Isiogu

A current member of the Michigan Public Service Commission is penning guest editorials featuring AT&T’s favorite talking points: promoting the company’s deregulatory agenda and providing false memes about Internet Overcharging schemes like usage caps and consumption billing.

Orjiakor N. Isiogu, co-vice chairman of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners Committee on Telecommunications and member and immediate past chairman of the Michigan Public Service Commission wrote nearly identical pieces appearing in The Hill, the Detroit Free-Press and the Battle Creek Enquirer that included misleading claims that could have come straight from an AT&T lobbyist’s “fact sheet.”

A sample:

The federal government has used the telecom industry as a model of how competition could be a better elixir than the guiding hand of government regulation. And the results are impressive. The high-speed Information Superhighway touches 95 percent of the U.S., and most consumers can choose from among six or more wireless or wireline providers (90 percent can choose from at least two). And the price of Internet access — measured by megabits per second — has fallen 87 percent since 1999, even as the speed has increased tenfold;

80 percent of U.S. homes now have access to download speeds of 100 megabits per second, and 4G wireless service will soon be available nationwide, with speeds of up to 20 megabits per second;

Despite the evidence, however, there are those who wonder whether there is sufficient competition for Internet access, whether speeds are too slow and prices too high. Others object to new pricing plans that allow a consumer to purchase the amount of bandwidth that best suits his needs.  In fact, some have asked the government to stop these new tailored pricing plans, even though these plans save nearly all consumers from having to underwrite the “outliers” whose monthly usage is gigantic — over 300 GBs a month or the equivalent of over 500 standard definition movies;

And if Teddy Roosevelt were with us today, he would likely argue that we can walk and chew gum at the same time, pointing to the banking industry as an example of industry excesses in need of a public check and the telecom industry as an example of how private competition, with occasional nudges, could better make the markets work.

In reality, if Teddy Roosevelt were alive today, he’d ask why a state commissioner working for the public is instead carrying water for the large telecommunications companies he oversees.

Did Roosevelt advocate the government keep their hands off AT&T and other consolidating telecom companies?

Isiogu doesn’t know his history either.

Roosevelt made no distinctions between the excesses of one industry over another. He strongly believed all major interstate corporations (and that would cover Isiogu’s friends at AT&T, Comcast, and other big telecom companies) should be subject to federal regulation and, in some cases, have their rates set by the government to ensure the public was charged fairly for the services they received. Roosevelt learned his lesson well from the oil, railway, and tobacco trusts his government sued to break up after years of consolidation and rapacious greed at the public’s expense. Those companies all claimed to be competitive as well.

Few industries have consolidated faster than the telecom sector, which is gradually rebuilding the Bell System in AT&T and Verizon’s image and a cable cartel that agrees never to compete directly with other cartel members.

Isiogu’s “facts” are disturbingly incomplete and misleading for a telecom regulator ostensibly serving the public interest.

For example, his claim that Americans can choose among six or more different providers ignores the fact AT&T and Verizon are counted twice (wired and wireless), no competition exists among multiple cable operators or phone companies, and many of the other options Isiogu counts (almost always wireless) do not provide coverage in suburban and rural Michigan. The average consumer in the U.S. has two practical choices for broadband — the cable or phone company.

While Isiogu sings the praises of American broadband, the rest of us have watched the price of Internet service continue to increase, whether customers want faster speeds or not. The industry itself admits it can raise prices because the competitive landscape and consumer love of broadband gives companies “pricing power.”

He also doesn’t mention the price of 100Mbps service or the fact it is not offered by either AT&T or (outside of one city) Time Warner Cable — both industry leaders. Wireless is no panacea either. 4G service may offer faster speeds, but usage plans that start with just a 1GB allowance make it hard (and expensive) to take advantage of the technology improvements. Just a few years ago those plans offered unlimited access.

Isiogu also tapdances around the fact no broadband provider in the country wants to sell a “pay for what you use” plan. Instead, companies create usage allowances that come with steep overlimit fees and, as AT&T executives have told shareholders, deliver limitless potential revenue growth as subscribers are forced to upgrade as their usage grows.

Most consumers favor and appreciate unlimited-use plans for predictable pricing and ease of mind. But flat rate plans ruin providers’ goals to monetize broadband usage and are usually eliminated when consumption pricing arrives, another fact Isiogu does not bother to disclose.

Isiogu has gotten remarkably cozy with the industry he oversees, even resorting to mind-bending pretzel logic that calls regulation for the banking sector a good idea and oversight of his industry friends a disaster.

What is disturbing is while Isiogu pens these industry friendly guest editorials in his spare time, he is also in a position of power to oversee and regulate these same companies in the public’s interest.

That represents a clear conflict of interest Teddy Roosevelt could see and feel from his grave.

The billing address on file at Verizon Wireless can make a difference in your monthly bill.

One Maryland man recently appealed for a refund of $840 when he discovered the wireless provider had specified his Bethesda workplace as his billing address, exposing him to additional taxes even though Verizon sends the bill to his Annapolis home.

That distinction cost Larry Sisle an extra $3.50 a month — the difference between mobile taxes charged in Annapolis and those levied in Montgomery County, which includes the city of Bethesda.

Adding up the incorrect taxes applied to his two phones over the years he has been with Verizon revealed Sisle was potentially out hundreds of dollars and he wanted his money back.

In a classic “pass the hundreds of bucks”-move, Verizon told him to work with his local government to get a refund — a virtual impossibility for a telecommunications tax collected by a third party.

Make sure you are being billed the correct county and state taxes based on your billing address, not the location designated by your Verizon Wireless phone number.

“Excuse me? Why should I have to take this up with Montgomery County when it was Verizon who collected the tax incorrectly,” Sisle asked the Capital Gazette’s consumer watchdog.

A spokesperson for Montgomery County agreed with Sisle, telling the newspaper the phone company pays the tax directly, not the consumer, so the only recourse would be to pursue Verizon directly.

A Verizon Wireless representative eventually explained his Anne Arundel wireless number was accidentally put into the Montgomery County tax category in early 2010, which is what caused the error. That should raise eyebrows among other Verizon customers with Anne Arundel numbers that could have been overcharged as well.

Verizon says since the error has been ongoing only since 2010, it is processing a refund of just under $200 which will be credited to Sisle’s account.

Customers should scrutinize their Verizon Wireless bills, particularly checking to see if the company is appropriately billing state, county, or local taxes based on your billing address, not the city and county associated with your original Verizon Wireless number.

The nation’s largest broadband stimulus grant recipient has turned a $126.3 million taxpayer funded broadband expansion program into an “orchestrated train wreck,” charged West Virginia Delegate Nancy Guthrie (D-Kanawha) on Monday.

West Virginia Homeland Security Director Jimmy Gianato defended his management of the project before a joint state House-Senate technology committee just learning it had been scaled back, dropping more than 400 sites that were slated to have fiber broadband upgrades Gianato claimed they already had.

Gianato defended the project, noting the original grant proposal was held up by the Commerce Secretary as one of the best-written proposals in the country.

Lawmakers did not criticize how the proposal was written. Instead, they questioned how the project was administered and how the money was spent.

“We’ve done everything the grant said we would do,” Gianato countered.

Many of the questions surrounded the decision to purchase 1,064 Cisco routers in 2010, which cost taxpayers $22,600 each, and were rejected by more than a few intended recipients. Several hundred routers ended up in storage, unused.

Still murky is why project managers only considered a single, expensive Cisco-brand router recommended by Verizon-employed consultants and ultimately purchased directly from Verizon.

Guthrie

Gianato claimed the federal government tied his hands requiring West Virginia’s broadband project be “shovel-ready.”

“All of the equipment was bought off contracts that had been competitively bid,” he told the conference.

But project managers and consultants can custom-tailor specifications that make it impossible for vendors to specify anything other than the Cisco router Verizon conveniently happened to sell.

Several members appeared unmoved by statements defending the decision to deploy identical, expensive routers to every West Virginia anchor institution, despite the fact they were designed to serve a minimum of 500 concurrent users and often ended up in rural community libraries with less than five public terminals.

Gale Given, the state’s chief technology officer, supported Gianato.

“The team determined that capacity should be provided to permit these community anchor institutions to deploy the applications that were required to meet future needs, not their current needs,” Given wrote in a letter to state lawmakers. “It would be a mistake to determine in advance that entities with low bandwidth requirements today will not have high bandwidth requirements in the future. To have shortchanged our smaller, more rural areas would have gone against the entire intent of the program.”

But now West Virginia taxpayers will be on the hook to cover the costs of making the new equipment compatible with existing equipment in certain state facilities.

At least 70 State Police detachments will begin using the once-rejected routers once the state spends $90,000 for new modules to update the agency’s voicemail system, which is not compatible with the routers.

State libraries also won a break from Frontier Communications, who agreed to supply fiber broadband service to 170 mostly small, rural libraries that could not afford the fiber upgrade. Frontier has agreed to supply the fiber service for the same price libraries pay for their existing service.

AT&T has told more than 75 call center workers in the Triad they have three weeks to either start looking for another job or consider relocating to Birmingham, Ala. if they wish to remain employed by the telecom giant.

The holiday layoff took workers partly by surprise, but some told a local Fox affiliate they felt something was coming when they noticed AT&T stopped updating the affected workers’ training to handle customer calls.

The Communications Workers of America called the announcement devastating news for career employees and their families during the holiday season. The union is trying to get AT&T to extend the deadline to give workers more time to consider their options.

Local AT&T workers have had a tough year at the company, with difficult contract talks and technicians complaining about the company’s policy to allow customers to have AT&T U-verse installed on Christmas Day.

CWA’s Local 3902 chapter, which represents AT&T workers in the Triad, claims the company has systematically tried to drive its workers out of the middle class with benefit and pay reductions and a race to the bottom mentality cutting labor costs and demanding longer work hours for less money:

[CEO Randall] Stephensons’ philosophy is as old as time. It is a belief that he is entitled and workers are not.  It has been called “wage slavery” and worse. People rose against it. Governments that stood by it have been toppled.

In America, the people began to say no more beginning in the late 1880’s. It took the Great Depression of the 1930’s to cause our great-grandparents to finally hit the streets. CWA began to see real successes in the 1950’s. A strike that lasted 72 days in 1955 set the stage for our best days. The strike itself did not win much, but it left a scar AT&T did not soon forget. Contract negotiations after that were easier. That period lasted through 1980. In that period we won solid pensions and no-premium healthcare. By 1980 we were a solid part of the middle class and thought we would be always.

By 1981 we had begun to lose our way. Those hired during the boom of the ’70’s did not want to hear of  the prior struggles. They just happily enjoyed the hard won gains of the generation before them. They began to vote against their own interests. They began to believe that AT&T and BellSouth loved them and would always take care of them. That is the period we find ourselves in today. But we are beginning to see it for what it is.

During this period we have lost most of our pension gains. We are again paying a large part of our healthcare. Our wages are stagnant. Workers are fired almost at will. AT&T is out of control. Politically, they control the state legislatures who deregulate the industry. They run roughshod over the American worker. They contract out and off-shore at will. It has been a devastating period for CWA and for all unions.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WGHP Greensboro ATT to eliminate 75 jobs in Greensboro 12-17-12.flv[/flv]

WGHP in Greensboro covered the sudden holiday announcement AT&T was letting go at least 75 North Carolina workers by the end of December unless they agreed to relocate to an AT&T call center in Birmingham, Ala.  (2 minutes)

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has called Verizon’s notification that phone service in lower Manhattan will not be back to normal until late next spring “unacceptable.”

Hurricane Sandy’s storm surge ruined at least 95 percent of Verizon Communications’ landline network in the lower half of Manhattan leaving numerous businesses without phone service with little hope service will be restored this year.

“Their schedule right now says that lower Manhattan is not going to be back up until May,” Bloomberg said in a recent speech.

The mayor is upset with Verizon’s timetable because a number of major buildings in the area cannot be reoccupied by business tenants until telephone service is restored, and Verizon is facing questions about why it will take a half-year to get phone service back up and running to everyone that wants it.

When local cable news channel NY1 asked Verizon how many customers were still without service, a spokesman told the reporter it did not know, adding some customers have priorities more pressing than phone service.

Verizon has chosen not to replace much of the damaged copper infrastructure and plans to invest in more reliable fiber optics in its ongoing effort to meet its FiOS rollout obligations in New York City, but that does not satisfy many business owners who cannot process credit card transactions or, in some cases, run their businesses as long as phone lines remain out of service.

This week a coalition of interest groups petitioned New York’s Public Service Commission asking them to impose new requirements on the state’s utility companies to develop comprehensive emergency response plans that acknowledge climate change and the extreme weather events that accompany it.

The petition was filed by the Columbia Law School Center for Climate Change Law, Natural Resources Defense Council, New York League of Conservation Voters, Pace Energy and Climate Law Center of Pace Law School, Municipal Art Society of New York, Earthjustice, Environmental Advocates of New York, and Riverkeeper.

The petition notes in the past two years alone, New York City has been hit by two of the largest hurricanes in history (Irene and Sandy).

The group’s observations are shared by some of the state’s highest elected officials.

“In just 14 months, two hurricanes have forced [New York City] to evacuate neighborhoods — something our city government had never done before,” New York City Mayor Bloomberg wrote in an editorial for Bloomberg View. “If this is a trend, it is simply not sustainable.”

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo echoed Bloomberg’s concerns:

Extreme weather is a reality. It is a reality that we are vulnerable. And if we’re going to do our job as elected officials, we’re going to need to think about how to redesign, or as we go forward, make the modifications necessary so we don’t incur this type of damage…. For us to sit here today and say this is a once-in-a-generation and it’s not going to happen again, I think would be short-sighted…. I think we need to anticipate more of these extreme weather type situations in the future and we have to take that into consideration in reforming, modifying, our infrastructure.

The coalition claims current utility policies are designed for short-term disaster response procedures, which they call inadequate.

Most utility companies develop plans based on historic weather patterns the environmental groups argue cannot take into account the more extreme weather patterns afflicting the state. The PSC can mandate utilities do more.

New York’s utility infrastructure is also deemed outdated, with much of it exposed above-ground, vulnerable to storm damage. The state also lacks more advanced technology including smart electricity grids, telecommunications fiber rings that can reroute around cable cuts, and reinforcement of vulnerably placed generator plants, telephone switches, and utility substations.

Despite the criticism, Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam remained upbeat about Verizon’s performance, particularly noting strong growth in wireless.

In the third quarter when Sandy struck, Verizon picked up 1.54 million more contract customers, exceeding the 901,000 estimate predicted by analysts polled by Bloomberg News. The wireless profit margin at Verizon also reached a new milestone – 50 percent, up from 49 percent in the second quarter.

[flv width=”534″ height=”320″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/NY1 Bloomberg Criticizes Verizon For Slow Recovery Of Service 12-6-12.mp4[/flv]

NY1 reports business customers in lower Manhattan are not too pleased waiting for Verizon to repair their landlines.  (2 minutes)

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Verizon Restoration of Verizon’s Lower Manhattan Cable Vault 11-12.flv[/flv]

Verizon produced this video showing off its own restoration efforts in a downtown Manhattan cable vault.  (3 minutes)