Back in May 2010, Stop the Cap! launched a debate with a few Wireless Internet Service Providers (WISPs) that provide largely rural America with wireless access to the Internet over long range Wi-Fi networks.  The debate got started when Matthew Larsen, who runs the Wireless Cowboys blog, announced the arrival of an Internet Overcharging scheme at his WISP — Vistabeam, which serves residents in rural Wyoming and Nebraska.

WISPs are being increasingly challenged by the changing tastes of Internet customers, who are gravitating towards broadband multimedia content, saturating limited capacity networks and forcing regular infrastructure upgrades to keep up with increasing usage demands.  Unlike larger providers, many WISPs are independent, family-run businesses that lack easy access to capital and resources to rapidly respond to demand, especially when most have a rural customer base that numbers in the hundreds or thousands.

That’s one of the reasons why Stop the Cap! has not been as harsh on these providers when they implement usage limit schemes on their customers.  Because WISPs provide service where cable and phone companies usually don’t bother to serve, these wireless providers are the only option beyond satellite Internet, which we regularly label “fraudband” for claims of broadband speeds that are rarely delivered.  Still, we were not impressed last year with some of Larsen’s language about what his usage caps were intended to do (underlining ours):

I feel that these caps are more than generous, and should have a minimal effect on the majority of our customers.   With our backbone consumption per customer increasing, implementing caps of some kind became a necessity.    I am not looking at the caps as a new “profit center” – they are a deterrent as much as anything.    It will provide an incentive for customers to upgrade to a faster plan with a higher cap, or take their download habits to a competitor and chew up someone else’s bandwidth.

Ouch.

It’s been over a year, and Larsen is back with an editorial patting himself on the back for an Internet Overcharging success story well-implemented:

We have never raised prices on our services.    We still have a customer note on the wall that reads “Your bill was the only one I got this month that DIDN’T go up.   Thank you!”     I would have a hard time raising prices on this person because of their neighbors that are downloading 20x as much.   Usage Based Billing is a much fairer way to go, especially when the provider faces so much reinvestment cost to accommodate the heavier users.   After the first year of implementation, I am very glad that we took the time to implement it and intend to use the revenue to build a better network for all of our customers.

Larsen is also upset with those who believe in the concept of unlimited Internet:

Operating a broadband network is not free, and it is not a low-maintenance business.   I have a group of dedicated employees and subcontractors that have spent a lot of late nights and early mornings away from their families to build and maintain our network.   Anyone who thinks that unlimited broadband is a God given right should be forced to spend a few days in my lead tech’s shoes, getting a good look at what a broadband provider has to do to build a network and keep it running.

Larsen, like other WISPs are confronting the reality that Internet usage is on the upswing, and while we sympathize with the challenges faced by Vistabeam and other WISPs, his statements do not apply to every broadband network around.  And frankly, an increasing number of customers simply aren’t interested in Larsen’s challenges, especially if another provider can deliver service more cheaply and efficiently.  Vistabeam better hope nobody does, because their prices are simply not competitive if just about any other provider manages to work their way into his territory.

Vistabeam prices start at $29.95 a month for 384kbps/128kbps service with a monthly usage limit of 10GB.  Exceed that and you will pay an additional $1 per gigabyte.  Customers who need more speed pay dearly for it.  A tier providing 4/2Mbps service will run you $99.95 a month with a 60GB monthly usage allowance.

As of late, Larsen has been railing against the U.S. Department of Agriculture over recent broadband stimulus awards designed to improve coverage of broadband Internet in the same rural regions of the country Vistabeam serves.  He’s upset the USDA has awarded a $10.2 million infrastructure loan to the Hemingford Cooperative Telephone Company, which provides service in western Nebraska under the name Mobius Communications.

Larsen speaks highly of the fact Vistabeam delivers service in the absence of government funding or stimulus. But average consumers are not likely to care when they compare prices and consider the fact Mobius doesn’t appear to limit customers’ usage.

Mobius DSL Prices:

• 500kbps – $35.00
• 1.5Mbps – $40.00
• 3Mbps – $50.00
• 5Mbps – $60.00 (Currently available in Alliance and Chadron.)

Mobius charges effectively half the price Vistabeam charges, and offers faster tiers of service in some areas, without fear of overlimit fees.  It’s also important to recognize the “award” was actually a “loan,” which must be repaid.  Larsen seems less upset with the fact there are broadband stimulus programs than with the reality industry lobbying has effectively cut out many Wireless ISPs from standing any chance of winning one.

I get especially frustrated by loan awards like this one because I have operated two ISPs that have had to compete directly with Mobius and did not have access to any federal grant or loan programs.   The USDA Broadband and Loan programs are essentially only available to [regional phone companies].   When I made inquiries into the programs several years ago, I found that they would only loan to a single recipient in a region so that they were not funding competing projects.

For Stop the Cap!, our constituents are consumers interested in obtaining the best possible broadband service at the best price.  Larsen’s views, understandable from the perspective of a business owner, would leave a number of consumers paying effectively double the price for usage-limited broadband. That would, however, satisfy a business argument that self-funded private providers should not face competition from other providers that can extend faster, unlimited DSL, cable, or fiber service with low interest loans.

Wouldn’t a better solution be to form a coalition to force open the same beneficial loan programs to Wireless ISPs who can more readily and affordably build up their networks and ease the Internet Overcharging that too often comes along for the ride?  We’re not accusing Larsen of gouging his customers for fun and profit, but we would like to see WISPs like Vistabeam develop win-win strategies that deliver success for their innovative efforts and lower priced, faster service for their customers.

The alternative may be the eventual arrival of those rural phone companies, increasingly equipped to deliver faster and cheaper service to Vistabeam’s current customers, eventually spelling disaster to that company’s business plan.  It has happened before.  Anyone remember the “wireless cable” industry that delivered a few dozen cable channels over microwave signals?  That’s a service whose time came and went, largely replaced with satellite television and rural telephone cable TV, better equipped to provide the kind of service consumers actually wanted, but wireless cable was ill-equipped to provide.

While thousands of West Virginians continue to struggle without any broadband service, the state government is having trouble finding a way to spend up to $40 million in broadband stimulus money on institutional broadband projects that often already have cutting edge fiber networks.

State officials won $126 million in federal stimulus grant money last year, from which the state announced it would lay more than 2,400 miles of fiber optic cable to wire government offices, schools, and libraries.  Now, a vocal critic says a combination of government waste, preferential treatment for the state’s largest phone company — Frontier Communications, and bad planning could leave up to $40 million of the grant money on the table, unspent for better broadband.

Jim Martin, president of business broadband provider Citynet, says the state overestimated the number of public facilities that need broadband improvements.  Many of the facilities involved already have high speed service, and do not require additional infrastructure.  As the grant expires, Martin says he would not be surprised if the state only managed to fund the installation of 300 miles of fiber.

Martin believes funds should be redirected to bolstering the state’s “middle mile” network — fiber infrastructure that would serve as an open network backbone to ensure capacity exists to support growing broadband demands in the state.  Instead, Martin told the Charleston Gazette, the state has been spending money providing fiber broadband to small libraries with fewer than a dozen computers that are unlikely to have the resources to pay the monthly fees Frontier Communications will charge for the service.

“There’s no value to any of this to anyone but Frontier,” Martin said.

In fact, Martin believes many of the current projects funded by taxpayer dollars deliver enormous benefits to Frontier’s bottom line, but only incremental improvement to some institutional users.

Martin claims Frontier has, in some cases, only spent enough money to install fiber from the pole to the building. That assures Frontier of being the only provider that can deliver ongoing service to institutional users.  Martin has a dog in this fight — his company competes with Frontier for business service contracts.

Before the grant expires in February 2013, the state is hurrying to bolster its list of would-be recipients.

Jimmy Gianato, the state’s homeland security chief, said his office recently identified 330 additional “replacement locations” — higher education facilities, schools, health departments and state-owned hospitals — that could be eligible for the project, according to the newspaper.

Not on the list are individual consumers and small businesses who currently do not have access to any broadband service.  One of the ongoing problems of broadband stimulus funding is that public funds are often available to bolster broadband for state and locally-owned institutions, such as government offices, health care facilities, schools and libraries, but no funding to improve infrastructure for individual broadband service for “last mile” users.  This can result in Cadillac-style installations for small schools and libraries who win superb quality networks they ultimately cannot afford to operate on an ongoing basis.  For most, that service would come from Frontier Communications.

Martin already accused the state of investing in more than 1,000 routers without being certain if they were needed or where they would be installed.  At $20,000 each, Martin called the routers “Lamborghinis” and suggested they were largely unnecessary.

Imagine if you drove down to your local credit union this morning to find the doors padlocked and an ominous sign taped across the front door: “Closed for Anti-Competitive Business Practices.”  Then you return your books on loan from the public library, but find the same padlock and sign on that building, too.  Scratching your head, you then drive home vowing to get to the bottom of this only to be greeted by the mailman, who hands you a letter from your daughter’s school announcing steep and immediate tuition increases required to cover surprising new expenses.

As you try and understand what exactly has happened, it all becomes clear when you switch on the evening news — the Republicans in Wisconsin have launched their version of a “revolution,” — one that originally promised to “restore fiscal sanity,” but instead looks more and more like a statewide pilot project run by the Ayn Rand Institute, with the financial backing of AT&T.

In the fight for better broadband, normally the bad actors can be easily identified and called out from both political parties.  Democrats and Republicans turn campaign contributions and promises of power and influence into favorable, often custom-dictated legislative proposals that come straight from the companies that will benefit the most.  But the last six months of Republican rule in Wisconsin cannot be compared with anything else that has come before.  It’s a wholesale sellout to AT&T, and even statewide protests and media coverage on a massive scale appears to have only delivered a temporary reprieve, with strings attached.  What’s worse, even after the massive call-out against the telecom overreach, some of the proponents of broadband slash and burn politics are completely unrepentant, vowing to try again, perhaps when the public isn’t paying attention.

While some educational institutions believe any deal is better than no deal with the state’s ideologues, they will do themselves no favor if they drop the issue after the “compromise” is reached.  This all-out “war on broadband” cannot be appeased while AT&T’s true believers remain in office.

Let’s catch up.

In the last 48 hours, an ongoing series of “discussions” about the ultimate fate of WiscNet, Wisconsin’s institutional broadband cooperative network, have brought some assurances the network will not have to close its doors, at least not yet.  Yesterday, AT&T’s meddling to make changes to the “compromise” was on display, and one should never underestimate the cleverness of this company at finding ways to tie the hands of its targets with innocuous-looking legislative language.  Those stealthy last-minute additions can deliver a powerful sting only realized later, after the bill becomes law.

Angry phone calls pounded legislators in Madison, as did many newspaper editorials, TV news coverage (which we will review below), and a lobbying counterattack by librarians and educators all working to stop AT&T from winning an all out victory.  But make no mistake, this battle is by no means over.

For at least two years, WiscNet appears to have won the basic right to continue to exist, but only under a form of big government supervision.

The provision to ban award recipients from accepting broadband stimulus money from the federal government has been dropped.  Telecom industry lobbyists fought hard to get Wisconsin to virtually return federal stimulus money awarded to public broadband projects by trying to prohibit winners from accepting the checks.  Tens of millions already allocated to the University of Wisconsin would have had to be forfeit.  Instead, the changes worked out this week allow the university to use those funds to build and expand WiscNet to more state schools, libraries and public buildings.

Few legislators would openly admit trying to utterly destroy WiscNet, instead preferring “death by a thousand cuts,” writing rules and regulations that threaten the viability of the network’s ability to conduct operations.  While most of the onerous provisions were turned back, including those that would ban participation in Internet2 and limit WiscNet’s expansion, the compromise forces the network to face additional auditing and scrutiny by committed opponents to public broadband.

WiscNet put on a brave face, releasing the following statement:

We welcome an objective review of the relationship between the University of Wisconsin and WiscNet, a nonprofit cooperative.  The amendment allows the University of Wisconsin to continue as full members of WiscNet for the next two years, while the review helps everyone understand these issues better.  We look forward to a healthy dialogue with legislators, telecommunications providers, community partners, and others.  We are confident that those open lines of communication will be fruitful.

Don’t count on it.  Having followed these legislative battles for the past several years, one thing is certain: AT&T and their industry friends like Access Wisconsin will be back to try again and again and again.  As long as the current legislature includes members who are not only amenable to AT&T’s world views, but openly espouse them (and occasionally exceed them), WiscNet and public broadband in general is hardly safe.

Let’s remember who and what we are dealing with here:

The War on Broadband: At the core of the Republicans’ argument against public or institutional broadband is that it competes unfairly (somehow) against private corporate providers.  That argument ignores the fact WiscNet, among many other public and institutional networks, is essentially a cooperative, and one that existed long before phone and cable companies got into the Internet Service Provider business themselves.  Members pool resources to sustain a service that first and foremost delivers benefits to its users, not to external banks or investors.  Many institutional networks like WiscNet might even be compared to credit unions, delivering service to a pre-determined constituency that also happens to have a voice in how that network is run.

There are big banks and their supporters who detest credit unions because they represent “unfair competition” for them, because they can afford to deliver more service for less money.  It’s a familiar argument when you listen to some Republican senators in Wisconsin argue that the very existence of WiscNet represents anti-competitive behavior, harming fellow networks like Badgernet (another state institutional network).  It should not be a surprise to our readers to learn Badgernet is a network largely serviced by AT&T, and charges radically higher prices for its service because of what the phone company charges them for access.

The conservative movement in Wisconsin has been largely content dismissing broadband support in Wisconsin as a luxury perk, despite the fact the state scores 43rd out of the 50 best-wired states.  In addition to the purposeful distortions coming from those opposing networks like WiscNet, some have been reduced to arguing academia simply wants these networks for fast access to porn and copyrighted content.

Can Wisconsin afford their asking price?

“Help” from Dollar-A-Holler Mouthpieces like Access Wisconsin: This group, funded by the commercial telecommunications companies it represents at the expense of ordinary consumers, claims it is a helper in delivering an improved broadband experience in Wisconsin.  So helpful, in fact, it joined with AT&T and the state Republicans in calling for federal broadband stimulus money to be returned and not spent in the state for improved service.  While Access Wisconsin attacks government subsidies it doesn’t like, its member companies run to the bank with over $90 million annually in federally-mandated Universal Service payments.  The group is even upset the University of Wisconsin didn’t use state-based providers and contractors to build their expanded fiber network.  That comes as little surprise considering the University reached out to several of Access Wisconsin’s member companies (and AT&T) and found none interested in helping out.

The War on Libraries, Schools, and Taxpayers: The proposed cuts in library spending are deemed so dire by many patrons, they have begun to suspect the Republican majority would rather see people buy books at Wal-Mart than check them out for free at the town library.  On top of the budget cuts, broadband costs for schools and libraries would explode if these institutions were forced to buy access from Badgernet.

The party of “fiscal sanity” supported killing off cost-effective, money-saving broadband from WiscNet to fulfill a rigid ideological framework that would ultimately deliver less service for a lot more money.

Let’s compare prices for a moment.  Badgernet, which gets wholesale access from AT&T, charges prices that are far higher than WiscNet charges.  Badgernet itself is not the problem, its wholesale supplier is.  To defray the costs, the state of Wisconsin subsidizes Badgernet to the tune of nearly $17 million annually, to keep prices affordable for libraries and schools.  That $17 million effectively goes straight into AT&T’s bank account.  But that subsidy only gets you so far.  Badgernet charges $6,000 a month for 100Mbps service because that is the price required to recover costs charged by AT&T.  Many institutions rapidly outgrow this level of service and can upgrade to 1,000Mbps service, so long as they have a spare $49,500 a month laying around for broadband.

In contrast, clients on WiscNet can purchase 1,000Mbps service for about $10,000 a year.  Is that price disparity worth raising a ruckus over?  Apparently so.

The AT&T Dilemma: While AT&T did not win everything it wanted this year, prior evidence shows the company will be back to try again, just as it did with its statewide video franchising legislation that was supposed to deliver a competitive market for cable in the state.  In fact, it delivered higher prices instead.  Negotiating defensively with companies like this assures a war of attrition, as public providers find themselves compromising away core features of their network to protect whatever is left.

A much better idea for Wisconsin broadband is to launch an all-out counteroffensive.  Instead of stalemate compromises that constrain public networks, let’s demand they expand.  If there can be a co-op for dairy products and a credit union for banking, there certainly can be a community broadband cooperative that delivers service not just to institutions, but to members of the public and any independent provider who wants access — publicly owned for the public good.  That may not be WiscNet, designed under an institutional model, but it certainly need not be yet another overpriced offering from AT&T.

Before that can happen, Wisconsin residents need a cleanup — an upgrade — of the caliber of elected officials working on their behalf.  Thus far, a good percentage of Wisconsin’s current majority party seems far more interested in turning the state into a corporate lab experiment of their version of the free market done their way — for their benefit, at your expense.  The proof was at hand this week when the state nearly adopted a “cost saving” measure for broadband that would have cost Wisconsin taxpayers considerably more, all for the benefit of a handful of telecom companies.  Let’s help those legislators find a new day job sooner rather than later.

After that, WiscNet needs a legislative advocate of its own to introduce measures that undo the damage and then build on WiscNet’s success by expanding its reach and keeping it affordable.

Timeline: Tracking Wisconsin’s Awakening of the Wisconsin Republicans’ Broadband Agenda

Too often, broadband policy debates are too arcane for the general public to grasp.  Most people in the state probably never heard of WiscNet, and don’t realize when they might be using it.  But what they do understand is pay-for-play politics that hits them in the pocketbook.  As state residents learned the Republican majority wanted to ban the provider that delivers the most service for the least amount of money in favor of AT&T, they got involved and helped temporarily defeat the plan.

[flv width=”512″ height=”298″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WISC Madison UW Schools Voice Concerns About Budget Measure Affecting Internet 6-7-11.m4v[/flv]

June 7th: WISC-TV in Madison explains to viewers the plan to kill WiscNet would carry a pricetag of at least $70,000 in Madison alone, with potentially millions more at stake, all for the industry’s claim of a “level playing field.” (2 minutes)

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WAOW Wausau Library Internet 6-08-11.mp4[/flv]

June 8th: WAOW-TV in Wausau discovers what the war on WiscNet would do to Internet access in area libraries.  (2 minutes)

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WFRV Green Bay WiscNet Deleted 6-12-11.mp4[/flv]

June 12th: WFRV-TV in Green Bay tells its viewers the cost to procure Internet access in area universities could increase from $70,000 to more than $400,000, all to benefit private providers who want to compete at much higher price points.  (1 minute)

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WXOW LaCrosse Pulling the Plug on WiscNet 6-13-11.mp4[/flv]

June 13th: LaCrosse residents are told they’ll pay more for less if large telecommunications companies get their wish to knock out inexpensive broadband through WiscNet.  WXOW-TV lead the 5pm evening news with news the bill was a last minute addition that received full support from state Republicans.  (2 minutes)

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WEAU Eau Claire WiscNet 6-14-11.mp4[/flv]

June 14th: WEAU-TV in Eau Claire reports Sen. Terry Moulton (R-23rd District) got an earful from area hospitals about the terrible impact the shutdown of WiscNet would have there, which concerned him.  The station also reports on the threat to broadband funding in rural Chippewa Valley.  (Loud Volume Warning) (2 minutes)

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WQOW Eau Claire WiscNet Targeted 6-14-11.mp4[/flv]

June 14th: Eau Claire station WQOW-TV reports university students and academia generally faced the end of unlimited bandwidth if the state proposal to do away with WiscNet were to pass into law.  A telecom industry lobbyist claims the bill would allow private providers to deliver comparable service to institutions, but one local institution found an amazing price disparity: $2,500/yr with WiscNet or $1,000,000/yr with a private provider.  (2 minutes)

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WXOW La Crosse New Amendments 6-15-11.mp4[/flv]

June 15th: Newly elected Rep. Steve Doyle introduces amendments to turn back Republican proposals in the legislature that would harm statewide broadband networks, reports WXOW-TV in La Crosse.  (2 minutes)

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WKOW Madison WiscNet will stay the same in budget 6-16-11.mp4[/flv]

June 16th: WKOW-TV in Madison reports a compromise deal which will keep service running as-is for now, but subject WiscNet to government approval of any expansion efforts.  (1 minute)

Vincent, one of our regular Stop the Cap! readers sent along a link to a story about the decrepit state of American broadband: it’s a real mess for those who can’t get it, can’t get enough of it, and compare it against what other people abroad are getting.

Cracked delivers the top five reasons why American broadband sucks.  Be sure and read their take (adult language), but we have some thoughts of our own to share:

#5 Some of Us Just Plain Can’t Get It

Large sections of the prairie states, the mountain states, and the desert states can’t get broadband no matter how much they want it.  That’s because they are a hundred miles or more from the nearest cable system and depend on the phone companies — especially AT&T, Frontier, CenturyLink, and Windstream to deliver basic DSL.  AT&T is trying as hard as possible to win the right to abandon rural America altogether with the elimination of their basic service obligation.  Verizon has sold off some of their most rural territories, including the entire states of Hawaii, New Hampshire, Maine, Vermont, and West Virginia.  CenturyLink has absorbed Qwest in the least populated part of America — the mountain and desert west.

Frontier and Windstream are betting their business models on rural DSL, and while some are grateful to have anything resembling broadband, neither company earns spectacular customer ratings.

So long as rural broadband is not an instant profit winner for the phone companies selling it, rural America will remain dependent on dial-up or [shudder] satellite fraudband.

#4 Often There are No Real Options for Service (and No Competition)

Cracked has discovered the wonderfully inaccurate world of broadband mapping, where the map shows you have plentiful broadband all around, but phone calls to the providers on the list bring nothing but gales of laughter.  As if you are getting service at your house.  Ever.  Stop the Cap! hears regularly from the broadband-deprived, some who have had to be more innovative than the local phone company ever was looking for ways to get service.  Some have paid to bury their own phone cable to get DSL the phone company was reluctant to install, others have created super-powered Wi-Fi networks to share a neighbor’s connection.  The rest live with broadband envy, watching for any glimpse of phone trucks running new wires up and down the road.

Competition is a concept foreign to most Americans confronted with one cable company and one phone company charging around the same price for service.  The most aggressive competition comes when a community broadband provider throws a monkey wrench into the duopoly.  Magically, rate hikes are few and fleeting and speeds are suddenly much better.  Hmmm.

#3 Those Who Have Access Still Lag Behind the Rest of the World

This is an unnerving problem, especially when countries like Lithuania are now kicking the United States into the broadband corner.  You wouldn’t believe we’re that bad off listening to providers, who talk about the innovative and robust broadband economy — the one that is independent of their lousy service.  In fact, the biggest impediment to more innovation may be those same providers.  Some have an insatiable appetite for money — money from you, money from content producers, money from taxpayers, more money from you, and by the way there better be a big fat check from Netflix in the mail this week for using our pipes!

Where is the real innovation?  Community providers like Greenlight, Fibrant, and EPB that deliver their respective communities kick-butt broadband — service other providers would like to shut down at all costs.  Not every commercial provider is an innovation vacuum.  Verizon FiOS and Google’s new Gigabit fiber network in Kansas City represent innovation through investment.  Unfortunately Wall Street doesn’t approve.

Still not convinced?  Visit Japan or Korea and then tell us how American broadband resembles NetZero or AOL dial-up in comparison.

#2 Bad Internet = Shi**y Economy

The demagoguery of corporate-financed dollar-a-holler groups like “FreedomWorks” and “Americans for Prosperity” is without bounds.  Whether it was attacking broadband stimulus funding, community broadband endeavors, or Net Neutrality, these provider shills turned broadband expansion into something as worthwhile as a welfare benefit for Cadillac drivers.  Why are we spending precious tax dollars on Internet access so people can steal movies and download porn they asked.  Why are we letting communities solve their own broadband problems building their own networks when it should be commercial providers being the final arbiter of who deserves access and who does not?  Net Neutrality?  Why that’s a socialist government takeover, it surely is.

It’s like watching railroad robber barons finance protest movements against public road construction.  We can’t have free roads paved by the government unfairly competing with monopoly railway companies, can we?  That’s anti-American!

The cost of inadequate broadband in an economy that has jettisoned manufacturing jobs to Mexico and the Far East is greater than we realize.  Will America sacrifice its leadership in the Internet economy to China the same way we did with our textile, electronics, appliances, furniture, and housewares industries?  China, Japan and Korea are building fiber optic broadband networks for their citizens and businesses.  We’re still trying to figure out how to wire West Virginia for 3Mbps DSL.

#1 At This Point, Internet Access is Kind of a Necessity

The United Nations this week declared the Internet to be a basic human right.  Conservatives scoffed at that, ridiculing the declaration for a variety of reasons ranging from disgust over any body that admits Hugo Chavez, to the lack of a similar declaration for gun ownership, and the usual interpretation of broadband as a high tech play-toy.  Some folks probably thought the same way about the telephone and electricity around 1911.

Yes, the Internet can be frivolous, but then so can a phone call.  Cursed by the U.S. Post Office for destroying their first class mail business, by telephone directory publishers, and those bill payment envelope manufacturers, the Internet does have its detractors.  But should we go back to picking out commemorative stamps at the post office?  Your local phone and cable company sure doesn’t think so.  We don’t either.

A research report sponsored by the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, the nation’s largest cable lobbying group, has concluded that millions of broadband stimulus dollars are being wasted by the government on broadband projects that will ultimately serve people who supposedly already enjoy a panoply of broadband choice.

Navigant Economics, a “research group” that produces reports for its paying clients inside industry, government, and law firms, produced this one at the behest of a cable industry concerned that broadband stimulus funding will build competing broadband providers that could force better service and lower prices for consumers.

• More than 85 percent of households in the three project areas are already passed by existing cable broadband, DSL, and/or fixed wireless broadband providers. In one of the project areas, more than 98 percent of households are already passed by at least one of these modalities.

• In part because a large proportion of project funds are being used to provide duplicative service, the cost per incremental (unserved) household passed is extremely high. When existing mobile wireless broadband coverage is taken into account, the $231.7 million in RUS funding across the three projects will provide service to just 452 households that currently lack broadband service.

Navigant’s report tries to prove its contention by analyzing three broadband projects that seek funding from the federal government.  Northeastern Minnesota, northwestern Kansas, and southwestern Montana were selected for Navigant’s analysis, and unsurprisingly the researcher found the broadband unavailability problem overblown.

The evidence demonstrates that broadband service is already widely available in each of the three proposed service areas. Thus, a large proportion of each award goes to subsidize broadband deployment to households and regions where it is already available, and the taxpayer cost per unserved household is significantly higher than the taxpayer cost per household passed.

But Navigant’s findings take liberties with what defines appropriate broadband service in the 21st century.

First, Navigant argues that wireless mobile broadband is suitable to meet the definition of broadband service, despite the fact most rural areas face 3G broadband speeds that, in real terms, are below the current definition of “broadband” (a stable 768kbps or better — although the FCC supports redefining broadband to speeds at or above 3-4Mbps).  As any 3G user knows, cell site congestion, signal quality, and environmental factors can quickly reduce 3G speeds to less than 500kbps.  When was the last time your 3G wireless provider delivered 768kbps or better on a consistent basis?

Navigant also ignores the ongoing march by providers to establish tiny usage caps for wireless broadband.  With most declaring anything greater than 5GB “abusive use,” and some limiting use to less than half that amount, a real question can be raised about whether mobile broadband, even at future 4G speeds, can provide a suitable home broadband replacement.

Second, Navigant’s list of available providers assumes facts not necessarily in evidence.  For example, in Lake County, Minnesota, Navigant assumes DSL availability based on a formula that assumes the service will be available anywhere within a certain radius of the phone company’s central office.  But as our own readers have testified, companies like Qwest, Frontier, and AT&T do not necessarily provide DSL in every central office or within the radius Navigant assumes it should be available.  One Stop the Cap! reader in the area has fought Frontier Communications for more than a year to obtain DSL service, and he lives blocks from the local central office.  It is simply not available in his neighborhood.  AT&T customers have encountered similar problems because the company has deemed parts of its service area unprofitable to provide saturation DSL service.  While some multi-dwelling units can obtain 3Mbps DSL, individual homes nearby cannot.

Navigant never visited the impacted communities to inquire whether service was actually available.  Instead, it relied on this definition to assume availability:

DSL boundaries were estimated as follows: Based on the location of the dominant central office of each wirecenter, a 12,000 foot radius was generated. This radius was then truncated as necessary to encompass only the servicing wirecenter. The assumption that DSL is capable of serving areas within 12,000 is based on analysis conducted by the Omnibus Broadband Initiative for the National Broadband Plan.

Frontier advertises up to 10Mbps DSL in our neighborhood, but in reality can actually only offer speeds of 3.1Mbps in a suburb less than one mile from the Rochester, N.Y. city line.  In more rural areas, customers are lucky to get service at all.

Cable broadband boundaries were estimated based on information obtained from an industry factbook, which gathered provider-supplied general coverage information and extrapolated availability from that.  But, as we’ve reported on numerous occasions, provider-supplied coverage data has proven suspect.  We’ve found repeated instances when advertised service proved unavailable, especially in rural areas where individual homes do not meet the minimum density required to provide service.

We’ve argued repeatedly for independent broadband mapping that relies on actual on-the-ground data, if only to end the kind of generalizations legislators rely on regarding broadband service.  But if the cable industry can argue away the broadband problem with empty claims service is available even in places where it is not (or woefully inadequate), relying on voluntary data serves the industry well, even if it shortchanges rural consumers who are told they have broadband choices that do not actually exist.

Navigant’s report seeks to apply the brakes to broadband improvement programs that can deliver consistent coverage and 21st century broadband speeds that other carriers simply don’t provide or don’t offer throughout the proposed service areas.  The cable industry doesn’t welcome the competition, especially in areas stuck with lesser-quality service from low-rated providers.