AT&T customers looking for better service need to put down those cellphones and turn off the computer and pick up a good book.  AT&T recommends Fed Up! Our Fight to Save America From Washington, written by Texas Gov. Rick Perry.

Perry’s book, which compares Social Security and FDR’s “New Deal” social programs with a Communist takeover is so popular with the Big Telecom, it purchased over 700 copies to hand out for free to state legislators, lobbyists and activists attending a conservative policy summit luncheon.  Oh, and the company paid for the lunch, too.  Total cost?  More than $13,000 — all ultimately paid for by AT&T’s customers.

AT&T made sure every guest had their own personal hardcover copy of the governor’s book, something that didn’t go unnoticed by former Texas Solicitor General Ted Cruz, who thanked AT&T from the microphone for paying for the books.

“Governor Perry has written a book – a book that all of us very kindly have been given by AT&T,” Cruz said. “Thank you, AT&T.”

AT&T’s gladhanding of conservative state politicians doesn’t come accidentally, reports the Dallas Morning News.  With hundreds of millions in revenue at stake, AT&T’s investment in the state’s Republican dominated legislature guarantees the company’s voice will be heard on important legislative matters.

AT&T has spent as much as $9.3 million to lobby Austin lawmakers and regulators, according to Texas Ethics Commission data. AT&T’s political action committee has donated $494,740 to Perry during his nine years in office, according to Texans for Public Justice.

The latter group told the newspaper AT&T doesn’t get into the book club business lightly.

“It does raise concerns. AT&T has a lot of business before the state of Texas and Texas regulators,” said Craig McDonald, director of Texans for Public Justice, a group that tracks money in politics. “They are generally the largest lobby in the state. They can reach out and touch every lawmaker simultaneously.”

Elected officials who write books routinely find some of their biggest sales come from lobbyists, who buy books in bulk and hand them out at public speaking engagements, or simply shove them into the nearest storage locker.  It’s not about the book, it’s about the access companies like AT&T gain from the goodwill earned from buying copies.

Perry does not profit directly from the book sales, but his political interests do.  Proceeds of the book sales go to the Texas Public Policy Foundation’s Center for Tenth Amendment Studies, a group dedicated to protecting corporate interests and “state’s rights.”

AT&T’s corporate interest is protected by the Policy Foundation’s opposition to Net Neutrality, but the group generally opposes broadband stimulus funding, some of which is likely to end up in AT&T’s pockets.

[flv width=”480″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Texas Public Policy Foundation Net Neutrality.flv[/flv]

The Texas Public Policy Foundation invited two Republican FCC commissioners — one current and one former — to bash Net Neutrality and broadband reforms before a stacked panel and audience of like-minded thinkers.  (1 hour, 50 minutes)

The cable company best known for serving suburban New York City has gone west with the purchase of Bresnan Communications

The new owner of Bresnan Communications is promising customers in Montana and Wyoming an end to anemic broadband service, but subscribers wonder who is going to pay for it.

Bethpage, N.Y.-based Cablevision is telling subscribers upgrades are on the way to bring faster broadband, better cable and phone service to 300,000 Mountain West customers formerly served by Bresnan.

John Bickham, president of Cable & Communications for Cablevision, told readers of the Billings Gazette improvements would arrive over the next year-and-a-half:

We’re going to start by increasing the number of high-definition channels we provide, with a goal of providing more than 100 free HD channels over the next 18 months. We will also be adding more movie choices and more free video-on-demand titles, including prime-time shows from leading broadcast networks.

High-speed Internet service in the towns we serve is going to get faster. Over the next 18 months, we will upgrade the speeds of our basic level of Internet service to up to 15 megabits per second, nearly double what they are today. And with our award-winning and top-rated phone service, we will be adding even more features, functions and value to the phone service available in these communities today, including access to an innovative Web site to manage account preferences, review calling records or check voice mail from any computer.

For many subscribers, the improvements cannot come soon enough.

One reader in Jackson Hole, Wyo., said Bresnan rarely provided broadband service at the advertised rates, noting their 8Mbps service really was closer to 3-4Mbps.

But residents in both Wyoming and Montana warn that if Cablevision plans to manage all of the spiffy upgrades with a rate increase, they’ll cancel.

“I’ll be watching my bill. If it goes up because of all these changes, I’ll drop you in a heartbeat,” wrote one Montana customer.

HP's Snowjob: The company that brought you the $70 ink cartridge supports an end to flat rate Internet service to "save" you money.

HP’s Joe Weinman argues consumers are behind the drive to abandon flat rate, “all you can eat” broadband pricing.

Weinman, whose company sells products and services to some of America’s largest broadband providers, has taken up their position that flat-rate Internet service is bad for you, claiming many are paying too much for Internet service they use too little.

In an essay posted on GigaOM, Weinman brings back the all-y0u-can-eat buffet metaphor:

For the record, I like unlimited Internet access just as much as anyone else. However, such plans appear to be on their way out, and here’s why. As I’ve explored in ”The Market for Melons” (PDF), pay-per-use is not an evil plot by greedy robber barons, but a natural outcome of independent, rational consumer choice. Consider a town with an all-you-can-eat (flat rate) buffet and an a la carte (pay-per-use) restaurant. Smart shoppers on diets will save money by patronizing the a la carte restaurant, whereas heavy eaters will save money by visiting the buffet. As patrons switch, the average consumption of the buffet will increase, driving price increases for the luncheon special, causing even more users to switch to pay-per-use.

Bottom line: it is not the proprietors driving this dynamic, but the customers themselves acting out of pure, rational self-interest—light users, by deciding not to subsidize the heavy ones, foster the vitality of the pay-per-use model.

Unfortunately for Weinman, most American broadband customers don’t believe a word of this, and even he was forced to admit as much when he noted consumers “often prefer to overpay for flat-rate rather than save money but risk bill shock.”

Karl Bode at Broadband Reports wasn’t suckered for a moment either, noting:

[…]Cable industry lobbyists would like the public to believe that such a shift isn’t about making more money, it’s about helping the poor. Not only is the metered billing push absolutely about making money, it’s about artificially constricting the pipe to protect uncompetitive carriers and TV revenues from Internet video. But instead, there’s a very concerted effort afoot to portray this shift as necessary, inevitable, and even altruistic.

Most consumers prefer the simplicity of flat rate pricing, and understand that ISPs are perfectly profitable under the flat-rate pricing model. They also understand that this is a pipe dream forged by never-satisfied investors, and once implemented ends with ever soaring per gig fees and ever shrinking usage caps.

Weinman’s essay completely ignores the reality his preferred pricing model already delivers to those who live under it in Canada.  Canadian broadband rankings continue to decline as customers there pay higher prices for a lower level of service, with usage caps that actually decline when new competitive threats from online video emerge.

Just what the doctor ordered: HP's Rx for American Broadband

We had to take time out to respond directly to Weinman and his cheerleading friends (see the comments section), some who wrote comments below the piece and couldn’t be bothered to disclose they owe their day jobs to industry-backed dollar-a-holler groups that are committed to delivering on behalf of their provider benefactors:

When Big Telecom comes ringing with promises of savings from metered or capped broadband, hang up immediately.

These plans save almost nobody money and expose dramatic overlimit fees to consumers, creating the kind of bill shock wireless phone users endure.

The OPEC-like Internet price-fixing on offer from big players delivers broadband rationing and sky high prices, while retarding Internet innovations that providers don’t own or control.

Consumers are forced to double check their usage and think twice about everything they do online out of fear of being exposed to huge overlimit fees up to $10 a gigabyte for exceeding an arbitrary limit ranging from 5-250GB.

Americans already pay too much for Internet service and now the providers want more of your money. The rest of the world is moving AWAY from the pricing schemes Weinman would have us embrace. It’s such a serious issue in the South Pacific, the governments of Australia and New Zealand are working to address the problem themselves.

Providers are already earning BILLIONS in profits every quarter from their lucrative broadband businesses. Now the wallet biters are back for more, with the convenient side benefit that limiting consumption is a great way to prevent Internet-delivered TV from causing cord-cutting of cable TV packages.

As far as consumers are concerned, and Weinman admits as much, people are happy with today’s unlimited price models. When Big Telecom complains people are overpaying for broadband, wouldn’t their shareholders be telling them to shut up and take the money? There is more to this story.

Weinman defends the extortion proposition Big Telecom would visit on us: either give us limited use pricing or we’ll raise all of your prices.

But as consumers have already figured out, these providers never reduce prices for anyone. When was the last time your cable bill went down unless you dropped services?

Don’t be a sucker to Big Telecom’s “broadband shortage” or pricing myths. Broadband is not comparable to water, gas, or electric. The closest comparison (and the one they always leave out) is to telephone service, and as we’ve seen, that business is increasingly moving TOWARDS flat race, unlimited pricing.

Want to know what metered pricing does to the wallets of consumers? Just ask Time Warner Cable customers in Rochester, Greensboro, San Antonio, and Austin what they thought about the cable company’s “innovative” pricing experiment that tripled the price for the same level of broadband customers used to get for $50 a month. After the torches and pitchforks were raised over $150 a month broadband service, Time Warner backed down.

Either with or without metered pricing, the cable company raised its prices three times last year alone.

The industry’s meme that “usage-based pricing” in inevitable is only true if consumers allow it to happen.  The parade of Internet Overcharging advocates all share one thing in common — they earn a living from the providers that dream about these pricing schemes.  Always follow the money.  As we’ve exposed repeatedly, the vast majority of defenders of these kinds of pricing schemes are not consumers.  They are:

• The providers themselves;
• Wall Street banks, investors, and the business media catering to them;
• Non-profit groups receiving substantial contributions from providers;
• Industry-funded “think tanks” and research that can carry the industry’s public policy agenda, hoping the media that quotes them are too lazy to follow the money;
• Equipment and service vendors, unions, and other groups who depend on the business or jobs they get from providers.

Phillip "Of course you know this means war" Dampier

Sizing up the big winners from FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski’s latest Net Neutrality proposals is as simple as putting those praising Genachowski in column “A” and those outraged by downsized consumer protections into column “B.”  It comes as no surprise Big Telecom, the employees whose jobs depend on those companies, their trade associations and lobbyists are all living it up on the “A” side while consumers and public interest groups sit in the dark in column “B.”

Among the high-five club is Kyle McSlarrow, the outgoing head of the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, the cable industry’s top lobbying enterprise.

On the NCTA’s blog, an indication of your broadband future has been placed front and center — a meter.  Perhaps putting a coin slot on your cable modem or a credit card reader on the side of your monitor would be a bit too brazen, even for this industry.

McSlarrow, among others, heaped bountiful praise on the FCC chairman for his ‘enlightened’ views on Net Neutrality.  That hardly a surprise considering Genachowski has opened his phone line, and apparently his heart, to industry propaganda and arguments.

Genachowski’s remarks about usage-based pricing, in particular, were a breath of fresh air to Wall Street and providers clamoring to dispense with unlimited broadband service for consumers to increase profits:

Our work has also demonstrated the importance of business innovation to promote network investment and efficient use of networks, including measures to match price to cost such as usage-based pricing.

“This approach reflects a responsible and considered view of a fast-moving and highly dynamic marketplace but it doesn’t assume that there is any one ‘correct’ answer,” McSlarrow wrote.

It’s also a view consumers strongly disagree with, but those opinions are off the FCC’s radar.  Consumers don’t have the chairman’s direct phone number.  If they did, they could argue the fact “matching price to cost” would mean a dramatic reduction in pricing for today’s unlimited broadband account.  Instead, we have a lobbying effort to end “unlimited” entirely, backed by manufactured studies funded by providers expecting pre-determined conclusions.  Too bad the FCC doesn’t read provider financial reports.

Writes McSlarrow:

Some consumers don’t see the need to go online.  Others are constrained by cost.  Still others want to use the service they have in cutting-edge ways.  And the ability to pigeonhole companies and their business plans as being one thing or another is breaking down, particularly in an environment where Internet applications, content, and services change the way we behave as consumers, provide new opportunities for providers and consumers and alter how we all interact with both traditional and new devices and features.

The key point is that that we need to focus on what best serves consumers.  With all this change, it is necessary to have the flexibility to test new business models – and perhaps new pricing plans – in order to see if they make sense.

A usage-based pricing model, for instance, might help spur adoption by price-sensitive consumers at the lower end of the socioeconomic ladder.  As Sanford Bernstein analyst Craig Moffett noted in a report issued yesterday, “{u}sage-based pricing for broadband would have profound implications.  At the low end, it would allow cable operators to introduce lower priced tiers that could boost penetration and help in efforts to serve lower income consumers.”

McSlarrow

Evidently, to chase the small percentage of Americans who either don’t have an interest in going online, or think it costs too much, the NCTA wants those already online to face Internet Overcharging schemes ranging from usage caps to metered billing.  Is it flexible for consumers who face the end of broadband pricing as they’ve lived with for more than a decade or is it flexible for providers who can run to the bank with the higher profits rationed broadband delivers?

McSlarrow quotes Moffett’s quest for higher profits for his clients — Wall Street investment banks, but ignores the implications Moffett himself admits — consumer rebellions, self-rationing of usage, a stifling of online innovation from independent companies not connected with providers, and higher prices.

American providers look north for an example of Big Telecom’s pot ‘o gold — Canadian ISPs that have managed to wreak havoc on the country’s broadband rankings, forcing consumers to live with higher prices and, in some cases, declining usage allowances.  Canada’s broadband innovation graveyard is an object lesson for Americans: usage-based pricing doesn’t deliver savings to anyone except the most casual users living under constrained speeds and paltry allowances as low a 1GB per month.  For everyone else, broadband prices are higher, speeds are slower, and usage allowances deliver stinging penalties for those who dare to exceed them.  What do Canadian providers do with all of the money they earn?  A good sum of it goes towards acquiring their competitors, further reducing an already-poor competitive marketplace.

As one Ontario reader of Broadband Reports noted, “our largest cable company has the money to buy three professional sports teams but not enough to roll out DOCSIS 3 [to all of its customers.]  Our largest phone company, Bell, has the money to buy half the news stations in Canada, but cannot seem to get users off of 3Mbps DSL service.  The whole system is a scam.”

While the rest of the world is decidedly moving away from limited-use broadband, American providers have sold Genachowski that rationing the Internet is “innovation.”

Of course, you and I know real innovation means investing some of the enormous profits providers earn back into their networks to keep up with growing demand.  Providers can innovate all they like to attract price sensitive customers, so long as current unlimited plans remain available and affordable.  But as AT&T illustrated earlier this year, the first thing off the menu is “unlimited,” replaced with overpriced and inadequate wireless data plans that only further alienate their customers.

AT&T should take a lesson… from AT&T.  While it gouges its customers on the wireless side, the company has managed to solve the affordability question all by itself, without resorting to wallet-biting.  It dramatically reduced prices on its DSL services — now just $14.95 a month for its customers, which includes a free gateway and modem.  That sure sounds like a solution for budget-conscious customers and delivered all without antagonizing those who want to keep their current unlimited service plans.

AT&T seems to have managed to solve the affordability question without overcharging their customers.

Cable companies deliver their own budget broadband plans, but it comes as no surprise they barely market them, fearing their premium-paying customers could downgrade their service.

In short, Internet Overcharging is a solution chasing a problem that simply does not exist in a responsible broadband marketplace.

McSlarrow says he’s not arguing for or against any particular model.  All he is really confident about is that the marketplace is changing and that “companies will have to adapt to that change.”

But as is too often the case, McSlarrow, his industry friends and colleagues, and Chairman Genachowski have forgotten it’s ultimately consumers who have to adapt to change, and we promise it means all-out war if providers tamper with unlimited broadband service.

A new report proves what Stop the Cap! has advocated for more than two years now — communities seeking the fastest, most-modern, and most aggressively priced broadband can get all of that and more… if they do it themselves.

The concept of community self-reliance for broadband has been dismissed and derided for years among small government conservatives and corporately-backed dollar-a-holler groups who claim government can’t manage anything, but when it comes to broadband in the state of North Carolina, the evidence is in and it is irrefutable — Tar Heel state residents are getting the most bang for their broadband buck from well-managed and smartly-run community-owned broadband networks.

Christopher Mitchell from the New Rules Project — part of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, gathered evidence from North Carolina’s different broadband providers and found the best broadband services come from local communities who decided to build their own fiber networks. instead of relying on a handful of cable and phone companies who have kept the state lower in broadband rankings than it deserves.

North Carolina is undergoing a transition from a manufacturing and agricultural-based economy that used to employ hundreds of thousands of workers in textile, tobacco, and furniture manufacturing businesses.  In the last quarter-century, the state has lost one in five jobs to Asian outsourcing and America kicking the tobacco habit.  Its future depends on meeting the challenges of transitioning to a new digital economy, and major cities like Charlotte, Raleigh, and Greensboro have risen as well-recognized leaders in engineering, biotech, and finance.

But for rural and suburban North Carolina, success has been hindered by a lack of necessary infrastructure — particularly broadband for small businesses and entrepreneurs.  It becomes impossible to attract high tech jobs to areas that are forced to rely entirely on low speed DSL service, if that is even available.

In communities like Wilson and Salisbury, long frustrated by area providers not delivering needed services, a decision was reached to build their own broadband infrastructure — modern fiber to the home networks worthy of the 21st century.

Mitchell’s report charts the benefits available to every resident, as communities with state-of-the-art fiber networks consistently deliver the most robust service at the lowest prices, all without risk to local taxpayers.  Better still, when the network construction costs are paid back to bondholders, future profits generated by the community-owned systems will be plowed back into local communities to reduce tax burdens and keep service state-of-the-art.

“Comparing the tiers of residential service from Wilson or Salisbury against the providers in the Raleigh area shows that the communities have invested in a network that offers far faster speeds for less money than any of the private providers,” Mitchell concludes.  “Whether communities in North Carolina are competing against other states or internationally for jobs and quality of life, they are smart to consider investing in a community fiber network.”

Mitchell’s report arrives just a few weeks after voters handed North Carolina’s General Assembly to GOP control for the first time in more than a century.  Both cable and phone companies in the state modestly suggest that is good news for their legislative agenda, which is an understatement equal in proportion to the historic handover of control of both the House (67-52) and the Senate (31-19).  The top items on the agenda of incoming members is a checklist of conservative activist favorites, including a war on unions, mandatory ID cards for voting, opting the state out of recently enacted health care reform, an eminent domain constitutional amendment, sweeping deregulation reform to favor business interests, and redistricting to “restore fairness” in future elections.

The state’s big cable and phone companies are convinced with a list like that, they can come along for the legislative ride and get their agenda passed as “pro-business reform.”  That means a much larger fight in 2011 for the inevitable return of corporate protection legislation banning exactly the kinds of municipal networks that are delivering North Carolina better, faster, and cheaper broadband.