3 project.  Comcast also has converted many of its service areas to all-digital service, which has opened up additional room to sell more expensive broadband packages, add additional HD channels, and make room for new product lines relating to home automation and security.

Cox Cable

Broadband Reports readers are sharing anecdotal evidence Cox has begun its own 2012 rate increase campaign.  In Florida, cable TV rates are up yet again:

Prices for Cox TV and Cox Advanced TV will be as follows:

• Cox TV Starter will change from $19.55 to $22.85/mo.
• Advanced TV will change from $5.50 to $4.20/mo.
• Advanced TV Standard Definition receivers will change from $5.55 to $6.99/mo.
• Advanced TV High Definition, High Definition/DVR & DVR receivers will change from $7.45 to $7.99/mo.

Advanced TV Paks will change:

• Any 1 Pak (excluding Variety Pak) from $4.00 to $4.25/mo.
• Any 2 Paks (excluding Variety Pak) from $8.05 to $8.50/mo.
• Any 3 Paks from $12.00 to $12.50/mo.
• Variety Pak will be $4.00/mo.

Premium pricing will change:

• 1 premium channel from $13.99 to $14.99/mo;
• 2 premium channels from $23.99 to $24.99/mo;
• 3 premium channels from $30.99 to $34.99/mo;
• 4 premium channels from $36.99 to $44.99/mo.
• (Pricing for the 3rd and 4th Premium channels will be grandfathered at the current price for existing customers.)

Cox’s Preferred Internet tier is increasing from $49.99 to $53.99 a month.  Basic phone service increases from $11.75 to $13.18, and popular calling features like Caller ID are also increasing (from $5.95 to $9.00 per month).

Rates vary in different franchise areas.

DirecTV

The satellite TV provider will raise rates on Feb. 9 by 4 percent on average. Its costs are going up by more than that, the company said on its website: “The programming costs we pay to owners of TV channels will increase by about 10 percent.”

DirecTV defends its rate increase, noting it will introduce new features in 2012 that include more than 170 HD channels and the most 3D viewing options of any television provider.  The full breakdown is provided from DirecTV:

Consumer Tips

1. Customers who subscribe to bundled services will see the fewest rate increases.  The more services you bundle, the lower the typical cost of each component within the bundle.  It rarely pays to have one company as a TV provider and another delivering your broadband because standalone service pricing is increasingly the most expensive option.
2. Ask for an extension of your introductory or promotional rate.  Request pricing from the competition and be prepared to summarize it with your current provider when arguing for a lower rate.  If your current provider thinks you are serious about jumping to another provider, they may lower your rates to keep your business.
3. Be prepared to switch.  Cable companies base their retention offers on several factors: what the competition offers, how long you have been a customer (2+ years guarantees a better retention deal) and how you pay your bill.  If you are a late payer, expect a much more difficult time negotiating a lower rate.  You may encounter a brick wall if you are labeled a “flipper” that jumps between providers’ introductory pricing offers.  But even these customers will be welcomed back, with lower rates, when they inevitably return.  They just won’t get their promotional offer renewed.
4. Some companies reserve their most aggressive pricing for customers who actually schedule a disconnect or turn in their equipment.  Cable companies have gotten wise to empty threats from negotiating customers.  If you schedule a complete service disconnection two weeks in advance, some companies will take you seriously and call you with the most aggressive “win back” offers available, especially if you turned in your cable equipment.
5. Dump extras overboard.  Premium channel pricing has skyrocketed recently after remaining relatively stable for nearly two decades.  HBO is now at or above $15 a month in many areas.  As customers try to economize, premium movie channels are usually the first to go, and many cable operators are starting to lose preferred wholesale volume pricing discounts.  They are passing along new, higher prices to the dwindling number of premium customers left.  Scrutinize your cable bill carefully for potential savings.  Look for mini-pay tiers of HD channels you never watch, consider downgrading your “digital phone” package to local-only calling if you rarely make long distance calls, and consider tossing “Turbo” broadband speed packages that only incrementally increase download speed.  Many customers originally signed up to obtain higher upload speeds, but as cable companies boost speeds for all of their customers, the extra boost may no longer be worth the money.

Liu

While Buffalo residents fume about missing the latest matchup between the Buffalo Sabres and Edmonton Oilers, the city of New York is pressuring Time Warner Cable to start compensating their subscribers for the loss of one of the most expensive channels on the basic cable dial.

New York City Comptroller John Liu has asked the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications, which oversees cable franchise agreements for the city, to make certain Time Warner compensates customers for the loss of MSG and MSG Plus, both removed over a contract renewal dispute.

“Consumers deserve to be compensated for what they have gone through as a result of this dispute, plain and simple,” Mike Loughran, a spokesman for Liu, told Bloomberg News in an e-mail. Loughran said the comptroller’s office would discuss compensation plans with the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications.

Time Warner says it has already effectively compensated impacted customers, primarily in New York State, with a free month of the company’s added-cost sports programming tier.  Time Warner has also replaced the two MSG networks with NBA TV and NHL Network, which are now likely to remain part of the basic package even if Time Warner reaches an agreement with MSG.  (Sorry football fans, NFL Network is still too costly to be deemed a suitable replacement network.)

Time Warner says there is no way they would pay MSG’s asking price for a renewed carriage contract, which the cable company says represented a 53% rate increase.

As Stop the Cap! reported earlier, the dispute is renewing rumblings about how pay television providers handle expensive sports programming.  An increasing number of cable executives are considering breaking sports networks out of the basic cable package and forcing interested sports fans to pay extra to receive them.  But sports remains a lightning rod issue for many pay TV companies, both among subscribers and politicians.  Disrupt a major sporting event at your peril — something Cablevision learned from an earlier dispute with Fox.

In Buffalo, some customers are dropping Time Warner Cable for Verizon FiOS, at least where that fiber to the home service is available.  Residents served by Frontier Communications or Verizon’s DSL have fewer choices — one of two satellite TV companies.

Verizon already carries a standard definition feed of MSG Networks.  AT&T announced this week it was adding MSG in HD to its U-verse lineup in Connecticut.  MSG has spent this week rubbing salt in Time Warner’s wounds, throwing MSG viewing parties in both Buffalo and New York City.  Now that the city of New York is pressuring Time Warner to cough up refunds as much as $4 or more a month for the loss of MSG, the dispute could prove increasingly expensive.  Some customers tell Stop the Cap! they are already receiving informal compensation for the loss of MSG after contacting the cable company by phone or e-mail to complain.

“I wrote Time Warner on their web contact form and a representative gave me a $5 courtesy credit for the loss of the channels after I explained I was shopping around for another provider,” writes Neil Thomowski who lives in Cheektowaga, near Buffalo.

[flv width=”360″ height=”290″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WNLO Buffalo Sabres fans dismayed by cable dispute 1-3-12.mp4[/flv]

Buffalo Sabres fans who have Time Warner Cable were left in the dark Tuesday night and couldn’t watch the match-up between the Sabres and the Edmonton Oilers.  WNLO in Buffalo has the story.  (2 minutes)

One of the things we have tried to teach readers over the last few years is how important it is to follow the money trail when encountering a group, politician, or researcher counter-intuitively arguing “up is down” or “right is left.”  So when a business columnist in the Press of Atlantic City slammed rural broadband as a service provided “to a group of people who mostly don’t want it,” we started digging:

The FCC claims this effort will give 7 million rural people reliable access to high-speed Internet connections. So the hundreds of millions of urban and suburban Americans who wish their Internet was faster and more reliable will pay for 2 percent of us to get just that.

Or maybe we’ll be paying for redundant, overpriced telecom work by companies that donate to rural politicians.

Federal stimulus spending in response to the recession already included $7.2 billion for this same purpose. An analysis by Navigant Economics of three big projects under that Broadband Initiatives Program found:

Even “areas in which very high proportions of households were already served by multiple existing broadband providers” were eligible for subsidized broadband work.

The author’s suspicion that money was involved in all this was correct, but he completely missed who was boarding the money train.

Navigant Economics, the “research group” that produced the inflammatory report slamming rural broadband funding, happens to count AT&T as one of its important clients.

The group, a subsidiary of Navigant Consulting, provides economic and financial analysis of legal and business issues to law firms, corporations and government agencies.

In fact, Navigant pitches its services to a range of corporate clients:

Navigant Economics provides economic analysis in litigation and regulatory proceedings involving competition issues. Our experts have provided testimony in proceedings before District Courts, the Department of Justice, the Federal Trade Commission, the Federal Communications Commission, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and numerous state Public Utilities Commissions.

We provide economic analysis and testimony in connection with mergers and acquisitions and antitrust claims of:

• Anticompetitive horizontal agreements (price fixing, bid rigging, potential anticompetitive effects of joint ventures)
• Unilateral conduct (predatory pricing, refusals to deal, monopolization via patent fraud)
• Vertical restraints (exclusive dealing, requirement contracting, tying and bundling)

We also offer economic analysis and testimony on issues of price and rate of return regulation, mandatory access, quality of service, and benefit-cost analysis, with especial expertise in regulatory proceedings involving communications and the Internet (software and hardware sectors, network unbundling and “net neutrality” issues affecting telecom and cable firms, retransmission consent and other content-related issues, and the range of wireless spectrum issues) and all types of energy markets.

Phillip "Making Sense, Not Dollars" Dampier

The result is what critics refer to as “dollar a holler research” — bought-and-paid-for-results that coincidentally fit the framework of a client’s public policy agenda.  In this case, AT&T (among other phone companies) has fretted about broadband stimulus funding ever since the Obama Administration made it clear the industry would not collectively control the program or reward themselves at taxpayer expense.  In addition to criticizing the decision-making process, phone and cable companies have objected to numerous applicants who applied for grants to build networks serving communities those companies have ignored or under-served for years.

To say AT&T has no vested interest in the outcome of rural broadband would be the first major understatement of 2012.

Martyn Roetter with MFR Consulting said Navigant was giving a bad name to researchers.

“Navigant Economics as well as other economists in academia and the consulting profession seem increasingly prepared to support arguments in favor of their clients’ desires and goals regardless of whether they are reasonable or preposterous,” Roetter wrote. “Unfortunately this behavior tends to blur the distinction between (a) respectable advocacy with findings based on evidence and rational arguments and (b) indefensible nonsense, discrediting both academics and consultants.”

Navigant spent much of 2011 trying to convince regulators and the public that T-Mobile actually doesn’t compete with AT&T, so there should be no problem letting the two companies merge.  Readers win no prizes guessing who paid for that stunner of a conclusion.  Thankfully, the Department of Justice quickly dismissed that notion as a whole lot of hooey.

Navigant’s second ludicrous conclusion is that there is no rural broadband availability problem.  Navigant has a love affair with slow speed, spotty DSL (sold by AT&T) and heavily-capped 3G wireless (also sold by AT&T) as the Frankincense and Myrrh of rural Internet life.  With those, you don’t need any broadband expansion (particularly from a third party interloper).

“The notion that a nominal maximum speed in a shared radio access network is comparable to a nominal maximum speed of a fixed broadband line to a location is a striking example of ignorance, wilful or otherwise, of the very different operating characteristics and capabilities of these two transmission media,” Roetter soberly observed.

But he knows better.

Roetter

Kevin Post, columnist for the Press of Atlantic City, bought Navigant’s conclusions hook, line, and sinker and repeated them in the press.  In fact, he upped the ante parroting the time-honored provider argument that rural America doesn’t need 21st century broadband because, well, they just don’t want it:

This costly effort is aimed at bringing broadband to a group of people who mostly don’t want it, according to a 2010 Pew Internet survey.

Half of Americans who don’t use the Internet told Pew that the main reason is they don’t find it relevant to their lives.

Only one in 10 nonusers said they would be interested in starting to use the Internet sometime in the future.

Actually, the Pew Internet survey came well before Navigant’s outlandish conclusions, and didn’t directly address the rural broadband availability problem.  Instead, Pew was looking at broadband adoption rates, primarily in places that already have one or more broadband providers.  Pew found what providers have already realized themselves: broadband growth and adoption is slowing; everyone who wants the service in urban America already has it or wants it.  Those that don’t are typically older and lack computers or are too poor to afford the asking price.

Post’s suggestion that a Pew Study concluded rural America does not want broadband service is an exercise in fixing the facts.

That’s the magic of the Dollar-a-Holler Echo Machine.  Big telecom companies hire public policy consultants and researchers to find their way to “scientific” evidence proving their corporate agenda, and then feeds the “facts” and “research” to receptive reporters, astroturf “consumer groups,” and politicians to bolster their case.  It’s not AT&T suggesting there is no rural broadband problem — it’s Navigant Economics.

As Roetter writes, “A basic knowledge of wireless markets exposes the […] indefensible nature of the positions outlined above. A policy based on ‘tell me what you want to hear, pay me, and I will reproduce it all regardless of its merits’ is a disservice to professionals who try to remain objective and independent, i.e. professional.”