Kyle McSlarrow

Once again, the telecommunications industry is threatening to run to the courts if it faces Net Neutrality regulation, claiming their corporate freedom of speech would be violated by protecting the rights of consumers to access the content of their choice on their terms.

Kyle McSlarrow, President & CEO of the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, the nation’s big cable operator trade association, delivered the warning at yesterday’s appearance at the Media Institute in Washington, DC.

In a speech clearly designed to put regulators on notice, McSlarrow dismissed Net Neutrality as a solution in search of a problem and a concept big cable would likely challenge in the courts.

“When all the dire warnings of the net neutrality proponents are stripped away, there really are no signs of actual harm.  Yes, there have been a couple of isolated incidents that keep being held up as examples of what needs to be prevented, but nothing that suggests any threat to the openness of the Internet,” McSlarrow said. “Internet Service Providers do not threaten free speech; their business is to enable speech and they are part of an ecosystem that represents perhaps the greatest engine for promotion of democracy and free expression in history.”

McSlarrow told the audience that the cable industry would be among the victims of Net Neutrality, claiming their rights to transact business on their networks could be trampled by an overzealous Federal Communications Commission.

Almost every net neutrality proposal would seek to control how an ISP affects the delivery of Internet content or applications as it reaches its customers.   This is particularly odd for two reasons:  First, there is plenty of case law about instances of speech compelled by the government – “forced speech” — that suggests such rules should be scrutinized closely. Second, and perhaps more importantly, it is an almost completely unnecessary risk.  All ISPs have stated repeatedly that they will not block their customers from accessing any lawful content or application on the Internet.  Competitive pressures alone ensure this result:  we are in the business of maximizing our customers’ choices and experiences on the Internet.  The counter examples used to debate this point are so few and so distinguishable as to make the point for me.

Beyond the forced speech First Amendment implications, however, net neutrality rules also could infringe First Amendment rights because they could prevent providers from delivering their traditional multichannel video programming services or new services that are separate and distinct from their Internet access service.  While the FCC’s NPRM acknowledges the need to carve out “managed” or “specialized” services from the scope of any new rules, it also expresses concerns that “the growth of managed or specialized services might supplant or otherwise negatively affect the open Internet.”   Meaning what?  Well, the strong implication is some kind of guaranteed amount of bandwidth capacity for services the government deems important.

McSlarrow is focused front and center on the rights of providers, not consumers, when he speaks about the First Amendment.  His constituents are Time Warner Cable, Cox, Comcast, Charter, and the other NCTA members, namely big cable companies.  In his view, any regulation or interference in how providers decide to deliver service is a potential violation of their constitutionally protected rights.  That’s a side effect of the nation’s courts recognizing that corporations have rights, too.

McSlarrow predicts a laundry list of  ‘doom and gloom’ scenarios that would befall providers if Net Neutrality was enacted:

• Net Neutrality could prevent providers from delivering their traditional multichannel video programming services or new services that are separate and distinct from their Internet access service;
• Net Neutrality would prohibit ISPs and applications providers from contracting for any enhanced or prioritized delivery of that application or content to the ISPs’ customers.  Under the proposal, ISPs wouldn’t even be permitted to offer such prioritization or quality-of-service enhancements at nondiscriminatory prices, terms and conditions to anyone who wanted it.
• Net Neutrality may mean that they [content providers] can’t provide material in the enhanced form that they want.
• Net Neutrality could tell a new entrant or an existing content provider that it cannot enter into arrangements with an ISP for unique prioritization or quality of service enhancements that might enable it to enter the marketplace and have its voice heard along with those of established competitors.

McSlarrow doesn’t offer a shred of evidence to prove his more alarmist predictions, even as he demands it from those who support Net Neutrality.  The kind of unregulated, non-neutral net McSlarrow advocates already exists in places like Canada.  What you see there is what you’ll get here  — threats of usage caps unless speed throttles are permitted, arbitrary “network management” that reduces speeds for some services while “enhancing” or “exempting” certain other services (usually those partnered with the provider), and in the end usage caps -and- throttles -and- price increases.  In Canada, the story extends beyond the retail broadband market.  Wholesale broadband sold to independent ISPs comes nicely throttled and overpriced as well.

McSlarrow maintains a see no evil, hear no evil approach to his provider friends who pay his salary.  Comcast’s quiet throttling of peer to peer applicati0ns that blew up into a major scandal when the truth came out was evidently one of the “isolated incidents” he speaks about.  That’s only the nation’s largest cable operator — no reason to get bent out of shape about that.

Let’s break down McSlarrow’s concerns and read between the lines:

• Nothing about Net Neutrality impacts on a cable system’s ability to deliver its multichannel video programming.  What McSlarrow is hinting at is that cable may end up using some of the same technology that moves online video to your computer to transport television programming to your TV set.  AT&T does that today with its U-verse system.  It’s basically a fat broadband pipe over which television, telephone, and broadband service travels together over a single pair of wires.  There is no demand that broadband must usurp your cable television package.
• McSlarrow is trying to be clever when he describes “new services” that he defines as separate and distinct from Internet access service.  That usually includes “digital phone” products which providers already exempt from usage limits imposed on competitors like Vonage.  If “network management” throttles Vonage while exempting the cable system’s own phone product, is that fair?  What about the forthcoming TV Everywhere?  Could a provider throttle the speed of Hulu while exempting its own online television service?  What happens if a provider’s own service is exempted from these throttles and can deliver a higher quality picture because of that exemption?
• “Bandwidth is not infinite.”  That’s something I’ve heard providers argue for more than a year complaining about their congested networks and why they need to impose controls to “manage them.” McSlarrow wants providers to be able to “manage” those networks by selling enhanced speeds for applications that partner with the provider.  Unfortunately, because cable broadband is a shared resource, those premium enhanced speeds will consume a larger share of that resource, naturally slowing down everyone else who didn’t agree to pay. Providers will say they are not ‘intentionally’ slowing down the free lane, but that’s a distinction without a difference to the consumer who will find many of their websites slower to access.
• Today’s model asks consumers to make the ultimate choice. If they want a faster online experience, they can purchase a faster tier of service. Now providers want to change that by establishing a nice protection racket — pay us for “enhanced speeds” or your content may not reach your customers at a tolerable rate of speed.
• It’s ironic McSlarrow is suddenly crying about how unfair it is content providers can’t purchase these “enhanced services.”  That’s a change of tune from an industry that used to accuse the large number of content providers who support Net Neutrality as freeloaders trying to use “their pipes for free.”

Customer demand for higher speeds and more reliable service should be all the impetus the cable industry needs to deliver quality service, particularly considering consumers pay a lot of money for the service and remain loyal to it.

McSlarrow’s final argument is a testament to the arrogance of the cable industry on the issues that concern subscribers.  A-la-carte channel choice, equipment options and expenses, usage limits, rate increases, and service standards are all issues this industry has fought with regulators about.  What customers want is secondary, and can remain that way as long as consumer choice is kept limited.  McSlarrow’s valiant defense of the rights and freedoms of the cable industry to offer extra freedom of speech through enhanced speed-privileges to content partners is more important to him and his provider friends than the rights of customers to not have their service artificially degraded to make room for even bigger cable profits.

Mark A. Jamison

Stop the Cap! reader Joe sends along news of another one of those guest opinion hit pieces on Net Neutrality that pop up regularly in the media.  This one, The Internet is Never Neutral, printed in today’s Sun-Sentinel in south Florida, comes from Mark A. Jamison and Janice Hauge, a dynamic duo who have co-written several papers that always manage to turn up favorable conclusions for big telecommunications companies, including these page-turners:

• “Bureaucrats as Entrepreneurs: Do Municipal Telecom Providers Hinder Private Entrepreneurs?”
• “Subsidies and Distorted Markets: Do Telecom Subsidies Affect Competition?”
• “Dumbing Down the Net: A Further Look at the Net Neutrality Debate.”

The two are also working on other papers purporting to study regulatory policy and competition issues.  Let me illustrate my psychic powers by guessing they’ll find regulatory authorities to be obstacles to the well-oiled telecommunications machine and competition will be most hearty if there are no pesky regulations to hamper it.  We’ve seen how well that has worked so far for consumers in North America.

Remember Al Gore calling the Internet the information superhighway? The metaphor wasn’t and isn’t perfect, but it is instructive. Suppose we applied net neutrality to our transportation system — there would be no high-occupancy vehicle lanes during rush hour, no car-only lanes on interstates, and no toll road as an alternative to I-95 in South Florida. Transportation would be more costly and provide less value.

Forcing net neutrality would have similar results. Time-sensitive information, such as stock market transactions, would wait in line behind football game highlights.

Jamison, who is a former manager at Sprint Communications, and Hauge miss the entire point of the Internet’s biggest strength: its equal treatment of traffic from the smallest blog to Amazon.com.  Assuming providers, earning billions in profits even as their costs decline, invested appropriately in those networks, there would be no need for high-occupancy vehicle lanes and toll roads.  These kinds of “traffic management” techniques are proposed because provider dollars don’t keep up with consumer demand.  Social engineering tries to throttle traffic downwards by discouraging it with toll fees or manage it with special high cost lanes reserved only for those willing to pay or follow arbitrary rules governing their use.  More often than not, those premium lanes go underutilized while the rest of us remain stuck in the slow lane.

Net Neutrality would not impede network management that enhances the efficiency of traffic, except when it comes at the expense of someone else’s traffic. Net Neutrality also throws up a roadblock against providers who would plan to cash in with enhanced connectivity services that cannot exist unless  a market is created to sell them.  It’s similar to providers in Canada limiting your access to broadband, then throwing a penalty fee on your bill… unless you sign up and pay for their “insurance” plan to protect you from those charges.

Want to run a video streaming application on the Internet?  Pay for a broadband provider’s deluxe delivery insurance, and customers will be able to watch that video without buffering.  The alternative is to be stuck waiting because your video is being delivered on an artificial “slow lane.”

If you are thinking that it sounds like net neutrality restricts innovation and hurts customers, you’re right. Our research has shown that net neutrality limits innovation, contrary to the claims of the net neutrality proponents. How can this be? Imagine a one dimensional network — one that does nothing but carry information from point to point, which is how the old Internet has worked. What kinds of content providers flourish in that context? Those big enough to distribute their software across the net and those whose software takes advantage of the great bandwidth that they don’t have to pay for.

Their research makes numerous assumptions that might prove accurate in a laboratory environment, but simply discounts provider mischief in their efforts to maximize profits and minimize costs.  Providers have earned countless billions providing this “one dimensional network” to consumers.  It’s the one bright spot in a lackluster telecommunications sector.  Those who innovate new broadband applications have flourished.  Some providers who have not want to innovate in a different way – by inventing new Internet Overcharging schemes to profit from the service without actually improving it.  When their interests are at stake in owning and managing their own content services, bandwidth suddenly becomes plentiful.  The TV Everywhere project will potentially provide a value-added service to cable and telco TV providers, all made possible in marked contrast to their argument that other producers’ video content is clogging their networks.

Another naked fallacy in the authors’ argument is that content providers don’t pay for the bandwidth to host and distribute their content.  They do — to the companies that host their content and provide connectivity to the Internet.  That’s the job of web hosting companies.  Internet service providers simply want to be paid extra for doing their job – providing connectivity to consumers who pay $4o or more a month Free Press found costs about $8 to provide, and then also charging content creators a second time to facilitate delivery of that content.  That’s akin to charging a phone customer for placing a long distance call and also demanding to bill the person who answers.

Now, suppose that the network can offer enhancements that improve customers’ experiences. Content providers whose sites would not benefit from such enhancements could ignore the offering. But there will be some content providers who could improve their services by buying the enhancements, such as priority packet delivery. These sites become better without net neutrality and offer customers more service. In other words, there is more innovation and greater customer welfare without net neutrality than with it.

Promises, promises.  Just getting these providers to upgrade broadband speeds to consumers has been a never-ending quest.  Many consumers are willing to pay for “improved service” in the form of faster connections to the Internet.  Consumers are not willing to pay more for artificially limited service, be it through throttled speeds or usage caps.

At the conclusion of their study, which assumes providers will not leverage their duopoly in most American markets to increase pricing/revenue and reduce costs by limiting demand on their networks, they readily admit they did not take into account several possible scenarios:

One issue is how the offering of premium transmission might affect the network provider’s incentive to change the standard transmission speed. At least AT&T has committed to not degrade service for any network user, but it is unclear how such a commitment would be enforced.

Secondly, we do not analyze the effects of peer-to-peer communication, which is growing in importance on the Internet.

Thirdly, we do not consider the effects of vertical integration by the network provider and whether this would provide an incentive for foreclosure.

The PURC is part of the University of Florida, but also receives private corporate funding

Because the broadband industry fights any attempt to regulate their service, it is unlikely any such promise from AT&T would be enforced.  What AT&T defines as “degraded” service is open to interpretation as well.  As broadband demand is dynamic and growing, should AT&T leave standard transmission speeds exactly as they are today, that non-premium service would be degraded through inattention to broadband growth.  Peer to peer communication is largely a story from the first round of the Net Neutrality debate in 2006-7.  A more significant amount of traffic is now attributed to online video.  Finally, not considering vertical integration in the cable and telephone industry is a fatal flaw.  The history of telecommunications regulation has largely been written during periods when the cable and telephone industry abused their market position to overcharge consumers for service, lock up content distribution channels, and forestall competition wherever and whenever possible.

Frankly, Jamison and Hauge’s world view only innovates new, even fatter profits for providers like AT&T.  Perhaps some of those profits can go towards even greater funding for the Public Utility Research Center, where Jamison serves as director and Hauge as a Senior Research Associate.  The PURC, part of the University of Florida, just happens to have, among others, AT&T and Embarq Florida as sponsors, and both companies have seats on the PURC Executive Committee.

Sun-Sentinel readers don’t have that information because it’s not included in the disclosure at the bottom of the piece.  Following the money would shed a lot more sun on this important debate.

John Boehner (R-Ohio)

Eighteen Republican senators joined twenty House Republicans in a letter writing campaign to get FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski to drop Net Neutrality from the agenda at the Federal Communications Commission, calling the policy “counterproductive,” and would create a “chilling effect” on broadband investment in the future.

Many GOP members signing the latest round of letters also took issue with Net Neutrality a few years ago when it was a hot topic in Washington.

After Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison’s aborted attempt to de-fund FCC enforcement of Net Neutrality regulations, the past month has seen a full frontal assault on Net Neutrality by many Republicans.  Minority Leader John Boehner (Ohio) and Republican Whip Eric Cantor (Virginia) co-authored a letter to President Barack Obama suggesting he intervene to drop Net Neutrality policies and instead focus on the national broadband plan.

Any regulations that would prohibit Internet service providers from managing their networks, they said, would discourage those companies from investing the billions of dollars needed to expand broadband access.

“We believe that network neutrality regulations would actually thwart further broadband investment and availability, and that a well-reasoned broadband plan would confirm our view. So to hastily begin the process of adopting network neutrality rules months before issuing such a plan implies that politics are driving the FCC’s decision-making process.”

Ranking Member of the House Communications, Technology & the Internet Subcommittee, Rep. Chris Stearns of Florida fired off a letter to Genachowski echoing the same sentiment:

Sam Brownback (R-Kansas)

“At first glance, net neutrality regulations may appear reasonable and harmless, but, a deeper examination reveals that net neutrality is neither reasonable nor harmless. These mandates would harm consumers, reduce competition, and discourage new investment and innovation at a time of tremendous technological growth.”

“The FCC bears the responsibility to prove a market failure, especially since its 2002, 2005, 2006, and 2007 decisions on cable modem service, digital subscriber line service, broadband over power line service, and wireless broadband service were predicated on the notion that the broadband market nationwide is competitive and that regulation is unwarranted,” Stearns wrote.

Of course, during the years he cites, the Republicans enjoyed a majority on the Commission that made that finding.

Stearns and his colleagues suggest that the FCC could only intervene if substantial evidence existed the broadband marketplace was collapsing.

The Senate Republicans, led by Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas and Chuck Grassley of Iowa, questioned the need to adopt new regulation, suggesting only two abusive incidents have occurred in the last five years that would have been prohibited by the regulations.

“It appears your decision to create new commission rules is outcome-driven. Your promulgating network neutrality rules seems to emanate from a fear that there may be some problems related to openness in ‘the future.’  Our view is that it is harmful for the commission to impose industry-wide rules based upon speculation about what may occur in the future.”

“Such a major policy shift should be contemplated with only all of the FCC Commissioners involved,” they wrote. “To do it with just one party reduces the confidence the public and Congress has in the proposal.”

Pro Net Neutrality groups had none of it:

Gigi Sohn, Public Knowledge:

It is truly unfortunate that the House Republican leadership has put itself in the position of trying to slow down the greatest economic engine for job creativity and innovation ever created. Under the neutral, non-discriminatory Internet, thousands and thousands of new businesses were created and millions of dollars were invested.

The latest House Republican letter asking for the FCC to slow action on preserving an open, non-discriminatory Internet is simply another attempt at a delaying tactic by those who favor big telecom and cable companies over competition and innovation.

The letter also has fatal flaws, such as when it asserts that Net Neutrality would make investment more difficult, or that Net Neutrality would result in lower speeds and higher prices for consumers. Both of those claims are false. Billions of dollars were invested in the Internet ecosystem, not only by carriers, but by companies doing business on the Internet, and by consumers subscribing to Internet services. That is the investment we seek to expand. There is nothing in banning discrimination on the basis of source, ownership or destination of bits would create lower speeds or raise prices. Those are simply distractions.

Net Neutrality is about big telecom, cable and wireless companies (which are often the same) picking winners and losers on the Internet. It has nothing to do with online services, consumer electronics or applications. The FCC should proceed to guarantee the freedom of the Internet that all consumers and businesses deserve.

Markham Erickson, Open Internet Coalition:

This issue has been under debate since 2005 when the Supreme Court issued its Brand X ruling. The previous Republican-led FCC engaged in ad-hoc enforcement in the Comcast case. To suggest this is a radical policy u-turn is simply incorrect.

The Internet existed for more than 25 years under a neutral regime. During that time, a national data network was built out by telcos and cable providers, despite a neutrality requirement. To suggest that a return to that status quo threatens broadband investment is not borne out by experience. In fact, it is critical to investment that this issue be addressed sooner rather than later — further delay in addressing this core policy issue will harm investment flows into new and innovative technologies.

“

Professor Geist

The Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission, the Canadian equivalent of the Federal Communications Commission in Washington, may be forced to consider American broadband policy before defining Net Neutrality and its role in Canadian broadband, according to an article published today in The Globe & Mail.

[FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski’s] proposal – to codify and enforce some general principles of “Net neutrality” – comes as the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission is expected to release its own position this fall, after public consultations this summer that prompted feedback from tens of thousands of Canadians.

“The kinds of principles that the FCC is now looking to put into rules are precisely what the CRTC heard from many groups this past summer,” said Michael Geist, a University of Ottawa professor who holds the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law. “The kinds of concerns that Canadians have been expressing have clearly been taken to heart by the FCC.”

Many Canadian citizens have been unhappy with the CRTC after a summer of hearings and policy decisions which have almost universally-favored Canadian broadband providers’ positions.  The CRTC seemed skeptical during hearings over the urgency to enforce Net Neutrality protections and stop provider’s throttling of peer to peer networks.  But consumers were even more upset when the Commission agreed with Bell, Canada’s largest phone company and wholesale broadband provider, and allowed the company to impose “usage based billing (UBB)” (Internet Overcharging) on wholesale buyers — primarily independent Internet Service Providers.  Canadian customers attempting to avoid usage caps and consumption billing relied on more generous policies from independent providers, policies likely to be revoked with the imposition of UBB, potentially making flat rate broadband service in Canada largely extinct.

In general terms, Net neutrality refers to the concept that access to all legal content on the Internet should be equal. The concept often comes up in relation to the practice of “bandwidth throttling,” where ISPs limit the transfer speed of certain kinds of data – such as the transfer of large movie files between users – but not other kinds.

Many large Canadian ISPs have argued that network management doesn’t affect Net neutrality, and taking away an ISP’s ability to manage its network results in worse service for a large number of customers.

Currently, there is no uniform practice among large ISPs in Canada when it comes to network management. Some firms throttle bandwidth during certain times of the day, whereas other limit bandwidth all the time, or not at all. A CRTC ruling this fall could go a long way toward implementing a uniform code for all ISPs.

“In light of what we’ve seen today, [the CRTC ruling] will be particularly telling because the benchmark now isn’t just what the CRTC heard during this hearing, the benchmark now is our neighbours to the south,” Prof. Geist said. “The CRTC will in many ways be measured up against what the FCC is doing in the U.S.”

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Communications and Information Technology Minister Hon. Steven Joyce

New Zealand, long ranked near the bottom of the barrel in broadband according to OECD rankings, will embark on a $1.5 billion (NZD) national broadband initiative, with a publicly-owned fiber network as its hallmark.

The plan, which will give urban and suburban New Zealand residents access to speeds faster than commonly available in the United States, will reach three-quarters of the population within the next ten years.  New Zealand has discarded the “wait around for the private sector” approach, which has left the country with stiflingly slow and heavily capped broadband at high prices.  Instead, it will create an open access fiber optic network on which private providers can compete and offer consumers the speeds they desire.  Communications and Information Technology Minister Steven Joyce issued a statement explaining why the government was getting involved:

Private sector companies have decided, on behalf of their shareholders and as a commercial decision, not to invest in a nationwide network of fibre-to-the-home at this point in time.  The government understands this, and so wishes to assist and work with the private sector in improving the business case for ultra-fast broadband.

The government is also getting involved in order to encourage the provision of widespread open access dark fibre services, which will facilitate the best possible competition outcomes in emerging markets and encourage innovation in wholesale and retail services.

For residents in 33 communities across the country targeted for access to the new network, it cannot come soon enough.  For many of them the most important issue, even beyond speed, is an end to what one Henderson resident called “the current crap called ‘data caps.'”

“The speed of the broadband is meaningless compared to the tiny data caps involved.  On the current slow broadband, I use up my 50GB data cap 12-15 days into the month.  Ultra fast broadband would only be useful with no data caps involved, because the existing broadband speed is twice as fast as the cap already,” Lucy in Auckland told the New Zealand Herald.

Rose in Glenfield agrees:

“We have a 20GB data cap that we chew through in about 10-14 days, and then we are stuck on 64kbps or we have to pay another $30 for another 20GB to get through the rest of the month. When are they going to address these kinds of issues,” she asks.

New Zealand has seen the impact of Internet Overcharging schemes for years.  Providers originally introduced ‘data caps’ to reduce the usage on their networks, but have since relied on them, and consumption billing also as a way to collect revenue.  Most residential customers endure usage caps of 20-50GB per month.  After that, some providers dramatically reduce their connections to just above dial-up speed, while others have found new revenue by charging customers $2/GB or more in overlimit penalties and fees.  Some offer additional usage allotments, but at high prices, such as $30 for 20GB of additional usage.

The result has been a dramatically lower adoption of broadband in New Zealand, and many don’t think it’s worth the money.

John Rutter in Howick suggests speed is secondary to dealing with the issue of loathed usage caps.

“I like the idea of a ultra-fast broadband investment initiative but I hope Internet service providers like Vodafone, Slingshot, and Orcon will provide unlimited Internet soon. Unlimited Internet should come first, then ultra-fast broadband,” he said.

The government has received public support for its broadband initiative.  The public benefit is a much faster “public highway” on which private providers can offer service to individual customers.  By constructing a fast pipeline publicly that no provider is willing to provide privately, it creates additional value for consumers who find faster, more reliable service, preferably on better terms.

“Already a number of companies have shown interest in the government’s broadband initiative,” Joyce said in a statement. “It’s time to get on with finding the right partners to build these networks.”

The government “is prepared to accept a less than commercial return” from the partners. It aims to hold less than 25 per cent in the partnered investment vehicles and will resist contributions of more than 50 per cent.

For rural New Zealand, the answer generally won’t come from a fiber-based strategy, Joyce says.  Instead, the government estimates $300 million will be needed from public and private sources for a rural broadband plan.  Significant portions of New Zealand are difficult to reach with traditional broadband networks, and many New Zealand residents in even medium sized outlying towns find themselves on long waiting lists for what service is available.

Steve in Wellington told the Herald “a lot of towns (like Richmond, Tasman and Rolleston – not just remote areas) have issues where due to lack of exchange space many people cannot get broadband or are on ‘port waiting lists’ waiting for ports to become available. I think the main issue should be ensuring access to broadband full stop. Not just faster for those lucky enough to already have it.”

Rural broadband through wireless is one initiative under consideration.  WiMax technology can deliver fast broadband to rural area, often at faster speeds than traditional telephone company DSL in rural communities.