Your Internet Service Provider keeps telling you there is no need for faster broadband speeds, but no matter how many times they say it, you still don’t believe them.

Neither do the folks at LUS Fiber — Lafayette, Louisiana’s publicly-owned fiber to the home broadband network.

In a state dominated by AT&T and cable companies like Cox, Louisiana has never experienced super-fast broadband.  But now they will.  LUS Fiber today announced 1Gbps broadband is now available in the Hub City.

Businesses will now have access to affordable broadband at speeds 20,000 times faster than dial-up.  Residential customers used to getting 1-12Mbps from phone company DSL or up to 50Mbps from Cox can put the slow lane behind them forever.  LUS Fiber can deliver upload and download speeds as fast as 1,000Mbps.

“Gigabit service from LUS Fiber is one of the most robust Internet offerings on the market today,” says Terry Huval, Director of Lafayette Utilities System and LUS Fiber. “We built this community network with a promise to the people of Lafayette that we will work hard to provide them with new opportunities through this unique, state-of-the-art fiber technology, and that’s just what we’ve done.”

That puts Lafayette on the map with Chattanooga, Tenn., as the two fastest operating fiber broadband networks in the country selling to both residential and business customers.  Both are publicly-owned networks private companies like AT&T have lobbied hard to banish.

In fact, Louisiana’s record on broadband outside of Lafayette is decidedly poor.

An $80 million federal grant to fund much-needed improvements to the state’s Internet infrastructure was returned in what one public official called Gov. Bobby Jindal’s special favor to Big Telecom companies like AT&T.

Public Service Commissioner Foster Campbell publicly berated the Republican governor for intentionally interfering with the project until time ran out and the government withdrew its funding.

The cancellation of the project has proved embarrassing because it was the first time a state lost federal broadband grant money.

The state’s Division of Administration eventually scrapped plans for the public broadband network and replaced it with a proposal to use grant dollars to purchase long term institutional broadband contracts from private providers.  AT&T is the dominant local phone company in Louisiana — the same company that has steadfastly refused to provide DSL service across rural Louisiana. The new proposal would have not delivered any broadband access to individual Louisiana homes, only to institutions like schools, libraries, and local government agencies.

No broadband for you...

Sometimes even money doesn’t talk… or buy you faster broadband service.

That is a lesson some of New Hampshire’s wealthiest residents — company presidents, top-dollar lawyers, and the trust-fund endowed — in Rindge and Grafton County are learning only too well.

It seems neither Comcast or FairPoint Communications has shown much interest in extending today’s definition of “broadband” to the multi-million dollar homes on Hubbard Road.

“Every year, I start working up the telephone chain, calling people at Comcast. I’m looking for the vice president, or whatever, in charge of infrastructure so I can call him, bribe him, plead with him to connect me,” said Leigh Eichel, who moved to the ritzy cul-de-sac in 2005. “I’ll pay anything!”

Eichel and his friends told their story to David Brooks of the Nashua Telegraph, who used the plight of the 1%’ers to ponder whether broadband should be a universal right.

A century ago, the government decided that mail service to all American homes was necessary and launched Rural Free Delivery. Then it decided electricity was necessary and created regulated utilities that guaranteed connection. It did the same with telephones, creating the universal access fund that collects money from all phone bills to subsidize land lines to the remotest home.

But nothing similar has happened with Internet service, which is mostly unregulated by government. The market has been largely left to its own.

The result is scattered empty spots like Hubbard Road, which should be broadband heaven.

... or you.

Comcast continues, for the seventh year running, to show zero interest in wiring the wealthy enclave.  That left residents trying to make do with satellite broadband, which they cried was too slow and usage-capped.

Eichel finally managed to cajole FairPoint Communications, the bankrupt phone company that bought out Verizon landlines in northern New England, to extend DSL to the neighborhood, but they did it on-the-cheap, leaving residents with sub-par service barely capable of breaking 1Mbps, when they’re lucky.

Welcome to broadband equality of a different kind, whether you are fighting AT&T from a family farm in Wisconsin for better-than-1Mbps DSL or a super-wealthy executive in New Hampshire suffering with FairPoint’s alleged broadband and utterly rejected by Comcast.

Particularly appalling for the well-traveled Hubbard Road residents: the realization that Singapore’s equivalent of a seedy Motel 6 has basic broadband service that beats the pants off New England’s dominant phone company.

Even Money Won't Talk

“I was staying in a budget hotel; there weren’t even windows in the room. Hey, I was spending my own money,” Eichel’s neighbor Rick Slocum told the newspaper. “[They had] 12Mbps broadband — the connection [was] 10 times as fast as my home.”

Brooks concludes New England wants the same thing most of the rest of the country wants — universal fiber-to-the-home access, which delivers 100-1000Mbps, depending on the provider.

They, like most everyone else, will have to wait.  Like AT&T U-verse and Verizon FiOS, FairPoint’s very-limited fiber offering FAST has reached a limit of its own — the amount the phone company is willing to spend rebuilding their network.  Future expansion plans are now on hold.

Slocum ponders the speed needs America will have in the future, and wonders if even fiber optics will one day need to be replaced for something even faster.

Brooks responds with a prediction.  As long as Comcast and FairPoint are in charge, whatever it is, Hubbard Road probably won’t have it.

The entertainment industry, in cooperation with the nation’s largest Internet Service Providers, joined forces to open a new copyright enforcement center that critics charge sidesteps judicial process, leaving consumers forced to prove they are innocent after they’ve been accused of being guilty.

On Monday, the Center for Copyright Infringement named its executive director and board, and intends to gradually begin serving as a clearinghouse for copyright infringement complaints brought by the nation’s music and movie companies.

CCI has representatives from the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), AT&T, Cablevision, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and Verizon Communications collectively working to streamline enforcement of copyright law and control Internet piracy.

Often known as the “Six Strikes Plan,” CCI participants will coordinate piracy notification warnings for suspected illicit downloads of copyrighted content from peer-to-peer file sharing networks.  Hollywood studios and recording labels will identify those they suspect are involved in illegal file swapping and participating ISPs will notify customers tied to the infringing IP addresses up to six times before reducing a customer’s Internet speed, temporarily disabling the account, or terminating service.

The CCI hopes to bypass the court system and adopt a self-regulation, “in-house” approach to Internet piracy.  Some courts have proven increasingly-reluctant to hand over identifying information to copyright holders based on the sometimes-flimsy evidence of illegal downloading included in supporting affidavits.  Judges in some courts have also become leery of a cottage industry of “settlement specialists” that threaten expensive litigation for alleged copyright infringement that can be resolved with a quick cash settlement.

Judge James F. Holderman of the Northern District of Illinois ruled against one litigant who demanded ISPs divulge the identities of every participant exchanging bits and pieces of a copyrighted work in a so-called “BitTorrent swarm,” because they were involved in a conspiracy.  Holderman dismissed that argument.

Such tactics have allowed some settlement specialists to demand settlement payments from a larger group, substantially boosting revenue at little cost to them.

CCI’s executive director Jill Lesser says laws no longer favor copyright holders.

“While laws that protect intellectual property remain strong and enforcement efforts continue, technology has tipped the balance away from the interests of most creators and artists,” Lesser said. “The ease of distribution of copyrighted content has helped create a generation of people who believe that all content should be free.”

CCI’s so-called “Copyright Control System” will bypass the courts entirely, as entertainment companies coordinate directly with major ISPs agreeing to enforce copyright compliance.

Lesser says consumers will still have a fair process to challenge notices of alleged infringement.  But it will cost at least $35 for consumers to argue their case.  Additionally, as a self-regulated, industry-controlled body, consumers’ rights of appeal are undetermined.  The arbitration process will be administered through the American Arbitration Association.

Why would ISPs want to become involved in a copyright control regime?  To reduce their own expenses and legal risks.  Copyright holders and their agents have peppered service providers with compliance and identification demands for years, creating full time positions processing the paperwork.  By adopting a clearinghouse and developing a streamlined process to handle complaints, service providers can cut costs and avoid possible litigation against themselves.

Still, both the entertainment industry and ISPs seem to be open to listening to consumer advocates.  Lesser was formerly involved with People for the American Way, a group sensitive to privacy rights.  Serving on the advisory board are Gigi Sohn from Public Knowledge and Jerry Berman, founder of the Center for Democracy and Technology.  Neither have direct authority over the group’s enforcement efforts, but Sohn told Ars Technica she hoped her involvement would give a voice to consumer interests and maintain transparency in the enforcement process.

West Virginia continues to be broadband challenged, with or without the help of Frontier Communications’ DSL service, which continues to be criticized for being woefully “oversold.”

Now some of Frontier’s most frustrated customers have found Facebook, and hope to encourage the company to deliver better speeds through their Fix Frontier DSL Now page.

Customers are especially peeved in areas where they are sold “up to 12Mbps” service, but cannot break 1Mbps during peak usage times when inadequate infrastructure cannot support customer usage demands.  Some are taking their complaints to the West Virginia Public Service Commission:

I am a long-time subscriber to Frontier Communications’ “High-speed Internet Max” DSL service. I live in the Frankford, West Virginia, telephone exchange (304-497-XXXX), which is an area that has always been served by Frontier. We never had Verizon service at my home.

When Frontier installed DSL service in our area, we immediately cancelled our satellite Internet service and signed up. Initially, we had business-class DSL which was very satisfactory. Later, we discontinued our business operation and downgraded to the residential “High-Speed Internet Max” DSL service. That remained quite satisfactory until about a year and a half ago, when service quality deteriorated to the point of being unusable.

During the evening hours, we generally log download speeds of anywhere from 150kbps (0.15MBPS) to 450kbps (0.45MBPS) , with around 300kbps (0.3MBPS) being the norm. This is barely adequate for accessing a static web page, and is totally inadequate for common tasks such as watching a video on YouTube or even streaming music. Speeds do improve, sometimes into the range of 1500kbps (1.5MBPS), in the middle of the night and the afternoons, when we are generally asleep or at work, but are consistently unusable during the evening hours when we are home.

Customers pay around $40 a month for this level of broadband service, and customers calling for assistance are being told to wait:

I have called Frontier’s tech support and opened numerous trouble tickets. Each time, a technician will come out to our house, test the line, pronounce it “perfect” from the house to the switching station, then explain that the problem is lack of bandwidth. Sometimes they say the bottleneck is in Bluefield. Sometimes they say it is between Marlinton and Ashburn, Virginia. In other words, Frontier does not have enough bandwidth available to meet customer needs.

The last time we put in a trouble ticket, the technician didn’t even come to our home. He just called and said he would put the ticket on the stack with all of the other ones, and perhaps the problem would be solved in a couple of years. A couple of years? Yet, I am constantly bombarded with ads asking me to buy Frontier’s high-speed DSL service at rates as low as half of what I pay.

As Stop the Cap! has reported previously, Frontier has acknowledged the problems in West Virginia and promised backbone upgrades to handle the influx of new customers, particularly those adopted from Verizon Communications in 2010 when the company purchased their landline network in the state.  But a schedule of promised upgrades disappeared off Frontier’s website, and according to our readers, continues to be overdue.

The loudest complainers are offered $5 monthly service credits for their troubles, but customers don’t want the money, they want something that actually qualifies as “broadband service.”

Here is how you can tell where your problem might be:

Technical Line Fault Symptoms (these can be corrected by a local technician’s service call to your home)

1. Consistently low speeds that do not vary much with time of day or on weekends;
2. Weather-related service interruptions or slowdowns – poor quality cables, fittings, and other problems are often most visible during the wet spring months;
3. Loud hum or static on your voice line when making or receiving calls;
4. Hearing conversations from other customers on your phone line;

Oversold Broadband (these problems require Frontier to regionally address problems that affect a much larger group of customers)

1. Dramatically reduced speeds during evenings and weekends that consistently speed up later at night or during the workday;
2. Similar speed-related issues affecting friends and neighbors in the same neighborhood or community;
3. Pages that do not load completely, time out, or require refreshing to load properly;
4. “Tracert” reports that indicate certain upstream connections Frontier uses to connect to its national network are timing out or require multiple attempts to get through.

Sen. Paul Hornback (R-AT&T)

A Kentucky state senate panel on Tuesday approved a bill admittedly-authored by AT&T that could allow the company to abandon providing basic telephone service in areas deemed not sufficiently profitable.

Senate Bill 12 is just the latest effort by AT&T to end “Universal Service,” the basic principal that all Americans should have equal access to basic landline telephone service.

The proposed legislation would allow the three largest phone companies in Kentucky — AT&T, Windstream, and Cincinnati Bell to abandon customers who, in one possible scenario, do not agree to a more deluxe feature package that includes long distance calling, wireless service, and/or broadband.

“This bill represents a grave threat to continued, stand-alone, basic telephone service for many Kentuckians who don’t have the luxury of access to Twitter and all the things that we in urban areas tend to take for granted,” Tom FitzGerald, director of the Kentucky Resources Council told the Lexington Herald-Leader.

AT&T says allowing it the right to terminate rural landline service would “spur innovation and create jobs.” It would also strip Kentucky of its power to investigate and force resolutions of consumer complaints.

The optics of the bill’s primary sponsor, Sen. Paul Hornback (R-Shelbyville/AT&T), sitting next to the two AT&T executives who authored the bill as he testified before the Senate Committee on Economic Development, Tourism and Labor was not lost on the bill’s opponents.

“It’s obvious who he is really working for,” said our regular Kentucky reader Paul in Louisville.

Daniel, the Stop the Cap! reader who first shared the story with us, is not happy either.

“This infuriates me,” he writes. “If AT&T gets their way, they will have less reason to invest in areas that are underserved or not served at all, and allow them to further push people to their horrific cell service.”

Daniel barely gets DSL from AT&T — 3Mbps if he’s lucky, and most of his neighbors cannot get any broadband from the company because they don’t officially service the area with broadband.  Daniel suspects once AT&T is deregulated further, they will have even fewer reasons to focus on less-populated regions of the state.

Hornback: "Nobody knows better than AT&T what the company needs the legislature to do for it."

“AT&T is my only reliable option – and if I can’t keep their Internet service then I will lose my job,” he says.

In 2006, AT&T helped push through a deregulation measure that stripped the Kentucky Public Service Commission of its ability to oversee prices for telecommunications services in the state. Customers of both AT&T and Cincinnati Bell soon saw price increases after the legislation passed with arguably no improvement in service.

Hornback argues S.12 will help “modernize telecommunications in the state of Kentucky,” without explaining exactly how abandoning customers enhances their level of service.

AT&T says they will not completely exit rural Kentucky if given the power to disconnect its landline network.  It can sell rural customers AT&T cell phone service instead. Critics say that comes at a substantially higher price and offers only limited broadband.

Hornback defended that, suggesting the company is wasting money and resources keeping its current antiquated landline facilities when it might be better spending that money on wireless services.

But customers would face charges starting at nearly $40 a month after taxes and fees for a basic AT&T wireless plan with as few as 200 calling minutes a month.

Hornback got around initial opposition to an earlier measure he introduced — SB 135, by reintroducing essentially the same measure inside another unrelated bill.  Hornback said that was an effort to give the legislation “a fresh start” in light of heated criticism from consumer groups, the AARP, and even Kentucky businesses.

The committee voted 9-1 for Hornback/AT&T’s measure and sent the bill forward to the Senate floor.  The single “no” vote came from Sen. Denise Harper Angel (D-Louisville).

Phone companies in Kentucky

AT&T’s clout in the state capital is unparalleled according to the newspaper:

It employs 31 legislative lobbyists, including a former PSC vice chairwoman and past chairs of the state Democratic and Republican parties, spending about $80,000 last year on legislative lobbying. Its political action committee has given at least $91,000 in state political donations since 2007.

Remarkably, Hornback defended AT&T’s authorship of his bill that would directly benefit the company’s interests.

Nobody knows better than AT&T what the company needs the legislature to do for it, Hornback said.