One of the chairs of the North Carolina House Finance Committee abruptly resigned his chairmanship on the House floor Wednesday, submitting a letter read aloud in the chamber that accused fellow Republican House Speaker Thom Tillis (R-Mecklenburg) of having an unexplained business relationship with Time Warner Cable.

Rep. Robert Brawley (R-Iredell) wrote Tillis burst into his office demanding to know about a bill Brawley introduced that would have weakened the 2011 law Tillis strongly supported that severely restricted publicly owned broadband networks in the state.

“You slamming my office door shut, standing in front of me and stating that you have a business relationship with Time Warner and wanting to know what the bill was about,” Brawley wrote in his resignation letter. “You and I both know the bill stifles the competition with MI Connections in Mooresville. MI Connections is being operated just as any other free enterprise system and should be allowed to do so without the restrictions placed on them by the proponents of Time Warner.”

Tillis’ office described the resignation of Brawley’s chairmanship as “a mutual decision.”

Tillis was honored in 2011 as ALEC’s “Legislator of the Year” and received an undisclosed cash reward. Time Warner Cable is a corporate member of ALEC.

House Bill 557, introduced by Brawley, would have permitted an exception under state law for the community-owned MI Connection cable system to expand its area of service to include economic development sites, public safety facilities, governmental facilities, and schools and colleges located in and near the city of Statesville. It would also allow the provider to extend service based on the approval of the Board of County Commissioners and, with respect to schools, the Iredell County School Board.

The bill died in the Committee on Government earlier this month.

MI Connection is the publicly owned and operated cable and Internet system serving the towns of Mooresville, Davidson and Cornelius in the counties of Mecklenburg and Iredell. It was originally a former Adelphia-owned cable system that fell into disrepair before it was sold in a bankruptcy proceeding. MI Connection has proved financially challenging to the local communities it serves because the antiquated cable system required significant and costly upgrades, faces fierce competition from AT&T and Time Warner Cable, and lacks the technological advantage fiber to the home offers other public networks like Greenlight in Wilson and Fibrant in Salisbury. Despite the challenges, MI Connection has successfully upgraded its broadband infrastructure with the fastest speeds available in the area — up to 60/10Mbps.

Tillis helped shepherd into law the 2011 bill that Time Warner Cable helped write and sponsor designed to stop public networks like MI Connection from expanding and new public networks ever seeing the light of day. The legislation places strict limits on public broadband network deployment and financing. The bill Brawley introduced would have chipped away at the law’s limits on network expansion. Brawley’s letter suggests Tillis had direct involvement stopping his bill from getting further consideration.

Brawley

Both Brawley and Tillis represent portions of the MI Connection service area.

Time Warner Cable has a long history pushing for community broadband bans in North Carolina, but the bills never became law when the legislature was still in the hands of Democrats. But in late 2010, Republicans took control of the state house for the first time in more than a century. Time Warner Cable’s fortunes brightened considerably under Republicans like Rep. Marilyn Avila (R-Wake). Avila willingly met with Time Warner Cable’s top lobbyist to coordinate movement on the community broadband ban legislation she introduced and after it became law was honored by the state cable lobby at a retreat in Asheville.

Tillis, who became speaker of the house in 2011 under the new GOP majority, received $37,000 in telecom contributions in 2010–2011 (despite running unopposed in 2010), which is more than any other state lawmaker and significantly more than the $4,250 he received 2006–2008 combined. AT&T, Time Warner Cable, and Verizon each gave Tillis $1,000 in early-mid January, just before he was sworn in as speaker on January 26. Tillis was in a key position to make sure the anti-competitive bill moved along the legislative pipeline.

Last summer, Time Warner Cable returned the favor inviting Tillis to serve a prominent role at a media event inaugurating its Wi-Fi network in time for last year’s Democratic National Convention, held at the Time Warner Cable Arena.

Despite all that, newspapers in the state are having trouble determining exactly what ties Tillis has to Time Warner Cable. The Raleigh News & Observer noted, “It’s unclear what relationship Tillis might have to Time Warner. His financial disclosure lists no connection.”

The Greensboro News & Record published a non-denial denial from Tillis spokesman Jordan Shaw: “Shaw said he doesn’t know of any business relationship between Tillis and Time Warner.” The paper added, “a regional Time-Warner spokesman said Tillis has no ties to the company.”

“Not knowing” is not a total denial and a legislator need not have direct ties to a company to be influenced by their agenda through lobbyists like the North Carolina Cable Telecommunications Association, the statewide cable trade association that includes Time Warner Cable as its largest member. Then there are third-party groups.

A May 7 editorial in the News & Observer pointed out Tillis does have close ties to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a group financed in part by Time Warner Cable and cited by CEO Glenn Britt as a useful asset to the cable operator because it was “particularly focused on telecom matters.” The commentary, “ALEC’s Guy is Thom Tillis,” reminded readers Tillis wasn’t just a casual member of the corporate-funded group, he’s a national board member. In fact, Stop the Cap! has learned he was ALEC’s 2011 Legislator of the Year. On hand at the 2011 New Orleans ALEC event to applaud Tillis were more than two dozen fellow North Carolina Republican legislators, including Reps. Marilyn Avila and Julia Howard.

Among the model, corporate ghost-written bills ALEC maintains in its extensive database is one that restricts or bans publicly owned broadband networks, similar to what passed in North Carolina in 2011.

The fortunes of ALEC (and the corporations that underwrite its operations) have continued to improve in North Carolina this year. The News & Observer notes:

ALEC, as it’s known, has provided language for bills that [have been] used this session in North Carolina, ranging from creating an independent board to take charter school governance away from the State Board of Education to protecting a Philadelphia-based company from lawsuits involving asbestos exposure to installing an anti-union amendment in the state constitution. Closer to home, the Civitas Institute, a conservative group, used ALEC literature in an indoctrination…er, training…session for freshman lawmakers.

“I wish you’d turn the camera off now because I am going to get up and leave if you don’t,” said Rep. Julia Howard

Uncovering the corporate influence and pay to play politics pervasive in North Carolina’s legislature on broadband matters has proved historically scandalous for members and ex-members alike, as Stop the Cap! has reported for more than four years:

• In 2009, Rep. Ty Harrell (D-Wake) ran away from his own bill to ban community broadband after he admitted he ran into a hornet’s nest of controversy over the legislation, which was introduced because Time Warner approached him and asked for it. Later that same year he ran into another hornet’s nest over allegations of misused campaign funds and resigned his office;
• In 2010, Sen. David Hoyle admitted he introduced a community broadband ban in the North Carolina Senate that the cable industry wrote with his help. When asked about criticism that he was “carrying water” for the cable companies, Hoyle replied, “I’ve carried more water than Gunga Din for the business community – the people who pay the taxes.” He decided not to run for re-election;
• In 2011, life became uncomfortable for Rep. Julia Howard (R-Davie, Iredell), who became so upset over scrutiny she received from Raleigh’s NBC affiliate over the bill to ban community broadband, she threatened to flee the interview if the cameras were not shut off.

Tillis is following in others’ footsteps and is suspected of having even bigger political ambitions for 2014 — challenging the U.S. Senate seat now held by Democrat Kay Hagan.

The News & Observer thinks Tillis is forgetting about the people who elected him to office:

For North Carolinians of any political philosophy, however, the larger concern here is that laws are being written by those outside the state with only an ideological interest. ALEC, except for advancing its agenda, likely could care less about issues specific to North Carolina, things of intense, day-to-day concern to North Carolinians.

And not only are bills being influenced by ALEC, the speaker of the House is on the group’s board.

Thom Tillis and his Republican mates on Jones Street weren’t elected to march to orders issued by some national organization. Perhaps if they kept their eyes and ears open for constituents, their legislative agenda might be more about them and less about doing ALEC’s bidding.

Brawley himself is not free from controversy. In addition to attending the aforementioned ALEC event in New Orleans with Tillis, Avila, and Howard, earlier this year Brawley introduced House Bill 640, legislation that would roll back ethics reforms and allow lobbyists to once again give gifts to state lawmakers without any public disclosure.

Brawley told WRAL-TV that required ethics classes on gifts and disclosure requirements “are useless for anyone without internal ethics anyway. They only tell you the law. They do not guarantee integrity. What makes you think a person without ethics is going to obey a law anyway?”

The laws were enacted after a major 2006 scandal involving then-House Speaker Jim Black.

Corrections: In the original article, we mistakenly identified the News & Observer as a Charlotte newspaper. It is actually published in Raleigh. We also wrote that House Bill 557 died without being assigned to any committee for consideration. We received word the bill was actually referred to the Committee on Government on Apr. 4, 2013 where no further action was apparently taken. We regret the errors.

Greenlight, the broadband provider owned and operated by the city of Wilson, N.C. today announced that it will begin offering gigabit Internet connectivity services to its customers by this July.

“In January, the Federal Communications Commission issued a challenge to communities to provide gigabit service by 2015, and we’re proud to answer that challenge now. We are excited to launch our gigabit service and allow our customers to be the first in the state to experience such high speed Internet access,” said Will Aycock, general manager of Greenlight. “Ultra-high speed Internet will help position Wilson for the future and will provide our businesses and residents with the tools they need to succeed.”

In January, the Federal Communications Commission Chairman issued the “Gigabit City Challenge” which challenged providers to offer gigabit service in at least one community in each state by 2015. Gigabit services are approximately 100 times faster than average high-speed Internet connections.

Greenlight was formed in 2008 to offer an independent, locally owned and operated option for television, telephone and Internet broadband connectivity for Wilson residents. Since then, Greenlight has grown to offer services to more than 6,000 residential customers and businesses and the Wilson County School System. In addition, Greenlight provides free wireless Internet access throughout the downtown Wilson area.

The community-owned broadband provider far out-delivers broadband performance from competitors Time Warner Cable and AT&T. Neither the cable or telephone company was willing to upgrade service in Wilson so the city decided to launch its own public network and manage its broadband future itself.

Unfortunately, many cities in the Tar Heel State cannot follow Wilson’s lead. The state’s dominant commercial cable and phone companies lobbied the Republican-controlled legislature for legislation that makes it nearly impossible for other public broadband providers to emerge.

The gigabit option will become available this summer on the community’s fiber to the home network.

Cable operators and publicly owned utilities in Tennessee are battling for control over the prices companies pay to use utility poles, with facts among the early casualties.

The subject of “pole attachment fees” has been of interest to cable companies for decades. In return for permission to hang cable wires on existing electric or telephone poles owned by utility companies, cable operators are asked to contribute towards their upkeep and eventual replacement. Cable operators want the fees to be as low as possible, while utility companies have sought leeway to defray rising utility pole costs and deal with ongoing wear and tear.

Little progress has been made in efforts to compromise, so this year two competing bills have been introduced by Republicans in the state legislature to define “fairness.” One is promoted by a group of municipal utilities and the other by the cable industry and several corporate-backed, conservative front groups claiming to represent the interests of state taxpayers and consumers.

Some background: Tennessee is unique in the pole attachment fee fight, because privately owned power companies bypassed a lot of the state (and much of the rest of the Tennessee Valley and Appalachian region) during the electrification movement of the early 20th century. Much of Tennessee is served by publicly owned power companies, which also own and maintain a large percentage of utility poles in the state.

Some of Tennessee’s largest telecom companies believe they can guarantee themselves low rates by pitching a case of private companies vs. big government utilities, with local municipalities accused of profiteering from artificially high pole attachment rates. Hoping to capitalize on anti-government sentiment, “small government” conservatives and telecom companies want to tie the hands of the pole owners indefinitely by taking away their right to set pole attachment rates.

The battle includes fact-warped editorials that distort the issues, misleading video ads, and an effort to conflate a utility fee with a tax. With millions at stake from pole attachment fees on tens of thousands of power poles throughout the state, the companies involved have launched a full-scale astroturf assault.

Grover Norquist’s Incendiary “Pole Tax”

Conservative Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform wrote that the pole attachment fee legislation promoted by public utilities would represent a $20 million dollar “tax increase” from higher cable and phone bills. Even worse, Norquist says, the new tax will delay telecom companies from rushing new investments on rural broadband.

Norquist

In reality, Americans for Tax Reform should be rebranded Special Interests for Tax Reform, because the group is funded by a variety of large tobacco corporations, former clients of disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, and several wealthy conservative activists with their own foundations.

Norquist’s pole “tax increase” does not exist.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) provides guidelines and a formula for determining pole attachment rates for privately owned utilities, but permits states to adopt their own regulations. Municipal utilities are exempted for an important reason — their rates and operations are often already well-regulated.

Stop the Cap! found that pole attachment revenue ends up in the hands of the utility companies that own and keep up the poles, not the government. Municipal utilities stand on their own — revenue earned by a utility stays with the utility. Should a municipal utility attempt to gouge other companies that hang wires on those poles, mechanisms kick in that guarantee it cannot profit from doing so.

A 2007 study by the state government in Tennessee effectively undercut the cable industry’s argument that publicly owned utilities are overcharging cable and phone companies that share space on their poles. The report found that “pole attachment revenues do not increase pole owners’ revenue in the long run.”¹

The Tennessee Valley Authority, which supplies electricity across Tennessee, regularly audits the revenues and costs of its municipal utility distributors and sets end-user rates accordingly. The goal is to guarantee that municipal distributors “break even.” Any new revenue sources, like pole attachment fees, are considered when setting wholesale electric rates. If a municipal utility overcharged for access to its poles, it will ultimately gain nothing because the TVA will set prices that take that revenue into account.

Freedom to Distort: The Cable Lobby’s Astroturf Efforts

Freedom to distort

Another “citizens group” jumping into the battle is called “Freedom to Connect,” actually run by the Tennessee Cable Telecommunications Association (TCTA). Most consumers won’t recognize TCTA as the state cable lobby. Almost all will have forgotten TCTA was the same group that filed a lawsuit to shut down EPB’s Fiber division, which today delivers 1,000Mbps broadband service across the city and competes against cable operators like Comcast and Charter Cable.

One TCTA advertisement claims that some utilities are planning “to double the fees broadband providers pay to the state’s government utilities.”

In reality, cable companies have gone incognito, hiding their identity by rebranding themselves as “broadband providers.” No utility has announced it plans to “double” pole attachment fees either.

TCTA members came under fire at a recent hearing attended by state lawmakers when Rep. Charles Curtiss (D-Sparta) spoke up about irritating robocalls directed at his constituents making similar claims.

“What was said was false,” Curtiss told the cable representatives at the hearing. “You’ve lost your integrity with me. Whoever made up your mind to do that, you’re in the wrong line of work.”

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/TCTA Pole Attachment Fees Ad 3-13.flv[/flv]

TCTA — Tennessee’s cable industry lobbying group, released this distorted advertisement opposing pole attachment fee increases.  (1 minute)

The Chattanooga Free-Press’ Drew Johnson: Independent Opinion Page Editor or Well-connected Activist with a Conflict of Interest?

Johnson (Times Free Press)

In its ad campaign, the TCTA gave prominent mention to an article in Chattanooga’s Times-Free Press from Feb. 27: “Bill Harms Consumers, Kills Competition.”

What the advertisement did not say is it originated in an editorial published by Drew Johnson, who serves as the paper’s conservative opinion editor. Johnson has had a bone to pick with Chattanooga’s public utility EPB since it got into the cable television and broadband business.

That may not be surprising, since Johnson is still listed as a “senior fellow” at the “Taxpayers Protection Alliance,” yet another corporate and conservative-backed astroturf group founded by former Texas congressman Dick Armey of FreedomWorks fame.

Johnson’s journalism credentials? He wrote a weekly column for the conservative online screed NewsMax, founded and funded by super-wealthy Richard Mellon Scaife and Christopher Ruddy, both frequent donors to conservative, pro-business causes.

TPA has plenty to hide — particularly the sources of their funding. When asked if private industry backs TPA’s efforts, president David Williams refused to come clean.

“It comes from private sources, and I don’t reveal who my donors are,” he told Environmental Building News in January.

Ironically, Johnson is best known for aggressively using Tennessee’s open records “Sunshine” law to get state employee e-mails and other records looking for conflicts of interest or scandal.

Newspaper readers may want to ask whether Johnson represents the newspaper, an industry-funded sock puppet group, or both.  They also deserve full disclosure if the TPA receives any funding from companies that directly compete with EPB.

The Institute from ALEC: The Institute for Policy Innovation’s Innovative Way to Funnel AT&T and Comcast Money Into the Fight

Provider-backed ALEC advocates for the corporate interests that fund its operations.

Another group fighting on the side of the cable and phone companies against municipal utilities is the Institute for Policy Innovation. Policy counsel Bartlett D. Cleland claimed the government is out to get private companies that want space on utility poles.

“The proposed new system in HB1111 and SB1222 is fervently supported by the electric cooperatives and the government-owned utilities for good reason – they are merely seeking a way to use the force of government against their private sector competitors,” Cleland said. “The proposal would allow them to radically raise their rates for pole attachments to multiples of the national average.”

The facts don’t match Cleland’s rhetoric.

In reality, the state of Tennessee found in their report on the matter in 2007 that Tennessee’s pole attachment fees are “not necessarily out of line with those in other states.”²

In fact, some of the state’s telecom companies seemed to agree:

• EMBARQ (now CenturyLink) provided data on fees received from other service providers in Tennessee, Virginia, South and North Carolina. In these data, Tennessee’s rates ($36.02 – $47.41) are similar to those in North Carolina ($23.12-$52.85) and Virginia ($28.94 – $35.77). Rates were lower in South Carolina.
• Cable operators, who have less infrastructure on poles than telephone and electric utilities, paid even less. Time Warner Cable provided mean rates per state showing Tennessee ($7.70) in the middle of the pack compared to Florida ($9.83) and North Carolina ($4.86 – $13.64).

In addition to his role as policy counsel, Cleland also happens to be co-chair of the Telecommunications and Information Technology Task Force of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). Members of that committee include Comcast and AT&T — Tennessee’s largest telecom companies, both competing with municipal telecommunications providers like EPB.

¹ Analysis of Pole Attachment Rate Issues in Tennessee, State of Tennessee. 2007. p.23

² Analysis of Pole Attachment Rate Issues in Tennessee, State of Tennessee. 2007. p.12

Time Warner Cable objects to publicly-owned broadband networks because they represent “unfair” publicly-funded “competition,” despite the fact TWC is also on the public dole.

The next time a cable operator or phone company claims community-owned broadband providers deliver unfair competition because they are government-funded, remind them that quite often that phone or cable company also happens to be on the public dole.

Take Time Warner Cable, which this week won a $5,266,979 grant courtesy of New York State taxpayers to extend their cable system to 4,114 homes in rural parts of upstate New York just outside of the cable company’s current service areas. That equals $1,280.26 in state tax dollars per household. For that public investment, Time Warner will reap private profits for shareholders from selling broadband, cable-TV, phone, and home security services to its newest customers indefinitely.

Now unlike some of my conservative friends, I am not opposed to the state spending money to wire rural New York. It is obvious cable and phone companies will simply never wire these areas on their own so long as Return on Investment conditions fail in these places. What does annoy me are the endless arguments we hear in opposition to public broadband from these same companies, claiming with a straight face that community-owned networks represent “unfair competition” because they are publicly funded. Time Warner Cable is no stranger to public taxpayer benefits itself, having won millions in tax abatements and credits in North Carolina, Ohio and a cool $5 million courtesy of Mr. and Mrs. N.Y. Taxpayer.

Many of the nation’s private telecommunications companies have plenty of love for federal, state, and local officials who have passed favorable tax laws and policies at their behest:

• AT&T not only did not pay any federal taxes in 2011, it actually secured a $420 million taxpayer-subsidized refund;
• Local governments have granted rights-of-way red tape cutting, tax credits and abatements in return for siting important facilities in select areas and hiring an appropriate number of employees to work in them;
• State laws that have made life easy for telecom companies, including statewide video franchising;
• State laws that make life difficult for their would-be competitors, especially public broadband networks.

So let us end the silly rhetoric about public vs. private broadband being a question of fairness. This is really a question about who controls your broadband future,  your community or big telecom corporations.

In states like Georgia, elected politicians like Rep. Mark Hamilton want those decisions made by Comcast (Pennsylvania), Windstream (Arkansas) and AT&T (Texas). His bill would make it next to impossible for a local community to do anything but beg and plead the phone company to deliver something, anything that resembles broadband service. For a good part of rural Georgia (and elsewhere), the answer has always been a resounding “no,” at least until the federal government steps up and kicks in your money to help defray the costs of extending Windstream or AT&T’s sub par DSL service that slows to a crawl once the kids are out of school.

Windstream waited for the federal government to kick in $7.28 million in taxpayer dollars before it would agree to extend its DSL service to rural customers in its own home state of Arkansas.

You have to wonder about the Republicans in Georgia these days who used to fight for local and state control over almost everything. It should be instinctive for any conservative to want out-of-state pointyheads out of their business, but Rep. Mark Hamilton, himself a business owner, seems content forfeiting those rights to companies headquartered hundreds of miles away. If it was the federal government telling Georgia what kind of broadband service it deserves, do you think Mr. Hamilton would be so amenable? Unfortunately, should Hamilton have his way, for the foreseeable future, residents and business owners in Gray, Sparta, or Eatonton to count just a few will have broadband just the way the state’s phone companies want it — super slow DSL, dial-up or satellite fraudband.

Residents in mountainous western North Carolina have been frustrated by broadband availability maps from the Federal Communications Commission that suggest broadband service is plentiful and fast. But on the ground, customers trying to sign up for Internet access the FCC says is readily available is anything but.

The FCC’s National Broadband Map has been repeatedly criticized by broadband advocates for relying on voluntary data supplied by Internet Service Providers — data that has often proved incomplete, exaggerated, or just plain inaccurate.

Wally Bowen, executive director of Asheville’s Mountain Area Information Network (MAIN), wants to show the FCC its broadband map is out of touch with the real world. MAIN has announced a new website that will let western North Carolina residents test and report the real broadband speeds they are getting from providers to the FCC. If no broadband service is available at all, residents can report that as well.

“Based on our experience, we believe the FCC is underestimating the scope of this problem,” said Bowen, an advocate for Internet access in rural areas. “The FCC’s estimate is based primarily on data provided by the cable and telephone companies.”

With a growing amount of federal money available to wire unserved areas, phone and cable companies may have a vested interest exaggerating their coverage areas and Internet speeds to stop would-be competitors from entering their territories and building new networks. New providers could find a very enthusiastic customer base of more than 48,000 aggravated residents in 16 counties in western North Carolina that have no broadband options at all.

“This new website empowers citizens to compare their real-life experience with the FCC data, but more importantly, it dissects the broadband problem, provides ideas for solving it, and shows citizens how to add their voices to the policy debate,” said Bowen.

Bowen believes profit-minded private companies are unlikely to ever be enthusiastic about wiring rural communities when larger profits can be earned in larger cities.

“Solving this problem isn’t rocket science,” said Bowen. “We’ve seen this movie before. Seventy-five years ago, for-profit electric utilities left rural America in the dark, so Congress passed the Rural Electrification Act and allowed local communities to solve the problem themselves by creating nonprofit electric cooperatives.”

But federal funds are off-limits if another provider already claims to offer service in an area, no matter how poorly they deliver it. Many large cable and phone companies have also worked to ban community-owned broadband networks from ever getting off the ground with the passage of corporate-sponsored bills passed by state legislatures. That leaves rural residents waiting endlessly for the telephone company to get around to providing some level of broadband service.

Problems with Frontier Communications’ DSL in the region tells the story:

Paul Manogue lives in an area considered “served” by Frontier Communications. The phone company sold him 3Mbps service, but after installation, Manogue found Frontier locked down his DSL modem to 1.5Mbps, the fastest speed his telephone line could comfortably handle. Today, Manogue pays $60.98 for 1.5Mbps service that has since further degraded. Today his top speed is 1Mbps or less, even though his monthly bill remains the same. His broadband connection does not come close to the 4/1Mbps minimum speed the FCC expects from today’s rural broadband networks.

“We have been bluntly told [by Frontier] that the level of service we receive is what we pay for,” Manogue told MAIN. Manogue has no other options.

Bill Duffell of Burningtown thinks Frontier broke its promise to deliver broadband where Verizon, his old provider, refused. He is still waiting, along with a number of other residents, for even basic DSL.

“Frontier promised to bring high-speed Internet access to remote areas of western North Carolina within three years,” he said. “They have not done this and now tell me there are no plans to bring high-speed Internet to the area. Internet access via satellite costs me $129.99 per month with Exede/WildBlue and is weather dependent.”

Allen in Madison County says Frontier delivered tolerable service until six months ago, when his speeds began to drop.

“The breaking point was when I was going to upload a 30 minutes video and found out it was going to take over 13 hours to upload.” Allen says. “I called Frontier and they [told me I was] ‘in a high volume area.'”

Anyone considering launching a competitive broadband service to improve the online experience of Manogue, Duffell, Allen and others will not qualify for any federal assistance because Frontier, the incumbent provider, already provides DSL broadband. Frontier also receives significant aid from the Connect America Fund — up to $775 to extend broadband to each individual home or business it earlier deemed unprofitable to serve. Each additional connection risks slowing down every other connection in the immediate area if Frontier does not maintain regular upgrades.

Two of the largest phone companies in the country — AT&T and Verizon — have both refused CAF money altogether. AT&T sees a bigger financial opportunity disbanding their wired telecommunications networks in rural America and forcing customers to switch to more costly (and much more profitable) wireless data services.

“The refusal of Connect America funding by the big carriers, plus their plans to abandon their wired networks in rural areas, is a policy earthquake that’s been ignored by corporate media,” Bowen said.