Despite today's setback, North Carolina's broadband hero is Rep. Bill Faison, who stood up for rural broadband.

In the North Carolina legislature’s Finance Committee, a one week timeout “to hear views from the public” actually means giving breathing room for cable and phone lobbyists to strip away surprise amendments not to their liking.  This morning, in a catastrophe for consumers, the state’s largest phone and cable companies got legislators to wipe out a provision that would have helped guarantee rural North Carolina at least 4Mbps broadband service, either from existing providers or new ones that develop in their absence.

During debate of H.129, the anti-Community Broadband bill, North Carolina consumer interests were kept out of sight and mind as lobbyists worked their magic to get rid of Rep. Bill Faison’s (D-Caswell, Orange) amendment that would set the state’s minimum acceptable definition of broadband at 4Mbps with a 1Mbps upload speed.  With the help of several flip-flopping representatives, they got their wish.

Faison’s amendment was designed to open the door to someone — anyone — to bring broadband into rural areas of the state.  While Time Warner Cable, AT&T, and CenturyLink dawdle, large numbers of rural residents simply go without any broadband service.  Faison’s amendment was simple and reasonable — if at least half of an area is not served with 4/1Mbps service, provisions should be made to allow local communities, if they wish, to establish service themselves to get the job done.

Last week, when Faison’s amendment appeared to be headed for incorporation into the bill, industry lobbyists blanched and fled the room, raising vocal objections and demanding a week timeout before a vote was taken.  After winning their reprieve, they managed to get the Republican majority in line to throw rural North Carolina under the bus, uniformly opposing Faison’s amendment.  Two Democrats, one representing the city where Time Warner Cable’s regional division is headquartered, joined them.

Hall of Shame: Rep. Carney does not care about North Carolina's digital divide.

In its place, they substituted a new amendment which defined broadband in the state of North Carolina as any service occasionally capable of achieving 768kbps downstream and 200kbps upstream.  That represents “well-served” among these industry-friendly legislators.

Among the worst offenders that stood out today were Reps. Jeff Collins (R-Nash) and Becky Carney (D-Mecklenburg).  Last week, they were standing with North Carolina consumers.  This week, they are voting for the interests of the cable and phone companies.  Rep. Carney, who lists her occupation as “homemaker”, voted to guarantee North Carolina families years of slow, expensive and erratic broadband service, if available at all.  Collins supported an amendment that says Nash County residents should do just fine with broadband speeds that don’t even manage to break 1Mbps.

The bill next moves to the floor of the House for consideration.

What is missing from this debate is a realization on the part of the legislature cable and phone lobbyists do not want anyone delivering basic broadband service in rural North Carolina unless it comes from them, and to date they have shown no interest in delivering it.

After all the debate, here is a fact no one can ignore.  The only networks in the state capable of delivering world class 100Mbps broadband are two fiber based community-owned networks in Wilson and Salisbury.  The companies that want to see them out of business see 768kbps as more than adequate to define broadband availability in North Carolina.  When members of the Finance Committee agreed, it helps explain how the state has managed to rank 41st in broadband excellence.

It’s time to ask your legislators what side they are on.  Yours or the state’s cable and phone companies.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/UBB is Nonsense.flv[/flv]

François Caron produced this video succinctly smashing the myth that “usage-based billing” and “usage caps” are about fairness or fight congestion.  In this case, Caron refers to Canadian providers, but the story is much the same south of the border.  These Internet Overcharging schemes are nothing more than an effort to control what you can do with your broadband connection.  AT&T wants a 150-250GB usage cap on broadband, but has limitless capacity for television and telephone service.  They also have $39 billion to buy T-Mobile, but need to overcharge you for broadband service.  Bell in Canada wants -every- broadband user in Canada to pay this ripoff pricing.  Share with anyone who thinks paying for usage is anything like paying for water, gas, or electricity.  It’s not!  (6 minutes)

South Africans won uncapped broadband service one year ago tomorrow when an upstart provider — MWeb — unveiled its “Free the Web” campaign, delivering usage-limit free Internet access to customers across South Africa.

The company’s move to unlimited, flat rate service was heavily criticized by competing providers, who enforce draconian usage limits and have tried to convince customers the global trend was moving towards metered broadband.  But MWeb president Rudi Jansen dismisses the notion limiting broadband is the way to go, suggesting usage caps and meters are more about profits than serving customers.

Today, MWeb’s uncapped broadband is a runaway success, with more than 50 percent of its customers switching to the meter-free service.  It has been profitable, too.

“We are running ahead of our business plan and all our products are profitable,” Jansen tells TechCentral.

Now the nation’s semi-privatized, 39% state-owned phone company Telkom is widely expected to stop the erosion of its own broadband customers by adopting flat rate broadband service itself.

For Jansen, that would represent a welcome move.  The Internet visionary wants to transform South African broadband away from its current expensive pricing model and throw the Internet wide open.

“I’m looking forward to it,” Jansen says. “The sooner they launch it the better.”

The arrival of flat rate broadband made headlines across the country in 2010. (click to enlarge)

South African broadband has coped with challenges few other countries endure.  International connectivity has always been one of the biggest — sustaining traffic on satellite backbone links or underpowered undersea cables first forced providers to limit Internet use because of capacity concerns.  But new fiber-based underseas cables from Seacom and Wacs, including the forthcoming 5.1Tbps West African Cable System project will dramatically increase capacity and slash costs.

Jansen (Courtesy: TechCentral)

Yet several of his competitors want to keep the caps on and prices high, earning lucrative profits on a service Jansen says is becoming less costly to deliver every day.

Jansen admits MWeb is currently forced to traffic shape certain activities on his network, particularly bandwidth-intensive peer to peer traffic, because other providers in the country don’t agree with his wide-open view of the Internet.

He wants every provider in South Africa to agree to “open peering,” a practice that allows providers to exchange traffic with each other without charging transit fees.  He also wants to see wholesale mobile wireless pricing come down.  In Africa, mobile broadband has a strong place in a market where cable infrastructure (and broadband speed) is often lacking.

Telkom, South Africa’s equivalent to AT&T or Bell, is cited by Jansen as the biggest impediment to his plan to deliver truly unfettered, unlimited access.

Some South Africans deride the state phone company as "Hellkom"

In South Africa, broadband customers pay two providers — Telkom for the monthly rental of the telephone line and an ISP for the DSL service that connects through it.  Jansen says Telkom’s broadband line rental prices are too high.  But more importantly, the interconnection fee Telkom charges providers to access its network is “absolutely ludicrous.”

“Those prices are far more than the price of international connectivity,” Jansen says. “Telkom charges us to get access to their last mile and then charges end users to get access to the same last mile, so they make double money on it. And it’s completely mispriced.”

Despite the challenges from other providers, MWeb will celebrate the first anniversary of uncapped broadband tomorrow with a surprise announcement, probably targeting small business clients.

Time Warner Cable has experienced several significant outages this week in different areas of the country.  When service conks out, customers are entitled to service credits, but you must request them — they do not come automatically.

The most significant problems:

• Yesterday: Northeastern U.S. — Telephone and broadband service was knocked out for several hours, causing a flood of calls to area newsrooms and clogging up Time Warner’s own call centers;
• This Morning: Ohio — Telephone and broadband service down in many areas.

The easiest and fastest way to request credit is sending a message to Time Warner Cable using their Online E-Mail form, select Billing Inquiry, and send a message like this (edit it as appropriate):

I am writing to request one day service credit for the Internet and phone service outage that occurred in my area yesterday. Please credit my account.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/North Carolina Community Networks Best Broadband.flv[/flv]

Despite provider-financed arguments in opposition of North Carolina’s community broadband networks, here is a fact incumbent cable and phone companies simply cannot argue with: Fibrant and GreenLight deliver far better broadband service with the fastest speeds in the state, all without slowdowns or Internet Overcharging schemes like usage limits.  (4 minutes)