Stop the Cap! reader Lance wrote this afternoon letting us know Google has a project running for the next few weeks to ask ordinary Americans, you know, the ones who don’t have their own astroturf groups, slick lobbyists, and Re-Education literature, what you and I want from broadband stimulus funding and a national broadband plan.

Submit your ideas for a National Broadband Plan
Google and the New America Foundation have teamed up to launch this Google Moderator page, where you can submit and vote on ideas for what you think the Federal Communications Commission should include in its National Broadband Plan. Two weeks from now we’ll take the most popular and most innovative ideas and submit them to the official record at the FCC on your behalf.

So do you have any good ideas? Submit them today — and you just might help change the face of broadband in the United States.

The operative word there is “might.” Without a massive deluge from angry consumers, the killer bee swarm of lobbyists and other special interests will surround and fly away with the honey pot of federal broadband stimulus funding. But you can’t win if you don’t play, so let’s get busy.

Here was my submission, which you can choose to give a thumbs-up to if you support it:

“A clear prohibition on Internet overcharging schemes! No usage caps, speed throttles, and consumption-based tiered pricing. Net neutrality enshrined into law, open competition, even if it comes from municipalities, and the more fiber, the better!”

Finding submitted ideas is best achieved by using the Search box at the top of the Google Moderator page. You can find mine with a search for “net neutrality.”

Some of the ideas from ordinary consumers that are already getting plenty of support are excellent, common sense winners in our humble opinion, so be sure to vote “thumbs-up” for these as well:

• “Install broadband fiber as part of every federally-funded infrastructure project. Most of the cost of deployment is due to tearing up/repaving roads. Laying fiber during public works projects already underway would dramatically reduce costs.”
• “Force real competition in any given market for broadband services from the same types of provider to eliminate monopolies (i.e. multiple cable providers competing in the same market).”
• “Charging per-data-rate (EG: per gb) is a bad idea. You don’t get charged per hour you watch cable on top of your monthly subscription and additional channels, why should you pay per hour or per gb for access to the Internet?”
• “Stop the ability of private companies to block local governments from trying to deploy their own broadband solutions. There have been numerous examples of this, and it really stifles broadband expansion.”
• “Place residential broadband under the same regulations as other utilities. Require companies to publish their tariffs, and forbid hard caps. Require a portion of the proceeds to be invested into improving the infrastructure.”
• “Recognize that high-speed, reliable and unfiltered Internet access in the 21st century is a civil right on par with free speech and a right to an education and not a simple luxury for those who can afford it. More federal funding, fewer monopolies.”
• “Get ConnectedNation out of the loop. Funded by telecos and cablecos and are lobbying congress using false and misleading data.”

How to participate:

1. You need to have a registered Google account. You have one already if you use Gmail or other Google services.
2. Visit this page to find the question.
3. You will find a login link at the bottom. Click it and you can login or get a new Google account.
4. You will be shown a list of ideas submitted by others. They often appear randomly.
5. On the right side of your screen, you will see a place to approve (checkbox) or disapprove (an “x” in a box) of various ideas.
6. Vote for as many or as few as you like.

You can also submit your own idea.

The most popular ideas will be part of Google’s submission to the FCC.

Let us know what idea you are voting for and if you submitted any of your own in the Comments section.

Click on the "Comments" link shown circled to go directly to reader comments, and share your own views!

For new readers, you can get involved in the conversation by clicking the comments link found as part of the heading of every article here, or just click the headline and scroll down the bottom of your screen where you can find a place to share your thoughts!

Here comes the Astroturf

Deborah Taylor Tate, a Bush-appointed ex-commissioner on the Federal Communications Commission is now earning her paycheck regurgitating telecommunications industry talking points of behalf of the astroturf group, the Free State Foundation.

In an editorial in today’s Washington Times (thanks to reader Mitchell for alerting us about it), Tate perfectly falls in line with the talking points Stop the Cap! readers can repeat in their sleep, right down to ripping off AT&T’s “grandmother” analogy from several weeks ago.  Her employer, the Free State Foundation, has a long history of advocating pro-industry positions in opposition to consumer interests.  Having a former credentialed FCC official doing the industry talk is designed to impress.

Tate, who was never impressive as an FCC commissioner and maintains her ongoing unimpressive credentials at FSF, phones it in with a fact-free piece entitled, “Paying for Use is Fair,” in which she directly advocates for Internet Overcharging schemes, attempting to convince readers it will somehow save them money on their broadband service.

Her efforts to tell the story of “paying for what you use” will be comical to those in the communities where such “experiments” were conducted, because Tate either doesn’t know or care about the details of the market experiments she writes about.

Most broadband consumers would be astounded that some members of Congress want to block our ability to pay for broadband Internet use in precisely the same way we now pay for other commodities: Pay more if you use more; pay less if you use less.

Most consumers would be astounded an ex-FCC commissioner got the basic facts wrong about the basis of such pricing schemes.  No broadband provider has ever offered a “pay for what you use” pricing scheme.  They have only offered “pay MORE for what you use, and a lot more if you use more than you thought.”

This comes on the heels of Time Warner’s rapid retreat from a pilot test of pay-for-use broadband pricing, bowing to congressional pressure and protests from consumer groups. Studies have indicated the top 25 percent of users have consumed 100 times more bandwidth than the bottom 25 percent. So, what is fair about one-price-fits-all if someone uses 100 times more than you do?

At least Tate barely acknowledges another basic truth about these pricing schemes: the overwhelming majority of Americans do not want this kind of pricing model, and more than half would leave their existing provider if they tried to force them into one.

The “studies” Tate writes about do not exist.  They are claims by the providers themselves, which have never allowed for an independent review of the raw data the companies claim to base their findings on.  Nor does it account for the industry’s “need” to increase every consumer’s broadband bill with overcharging schemes based on limited consumption allowances and credit card-like overlimit penalties and fees.  Indeed, this is an industry with profits well into the billions of dollars whose costs are actually declining, along with their willingness to invest in growing their networks.  One need only review quarterly and annual financial reports issued by the providers’ themselves to learn the truth.  These companies are not hurting for profits.

Even where monopolies exist, pricing has generally been based on the notion that customers are charged more if they consume more and less if they use less. Obviously, beyond basic necessity, they could exercise some self-control, and could even save money through metering that measured consumption. This is especially true in an environment where consumers have options for providers of broadband, cell phones and now, in many cases, electricity.

Broadband pricing has been flat rate since the service was launched by phone companies providing DSL and cable operators launched cable modem service in most areas of this country.  That’s because broadband has been cheap, capacity plentiful, and profits high.  Absolutely nothing has changed in that equation, except a desire by broadband providers to dramatically grab additional profits, reduce demand with threats of overlimit fees or service being cut off for overuse, and attempts to invest less in their networks.  Controlling online video is critical for most of the providers who find that a competitive threat to their television service business model.

Tate doesn’t bother to contemplate increased competition, seeming happy enough to acknowledge monopolies do exist and then moving on to something else.  That mimics the FCC’s position over the past eight years, so that comes as no surprise either.

Whether run by local co-ops, governments or profit-making firms, any network has substantial capital costs to build out infrastructure, provide service, expand capacity and meet higher demand, particularly at peak periods. The same network cost issues also apply to Internet service providers. Expanding bandwidth and capacity for the exponential growth of Internet traffic is expensive. Updating security applications to prevent cybercrime are increasingly necessary for government, business and individuals, driving up costs even further. The supply of fiber optic cable and computer servers is not infinite, and we are already facing network constraints. We have all experienced the network being slowed by periods of heavy usage. Broadband providers — just like wireless providers — should be allowed to use a consumption model without government interference as long as consumers know and understand what they are paying for.

To date, there has been a surprising uniformity in billing for broadband Internet service. But why should a grandmother who checks e-mail once a day or makes an occasional purchase online be charged the same monthly rate as a researcher downloading massive data files or teenagers watching full-length movies every day? Why not provide consumers the freedom to monitor and control their own use — and to benefit from volume-based rate packages?

AT&T should consider legal action against Tate for plagiarizing their talking points.  In fact, her entire argument is part of the grand Re-education campaign we’ve written about since Time Warner Cable temporarily shelved their overcharging scheme back in April.  The “exaflood” nonsense, the “it’s expensive to spend money to upgrade our networks” whining, and the hissyfit over consumers using their service just as these same providers marketed them are all in there.

Deborah Taylor Tate: The Marie Antoinette of Internet Pricing

At least Tate is consistent — she never cared about consumers like you and I during her stay on the FCC, and she still doesn’t care about consumers by doing the bidding of groups like the Free State Foundation.

What do Washington Times readers think?  Not much of Tate or her positions.  Among them:

“Wow, did you just pull a page out of the telecom’s lobbyist manual to come up with this article?  They are doing this to prevent new technologies from making them an antiquated model, and they are doing it to get more money out of the customer. I promise it has nothing and I mean nothing to do with saving your grandma a single cent.”

“Are you being paid by the cable co? Seriously. Do you even realize with the utter lack of competition and the fact that the cable company enjoys a monopoly in most all of their markets, pricing for use is utterly bad for consumers.”

“Bill is right, you’re just reading talking points at this point, and not looking at the actual economics or technology behind it.”

“Deborah, Please take a moment to think for yourself instead of shilling for an industry. Metered billing has nothing to do with customer choice, please don’t pretend that it does. This is about making more money off of existing usage, while avoiding upgrading of networks and services.”

“So for instance, using the same logic and same company, when I call for traditional phone service, they are quick to sell me an “Unlimited” minute plan for $40.00/month.”

“Metered usage is nothing more than a money grab by the content providers. Their current business model is being threaten by media content being available via streaming services.”

In the end, consumers like you and I pay part of our monthly broadband bill to providers that are cutting checks to astroturf groups to advocate against consumer interests.  Imagine if they spent some of that money on their network upgrades, and a little less funneled to inside-the-beltway hackery written by underwhelming ex-officials-turned-insider-special-interests.

The Communications Workers of America (CWA) has been running a project I have subscribed to for awhile now, called Speed Matters. Today I received this e-mail from them:

What’s next for SpeedMatters? Growing our movement.

Dear Jason,

Time’s up. Pencils down.

How did you do on the SpeedMatters.org speed test?

Believe it or not, you had one of fastest connection speeds in the country – and you’re probably paying a pretty penny for it. The majority of people who took the test didn’t come close to scoring as high as you did.

But fact is, even some of the fastest internet connections in the United States pale in comparison to many of our global competitors like Korea, Sweden, and Japan. These countries have average speeds that are almost ten times faster than the United States — at about 1/12 the cost to the consumer.

FCC Commissioner Michael J. Copps has admitted “America’s record in expanding broadband communication is so poor that it should be viewed as an outrage by every consumer and businessperson in the country.”

It’s time to fix this problem, and the first step is determining exactly where our current high speed networks reach — and who is getting left behind.

You’ve already helped us begin to gather this crucial data by testing your Internet speed.

So what’s next? Now you can help grow our movement and educate as many people as possible about the importance of improving our country’s high speed Internet access. That way, when we demand our elected representatives take action, they’ll hear us loud and clear.

Forward the message below to everyone you know, and ask them to join you in getting the U.S. up to speed.

Thank you,

Beth Allen
speedmatters.org Online Mobilization Coordinator

P.S. Don’t forget to sign up for our weekly SpeedMatters.org blog update email to stay up-to-date on the nationwide effort to expand high speed Internet access and the amazing things that people are doing with the improved technology.

Dear Friend,

Americans are charged more for slower internet speeds, and our current high-speed networks don’t even reach millions of households. It’s time for that to change — and you can play a part. Testing your own speed will help make our new community research project, SpeedMatters.org, a success.

We’re falling behind in the global economy because we won’t invest in the technology to bring the benefits of this telecommunications revolution to most of our population. We’re the only industrialized country without a national policy to promote high- speed Internet access.

That’s why you’re getting this email. Testing your connection’s speed now will help us better understand the American average — and craft an effective public policy and awareness campaign.

Take the speed test:

High speed Internet means more than smooth web videos or fast downloads.

Advanced high capacity communications networks can increase democratic and civic participation, improve the delivery of health care, education, job training, public safety and other vital services.

What are we waiting for? It’s time to close the digital divide.

Thanks!

What I found interesting was the quote from FCC Commissioner Michael Copps, “America’s record in expanding broadband communication is so poor that it should be viewed as an outrage by every consumer and businessperson in the country.”

Commissioner Copps is right. It is an outrage. When the rest of the world is moving on average 10 times faster and at 1/12 the cost to consumers, I am a little more then outraged. Speed does matter and I urge you all to join and spread the word about Speedmatters.org.  They have a lot of useful information at their site, including speed by state and listing of broadband initiatives.

I took the speed test here in Greensboro, North Carolina, using Time Warner Cable’s Road Runner Turbo and my results were 11.114Mbps download and 4.85Mbps upload.  What is your speed?

I know here in Greensboro, the CWA had tried to to unionize the local Time Warner Cable workers and the company pushed back and won. Now a lot of those same TWC employees have been pink slipped in favor of non-union contract workers or demoted to lesser positions with less pay. I am sure this isn’t the only city this is happening in.  Just goes to show that TWC isn’t just effecting your families with their greed, but their own workers’ families too.

The only downside to this organization I see is that they have a partnership with Connected Nation, which is the cable/telecom industries mapping group.  I would urge the good folks at the CWA to tread lightly with Connected Nation.  They are Time Warner, Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, and the other companies in disguise.  They have their own interests at heart.  This is what Connected Nation is doing here in North Carolina.

The NoChokePoints Coalition has a point.  They are a coalition of public interest groups and providers like British Telecom and Sprint-Nextel that are upset with monopolistic pricing for high speed broadband lines.  Verizon and AT&T “control the broadband lines of almost every business in the United States” the coalition states, and “generates a profit margin of more than 100% for the controlling phone companies.”

“Releasing the broadband economy from the chokehold these huge phone companies have on the special access market will be a catalyst for innovation and investment in the broadband marketplace, something we desperately need,” said Maura Corbett, spokeswoman for the NoChokePoints coalition.

“Every time you send an email, withdraw money from an ATM, or use your wireless phone, your information travels on these high-capacity lines. Excessive pricing and other market abuses by these companies have long been an issue of concern at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Nearly five years ago, after many complaints by broadband customers in several FCC proceedings, the Commission began a review of the high-capacity broadband market to determine the changes needed to ensure reasonable prices. Despite ample evidence of excessive pricing, the Commission inexplicably has yet to take any action.”

“The Obama administration, Congress, and the FCC repeatedly emphasize the importance of broadband to our economic recovery and, frankly, it defies explanation that we are still fighting this market abuse,” Corbett continued. “Huge companies like Verizon and AT&T control the broadband lines of almost every business in the United States. The virtually unchallenged, exclusive control of these lines costs businesses and consumers more than $10 billion annually and generates a profit margin of more than 100 percent for the controlling phone companies, according to their own data provided to the FCC. This hidden broadband tax results in enormous losses for consumers and the economy, and this country cannot afford it; especially now.”

NoChokePoints cited four central principles of its campaign to reform the special access market: (1) the special access market is broken; (2) the outgoing Federal Communications Commission made a bad situation worse by failing to address obvious market abuse by these huge phone companies; (3) this unchecked market control continues to slow broadband deployment, compromise innovation and harm our national information economy; and (4) the resulting market failure must be corrected now.

Yes, when one or two providers get together and establish pricing for a product that is way out of line for what it costs to provide, and uses that control to further squeeze every last penny they can from customers, something should be done.

As consumers, we should agree to join the NoChokePoints coalition struggle.  There are several very credible pro-consumer organizations that support the Coalition and its goals.  And consumers like myself shall, mere seconds after:

Member BT (British Telecom) stops throttling UK customer’s broadband connections, and imposing Internet Overcharging schemes on customers through limits on their data consumption.

Member Sprint-Nextel agrees that consumers should be able to request temporary suspension of their wireless data account, currently limited to 5GB of consumption per month, the moment the limit is reached to avoid the potential of paying overlimit fees, if/when applicable.

TW Telecom gets a pass here as they are entirely independent from Time Warner Cable.

Internet Overcharging schemes, monopolistic control, abuse of market pricing, and other anti-competitive behavior should be confronted.  But companies engaged in problematic behavior themselves should not anticipate a great deal of consumer compassion towards their plight, when those consumers often are on the receiving end of that problematic behavior themselves.

If cable operators intend to impose Internet Overcharging schemes to measure and cap residential broadband accounts, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) must impose equal treatment on traditional video cable television packages to allow customers to subscribe to only the channels they want.

The Austin Broadband Interest Group, a not-for-profit broadband advocacy organization, calls out the cable television industry for advocating an end to flat rate broadband service at the same time they continue to resist a-la-carte pricing for cable television packages.

In a filing with the FCC as part of a nationwide broadband policy inquiry, the Texas group recites the history of Time Warner Cable’s recent proposed experiment curtailing current flat rate Internet service.  Time Warner Cable planned to expand its Internet Overcharging market test conducted in Beaumont, Texas into four additional cities: Austin and San Antonio in Texas, Rochester in western New York, and the Triad region of North Carolina.  Customers in the test would have faced the prospect of paying 300% more for an equivalent level of flat rate service, with bills increasing from $40-50 a month to a staggering $150 a month, with no increase in speed or immediate improvement in service.

The Austin group claims that such Internet Overcharging efforts are designed to protect Time Warner Cable’s video business model, which includes the packaging of flat rate video cable TV packages to customers across the country.  Time Warner Cable, among other cable providers, have grown increasingly concerned about free online video potentially discouraging customers from subscribing to a cable television package.  Industry executives fear that new generations of Internet users will dispense with traditional cable TV service, obtaining video entertainment online, instead.

The group advocates the FCC enforce a rule that any broadband provider that wants to implement limits or consumption-based service tiers must also offer the same pricing model for video programming.  Matthew A. Henry and Chip Rosenthal, authors of the filing, include other competing video providers in their comments.  Telephone companies, including AT&T and Verizon, have begun offering video services to customers in addition to broadband packages.  AT&T is testing an Internet Overcharging scheme to limit consumption in two cities — Beaumont, Texas and Reno, Nevada.

The cable industry has struggled with Congress and the Commission for years to prevent the imposition of a-la-carte video programming pricing, permitting customers to pay for only the channels they want to watch.  The industry claims it would destroy the business model of cable television, where cable programmers like CNN, The Weather Channel, A&E, and most others impose a subscription fee based on the number of “basic cable” subscribers that have access to those channels.  Most networks charge between 10-80 cents per subscriber, with some sports-related channels charging considerably more.  By dividing the costs among every subscriber, the industry argues, it can deliver a robust video package to everyone for the same price.

Unfortunately, cable programmers continually increase the rates they charge for their cable networks, often well above the rate of inflation, and many broadcast networks and stations also demand cable companies take on new networks they may not necessarily want, to obtain continued permission to carry local stations on the cable dial. The result: relentless annual rate increases for cable television packages.

The inequity of cable’s argument that it must be allowed to continue providing flat rate television programming packages (and disallow a-la-carte) while programming costs increase, while demanding an end to flat rate Internet pricing, despite a decrease in the costs to provide it, suggests “fairness” is not the motivation for proposing such Internet Overcharging schemes:

In May of 2009, Time Warner Chief Executive Officer Glenn Britt essentially admitted that the competitive threat of online video to traditional cable is the driving force behind the company’s capped and metered pricing model. Mr. Britt told investors, “If, at an extreme, you could get all of the programming you get over cable for free on the Internet, over time people will stop buying (TV).”  Unfortunately, Time Warner has chosen to protect its cable revenues through unfairly restricting usage of its broadband service. This clearly demonstrates the need regulatory ground rules aimed at dissuading such anti-consumer and anti-broadband business practices.

Rather than representing a “fair” method of billing, metered pricing plans and usage caps are a strategy intended to salvage diminishing cable revenues by forcing users to use less Internet. Users have been watching increasing amounts of video online, with some abandoning their cable service altogether in favor of broadband (an effect that has been sped by the struggling economy). This presents an obvious dilemma for broadband providers that also offer a cable product, like Time Warner: as online video watching goes up, the revenue-generating cable usage goes down. Online video is bad for business because a cable company directly profits from its cable content through advertising, pay-per-view and video-on-demand, but can’t profit off Internet content. The fact is that Time Warner is offering competing products and the company has a vested interest in cable video prevailing over Internet video. Time Warner introduced metered pricing and usage caps to make its customers turn off their computers and pick up the remote.