Brian is integrally involved in Greenlight, the highly-recommended municipal fiber to the home broadband service in Wilson, North Carolina
Because of our Internet disruption late this morning and into this afternoon, and the time considerations in the ongoing fight against anti-consumer nonsense from the likes of Senator Hoyle, I am going to re-post an article from Brian Bowman, who is one of the hardest fighters we have for the municipal broadband option in North Carolina. He has an excellent round-up of the latest events. We’ll launch another Call to Action shortly once we coordinate our response to this latest attempt to throw North Carolina residents under the bus.
Okay, I know there’s a lot to keep up with in this ongoing battle, but there’s a new development you need to know about. According to the Greensboro News and Record’s Mark Binker, the municipal broadband moratorium from Senate bill 1209 has been moved to another bill, House bill 1840; apparently to get around a committee that the sponsor, Sen. David Hoyle (D-Gaston), considered unfriendly.
Here’s today’s story, courtesy of the News and Record:
For those watching the municipal broadband moratorium bill (background from me here and from the N+O here) you have another bill to keep track of.
The Senate Rules Committee attached the broadband study and moratorium as constructed in S 1209 and dumped it into H 1840, which has to do with extending E-NC authority.
Sen. David Hoyle (D-NC)
I asked Sen. David Hoyle, chairman of the Rules Committee, why he was sending over a bill that has already passed the Senate.
“I’m sending it over with something the House likes,” Hoyle said. “I can’t get a committee hearing on the broadband.”
Rep. Bill Faison, the House committee chairman holding onto the bill, attended Senate Rules to watch the proceedings but did not comment to the committee.
This is the legislative version of trading paint. If the House fails to concur on H 1840, the measure will be sent to a conference committee. At that point, if no senator signs off on a conference report, the bill goes nowhere. So Hoyle can say, give me a hearing on the muni broadband bill or I lock up you E-NC bill.
“All I’m asking for is a hearing, an up or down vote,” he said. “It’s not fair for someone just to hold my bill and not hear it.”
That collective coffee spit you just heard was Senate Republicans thinking to themselves about all the bills they can’t get heard in their own chamber.
Telstra is Australia's largest telecommunications company. (Photo: Telstra)
It’s not as if the Australian government didn’t warn private broadband providers, notably Telstra. For the past several years, Australians have endured expensive, slow, heavily usage-limited broadband service that has put the country well behind many other Commonwealth nations. Australian Communications Minister Stephen Conroy finally warned the nation’s largest telecommunications provider if it didn’t move forward on upgrades and improved service, the government would be forced to step in to protect the national interest.
Instead of improving service, Telstra spent years stonewalling the government and the Australian public, while banking high profits for broadband service. That’s a familiar story for North Americans, stuck with companies like Bell, Rogers, AT&T, Comcast and Verizon — all of whom seek ultimate control over what kind of service you receive, what you pay for it, and what websites you can and, perhaps down the road, cannot visit without paying a surcharge.
Australia is closing the chapter on this story with a happier outcome for its 22 million citizens. Perhaps the United States and Canada could learn a thing or two from the folks down under.
Bringing U.S. Oligopoly-Style Management to Australian Broadband: The Sol Trujillo Years — 2005 to 2009
Telstra, a former government monopoly comparable to the American Bell System, was privatized in the late 1990s. Telstra looked to the United States for a chief executive that had experience navigating that transition. They found Sol Trujillo working his way up the management ladder at AT&T, finally culminating in chairmanship of former Baby Bell Qwest Communications. Would Trujillo like to take on the challenge of managing Australia’s largest phone company? Trujillo signed on with as Telstra’s CEO in 2005 promising to modernize the business and to bring American-style innovation to the South Pacific.
Instead, Trujillo established an American-style rapacious oligopoly.
[flv width=”424″ height=”260″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Nine Australia Trujillo War on Unions.flv[/flv]
Channel Nine in Australia reported on Telstra’s sudden interest in union-busting after Sol Trujillo arrived in 2005. (1 minute)
Sol Trujillo
In his first year at the company, Trujillo started an all-out war to get rid of Telstra’s organized labor, slashing 10,000 jobs to “save the company money” all while boosting his own salary. What started as $3 million in compensation in 2005 would rise to more than $11 million dollars just four years later, even as the value of Telstra declined by more than $25 billion on his watch.
Trujillo alienated his employees and officials in the Australian government. Then-Prime Minister John Howard attacked Trujillo’s salary boost as abusive.
“I’m not complaining about the salary I get but I do think the average Australian, who gets paid a lot less than I do … regards that sort of salary as being absolutely unreasonable,” Mr Howard said on Southern Cross radio. “And it doesn’t help the capitalist system, which I believe in very passionately, that some people appear to abuse it.”
Trujillo’s salary was 38 times greater than the highest official in Australia’s government.
The average Australian retiree gets by on $219AUS a week.
Trujillo had to make due with more than $211,000 a week.
[flv width=”424″ height=”260″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Nine Australia Telstra Salary Hike.flv[/flv]
Channel Nine ran this report on the controversy over Sol Trujillo’s compensation package. That old meme about having to pay high salaries to attract quality talent would have been more convincing had Trujillo’s policies not caused a $25 billion reduction in Telstra’s value. (2 minutes)
Customers weren’t exactly endeared to spending more of their money on Telstra products and services. Telstra had already embarked on cost controls for network upgrades, leveraged its monopoly power in many parts of the country with high rates for usage-restricted service, and bungled a critical application to participate in Australia’s National Broadband Network.
Australia’s National Broadband Plan, a roadmap for broadband improvements, set pre-conditions to involve small and medium-sized businesses in network construction. Trujillo balked, demanding that Telstra — and only Telstra — should have the right to determine what kind of network should be built in the country. More importantly, unless they exclusively ran it, the company would do everything in its power to block or destroy it.
Internet Overcharging schemes limit enjoyment of broadband usage across Australia. Telstra provides a usage meter estimator that includes all of the useless measurements for e-mail, images, and web browsing. But throw in some movie watching and the gas gauge really starts to spike.
The Sydney Morning Herald business reporter Ian Verrender was stunned:
Telstra has employed a three-step strategy to muscle out any competition.
It can be neatly condensed into three words: Bluster, Belligerence and Obfuscation. We [just] saw it again in spades.
Telstra has been excluded from one of the most ambitious infrastructure projects announced by a Federal Government in decades: the construction of a national broadband network.
Could it really be that Telstra’s board and management were so incompetent that they could not get past stage one in a tender process of this magnitude?
After all, there were only four main criteria that had to be met. The first was the proposal had to be lodged in English. The second and third had equally low hurdles. Metric measurements – not the old inches, feet and miles – were required and the bid had to be signed. Nothing too difficult there.
But the fourth criterion appeared to stump Telstra. It didn’t include any plan for the inclusion of small business. And so the Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, was obliged to exclude Telstra, an announcement that shook 12 per cent from the value of the country’s biggest telecommunications company.
This was no accident on Telstra’s part. It knew it was lodging a non-conforming proposal. Why, you ask?
The answer is simple. Telstra does not want a national broadband network, particularly one that involves anyone else. That includes taxpayers.
And if one has to be built, Telstra will do everything in its power to delay or kill the process. Yesterday marked stage one in a protracted war, ultimately designed to defeat one of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s key election promises.
Trujillo claimed yesterday that Telstra had been unfairly excluded from the process on a technicality. That’s just rubbish.
In recent months, the company, its chairman, Don McGauchie, and Trujillo repeatedly threatened to walk away from the tender process, and lodged the proposal only a few hours before the deadline.
Trujillo’s rhetoric yesterday was laced with the usual mixture of bravado and threats. He compared Australia to North Korea or Cuba. He declared only Telstra was capable of building the type of network required by the Government.
But two lines stand out. First this: “Customers make the choice of who they do business with; regulators and governments and others do not.” And then: “We reserve our rights regarding future action.”
The message is clear. Telstra will launch legal action at every opportunity – and even when there aren’t opportunities.
That time-honored American practice of simply suing your way through any legislative or regulatory roadblocks threatened to come to Australia.
The exclusion of Telstra from such a revolutionary broadband project didn’t sit well with the board or shareholders, and directly led to Trujillo’s ouster in 2009. By then, he had alienated customers, the government, and just about everyone else. Perhaps the government would allow a second look at a Telstra broadband application if it was submitted by someone other than Sol Trujillo? It couldn’t hurt to find out.
[flv width=”424″ height=”260″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Nine Australia Telstra Trujillo Quits 2-26-09.flv[/flv]
Channel Nine covers the ousting of Sol Trujillo, wondering what sort of golden parachute he’d receive on the way out the door. (3 minutes)
Just weeks after leaving, Trujillo decided to settle scores with Australia, telling reporters that he thought the country was backwards and racist.
[flv width=”424″ height=”260″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Nine Australia Trujillo Calls Australia Racist 3-09.flv[/flv]
Payback time. Trujillo threw a hissyfit in a BBC interview calling Australia’s lack of laissez-faire regulatory policies backwards, and treatment towards him racist. (Channel Nine – 1 minute)
The Post-Trujillo Era: More Arrogance and Ruthlessness, But a Communications Minister Outmaneuvers the Telecom Giant — 2009 to Present Day
Telstra spent the summer of 2009 attempting to heal the Trujillo-caused wounds with conciliatory statements in the Australian media. Telstra’s new chief executive, David Thodey, admitted the company’s customer service record needed improvement. He distanced himself from some of the more caustic comments from the former CEO, and claimed the company was on-track to be a major participant in improving Australia’s broadband experience.
Conroy
But as the months progressed, Australia’s Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy ultimately concluded he was getting the lip service treatment that Telstra had delivered Australians for years. Conroy, already suspicious of the company’s control-minded tendencies, quietly began bending the ear of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. Conroy had watched Telstra’s steadfast refusal to work constructively towards a National Broadband Network (NBN). By last summer, the company was making proposals for underwhelming broadband expansion. Fiber optic broadband was unnecessary and expensive, they said. Besides, the service Telstra was providing was already good enough.
Australians didn’t agree. Part of the platform that brought the Rudd government to power was the promise of better broadband service in Australia. Waiting for Telstra to provide it was a futile exercise.
Conroy told Rudd the government should not be setting its broadband policy agenda based on what worked most conveniently for private providers. If they won’t move, then let’s get them out of the way, Conroy suggested. Rudd, working for the interests of the Australian people — not just a handful of telecom companies seeking riches with substandard service at monopoly prices, agreed.
After reviewing the proposals submitted to design and construct 21st century broadband service for Australia, Rudd dismissed them all, calling them inadequate. The government, he announced, would go it alone and build the network itself — delivering a fiber to the home network for 90 percent of Australians on an open network available to any provider that wanted to rent access at wholesale rates.
More importantly, Conroy was not going to allow Telstra to continually block progress on the NBN. Conroy was not some supine minister willing to compromise away the goal of super-fast affordable broadband. His critics called him Machiavellian, slashing and burning anything that stood in his way. But Conroy was steadfast — corporations would never be allowed to dictate broadband terms to the government. He warned Telstra to cooperate or face the consequences.
Telstra continued to stall and stonewall, and last September, the Rudd government delivered what it promised — a forced break-up of Telstra. The company was given a choice — either sell back its copper wire landline network to the government or divest itself of satellite TV service Foxtel and lose access to any additional wireless mobile frequencies for Telstra’s cellular service.
The equivalent in the United States would be to declare fiber to the home to be in the national interest, and if AT&T and Verizon didn’t deliver it to nearly every home in their service areas, the government would move in and do it themselves, taking back ownership of the AT&T and Verizon’s infrastructure along the way.
[flv width=”512″ height=”308″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Network 10 Aus Telstra Break-Up 9-15-09.flv[/flv]
Network Ten covered the announced break up of Telstra by the federal government. (2 minutes)
Channel Nine ran several reports on the announced breakup of Telstra, including an interview with the opposition. (6 minutes)
Australia Declares Broadband a Utility Service that Private Providers Cannot Control
Monday marked a day in history for Telstra, agreeing to sell back its copper wire landline business (for which it will receive $11 billion in compensation). In return, Telstra is assured wholesale access to the new fiber broadband network, and can market products and services on it. It cannot, however, serve as a gatekeeper to keep competitors out nor maintain virtual monopoly service, especially for less suburban and rural customers.
Some telecom analysts believe the deal is actually good news for Telstra, if they’d see beyond their control tendencies. After all, they say, Telstra gets to rid itself of a legacy copper-wire landline network that is expensive to maintain and serves a dwindling number of consumers, many who have switched to wireless. They also get to develop and market new high bandwidth applications on a network they are no longer responsible for financing.
It’s a win for the government as well who gets a single, national fiber network built in the public interest, which makes it far easier to recoup the billions in costs to build it. They’ll even likely make a profit suitable to defray the costs of subsidizing wireless broadband service for Australia’s rural residents, to be served with at least 12Mbps connections. No cost-recovery fees on customer bills, no usage limitations that restrict innovation, and broadband that serves everyone, not just a handful of corporations that seek to monetize every aspect of it.
Conroy wouldn’t think much of America’s National Broadband Plan, which relies near-exclusively on private providers voluntarily doing the right thing. Conroy stopped putting blind faith in Australia’s large telecommunications companies. The Obama Administration hasn’t.
We’ve seen millions spent lobbying to permit a handful of providers to control broadband service on their terms. Few will provide fiber to the home service and many are content leaving rural Americans with dial-up service. With dreams of Internet Overcharging schemes to manipulate usage to maximize profits even higher, things could get much worse. What’s right for AT&T isn’t right for us.
For Australia, who has lived under such monopolistic broadband regimes for over a decade, a National Broadband Network without arbitrary usage limits and available to all — rural and urban — is the promised land. It will leapfrog Australia well ahead of the United States and Canada, with far faster speeds and better prices, all because a government stood up to a corporate provider that preferred to overpay its executives instead of getting the job done right.
Australia had a reality check — broadband is a utility service necessary for every citizen who wants it. Just as electrification and universal phone service became ubiquitous in the last century, broadband will also join those services in the years ahead as commonplace in nearly every home.
If only the strength and conviction that is fueling Australia’s broadband future could also be found in the United States, where too often what is urgently needed today gets frittered away into “maybe we can have it someday” compromises with big telecom and their lobbyists. That isn’t good enough.
ABC National Radio interviewed telecom analysts about the implications of today’s deal with Telstra to retire Australia’s copper wire phone network (June 21, 2010) (4 minutes, 17 seconds)
You must remain on this page to hear the clip, or you can download the clip and listen later.
Australia is set to leapfrog over the United States and Canada, declaring its intent to deliver fiber broadband service to the vast majority of its citizens within eight years. The country embarked on a National Broadband Plan more than a year before the United States, declaring the current state of usage-limited, slow, expensive, and incomplete broadband coverage to be unacceptable.
Australia discarded an earlier plan to work with private providers to build the network when government officials faced opposition from private providers who did not want to lose control of the broadband market. In a surprising decision last September, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced the government would commence construction of a fiber to the home network itself, excluding private providers from participation.
NBN Company, a government-owned entity, will construct the $43 billion network over eight years, delivering 100Mbps speeds on a fiber network. The infrastructure will be designed for an easy upgrade to 1 Gigabit service as bandwidth demand intensifies.
A separate deal concluded today with Telstra, Australia’s largest telecommunications company, will retire the nation’s copper wire landline network and cable systems, to be replaced by NBN fiber.
Up to 37,000 jobs will be created to build the network across the country, supplemented with wireless broadband for Australia’s most rural areas.
But some are complaining the network is too extravagant and expensive, adding their displeasure with the Rudd government’s strong-arming of Telstra to give up its network.
Opposition finance spokesman Andrew Robb said taxpayers would be on the hook for the project.
“It’ll come with a multi-billion dollar taxpayer debt that will have to be paid off over decades,” Robb said, adding if elected, the opposition promises to scrap the plan.
[flv width=”424″ height=”260″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Nine Network New National Broadband Plan 4-6-09.flv[/flv]
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd originally introduced his nationwide fiber network proposal in April 2009. Channel Nine provides this roundup of the original announcement, media reaction, and a few insults from the opposition. Just a day after the plan was introduced, Communications Minister Stephen Conroy warned Telstra to “back off,” referring to the company’s immediate lobbying effort to block the proposal. (11 minutes)
When millions of dollars are at stake, some commercial broadband providers will stop at nothing to preserve the duopoly they enjoy across most of North Carolina. Their formula for success — delivering the least amount of service at the highest possible price. When communities like Wilson and Salisbury decided that formula wasn’t working for them, they embarked on their own municipally-built, fiber-based broadband networks. It wasn’t something either community took lightly. They asked, they pleaded, they begged for better broadband service from incumbent providers who decided what they were providing was already good enough.
The biggest shock of these providers’ lives came when both communities decided to build better networks themselves.
Now, the commercial providers who are challenged to upgrade to compete are instead spending enormous sums of money in the North Carolina legislature to put a stop to these municipal projects. Why spend money on upgrading when you can simply ban the potential competition?
Last year, Stop the Cap! teamed up with other consumer advocates to put a stop to legislation custom-written by the cable industry and introduced by a very-compliant state legislator. When our readers and others called to complain, some found the phone handed off to a cable lobbyist literally sitting in his office!
Your outrage over paying big bills for bad service from too few providers was heard in Raleigh, and the legislation was de-fanged and buried in a committee charged with “studying the issue.” The legislator who introduced it resigned under an ethical cloud last fall.
Unfortunately for consumers in North Carolina, there is always someone else willing to pick up where the last one who sold his constituents down the river left off.
Our North Carolina issues coordinator Jay Ovittore, who is now working with Communities United for Broadband to promote better broadband, is here with a report about the latest developments in North Carolina and a Call to Action! for all of our readers. Preserving successful municipal broadband projects and those working to get off the ground protects this option for every community faced with intransigent broadband providers who won’t improve service. — Phillip Dampier
As I told everyone on Stop the Cap! last summer, they would be back.
They are, and now they’ve shown us their cards.
North Carolina’s incumbent cable and phone companies are once again trying to ram through an anti-municipal broadband bill, and their timing is designed to rush it through committee before a groundswell of consumer opposition has a chance to build. Time is short — the bill will be taken up April 21st in the Revenue Laws Study Committee, so your immediate action is imperative!
Clodfelter
This year’s push for anti-consumer legislation comes courtesy of Senator Daniel G. Clodfelter (D-Mecklenburg County).
He reportedly wants a moratorium on all municipal broadband deployments on the alleged basis that these are bad for the private sector and will harm state tax revenue. Hello? Virtually every municipal broadband project underway fuels job creation as crews work to install the fiber optic networks that will come to represent an economic catalyst and job creator. When communities no longer have to turn away digital economy jobs lost because of inadequate broadband by existing providers, that’s an economic victory for hard-pressed North Carolina, where unemployment is at 11.2 percent these days — 10th worst in the country.
The FCC’s National Broadband Plan has prioritized stimulating the deployment of ultra high-speed broadband (100/50Mbps) service to 100 million households in ten years, so why are some in our legislature standing in the way of better broadband options for North Carolina? You need to ask them!
Just look at Wilson’s community broadband project for evidence of a broadband success story. Wilson pleaded with providers to deliver 21st century broadband service to no avail. So Wilson did it themselves.
Cable and phone companies howled in protest. They even brought in their astroturfing friends from corporate-funded groups like FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity to try and hookwink consumers into opposing municipal broadband.
It’s just another classic case of providers not wanting to spend money to upgrade their networks to compete. Communities like Wilson getting the broadband service they deserve are good examples of why the industry is afraid such projects could spread.
Watch what happens when a municipal provider competes for your business. Catherine Rice of Action Audits delivered the undeniable proof at a December NC House Select Committee on High Speed Internet Access in Rural and Urban Areas hearing, showing while cable and broadband rates across the state march ever higher, they strangely don’t in Wilson, where GreenLight, the municipal alternative, keeps rates in check. Click here to download a PDF copy of the slides Rice refers to in her presentation. (11 minutes)
Some members of the legislature will stand with their constituents and vote against this anti-consumer nightmare. Some may not be fully informed on the issues and are only hearing the telecommunications industry talking points. For some others, I’m afraid it’s a case of following the money.
The telecommunications industry in North Carolina is very generous to their benefactors, only too willing to return the favor writing the industry’s wish-list into state law.
You will recognize some of the names from the Follow the Money series I wrote last year (read Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3). It’s a new year, so Part 4 will follow in the coming days, updating the financial contributions of incumbents and introducing new members and how much they’ve accepted from this industry.
Ironically, one of the legislators, Rep. Pryor Allan Gibson, III works as a contractor for Time Warner Cable! His vote will be particularly interesting to follow.
North Carolina Legislature
North Carolina Call to Action!
Phone calls are always the most effective, and they are timely coming just days before the April 21st meeting of the Revenue Laws Study Committee. But you can also e-mail representatives (and that’s not a bad idea even if you also called). North Carolina deserves world-class, next-generation broadband. Don’t allow a handful of the same companies overcharging you for today’s slow service strangle your best chance for competition!
Here is a sample e-mail message to send to all of the Committee members involved:
Subject: Don’t You Dare Vote for an Anti-Municipal Broadband Bill!
Message: As a consumer, I was disturbed to hear the Revenue Laws Study Committee was prepared to vote for an industry-sponsored Anti-Municipal Broadband Bill on April 21st. Please do not vote for this or any other bill that removes competitive choice for broadband service. Our local communities should not be stopped from deploying 21st century fiber to the home systems other providers refuse to deliver. Such fiber networks create jobs, keep North Carolina business competitive, and stimulate economic development, which will deliver needed tax revenue.
The same providers backing this bill that are not delivering service to unserved communities, or offer inadequate service in others, have had a decade to deliver the service municipal providers are actually providing today in our state. Instead of delivering, they’ve offered a litany of excuses and now want special legislative protections to preserve their entrenched market position.
As a consumer, I am fed up with relentless rate increases year after year. In communities like Wilson, where a municipal provider delivers excellent service, the rate increases from cable and phone companies have stopped. A vote for this bill guarantees we’ll be paying higher and higher cable and phone bills indefinitely, and that’s something I would definitely remember come Election Day. Make no mistake — this proposed legislation is an obvious gift to the telecommunications industry at the expense of all of your constituents, including myself. That’s why I am confident you will stand up and make your opposition heard to this and similar measures.
At a time when the FCC’s National Broadband Plan envisions 100 million households with ultra-fast broadband service delivering economic benefits, it’s ironic our state legislature is even considering impeding the very providers that are on track to fulfill that goal.
With 11.2 percent unemployment — the 10th worst in the country, now is not the time to put a moratorium on North Carolina’s communities considering a better future through municipally-provided broadband.
With all this in mind, I am confident you will deliver for constituents like myself and oppose these industry-backed bills. I look forward to hearing from you soon on this issue.
For best results, use your own wording and talk about the broadband market in your community. You can reference the excitement over Google’s fiber to the home project.
Here are the Committee members to write or call, including their district area and what they do for a living:
(Please send individual messages to members, even if the contents are essentially the same — avoid simply CC’ing a single message to every representative.)
Sen. Daniel Gray Clodfelter (Co-Chair) Mecklenberg [email protected] (919) 715-8331 Democrat (704) 331-1041 Attorney
Sen. Daniel T. Blue, Jr. Wake [email protected] (919) 733-5752 Democrat (919) 833-1931 Attorney
Sen. Peter Samuel Brunstetter Forsyth [email protected] (919) 733-7850 Republican (336) 747-6604 Attorney
Sen. Fletcher Lee Hartsell, Jr. Cabarrus, Iredell [email protected] (919) 733-7223 Republican (704) 786-5161 Attorney
Sen. David W. Hoyle Gaston [email protected] (919) 733-5734 Democrat (704) 867-0822 Real Estate Developer/Investor
Sen. Samuel Clark Jenkins Edgecomb, Martin, Pitt [email protected] (919) 715-3040 Democrat (252) 823-7029 W.S. Clark Farms
Sen. Josh Stein Wake [email protected] (919)715-6400 Democrat (919)715-6400 Lawyer
Sen. Jerry W. Tillman Montgomery, Randolph [email protected] (919) 733-5870 Republican (336) 431-5325 Ret’d school teacher
Rep. Paul Luebke (Co-Chair) Durham [email protected] 919-733-7663 Democrat 919-286-0269 College Teacher
Rep. Harold J. Brubaker Randolph [email protected] 919-715-4946 Republican 336-629-5128 Real Estate Appraiser
Jesse and his nearby neighbors on the west side of Milton are frustrated. They live just 20 minutes away from Burlington, the largest city in the state of Vermont. Despite the proximity to a city with nearly 40,000 residents, there is no cell phone coverage in western Milton, no cable television service, and no DSL service from FairPoint Communications. For this part of Milton, it’s living living in 1990, where dial-up service was one’s gateway to the Internet.
Jesse and his immediate neighbors haven’t given up searching for broadband service options, but they face a united front of intransigent operators who refuse to make the investment to extend service down his well-populated street.
“After many calls to Comcast, they eventually sent us an estimate for over $17,000 to bring service to us, despite being less than a mile from their nearest station,” Jesse tells Vermont Public Radio. “They also made it very clear that there was no plan at any point in the future, 2010 or beyond, to come here unless we paid them the money.”
Jesse and his neighbors want to give Comcast money, but not $17,000.
For at least 15 percent of Vermonters, Jesse’s story is their story. Broadband simply remains elusive and out of reach.
Three years ago, Vermont’s Republican governor Jim Douglas announced the state would achieve 100 percent broadband coverage by 2010, making Vermont the nation’s first “e-State.”
Vermont Public Radio reviewed the progress Vermont is making towards becoming America’s first e-State. (January 20, 2010) (30 minutes)
You must remain on this page to hear the clip, or you can download the clip and listen later.
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Gov. Douglas
In June 2007 the state passed Act 79, legislation that established the Vermont Telecommunications Authority to facilitate the establishment and delivery of mobile phone and Internet access infrastructure and services for residents and businesses throughout Vermont.
The VTA, under the early leadership of Bill Shuttleworth, a former Verizon Communications senior manager, launched a modest broadband grant program to incrementally expand broadband access, often through existing service providers who agreed to use the money to extend service to unserved neighborhoods.
The Authority also acts as a clearinghouse for coordinating information about broadband projects across the state, although it doesn’t have any authority over those projects. Lately, the VTA has been backing Google’s “Think Big With a Gig” Initiative, except it promotes the state as a great choice for fiber, not just one or two communities within Vermont.
Vermont used this video to promote their bid to become a Google Fiber state. (2 minutes)
Some of the most dramatic expansion plans come from the East Central Vermont Community Fiber Network. ECFiber, a group of 22 local municipalities, in partnership with ValleyNet, a Vermont non-profit organization, is planning to implement a high-capacity fiber-optic network capable of serving 100% of homes and businesses in participating towns with Internet, telephone and cable television service. In 2008, the group coalesced around a proposal to construct a major fiber-to-the-home project to extend broadband across areas that often don’t even have slower speed DSL.
The ECFiber project brought communities together to provide the kind of broadband service private companies refused to provide. Vermont Public Radio explores the project and the enthusiasm of residents hopeful they will finally be able to get broadband service. (March 8, 2008) (24 minutes)
You must remain on this page to hear the clip, or you can download the clip and listen later.
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ECFiber's Partner Communities
The Vermont towns, which together number roughly 55,000 residents, decided to build their own network after FairPoint Communications and local cable companies refused to extend the reach of their services. Providers claim expanding service is not financially viable. For residents like sheep farmer Marian White, interviewed by The Wall Street Journal, that means another year of paying $60 a month for satellite fraudband, the speed and consumption-limited satellite Internet service.
White calls the satellite service unreliable, especially in winter when snow accumulates on the dish. Unlike many broadband users who vegetate for hours browsing the web, White actually gets an exercise routine while trying to get her satellite service to work.
“I open a window and I take a pan of water and, a cup at a time, I launch warm water at the satellite dish until I have melted all the snow off the dish,” Ms. White says. “It works.”
Other residents treat accessing the Internet the same way rural Americans plan a trip into town to buy supplies.
Kathi Terami from Tunbridge makes a list of things to do online and then, once a week, travels into town to visit the local public library which has a high speed connection. Terami downloads Sesame Street podcasts for her children, watches YouTube links sent by her sister, and tries to download whatever she thinks she might want to see or use over the coming week.
A fiber to the home network like ECFiber would change everything for small town Vermonters. The implications are enormous according to project manager Tim Nulty.
“People are truly afraid their communities are going to die if they aren’t on the communications medium that drives the country culturally and economically,” he says. “It’s one of the most intensely felt political issues in Vermont after health care.”
Despite the plan’s good intentions, one obstacle after another has prevented ECFiber from making much headway:
The VTA rejected the proposal in 2008, calling it unfeasible;
Plans over the summer and fall of 2008 to approach big national investment banks ran head-on into the sub-prime mortgage collapse, which caused banks to stop lending;
An alternative plan to build the network with public debt financing, using smaller investors, collapsed along with Lehman Brothers on September 14, 2008;
An attempt by Senator Pat Leahy (D-Vermont) to insert federal loan guarantees into the stimulus bill in February 2009 was thwarted by partisan wrangling;
Attempts to secure federal broadband grant stimulus funding has been rejected by the Commerce Department;
Opposition to the plan and objections over its funding come from incumbent providers like FairPoint, who claim the project is unnecessary because they will provide service in those areas… eventually.
For the indefinite future, it appears Ms. White will continue to throw warm cups of water out the window on cold winter mornings.
Vermont Edition takes a comprehensive look at where the state stands in broadband and wireless deployment. (April 8, 2009) (46 minutes)
You must remain on this page to hear the clip, or you can download the clip and listen later.
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For every Tunbridge resident with a story about life without broadband, there are many more across Vermont living with hit or miss Internet access.
Take Marie from Middlesex.
Most residents in more rural areas of Vermont get service where they can from FairPoint Communications
“I am in Middlesex, about a half-mile off Route 2, and five minutes from the Capitol Building. Yet up until just recently, we had no sign of high-speed Internet. I understand that my neighbors just received DSL a few weeks ago, but when I call FairPoint, they tell me it’s still not available at my house, which is a few hundred yards up the hill. Hopefully, they’re wrong and I’ll see DSL soon,” she says.
Marie is pining for yesterday’s broadband technology — FairPoint’s 1.5Mbps basic DSL service, now considered below the proposed minimum speeds to qualify for “broadband” in the National Broadband Plan. For Marie, it’s better than nothing.
Geryll in Goshen also lacks DSL and probably wouldn’t want it from FairPoint anyway.
“We have barely reliable landline service. A tech is at my house at least three times per year. I was told the lines are so old they are decaying. Using dial-up is impossible. I use satellite which is very expensive and is in my opinion only one step up from dial-up. I am limited to downloads and penalized if I reach my daily limit,” he says.
Many Vermonters acknowledge Douglas’ planned 100-percent-broadband-coverage-by-2010 won’t come close to achievement and many are highly skeptical they will ever see the day where every resident who wants broadband service can get it.
Chip in Cabot is among them, jaded after six years of arguments with FairPoint Communications and its predecessor Verizon about obtaining access to DSL. It took a cooperative FairPoint engineer outside of the business office to finally get Chip service. His neighbors were not so lucky, most emphatically rejected for DSL service from an intransigent FairPoint:
“I laughed when Governor Douglas announced his e-State goal “by 2010” three years ago. Now I’m thinking I should have made some bets on this claim. It took years of legal battles and a zoning variance to obtain partial cell coverage here in Cabot. Large parts of the town still do not have any cell coverage. Governor Douglas can perhaps be forgiven – he has no technical knowledge, and as a politician would be expected to be wildly optimistic about such “e-State” claims. The Vermont Telecommunications Authority and the Department of Public Service should know better however. We’re talking about rural areas where there is no financial incentive to provide either DSL or cell service. It will take a huge amount of money to provide service to those remaining parts of the state. I’m not optimistic.”
[flv width=”512″ height=”308″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Wall Street Journal Vermont Broadband Problems 03-02-09.flv[/flv]
The Wall Street Journal chronicled the challenges Vermonters face when broadband is unavailable to them. ECFiber may solve these problems. Some of the stories in our article are reflected in this well-done video. (3/2/2009 — 4 Minutes)
Be Sure to Read Part One: Astroturf Overload — Broadband for America = One Giant Industry Front Group for an important introduction to what this super-sized industry front group is all about. Members of Broadband for America Red: A company or group actively engaging in anti-consumer lobbying, opposes Net Neutrality, supports Internet Overcharging, belongs to […]
Astroturf: One of the underhanded tactics increasingly being used by telecom companies is “Astroturf lobbying” – creating front groups that try to mimic true grassroots, but that are all about corporate money, not citizen power. Astroturf lobbying is hardly a new approach. Senator Lloyd Bentsen is credited with coining the term in the 1980s to […]
Hong Kong remains bullish on broadband. Despite the economic downturn, City Telecom continues to invest millions in constructing one of Hong Kong’s largest fiber optic broadband networks, providing fiber to the home connections to residents. City Telecom’s HK Broadband service relies on an all-fiber optic network, and has been dubbed “the Verizon FiOS of Hong […]
BendBroadband, a small provider serving central Oregon, breathlessly announced the imminent launch of new higher speed broadband service for its customers after completing an upgrade to DOCSIS 3. Along with the launch announcement came a new logo of a sprinting dog the company attaches its new tagline to: “We’re the local dog. We better be […]
Stop the Cap! reader Rick has been educating me about some of the new-found aggression by Shaw Communications, one of western Canada’s largest telecommunications companies, in expanding its business reach across Canada. Woe to those who get in the way. Novus Entertainment is already familiar with this story. As Stop the Cap! reported previously, Shaw […]
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In March 2000, two cable magnates sat down for the cable industry equivalent of My Dinner With Andre. Fine wine, beautiful table linens, an exquisite meal, and a Monopoly board with pieces swapped back and forth representing hundreds of thousands of Canadian consumers. Ted Rogers and Jim Shaw drew a line on the western Ontario […]
Just like FairPoint Communications, the Towering Inferno of phone companies haunting New England, Frontier Communications is making a whole lot of promises to state regulators and consumers, if they’ll only support the deal to transfer ownership of phone service from Verizon to them. This time, Frontier is issuing a self-serving press release touting their investment […]
I see it took all of five minutes for George Ou and his friends at Digital Society to be swayed by the tunnel vision myopia of last week’s latest effort to justify Internet Overcharging schemes. Until recently, I’ve always rationalized my distain for smaller usage caps by ignoring the fact that I’m being subsidized by […]
In 2007, we took our first major trip away from western New York in 20 years and spent two weeks an hour away from Calgary, Alberta. After two weeks in Kananaskis Country, Banff, Calgary, and other spots all over southern Alberta, we came away with the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: The Good Alberta […]
A federal appeals court in Washington has struck down, for a second time, a rulemaking by the Federal Communications Commission to limit the size of the nation’s largest cable operators to 30% of the nation’s pay television marketplace, calling the rule “arbitrary and capricious.” The 30% rule, designed to keep no single company from controlling […]
Less than half of Americans surveyed by PC Magazine report they are very satisfied with the broadband speed delivered by their Internet service provider. PC Magazine released a comprehensive study this month on speed, provider satisfaction, and consumer opinions about the state of broadband in their community. The publisher sampled more than 17,000 participants, checking […]
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