AT&T customers looking for better service need to put down those cellphones and turn off the computer and pick up a good book.  AT&T recommends Fed Up! Our Fight to Save America From Washington, written by Texas Gov. Rick Perry.

Perry’s book, which compares Social Security and FDR’s “New Deal” social programs with a Communist takeover is so popular with the Big Telecom, it purchased over 700 copies to hand out for free to state legislators, lobbyists and activists attending a conservative policy summit luncheon.  Oh, and the company paid for the lunch, too.  Total cost?  More than $13,000 — all ultimately paid for by AT&T’s customers.

AT&T made sure every guest had their own personal hardcover copy of the governor’s book, something that didn’t go unnoticed by former Texas Solicitor General Ted Cruz, who thanked AT&T from the microphone for paying for the books.

“Governor Perry has written a book – a book that all of us very kindly have been given by AT&T,” Cruz said. “Thank you, AT&T.”

AT&T’s gladhanding of conservative state politicians doesn’t come accidentally, reports the Dallas Morning News.  With hundreds of millions in revenue at stake, AT&T’s investment in the state’s Republican dominated legislature guarantees the company’s voice will be heard on important legislative matters.

AT&T has spent as much as $9.3 million to lobby Austin lawmakers and regulators, according to Texas Ethics Commission data. AT&T’s political action committee has donated $494,740 to Perry during his nine years in office, according to Texans for Public Justice.

The latter group told the newspaper AT&T doesn’t get into the book club business lightly.

“It does raise concerns. AT&T has a lot of business before the state of Texas and Texas regulators,” said Craig McDonald, director of Texans for Public Justice, a group that tracks money in politics. “They are generally the largest lobby in the state. They can reach out and touch every lawmaker simultaneously.”

Elected officials who write books routinely find some of their biggest sales come from lobbyists, who buy books in bulk and hand them out at public speaking engagements, or simply shove them into the nearest storage locker.  It’s not about the book, it’s about the access companies like AT&T gain from the goodwill earned from buying copies.

Perry does not profit directly from the book sales, but his political interests do.  Proceeds of the book sales go to the Texas Public Policy Foundation’s Center for Tenth Amendment Studies, a group dedicated to protecting corporate interests and “state’s rights.”

AT&T’s corporate interest is protected by the Policy Foundation’s opposition to Net Neutrality, but the group generally opposes broadband stimulus funding, some of which is likely to end up in AT&T’s pockets.

[flv width=”480″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Texas Public Policy Foundation Net Neutrality.flv[/flv]

The Texas Public Policy Foundation invited two Republican FCC commissioners — one current and one former — to bash Net Neutrality and broadband reforms before a stacked panel and audience of like-minded thinkers.  (1 hour, 50 minutes)

The National Cable and Telecommunications Association, the cable industry’s top lobbying group, upped its lobbying activity during the third quarter, spending $4 million to press government officials to adopt a pro-cable legislative agenda.

That amount was up from $3.93 million spent in the second quarter, and $3.78 million spent during last year’s third quarter.

Among the issues on the cable industry’s agenda: stopping Net Neutrality, lobbying against consumer regulatory reforms, tax policies that favor cable companies, cybersecurity, and patent reform.

Among the companies chipping in: Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and Cablevision.

In addition to members of Congress, NCTA lobbyists appealed to the Federal Communications Commission, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, and the Federal Trade Commission.

[flv width=”640″ height=”500″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Bloomberg Oppenheimer Declares Net Neutrality A Victory for Consumers 12-21-10.flv[/flv]

Wall Street continues to consider Monday’s lukewarm Net Neutrality regulations to be a victory for AT&T and other providers.  Bloomberg News asked Tim Horan, an analyst at Oppenheimer & Co., whether the impact of Net Neutrality would be higher prices for consumers.  “Uhhh,” began the stumbling reply.  Watch as Oppenheimer tries to get back on board with provider-generated talking points, eventually declaring the almost non-existent protections “a victory for consumers.”  Do you think he really believes that?  (3 minutes)

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/CNN Net Neutrality Primer 12-21-10.flv[/flv]

For those who may not fully grasp Net Neutrality, CNN’s Ali Velshi delivered a primer that helps explain how Internet traffic moves, how providers want to manage that traffic, and the implications of not enforcing robust Net Neutrality.  Velshi’s explanation delivers both sides of the argument with only a few minor errors.  We’d remind him consumers already paid for the big pipe depicted in the video.  Consumers should not have to pay twice for the same thing.  Less useful is CNNMoney Staff Writer David Goldman, who got several points wrong, especially about wireless. (8 minutes)

No, don't get up. We've got it.

Want an example of the kind of lazy journalism you get from one of America’s largest news operations, about to become a part of the Comcast family?  Look no further than MSNBC’s Wilson Rothman, who shared some serious Net Nonsense in his piece: ‘Open’ Internet just a pipedream.

Rothman apologized in a tweet after publishing the essay, admitting it was “cynical.”  But we want to know where the apology is for being wrong on the actual facts.

The author tells readers it’s a Comcast world this winter:

As long as you buy Internet access via cable provider, wireless carrier or telecom, you’re going to have to play — or at least pay — by their rules. They’ll just have to make sure to tell you what those rules are. That seems to be the real gist of the FCC order that was ratified today.

[…]The only people currently getting throttled by their broadband providers are file-sharing pirates who wouldn’t be protected by any net neutrality regulation anyway; meanwhile, wired and wireless broadband networks are increasingly controlled by a smaller, more powerful cadre of competitors.

Tiered pricing has to happen

You can use as much electricity from the power grid as you want, but you have to pay by the kilowatt hour. If you think of the Internet as a utility — and why shouldn’t you? — network management should look something like that. Prices offered by regulated private companies should be competitive and reasonable, but highly metered. Sadly, that means no more flat-fee unlimited access.

[…]I don’t mean to sound cynical, but I come at this from a technology background, not a legal or political one. What I see are all the ways in which “public” access to utilities become profit centers for increasingly massive companies.

After the break-up of the Bells, the phone companies eventually consolidated and worked their way back together like some kind of liquid-metal Terminator. The good news? Instead of a single monopolistic phone company, we have two Leviathans and some smaller fish. Long-distance service used to be their cash cow; now it’s wireless and broadband, and they’re not going to let those slip so easily.

“Give that man a raise,” said Brian Roberts, Comcast CEO.

Seriously, Rothman might come from a technology background, but he sure doesn’t know his way around the broadband public policy debate. Digging into the reasons for today’s broadband mess would require actual reporting.

Rothman suggests Americans are effectively required to accept today’s decision from the Federal Communications Commission.  That’s akin to telling Time Warner Cable customers they should have just knelt down to the cable company’s 2009 pricing experiments.  Or that North Carolina needed to padlock community broadband networks until they could be sold on eBay to the highest Big Telecom bidder.  Or that Frontier can and should get away with a 5GB usage cap.

We said no.  You said no.  And we won all three of those battles.

Today’s FCC vote has relevance only until the first major cable or phone company (or interested third party) files a lawsuit.  The outcome is predictable — the same court that threw out the FCC’s authority earlier this year will do so again, for many of the same reasons.  For consumers, that isn’t all bad.

Rothman’s claim that only pirates are victims of speed throttling is demonstrably false, and nothing less than journalistic malpractice.  Innocent consumers are routinely throttled on wireless and wireline broadband networks using “network management” technology.  Are Clear’s customers all pirates?  How about Cricket’s clients?  Exceeding an arbitrary amount of usage on these networks guarantees you a spot in the dial-up-like doghouse.

The author also misses the point about increasing consolidation in the Big Telecom marketplace.  Cadre?  Sure.  Competitors?  Hardly.  Most Americans endure a broadband duopoly for reasonable Internet access — a cable and phone company.  Cable and phone companies have quite a deal.  They effectively charge around the same price for service and never have to worry about a third cable or phone company entering the marketplace.  Cable companies don’t compete with other cable companies.  Same for telephone companies.  Community broadband networks deliver the only real competition some areas have, which is why Big Telecom wants to ban these upstarts wherever they can.  Big Telecom believes Americans should not get to choose an alternative cable company if Comcast delivers terrible service.  Consumers living in small communities like Penn Yan, N.Y., live with Verizon DSL, if they are lucky.  Outside of the immediate town limits, there isn’t a cable competitor, much less another phone company.  That’s the real “take it or leave it” Americans contend with.

Rothman's electric utility analogy is as valid as charging for broadband by the foot.

Why shouldn’t Americans think of broadband as just another electric utility?  Because it isn’t.  This common talking point/analogy adopted by Rothman’s future employer has as much validity as pricing broadband by how many feet of wire was necessary to install it.

Broadband is neither a limited resource nor a product that requires a utility to purchase raw materials to perpetually generate.  His argument works only if a provider “generated” the actual content you consume online.  They don’t — they simply transport content from one point to another over a network that becomes enormously profitable once the initial construction costs are paid.  Rothman can discover this for himself reviewing the quarterly financials of broadband providers.  After billions in profits are counted, it’s clear this is one recession-proof industry that is hardly hurting.

It’s no mistake these analogies always leave out the one utility that is most comparable to broadband — telephone service.  You know, the one service that is rapidly moving towards unlimited, flat rate — talk all you want.  Providers using the consumption billing argument cannot afford to include phone service in their analogy, because then the ripoff would be exposed.  One would think a reporter for NBC News might have managed to figure that one out as well, but no.

The fact is, there is no healthy competition in broadband.  You know what that means — high prices for limited service.  Rothman seems ready and willing to take whatever Big Telecom wants to dish out, but then his paycheck is about to be paid by one of those companies, so he can afford to be cynical.

Unfortunately for his readers, Rothman is oblivious to the reasons why phone companies have consolidated and consumers are stuck with the results.  The recipe:

• A multimillion dollar lobbying effort that includes huge contributions to politicians, astroturf “dollar-a-holler” groups paid to front for Big Telecom’s agenda, and a mess of scare tactics predicting horrible things if they do not get their way;
• A supine media that simply accepts provider arguments as fact, deems the abusive practice that follow as inevitable, and apologizes later for being cynical;
• An uninformed public that decreasingly relies on media companies that also happen to have direct financial interests in the outcome of these public policy debates.

Consumers have more power than Rothman thinks when they take a stand with elected officials.  When taking AT&T money becomes more costly than voting for their constituents, elected officials will do the right thing.  That takes individuals letting elected officials they are watching them closely on these issues.

Consumers can also tell their local elected officials that the Big Telecom Money Party needs to come to an end.  A community-owned broadband network that throws out the online toll booths and creates a network for Main Street instead of Wall Street is the functional equivalent of handing unruly Verizon and Comcast their coats and escorting them the door.