Governor Walker

You have to hand it to Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker.  He wants to push through his legislative agenda come hell or high water.  After creating a national controversy about his battles with the state’s public unions, Walker and his Republican colleagues are in a hurry to ram through their laundry list of legislative initiatives before Wisconsin voters have a chance to potentially recall a number of them.

Among Gov. Walker’s favorites — a telecommunications deregulation bill ghost-written by AT&T.  If such legislation seems familiar to you, it is.  It’s largely the same bill written by and for telecommunications companies that withered in the Democratic-controlled legislature last year.  Now the Republicans hold the majority, and they see measures to strip out rate protection for basic landline service, investigations of consumer complaints, and holding low-rated companies’ feet to the fire as “anti-business and anti-competitive.”

Somehow, bill proponents claim, all of this deregulation will inspire AT&T and other companies to wire rural Wisconsin for broadband service, which would be a remarkable feat considering they’ve not done so in other states where they’ve passed nearly-identical deregulation bills several years ago.  In fact, the bill eliminates any state oversight of broadband matters period, end of story.

Perhaps AT&T’s goodwill will bring broadband to the rural masses.  What are the chances?  Not good, considering the proposed legislation also allows AT&T the right to abandon providing basic telephone service in the same rural areas still waiting for broadband.  Your chances of getting DSL from AT&T are markedly diminished if the company decides to disconnect your phone line, permanently.

“What’s in it for the citizens of Wisconsin?” asked Rob Boelk, president of one Wisconsin chapter of the Communications Workers of America that represents AT&T workers. “If you want to give away the farm, what will you get in return?”

Why campaign contribution checks, of course.

AT&T and other telecommunications companies have donated heavily to legislators in the state, particularly those sponsoring their legislative wishlists.  Walker has made serving the interests of AT&T and the Wisconsin State Telecommunications Association one of his top priorities this spring.

AT&T is delighted.  In fact, they are so confident in their friendship with Walker and the Republican-controlled legislature, they are willing to throw their usual deregulation allies overboard in the bill.  Verizon and Sprint are fiercely opposing AT&T’s bill, despite promoting it in prior years.  At issue are new provisions requiring wireless and VoIP providers to pay higher government fees and also pay access charges for using other companies’ broadband networks (AT&T’s) to complete calls.

At a recent hearing, telecom company executives told members of the state Senate’s Information Technology Committee Senate Bill 13‘s deregulation would bring competitive balance in the industry, wider broadband access and create tens of thousands of jobs.

They didn’t bring any evidence to back up those claims, but bill sponsor Rich Zipperer, (R-Pewaukee) was ready to deliver AT&T’s talking points anyway.  He’s a helper.

“Today’s smart phone world is governed by rotary phone regulations,” Zipperer said. “We have to ensure our telecommunications infrastructure can keep up with market demands.”

Evidently that means upgrading wireless networks, something AT&T is preoccupied with these days judging from their television ads, while ignoring Wisconsin’s rural consumers.

In fact, when similar bills passed in other AT&T states, basic telephone service rates began increasing, sometimes repeatedly.  AT&T wants to push customers into pre-packaged bundles of services, so most of the savings go to those who take all of their telecommunications business to AT&T.  But if all you want (or can afford) is a basic telephone line, price increases are in your future.

The dollar-a-holler groups are out and about

Zipperer called copper wire landlines “ancient technology,” a relevant point if AT&T was delivering something better to every Wisconsin resident.  They are not.  Instead, while their landline network languishes in rural areas, the company is investing in U-verse upgrades in larger cities, setting up the potential for telecommunications have’s and have-no-longer’s.

Some of the accompanying documentation supporting the deregulation bill is also suspect.

We were particularly struck with broadband map data provided by bill proponents showing a bountiful supply of competitive choice for broadband service in Wisconsin. Ironically, their bill also bans the state from getting involved in broadband mapping in the future.  Those who control the maps control the debate over broadband availability.  As usual, provider-influenced maps promise service where none exists or comes with strings attached.

Providers equate wireless broadband as identical to DSL, fiber, and cable Internet service.  Because of that, customers even in “one-bar” towns can “enjoy” wireless broadband from AT&T and Verizon (as long as they keep it under 2-5GB a month with AT&T or under 10GB on Verizon’s mobile broadband plans.)  Sprint, which barely covers rural and suburban Wisconsin, is also considered a player.  So is T-Mobile, despite the fact AT&T wants to buy it.  For most of Wisconsin, the broadband reality is far different.  AT&T is the dominant provider of DSL and U-verse service, Time Warner Cable delivers most of the cable broadband.  In rural areas, a handful of Wireless ISPs deliver service to some areas, but many others have no access at all.

Robust competition?  No.  Will this bill change that?  No.

Wired Wisconsin is wired into AT&T's cash machine.

Deregulation only enhances the trend of landline providers like AT&T allowing their aging landline networks to go to pot.  Providing DSL or wireless broadband to rural Wisconsin requires the same return on investment with this bill as it does without, and these companies have refused to deliver either, using that reasoning, for years.

Despite common sense reality, the dollar-a-holler groups are working overtime with AT&T to push this bill.  Take “Wired Wisconsin,” a group particularly ‘burdened’ with its corporate sponsors (namely AT&T).  Wired Wisconsin is all for the deregulation bill, which they like to call “modernized telecom rules.”  The group’s leader Thad Nation, is a lobbyist who has run several campaigns promoting AT&T’s agenda, including the ironically-named Midwest Consumers for Choice and Competition, TV4Us and Technology for Ohio’s Tomorrow, all creatures of AT&T.

Nation’s lobbying firm explains how it works:

Getting government officials or bodies to do what you want isn’t easy. Government is inherently a slow, bureaucratic entity. When you want elected or appointed officials to change policy, you need a comprehensive plan – and the resources, relationships and quick-thinking to implement that plan.

We come to you with decades of experience in advocacy, moving legislators and engaging state agency leaders to action. Let us help you build and drive an aggressive advocacy agenda.

It’s a tough job, and Nation can be glad he isn’t doing it alone.  The Discovery Institute, which has turned pay-for-play research into an art form, was linked by Wired Wisconsin to “negate the myths and false assumptions” deregulation will bring.  They quote from Connected Nation, another industry connected group.  The only false assumption is that these people do this work for free and their results represent actual independent analysis.

Even if one were to believe AT&T’s claims, fact-checking them is just a few states away, in places like Arkansas, Kansas, or Texas.  None of them are bastions of rural broadband.  They weren’t before AT&T’s lobbying circus came to town and they still aren’t after they left.

Rep. Marilyn Avila (R-Time Warner Cable)

After passing through the Republican-dominated Finance Committee, Rep. Marilyn Avila’s (R-Time Warner Cable) cable company-written, anti-consumer legislation arrived in the North Carolina Senate this afternoon, where it was promptly, if temporarily, derailed over whether residents have the right to watch adult entertainment on community-owned broadband/cable networks.

That’s right… porn has thrown the state legislature into such silliness, the entire bill had to be pulled from consideration until Monday.

Here’s a quick rundown how things played out today:

♥ — H.129, Avila’s anti-broadband bill, has proved to be the first serious piece of legislation that has divided the normally lock-step Republican-controlled legislature this session.  That is entirely because YOU are putting the pressure on with your calls and e-mails to Senate members.  We have it on good authority the overwhelming amount of response to this bill from constituents has been downright hostile to the idea it should ever pass.  Consumers in North Carolina want more choices for broadband, not less.  They want increased competition, lower prices, and most importantly — better service (or at least s0me service from someone).  H.129 does none of those things.  It doesn’t deliver a single new broadband connection anywhere in the state.

♥ — Several amendments helpful to broadband development managed to win a place in the bill.  The communities of Wilson and Salisbury will get to expand their systems to cover larger areas, including the town of Faith Stop the Cap! covered earlier.  We also won a victory changing the terms of the “mandatory referendum” provision to strip away the loaded, misleading ballot question about whether cities should ‘take on more public debt’ to finance the construction of community broadband, replacing it with a fairer alternative — do you favor your community building its own broadband system. 

↓ — But we also lost a few battles. Yesterday, the industry covertly changed the definition of an unserved area from “an area where 50% don’t receive FCC basic broadband service” to a Census block, where 50% of the households don’t receive 768/200Kbps. That change annihilates the unserved area exemption. As confirmed by the highly credible e-NC authority, the industry provides its broadband data by Census block, not by household, and if a census block has just one home that receives Internet service, the entire census block is labelled as having Internet service.

Today, Senator Atwater (D-Chatham) tried to modify that definition with a much better measurement standard: “homes per square mile.”  The federal government has established that the least dense areas of the country are the most costly to serve, which explains why these areas traditionally lack broadband service or receive low speed DSL.  Atwater’s amendment targeted the 38% of the most rural areas in North Carolina to keep the door open for community broadband, but Senator Tom Apodaca (R-Hendersonville) would have none of it, despite the fact his district covers the rural expanse of the western mountains of North Carolina.  Stop the Cap! readers have shared stories with us about hanging out in parking lots using motel Wi-Fi to pay their bills online or complete homework.  In Apodaca’s world-view, that means those areas have broadband.

Now our readers will understand why we have stressed it is so important to have accurate, in-depth broadband map data.  Instead, industry-connected groups like Connected Nation conjure up maps created by unverified, provider-supplied data.  This map data is a critical part of H.129’s tragic terms and conditions.  If the maps say service exists, industry lobbyists use that to browbeat elected officials into believing there is no broadband problem, and there is no reason to allow communities to build their own broadband services.

Of course, the reality is very different.  We’ve received hundreds of messages from Americans who say these maps show broadband as being widely available in their communities, but in reality is not.  Some legislators in North Carolina have confronted this reality personally. For those that haven’t, it’s easy to accept provider arguments, cash those campaign contribution checks, and throw constituents under the bus.

We Saved the Most Ridiculous Part of Today’s Events for Last

Sen. Apodaca's obsession with adult entertainment derailed a scheduled vote on H.129 this afternoon.

When the city of Fayetteville wanted protection for their investment in fiber optics, at risk from H.129, the aforementioned Sen. Apodaca lost his mind.  Instead of protecting city funds already spent on next generation fiber, he substituted his own new amendment — to strip adult programming off community-owned broadband/cable systems instead.

You read that right. In case you didn’t, here it is again:

Sen. Apodaca would rather be the arbiter of what you can watch in the privacy of your own home than protecting community investments in broadband improvements.

So much for the “level playing field” title of Avila’s original bill.  Apodaca’s anti-porn crusade does not apply to Time Warner Cable or other private providers, so he has no problem at all if you want to pop some popcorn and settle down to some movies like “Suck It Sunrise,” “Boning Black Beauty 8” (to answer those lingering questions that went unanswered in part 7), or “Dripping Wet Lesbians,” all currently running on TWC’s adult channels.

No matter that Apodaca’s amendment is completely against federal law, which should signal how clueless some legislators are about these issues.  The Cable Act provides settled law on this subject.  Government cannot engage in cable content regulation — particularly the state and federal government.  The cable industry lobbied hard for that protection in the 1980s in part because of controversy over MTV and other “explicit” programming.  Only the local franchising authority can make decisions about the content they carry — and that means local communities get to make those decisions for themselves (47 USC 544(d)(1)).  That means Sen. Apodaca should worry about his own television viewing habits and stay out other peoples’ lives.

We’re helpers here at Stop the Cap!, so we’d point the senator to 47 USC 544(f)(1):

(f) Limitation on regulatory powers of Federal agencies, States, or franchising authorities

(1) Any Federal agency, State, or franchising authority may not impose requirements regarding the provision or content of cable services, except as expressly provided in this subchapter.

Those exceptions, by the way, have to do with changes in federal law, not the individual whims of one state senator.

Sen. Mansfield, who introduced the original amendment to protect Fayetteville, was naturally disturbed to find Apodaca’s non-germane substitute.  That promoted Apodaca to suggest Mansfield allowed his children to watch pornography, and from there the debate spiraled out of control.  After a brief recess, Apodaca returned to apologize to Mansfield, before killing the amendment to protect Fayetteville’s fiber investment for a second time.

Reviewing today’s events provides us with another edition of Legislators Out of Their League.  Apodaca’s naive amendment was not the only telling example (we know more about telecommunications law than he does.)  Yesterday in the Senate Finance Committee, Ms. Avila was utterly lost at sea as discussion ensued on amendments to the bill with her name on it.  Reduced to muttering at times, confused about the discussions dealing with the definition of underserved, her usual reaction was to oppose what she didn’t understand.  None of this is surprising considering the cable industry wrote the majority of her bill she introduced as her own.  She continues to protect their interests while ignoring yours.

This is why we continue to oppose H.129 and you should too.  We have until Monday to continue to drive the message home to state senators.  If you called or wrote before, it’s time to write and call again.  Tell your state senator H.129 is a bill written by and for the cable and phone companies.  It does not deliver any new broadband service to anyone, risks the investments communities across the state have already made, and allows a handful of big telecom companies to control North Carolina’s broadband destiny.  Considering the state achieves dead last ratings in broadband, that is the kind of control they should never be allowed to have.

Senate Representation By County

2011-2012 Session

(click on your member’s name for contact information)

Rep. Avila with Marc Trathen, Time Warner Cable's top lobbyist (right) Photo by: Bob Sepe of Action Audits

Over the course of an hour this afternoon, North Carolina’s Senate Finance Committee discussed the implications of H.129, legislation proposed, written, and lobbied by Time Warner Cable and some of their phone friends across the state.

On hand was Rep. Marilyn Avila (R-Time Warner Cable), who tried to turn her competition-busting bill into an emotional epiphany about jobs and the benefits private providers bring to a state now ranked dead last in broadband.

Pass me a tissue.

Nobody doubts Ms. Avila is looking out for the interests of the state’s big cable and phone companies.  Unfortunately for her district, she isn’t looking out for the broadband interests of her constituents, forced to pay some of America’s highest prices for low end service.

As Avila pals around with lobbyists from Time Warner Cable and the state’s cable trade group (more lobbyists), consumers in places like Orange County in north-central North Carolina see themselves on broadband maps but find they cannot actually get service from any providers.

As the hearing progressed into two-minute statements from parties interested in the outcome, the disconnect between well-paid lobbyists and corporate front groups like Americans for Prosperity with elected officials and consumers on the ground surveying a bleak broadband landscape said a lot.

Cable companies and their lobbyist friends sought to portray community broadband projects as fiscal failures — one suggested that was a global reality, despite the fact many countries have embarked on nationwide broadband plans that directly involve government to help build infrastructure.  The global leader in broadband, South Korea, is a perfect example.  With collaboration between the government and the private sector, Korea will have 1 gigabit broadband service across much of the country within a few years.  That’s because South Korea does not believe broadband is simply a convenience, they see it as a social and economic necessity.

The other side sees it as a private moneymaker that can charge rapacious prices because it’s not an essential service.

Shining a bright light on this reality was Americans for Prosperity, who delivered their own speaker at today’s hearing.  As the group complained about government ‘overreach’ providing incentives in the 1930s for rural power and phone service, it quickly became apparent there are some in this debate willing to let rural Americans sit in darkness, without a phone line (much less broadband), to make a free market point: if private companies can’t or won’t deliver the service, you don’t deserve it and shouldn’t have it.

One wonders where this thinking will ultimately take us.  Will community gardens be opposed for taking vegetable profits away from private corporate farms?  Flea markets on public fairgrounds should be banned because they unfairly compete with eBay, Dollar Tree or a supermarket?  The irony is these “small government conservatives” are all for big government legislation to keep potential competitors at bay.  For them, broadband cannot be a locally-determined community project — just something you buy from a company that may or may not have an interest in serving you.

Just ask the gentleman from Orange County, who appeared as the final speaker.  He spent his two minutes complaining about faulty cable and phone company-provided broadband coverage maps that claim service where none exists.  After spending money on equipment, he learned CenturyLink had no interest in actually providing him with DSL.  In fact, when he asked both the phone and cable company when that might change, the impression he was left with was “never.”

Whether members of the state legislature understand the irony of CenturyLink spending a fortune making sure Orange County never delivers the broadband service the company won’t provide itself is something voters across the state will need to impress on them.

They should be told, in no uncertain terms, to oppose H.129 and leave community broadband alone in North Carolina.

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration unveiled America’s broadband map early this morning, showing broadband availability, speeds, and coverage areas across all 50 states.

“A state-of-the-art communications infrastructure is essential to America’s competitiveness in the global digital economy,” said Acting Commerce Deputy Secretary Rebecca Blank. “But as Congress recognized, we need better data on America’s broadband Internet capabilities in order to improve them. The National Broadband Map, along with today’s broadband Internet usage study, will inform efforts to enhance broadband Internet access and adoption — spurring greater innovation, economic opportunities, and advancements in health care, education, and public safety.”

The map, searchable by street address or zip code, delivers data largely volunteered by service providers themselves.  Some of the data, particularly for broadband speeds, represent best-case scenarios, not actual results.  Regardless, looking at the nation as a whole, there are some dramatic gaps in coverage.  Large areas west of the Mississippi are without broadband, which can be understandable in the sparsely populated region.  To the east, the biggest problem by far as in the Appalachians, especially in West Virginia, western Virginia, and the western Carolinas.  West Virginia in particular stands out as the state with the least amount of coverage in the east, perhaps only rivaled by Maine.  In the southern U.S., Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and northern Florida are problem areas.  East Texas outside of major cities is as well.  In rural areas, the coverage map fills in the most when rural wireless mobile providers are introduced, but their broadband plans are hardly suitable as a replacement for wired, unlimited access service.

“The National Broadband Map shows there are still too many people and community institutions lacking the level of broadband service needed to fully participate in the Internet economy. We are pleased to see the increase in broadband adoption last year, particularly in light of the difficult economic environment, but a digital divide remains,” said Assistant Secretary for Communications and Information and NTIA Administrator Lawrence E. Strickling. “Through NTIA’s Broadband Technology Opportunities Program, digital literacy activities, and other initiatives, including the tools we are releasing today, the Obama Administration is working to address these challenges.”

Reviewing the map for Stop the Cap!‘s headquarters — Rochester, N.Y., shows a correct list of providers, but the data about their products is more fantasy than reality:

• Time Warner Cable does not deliver 25/1.5Mbps service to residential customers in Rochester at this time, but its PowerBoost temporary speed gimmick might, for around 30 seconds.  Currently, Time Warner Cable maxes out at 15/1Mbps in the Rochester area;
• Frontier’s claim of 10Mbps is a theoretical maximum.  Most DSL customers don’t come close.  In our area (Brighton, N.Y.) Frontier couldn’t deliver more than 3.1Mbps.
• Wireless carrier data is simply wrong.  Sprint-Nextel is beaten down to a maximum 1.5Mbps, despite the arrival of its 4G network, which can manage better than that.  Verizon’s 3-6Mbps service is in their dreams, considering this data came from last June — before the introduction of LTE service in Rochester.  Clearwire is also guilty of boasting speeds they will never deliver on their increasingly throttled network.

The NTIA touts their map will be verifiable using “crowdsourcing,” but we found visitors are only able to confirm if a provider serves an area, but not how well and at what speeds.

Price data is also missing.  Strickling blames that on fast-changing industry practices.  We blame it on the fact providers refused to disclose that information, along with more specific details about their broadband networks.  Large providers claimed releasing proprietary, confidential business information could harm them competitively.

Another glaring example of questionable accuracy is the compelled-to-report top and bottom 10 cities in the country for service.  According to the NTIA, America’s number one city for broadband availability at speeds greater than 3Mbps is… Cleveland, Ohio.

Cleveland?

The worst?  Terre Haute, Indiana.

Really?