Rep. Michele Hoitenga (R-Manton) doesn’t care much for community broadband, so she introduced a bill in the Michigan legislature that is as stark as it is short:

House Bill 5099:

The bill is remarkable for its brevity — most proposed community broadband ban bills avoid outright bans, preferring to use forced complicated referendums or operational limitations that usually make municipal broadband projects untenable. But Rep. Hoitenga’s bill leaves no doubt she wants private cable and phone companies left unmolested by publicly funded alternatives. Although the Michigan Republican chairs the House’s Communications and Technology committee, she appears confused about the difference between upload and download speeds. Her bill would define a “qualified” internet service as one offering at least 1/10Mbps service. Yes — 1Mbps download speed and 10Mbps upload speed.

Ars Technica’s Jon Brodkin asked Rep. Hoitenga about the oddity of the language in her bill:

When asked about this on Twitter, Hoitenga said she would have to “speak with the attorneys who wrote the bill” to determine whether the listed speed was a mistake. “I will speak with the attorneys who wrote the bill. They changed the language I submitted but will ask why they changed it,” Hoitenga wrote.

Rep. Hoitenga

Rep. Hoitenga used her Twitter account to promote and defend her bill, pointing out the district she represents had “37 providers” to choose from — a fact she gleaned from an online AT&T Yellow Pages directory. Stop the Cap! investigated that claim and found the majority of the providers cited did not offer internet access to members of her district, provided service only in adjacent communities, or sold commercial internet services to businesses only. In fact, for the overwhelming majority of her constituents, there are only two providers to choose from — AT&T or Comcast. Both are top donors to Rep. Hoitenga’s campaign, but more on that later.

Michigan has never been a hotbed of community broadband initiatives, despite having uneven broadband service in suburban and rural areas across the state. Michigan law already includes several significant roadblocks for public broadband projects, notes Lisa Gonzalez from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance:

“Michigan already has a significant state barrier in place; municipalities that wish to improve connectivity must first appeal to the private sector and can only invest in a network if they receive fewer than three qualifying bids. If a local community then goes on to build a publicly owned network, they must comply with the terms of the RFP, even though terms for a private sector vendor may not be ideal for a public entity.

“Nevertheless, several communities in Michigan have dealt with the restrictions in recent years as a way to ameliorate poor connectivity. They’ve come to realize that their local economies and the livelihood of their towns depend on improving Internet access for businesses, institutions, and residents.”

Although Rep. Hoitenga’s bill offers the possibility for “public-private” partnerships, her bill would bring a significant chilling effect because the proposed law fails to define how such partnerships should be structured.

Rep. Hoitenga told Stop the Cap! the bill would put a stop to tax dollars being spent on broadband service, something she felt was unwarranted. We asked the Michigan representative, “Did you know the phone and cable companies receive taxpayer subsidies already in the form of PILOT agreements, and other incentives?” which received the non-sequitur response that her office’s phones were ringing constantly with callers praising her new bill.

But that isn’t what Rep. Hoitenga told her Facebook fans.

“Many individuals have reached out to my office in regards to HB5099; with the belief that I am attempting to limit broadband expansion,” Hoitenga wrote. “This could not be further from the truth. One of my main goals as the Chair of the House Communications and Technology committee is to make internet access more easily obtainable. This legislation does indeed prevent cities from using tax dollars to subsidize ISPs; especially without a vote of the people. While at first glance government operated networks may sound like a good idea, the argument in support of them crumbles with an in depth look into the financial and long-term investment side of implementing such a network.”

So we remain unsure if the wave of phone calls Hoitenga referenced were in support of her proposed bill or opposed to it. Either way, the Michigan representative mischaracterized her own three-paragraph bill by claiming it would prevent cities from using tax dollars for internet service, “without a vote of the people.” But no provision for such a vote exists or would be allowed by her existing bill. Hoitenga’s bill also clearly makes internet access less obtainable, especially in communities where a for profit provider does not exist and a community is seeking to provide an alternative.

Hoitenga later states communities may not need to worry about internet accessibility because, “there is also a package of bills in the senate regarding Small Cell Technology (which also attempts to reduce barriers),” she wrote. That provision is backed by AT&T, which is currently one of the two ISPs serving her district.

She then picks up familiar talking points distributed by public broadband opponents:

“There are examples throughout the state and nation of taxpayers being on the hook for failed networks. There is also concern that some of these networks are in towns where employee pensions are severely underfunded, causing layoffs and cutting services, yet there seems to be money for high risk broadband investments. It’s time to address these issues.

She also cited a 2017 study critical of municipal broadband networks authored by University of Pennsylvania Law School Professor Christopher Yoo and co-author Timothy Pfenninger. Neither author or Rep. Hoitenga disclosed the group that produced the study is funded by AT&T and Comcast, among other large telecom companies and their respective lobbying organizations.

After opening a dialogue with the Michigan representative, she did not take kindly to questions or criticism about her bill, and summarily blocked Stop the Cap! from seeing her Tweets or communicating with her further — the first time anyone has blocked our group on Twitter. Shortly after that, she changed her Twitter channel to be viewable by invitation only, limiting her potential audience to her 284 current followers. At the moment, the only social media outlet that seems to be still open to communicating with Rep. Hoitenga is Facebook, where she is taking heat from her constituents about her bill.

The Michigan representative has been behind several controversial bills introduced in the current session of the Michigan House, including a proposal to allow concealed pistols to be carried in public and a ban on Sharia law being practiced in the United States.

Her top donors for the current legislative session include:

#2 – Telecommunications Association of Michigan PAC, $3,000
#4 – AT&T Michigan, $1,500
#11 – Comcast Corp. & NBC Universal, $500

Microsoft is indirectly getting into the internet access business with its support for white-space wireless internet access for two million rural Americans by 2022.

The project will involve a partnership putting Microsoft’s financing together with rural telecommunications companies that want a rural broadband solution for their customers.

Microsoft has spent at least a decade promoting “white space” wireless broadband, which works over unused UHF TV channels. An internet provider markets the service as a next generation Wi-Fi network, capable of serving customers over a much larger distance than traditional in-home or business Wi-Fi. The service transmits from strategically placed antenna towers that are capable of delivering internet access to dozens of families in an immediate area.

Pilot projects not associated with Microsoft are already up and running in selected rural areas with mixed results. None of the projects have lived up to their pre-launch hype, but most have been a significant improvement over satellite internet access. Speed variability and capacity has proven difficult technical challenges, and finding ongoing financial resources to maintain the wireless network once constructed has also been a challenge.

Rural community politics is never too far away. Thurman, N.Y.’s white space broadband project Stop the Cap! wrote about two years ago has turned into a political football. Only about three dozen residents subscribe to the white space internet service and vocal opponents of the project and controversy over other spending initiatives caused the town’s CEO and one board member to resign. Town meetings have deteriorated into shouting matches as recriminations are fired back and forth. One of the project designers resigned after the town refused to honor an invoice for a cost overrun. The white space project was funded with a grant that required local matching funds. With only a few dozen customers using the service, some taxpayers object to underwriting its expenses.

The technology has not been a runaway success in the U.S., but Microsoft has had better luck funding internet access to 185,000 people in 20 wireless projects, many in the developing world.

Microsoft president and chief legal officer Brad Smith today introduced Microsoft’s plan to expand white space internet in the U.S., pointing to a white paper laying out Microsoft’s rural broadband strategy, which will leverage several wireless technologies.

A combination of technologies can substantially reduce the total cost of extending broadband coverage. Specifically, a technology model that uses a combination of the TV white spaces spectrum, fixed wireless, and satellite coverage can reduce the initial capital and operating costs by roughly 80 percent compared with the cost of using fiber cables alone, and by approximately 50 percent compared with the cost of current LTE fixed wireless technology.

One key to deploying this strategy successfully is to use the right technology in the right places. TV white spaces is expected to provide the best approach to reach approximately 80 percent of this underserved rural population, particularly in areas with a population density between two and 200 people per square mile. […] Satellite coverage is expected to be the most cost-effective solution for most areas with a population density of less than two people per square mile, and LTE fixed wireless for most areas with a density greater than 200 people per square mile. This mixed model for expanding broadband coverage will likely bring the total national cost of closing the rural broadband gap to roughly $10 billion.

To cover the costs, Microsoft has agreed to front its own money and recover it later. The Mid-Atlantic Broadband Communities Corp. received $250,000 from Microsoft. Another $500,000 originated with the Virginia Tobacco Region Revitalization Commission and another $250,000 came from the telecom company. Mid-Atlantic hopes to expand white space internet access to 1,000 local customers by the end of the year.

Mid-Atlantic today offers residents in Charlotte and Halifax counties, two rural regions in southern Virginia, free internet access to a limited number of education-related sites with speeds of 3-4Mbps. Customers can pay to access the entire web at those speeds for about $10 a month. A premium tier raises speeds to 8-10Mbps for $40 a month. About 90% of subscribers have chosen the free service, an alarming percentage for any company trying to sell internet access and recoup its investment. It currently costs around $1,000 to hook up each customer, a number local officials hope to reduce to $100 eventually.

Microsoft argues the technology is still cheaper than the alternatives – 80 percent less costly than fiber to the home service and half the price of 4G LTE wireless.

To guarantee the technology will work, Microsoft wants to preserve unlicensed frequencies not currently in use by licensed television stations for “white space” broadband.

“The Incentive Auction reduced the number of available channels that can be used for TV white spaces technologies,” Microsoft noted in its white paper. The company is referring to the FCC’s auction of UHF TV licenses, freeing up channels to be repurposed for wireless data expansion by the country’s mobile phone operators. “To make the significant investments necessary to reach economies of scale, potential TV white spaces network operators and device and chip manufacturers have converged on the need for a minimum of three usable TV white spaces channels in every market, with additional TV white spaces available in smaller markets.”

In other words, Microsoft wants the FCC to ensure at least three unused UHF channels in each city in the country are kept available for unlicensed spectrum users, like white space internet. That brought a scathing response from the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) who called Microsoft’s request “nonsense on its face”:

The proposal is either unnecessary, because there will be plenty of spectrum, or it is harmful, because there will not be enough. If you were playing musical chairs with someone and he told you, “you must reserve that chair for me, but don’t worry, there are plenty of chairs for everyone,” you would rightly be suspicious. The post-auction repack is essentially a game of musical chairs for displaced low power stations. Microsoft is telling the Commission: (1) it needs to have a chair reserved for unlicensed use, but that (2) there will be no effect from that reservation on anyone else. One of those assertions is untrue.

Microsoft also claims that only the reservation of spectrum can provide the regulatory certainty that Microsoft needs to increase investment in white space technology. But the truth is the Commission just held a lengthy auction of the very spectrum Microsoft claims it so urgently desires. If Microsoft were interested in increasing investment, it had an unprecedented opportunity to get guaranteed access to 600MHz spectrum with a nationwide footprint. Instead, Microsoft is trying to convince the Commission to give Microsoft a backdoor frequency allocation with exclusive access to that spectrum for free, and on better terms than winning auction bidders received.

Certain parts of the northeastern U.S. are signal-crowded, with no available white space channels.

The NAB objects to Microsoft requesting spectrum without directly paying for it, but Microsoft’s actual request is that those frequencies be reserved for unlicensed users of all kinds, not just for white space internet. The NAB accuses Microsoft of potentially increasing interference for licensed TV stations on a newly crowded, repacked UHF dial, a theory that seems unlikely in the most rural parts of the country where over the air television reception is problematic or non-existent. There are urban areas of the country, particularly in the Boston-New York-Washington corridor where open channel space is either not available or severely limited, but white space internet was designed to resolve rural broadband problems, not urban ones.

To find out what is true and what is theoretical Microsoft announced 12 new white space pilot projects in 12 U.S. states, including Arizona, Georgia, Kansas, Maine, Michigan, New York, North Dakota, South Dakota, Texas, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin that will be up and running over the next year. Few details are available about the specific communities involved or the types of access to be offered. Microsoft only said if it gets its way, it could be providing internet access to two million more Americans by July 4, 2022.

Most customers are likely not going to get the FCC’s definition of broadband (25Mbps) from the current generation of white space broadband technology. Speeds are often comparable to DSL and just as variable, depending on reception conditions. The NAB questions whether this technology will really make much difference.

“Microsoft has been making promises about white spaces technology for well over a decade,” the NAB wrote on a blog post, noting it estimates fewer than 300 customers are getting white space internet access in the U.S. “There remain few tangible consumer benefits associated with white spaces deployments across the U.S.”

For states like New York, embarked on their own efforts to achieve 100% broadband penetration, Microsoft’s project may be too little, too late. Governor Andrew M. Cuomo launched the final phase of the New NY Broadband Program in March, seeking to deliver a final round of funding to secure access to high-speed internet for all New Yorkers by the end of 2018, four years sooner than Microsoft’s target date for its project. New York’s rural broadband expansion program relies primarily on incumbent providers and helps subsidize expansion of their networks to reach customers deemed too expensive to serve without supplemental funding.

Any opportunity to paint Hillary Clinton as an out-of-touch politician rarely escapes the Beltway crowd and some of the media that covers it. Unfortunately, rural America’s broadband problems also get dismissed in the process.

After a 35-minute Hillary Clinton interview with Christiane Amanpour, one takeaway line about how the former presidential candidate felt about rural job creation was seized on by the folks inside-the-D.C. Beltway and used to mock and belittle her:

“If you don’t have access to high-speed, affordable broadband, which large parts of America do not, [large employers will overlook your town]. If you drive around in some of the places that beat the heck out of me, you cannot get cell coverage for miles. And so, even in towns — so, the president was in Harrisburg. I was in Harrisburg during the campaign, and I met with people afterward. One of the things they said to me is that there are places in central Pennsylvania where we don’t have access to affordable high-speed internet.”

As any reader of Stop the Cap! knows, those are very legitimate points. The video embedded below has several more. Available robust internet access at affordable prices attracts employers. Just ask the city of Chattanooga, Tenn.

Anyone who has traveled mountainous central Pennsylvania knows exactly what Mrs. Clinton is talking about. These communities are served by Frontier Communications and Verizon, and the best either company will offer, if you’re lucky, is basic DSL service. There are significant parts of Pennsylvania with no cable provider, and with terrain that often resembles West Virginia — another difficult-to-serve state — wireless is not so great either.

Long term rural Pennsylvanians decried the day the last analog cellular network was switched off. They routinely outperformed the digital network that replaced it in fringe reception zones. Many residents have to use indoor cell tower extenders provided by companies like Verizon Wireless and AT&T to get stable cellular reception, and many rural towns are either a total wireless dead zone or are filled with dead spots where reception evaporates.

Competition from Sprint and T-Mobile don’t mean much in rural Pennsylvania, because neither offer any reception in significant sections of the state, and AT&T and Verizon Wireless can be only nominally better in some areas.

Areas where at least 25Mbps broadband is available in Pennsylvania (Blue – Cable, Brown – Fiber) (Map courtesy of Pennsylvania Department of Community Economic Development)

So like much of the Appalachians, rural broadband is a very big problem in central Pennsylvania. Candidate Clinton proposed spending billions to augment rural broadband service, presumably by offering matching funds and grants to rural telephone companies. Although saddling rural areas with indefinite DSL service is not an ideal solution, it offers more than the Trump Administration’s apparent willingness to coddle incumbent providers with more deregulation and less oversight.

But the D.C. chattering class ignored the entire question of rural broadband problems in America and according to the Washington Post, selectively edited Mrs. Clinton’s statement into a whiny complaint she couldn’t get enough bars on her cell phone while campaigning in areas across the state where she ultimately lost:

“You cannot get cell coverage for mile,” Clinton says of the places that voted against her.

— Phil Elliott (@Philip_Elliott) May 2, 2017

Elliot is a reporter for Time magazine. If he can take her quote out of context on Twitter, is that a routine practice in Time magazine as well?

Clinton NOW talking about Pennsylvania, rural cell service. Uhhh.

— Zach Wolf (@zbyronwolf) May 2, 2017

Zach Wolf manages @CNNPolitics for the cable news channel. That does not inspire confidence in CNN.

Is @HillaryClinton adding cell coverage to “List of reasons not including myself why I lost” list? https://t.co/SaE3lzCkAm

— Clinton Soffer (@clintonsoffer) May 2, 2017

Clinton Soffer is a regional National Republican Senatorial Committee director, so his shot is at least politically predictable, but easy enough to identify as partisan.

Of course, nobody is talking about the real issue, which isn’t whether Hillary Clinton is a limousine liberal or not. It’s the bipartisan problem of downright lousy or non-existent rural broadband, a problem that incumbent providers won’t do much about unless the government arm-twists them into expansion when companies launch another merger or acquisition that needs government approval, or better yet for them, if taxpayer or ratepayer dollars help foot the bill.

At the same time this kerfuffle was going on, a private company selling VPN services decided to embark on a questionable survey asking whether Americans think broadband is a “human right” or simply a nice thing to have if you can get it.

Results of survey conducted by AnchorFree, which sells VPN services to consumers.

In April, AnchorFree surveyed an audience of over 2,000 consumers, ages 18+ about online privacy. This survey was completed online and was completely anonymous — two points that rendered it largely useless for actual opinion measurement. Online surveys are notoriously unreliable because they are heavily weighted toward those that found the survey on a website most Americans would not likely have visited, and AnchorFree offers no reliable evidence of an appropriate measurement of different demographic groups to get a properly mixed sample of opinions. In this case, we predict about 80-90% of respondents were young, male, and paranoid enough about online security to warrant shopping around for a VPN provider. But the survey does at least highlight the real issue of “not my problem” thinking that impacts on rural broadband public policy.

AnchorFree’s study asked these 2,000 visitors to its website whether they felt the internet was a “human right” or a privilege. That question was more weighted than a circus elephant, because it suggests Americans were entitled to a broadband account, presumably paid for by the government. Only one out of three respondents agreed it was “a human right.” The survey mentioned the language came from a United Nations declaration, without linking to it, which is another surefire way to get about the half the country riled up enough over the UN to stampede in the other direction.

Nobody responsible for the survey explained the premise for the UN declaration, which was first to declare broadband an extension of freedom of expression, so long as it was affordable, available, and uncensored.

It is easy to demagogue Lifeline phone service and affordable broadband as a type of welfare, as Drudge Report did in 2015.

“The Special Rapporteur underscores the unique and transformative nature of the Internet not only to enable individuals to exercise their right to freedom of opinion and expression,” according to the report’s summary, “but also a range of other human rights, and to promote the progress of society as a whole.”

It did not say broadband should be free of charge, but at least it should be available. That means just as electricity and telephone service are available today to every American that wants either or both, so should broadband.

The very thought of someone effectively paying for someone else’s broadband service went down about as well as increasing welfare benefits with survey respondents. Some people also love to make decisions on behalf of others, which is why the survey also revealed a lot of broadband selfishness. Among those who told AnchorFree broadband was only a privilege, 64% exempted themselves, declaring it was essential to them, while only 18% said it might be essential for others. How nice.

This is why it can be easy to demagogue broadband expansion programs as an unnecessary luxury. AnchorFree’s study isn’t very useful or credible on its own because the questions asked and the responses given appear in context with AnchorFree’s own agenda of peddling its products and services. Its methodology is suspect, but the results are not completely surprising.

How the rural broadband problem is framed in language can make a significant difference in how the problem is tackled. If the survey asked if Americans were in favor of guaranteed universal access to quality broadband service, the results would likely have been more favorable. Hillary Clinton’s campaign had not pledged this and her broadband platform was based primarily on spending more money to cajole phone companies to expand their networks, perhaps alluding this alone might solve the problem. It won’t for at least the last 1-2% of unserved America, because those last users will be hellishly expensive to reach. But Mrs. Clinton, and rural America, deserved something more than cheap shots about cell phone reception as part of the media’s narrative she was out of touch with rural voters. On the issue of broadband, she put her finger precisely on the problem after just visiting the area. The locals have to live with it and there are no signs this will change anytime soon.

In an interview with Christiane Amanpour at a Women for Women International event, Hillary Clinton spoke about creating jobs and the importance of access to high-speed affordable broadband in rural towns. (Women for Women International) (1:12)

New York State taxpayers will contribute $212 million to expand broadband to reach 89,514 homes and institutions in mostly in rural upstate communities that either lack internet access or have to endure very slow speed DSL service from the phone company. All recipients have agreed, as a condition of receiving the money, not to impose data caps on their customers.

This week, New York Governor Andrew M. Cuomo announced the latest winning projects that will receive grants from a second round of funding from the New NY Broadband Program, part of the governor’s effort to achieve 100% broadband penetration in the Empire State.

Gov. Cuomo

Twenty six cable and phone companies, mostly for-profit businesses, will share awards ranging from $226,184 for Cable Communications of Willsboro to reach 558 homes in the Essex County communities of Willsboro and Essex, on the border of Lake Champlain and the state of Vermont to $47,770,970 for Armstrong Telecommunications to reach 16,545 homes in Allegany, Cattaraugus, Erie, Livingston, Steuben, and Wyoming counties in the Finger Lakes Region and Southern Tier.

“Broadband is today what electricity was nearly a century ago – essential to creating economic opportunity, driving innovation and an absolute necessity for our way of life,” Governor Cuomo said. “These awards will provide homes and businesses with access to the high-speed internet required to participate and succeed in the modern economy, and are a major step toward broadband for all in New York.”

Grant recipients provided $56,253,037 in private matching funds, with New York taxpayers picking up the remaining 75% of the total expansion cost — about $2,366 per home or business.

A separate agreement with the New York State Public Service Commission obligates Charter Communications (formerly Time Warner Cable) to embark on its own company-funded expansion program to expand service to approximately 145,000 unserved and underserved premises. Charter has identified Columbia, Erie, Jefferson, Onondaga, Oswego, and Sullivan as “Year One Priority Counties” where most upgrades will be taking place in 2017, including expansion to reach 100Mbps speeds during the first six months of this year.

The winning providers had to guarantee they would upgrade speeds to at least 100Mbps except in the “most remote areas” where 25Mbps is acceptable. Although the state targeted 50% private sector co-investment, providers ultimately came closer to the absolute minimum of 20% in matching funds. They must also guarantee that broadband service will be available to customers for no more than $60 a month to qualify for the grant. Cable Communications of Willsboro, for example, now offers 8/1Mbps for $59.95 a month. Presumably it will have to boost speeds as part of its grant award.

The grant program was also designed to favor applicants offering fiber-to-the-home or hybrid fiber/cable (HFC) technology currently favored by cable operators. DSL and fixed wireless applicants had to give evidence the governor’s need for speed would be delivered using those technologies. All applicants must also agree not to impose data caps of any kind for New York residents.

New York is a rare exception to rural broadband expansion in states that mostly rely on politicians begging and pleading with providers to expand their service areas. At best, this has delivered modest results without access to supplemental funding to achieve Return On Investment requirements private companies demand.

As New York progresses through multiple rounds of bidding, each new round becomes more challenging because of the increasing expense to reach each remaining unwired rural home, business, and farm. In the current round, the costs to wire a single home are at least four times more than what Verizon spent to extend its FiOS service to a new home or business in downstate New York.

To meet 100% penetration, some properties will require a $20,000 or more investment to extend service. Gov. Cuomo has decided that broadband should be treated as a necessary utility, not a convenience. In effect, New York wants universal service standards to be applied to broadband, regardless of cost.

All projects must be finished by the end of 2018. The Broadband Program Office is currently finalizing a Request for Proposals for the Program’s upcoming Round III, which will launch within 30 days. This round will seek to complete the goal of bringing high-speed internet access to New York’s remaining unserved and underserved communities. Round III will be paid for by the $170 million in Connect America Funds Verizon forfeit because of their lack of interest in expanding rural broadband service. New York officials successfully petitioned the Federal Communications Commission to reallocate those funds to the state to disburse to reach the remaining rural areas still without suitable internet access.

Phase 2 Awardees