The community of Pinetops, N.C. has finally got 21st century gigabit broadband, but no thanks to a state legislature so beholden to Time Warner Cable, it let the cable giant write its own law to keep potential competitors away.

The passage of H129 was almost a given after Republicans regained control of both chambers of the state legislature in 2011 for the first time since 1870. The bill made it almost impossible for any of the state’s existing community-owned broadband networks to expand out of their immediate service areas. It also discouraged any other rural towns from even considering starting a public broadband network to solve pervasive broadband problems in their communities.

It was not the finest moment for many of H.129’s supporters, who had to explain to the media and constituents why the state’s largest cable operator needed protection from potential competition and more importantly, why public officials were catering to the corporate giant’s interests over that of the public.

“I wish you’d turn the camera off now because I am going to get up and leave if you don’t,” said Rep. Julia Howard

Rep. Julia Howard (R-Davie, Iredell) found herself losing her cool when WNCN reporters in Raleigh caught up with her and confronted her with the fact her campaign coffers had been filled by the state’s largest telecom companies. She didn’t have an answer for that. Moments later, she appeared ready to flee the interview.

“I wish you’d turn the camera off now because I am going to get up and leave if you don’t,” Howard told the reporter.

Rep. Marilyn Avila was so close to Marc Trathen, then Time Warner Cable’s top-lobbyist in the state, we decided five years ago it would be more accurate to list Time Warner Cable as her sole constituent. Avila’s name appeared on the bill, but it was readily apparent Time Warner Cable drafted most of its provisions. The nearest city in Avila’s own district wanted no part of H129, and neither did many of her constituents.

The bill managed to pass the legislature and after becoming law effectively jammed up community broadband expansion in many parts of the state.

It would take the Federal Communications Commission to pre-empt the legislation on the grounds it was nakedly anti-competitive and prevented broadband improvements in communities major telecom companies have ignored for years.

As a result of the FCC’s actions, the community of Pinetops now has access to gigabit broadband, five years late, thanks in part to Rep. Avila who got a $290 dinner for her efforts and was honored as a guest speaker at a cable industry function in recognition of her service… to Time Warner Cable.

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

Greenlight, Wilson’s community-owned fiber to the home provider, switched on service in the community this spring to any of the 600 Pinetops homes that wanted it, and many did.

“We just love it!” said Brenda Harrell, the former acting town manager.

In fact, Greenlight is now delivering the best broadband in Edgecombe County, and deploying fiber to the home service was hardly a stretch for Greenlight, which was already installing fiber optics to manage an automated meter infrastructure project. The only thing keeping better broadband out of the hands of Pinetops residents was a law written by an industry that loathes competition and will stop it at all costs. Time Warner Cable didn’t bother to offer service in the community even after its bill became law and residents endured years of unreliable DSL or dialup access instead. Talk about a win-lose scenario. Time Warner Cable got to keep its comfortable cable monopoly while many families had to drive their children to businesses miles away just to borrow their Wi-Fi signal to finish homework assignments.

Faster broadband is likely to be transformative for the quiet rural community. Current town manager Lorenzo Carmon sees more than nearby fields of sweet potatoes and soybeans. With gigabit fiber and cheap local housing, Pinetops could become a bedroom community for upper income professionals now living in Greenville, a university town heavily populated by doctors, students, and high-tech knowledge economy workers. If and when they arrive, they’ll find a tech-ready community, right down to the local Piggly-Wiggly supermarket, which now has fiber fast internet service too.

Pinetops offers proof of the obscenity of bought-and-paid-for-politicians supporting corporate protectionism that harms people, harms education, harms jobs, and leaves rural communities with no clear path to the digital economy of the 21st century. Legislation like H129, which continues to be enforced in more than a few U.S. states, needs to be pre-empted nationwide or even better repealed by state legislators.

But North Carolina’s legislature still isn’t getting the message. They are outraged the FCC outsmarted Time Warner Cable and them, and are now wasting time and resources to have the FCC’s pre-emption overturned in court, evidently so that rural North Carolina can continue to tough it out with DSL indefinitely. That’s political malpractice and North Carolina voters need to show the door to any elected representative that cares more about the interests of a giant cable company than what is good for you and your community. Reps. Avila and Howard don’t have to live with 3Mbps DSL, so why should you?

“If the private sector is not providing the services, the government has to step in,” said Carmon. “The internet is just like electricity. You can’t live without it.”

We couldn’t agree more.

The Federal Communications Commission is getting an earful from satellite provider Dish Network, upset with the agency’s proposal to boost regulatory fees covering direct broadcast satellite services by 125% this year.

If the FCC adopts its new fee structure, Dish will pay 24 cents per subscriber (up from 12¢) per year to cover the cost of full-time employees at the FCC who spend their days monitoring and regulating satellite television providers. Satellite companies will also pay a one-time fee of 3¢ per subscriber in 2016 to cover the FCC’s downsizing expenses.

The regulator has successfully found a way to cover some of its expenses by charging the companies it oversees “user fees.” In 2015, the FCC collected nearly $340 million in regulatory fees. This year, the FCC wants more, seeking to impose a temporary “facility reduction cost” surcharge that will cover the expenses of moving employees to new, smaller offices, or downsizing the current ones to save money. The FCC says that will cost an extra $44 million. Taxpayers won’t pay those expenses, but pay television customers ultimately will when providers pass both of those fees on.

Dish says the rate hike is unjustified because of its size and scope, and runs contrary to the FCC’s goal of minimizing consumer bill shock. The satellite provider also wants the FCC to explain how it can justify more than doubling user fees while downsizing.

If the FCC doesn’t answer, the American Cable Association, representing small independent cable operators, is willing to share their views on the matter. The ACA complains the FCC isn’t charging DirecTV and Dish enough, noting they are still getting preferential treatment over cable and IPTV providers that are being asked to pay $1 per subscriber this year.

“There is absolutely no basis for keeping the proposed DBS fee levels over 75% below those proposed for other entities in the Cable/IPTV category,” wrote ACA president Matt Polka in comments to the FCC. “DBS providers should be paying the same Media Bureau regulatory fee.”

Polka pointed to AT&T’s acquisition of DirecTV as an example of how disproportionate fees cost small independent cable companies much more on a per-subscriber basis than telecom giant AT&T has to pay for almost 20 million DirecTV satellite customers.

“AT&T, now the nation’s largest [pay TV company], operates two types of services – its U-verse IPTV service and its DirecTV DBS service,” noted Polka. “Yet, AT&T will be assessed starkly lower regulatory fees for its approximately 20 million DirecTV subscribers than it will pay for its approximately 6 million IPTV subscribers, even though all of these services make absolutely comparable use of Media Bureau […]  resources and AT&T’s advocacy […] is on behalf of all its [pay TV] subscribers.”

Polka wants fee parity – charging the same user fees for all providers, regardless of the technology they use.

“Doing so will avoid the competitive distortions the current fee structure creates by having cable operators and IPTV providers, most of whom are far smaller than the DBS providers, cross-subsidize the fee burden of their primary and direct competitors in the marketplace,” Polka argued.

Whatever fee structure is ultimately approved by the FCC, customers can be certain providers will pad those fees when passing them on to customers. For more than a decade, some providers have used regulatory fee increases amounting to spare change as an excuse to pass on new “regulatory surcharges” that are many times more than what those providers actually pass on to the government.

“It’s a price increase,” bluntly notes Mark Cooper from the Consumer Federation of America back in 2004.

This spring, The Consumerist broke down a typical AT&T U-verse bill loaded in junk fees and surcharges. (The RED numbers [1, 4-10, 13-14, 17-20, 22] are AT&T-originated fees, fake surcharges/bill padding, or fees that represent the cost of doing business; BLUE numbers [2-3, 11-12, 15-16, 21, 23-25] are real government fees passed on to local, state, and federal taxing authorities.)

A federal appeals court today sided with the Federal Communications Commission, upholding its view broadband service is an essential utility that can no longer be left unregulated and open to the whims of large cable and phone companies.

The 2-1 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia firmly establishes the FCC’s right to transition broadband from its old designation as a barely regulated “information service” to a “telecommunications service” subject to broad oversight by regulators under the FCC’s “Title II” authority.

The most immediate implication of the court’s decision is upholding the FCC’s Net Neutrality rules, which require Internet providers to grant equal access to all legal Internet content and applications regardless of the source, without favoring or blocking particular products or websites.

“After a decade of debate and legal battles, today’s ruling affirms the commission’s ability to enforce the strongest possible Internet protections — both on fixed and mobile networks — that will ensure the Internet remains open, now and in the future,” said FCC chairman Tom Wheeler.

The ruling left broadband providers smarting, especially wireless carriers that once expected to be exempted from Net Neutrality regulations. Wireless broadband services are now also considered common carrier utility services subject to Net Neutrality.

“The people have spoken, the courts have spoken and this should be the last word on Net Neutrality,” Free Press President and CEO Craig Aaron said in a statement.

At least one Republican FCC commissioner, Ajit Pai, disagreed and was heartened by news a very disappointed AT&T was vowing a quick appeal to the Supreme Court.

“We have always expected this issue to be decided by the Supreme Court, and we look forward to participating in that appeal,” said David McAtee II, the senior executive vice president and general counsel for AT&T.

“I continue to believe that these regulations are unlawful, and I hope that the parties challenging them will continue the legal fight,” Pai added. Pai has been a frequent critic of Net Neutrality.

But AT&T may find itself in the unenviable position of taking their case to the Supreme Court without the late Antonin Scalia on the bench. The ongoing opposition by Senate Republicans to hold hearings to consider President Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to fill the open ninth seat on the court opens the door to a 4-4 tie vote on the FCC’s authority to regulate broadband as a utility, which would automatically affirm the lower court ruling.

Bull Connor was Birmingham, Ala.’s notorious Commissioner of Public Safety in the 1950’s and 1960’s.

In an astonishing guest editorial published by USA TODAY, Rev. Jesse Jackson evoked imagery of the 1960s civil rights movement as a backdrop to claim the Federal Communication Commission’s plan to promote an open, competitive market for set-top boxes was racist.

“National news coverage of the snarling dogs, water hoses and church bombings in the American South were the catalysts to exposing the ugly truths of racism and bigotry in the 1960s. Local news outlets gave new meaning to what the struggle looked like for people on its front lines,” wrote Jackson. “That is why a new proposal at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to regulate TV ‘set top boxes’ has raised so much concern.”

That “concern” has come almost entirely from the cable and telco-TV industry and their allies, which have compared the potential breakup of a lucrative cable TV equipment monopoly to anti-Americanism, minority television genocide, an invitation to piracy and a pathway for total world domination by Google.

In April, we reported the rhetoric surrounding the proposal, which would create an open standard allowing any manufacturer to make and sell their own set-top box, had already taken Hyperbole Hill. But Rev. Jackson’s latest guest editorial rockets the ridiculousness of the cable industry’s opposition into the stratosphere.

Jackson claims (wrongly) the proposal will lead third-party manufacturers to segregate minority television content, apparently in a way that resembles life in rural Mississippi in 1962. It evokes dreams of hordes of Google vans roaming across the southern countryside looking for trouble by stripping networks like Revolt and Vme TV of their ad revenue and copyright protection. It just isn’t true. But one line in Jackson’s commentary does prove revealing — noting all these terrible events could all take place “without any compensation.”

Jackson

This is the diamond in the rough of this near-senseless editorial. Like most things in the world of Big Telecom public policy, it’s all about the money. Jackson’s Rainbow PUSH Coalition apparently isn’t what it used to be. Originally created to promote civil rights and diversity, the organization these days is just as likely to promote Big Telecom mergers and its public policy agenda, usually in exchange for contributions to Jackson’s groups, although such quid-pro-quo is always hotly denied. Therefore, we shall call them monetary “coincidences.” His coincidental association with Comcast, AT&T, Verizon and others runs back more than a decade:

• Bell Atlantic (later Verizon) coincidentally donated $1 million to Jackson and his groups. In 1999, Jackson coincidentally endorsed the merger of GTE and Bell Atlantic into a new entity known as Verizon, which coincidentally pledged $300,000 to Jackson annually through the year 2002;
• In 1998 Jackson was strongly opposed to the merger of SBC and Ameritech (which would later emerge as AT&T), suggesting it was anti-democratic. After the two companies donated $500,000 to Jackson’s Citizenship Education Fund (given a dubious rating by Charity Navigator), Jackson coincidentally did a complete 180, praising the merger. It didn’t hurt that Ameritech coincidentally sold part of its cellular business to Georgetown Partners, owned coincidentally by one of Jackson’s closest friends.
• Not to be left out, AT&T coincidentally donated $425,000 to Jackson’s Citizenship Education Fund in 1999, right after Jackson coincidentally withdrew his opposition to the merger of AT&T and TCI Cable (later sold to Comcast).
• Jackson coincidentally has maintained a regular presence in proceedings involving Comcast’s various business dealings, particularly its merger with NBCUniversal, which it coincidentally endorsed as “pro-consumer.”

Jackson mentioned his views have the support of certain other civil rights organization including the National Urban League and the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), two groups Stop the Cap! has written about extensively regarding their ongoing committed support of Big Telecom mergers, deregulation, and other public policy agendas. They don’t work for free — substantial contributions and other compensation from those same companies head into the coffers of both groups. LULAC counts AT&T, Comcast, Cox, the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, Time Warner Cable and Verizon as members of their “corporate alliance.” None of those companies support the FCC’s plan to open up the set-top box marketplace.

Jackson cheapens the legacy of the civil rights movement in his efforts to draw comparisons between the horrible atrocities of the past with the fat equipment profits the cable industry is counting on in the future.

His views are also simply provably wrong. Jackson’s claim that the government was somehow responsible for the destruction of local multicultural newspapers at a time when the entire newspaper industry continues to struggle against online media is ludicrous. His myopic view that the elimination of a minority tax certificate program is the reason minorities don’t own many radio and television stations today ignores the fact many former minority owners cashed out and sold those stations (at a massive profit) after the Clinton Administration deregulated the industry in the late 1990s, which lead to a massive wave of ownership consolidation. Finding individuals, minority or otherwise, that still own local radio and television stations isn’t as easy as it once was.

Jackson and his supporters are wasting their time fighting to preserve the dying concept of the 500-channel linear TV marketplace. Consumers, minorities included, are not clamoring for more minority networks littering the cable dial that spend much of their broadcast day airing program length commercials and reruns of Good Times or The Cosby Show. Many of these networks only add to the growing cost of cable TV. Viewers want on-demand access to quality original programming they can actually find and watch.

We’d also remind Jackson minorities also pay the outrageous price of set-top box rentals, something Jackson and his organization should be sensitive about. Busting the set-top box monopoly means every American will pay lower rates for this equipment. We do understand it won’t help Jackson’s bank account, or those of other civil rights groups that kowtow to their corporate friends, but who exactly do they represent?

Daring to suggest that this debate has anything to do with Bull Connor’s outrageous behavior in Birmingham, Ala. in 1963, where Connor ordered the city fire department to turn fire hoses on peaceful civil rights protesters and attacked them with police dogs, tarnishes the reputation of Jackson and his group and demonstrates just how desperate the cable industry is getting trying to credibly defend a monopoly. Jackson should withdraw those remarks.