Rep. Avila (left) with Time Warner Cable's top lobbyist (right, back turned). Photo by: Bob Sepe of Action Audits

Rep. Marilyn Avila (R-Time Warner Cable) is living up to her much-deserved reputation as a shill for North Carolina’s largest cable company as she continues her campaign to wreak havoc on community-owned broadband networks and services.

Well-placed sources tell Stop the Cap! either Avila has an evil twin running around impersonating her, or she is saying one thing to a public audience while doing something completely different in private.

In a closely coordinated effort with the state’s top cable lobbyists, Avila met last Friday to negotiate promised protections for existing community-owned broadband networks that would otherwise be destroyed by her bill, H129, written by the state’s Big Telecom companies.

Both Reps. Avila and Julia Howard told us their word was their bond.  “The last thing that we want to do as a state is to harm one of our cities after they entered into the business,” Avila said to members of the Public Utilities Committee.

Howard expanded on her own promise: “The objective is to protect the cities that have already gone into the business.  It is our intent to carve out these cities and hold them harmless.  My word is my bond, and I don’t hear anybody snickering.  But when I say it I mean it, as the senior chair of finance, that is my pledge.  Before it heads into finance there will be a PCS that is satisfactory to everybody.”

Apparently those bonds were issued by Lehman Brothers, because they have lost all of their value to the people of North Carolina.  Nobody feels like snickering over such a serious betrayal of trust, especially when Howard’s definition of “everybody” is limited to lobbyists for the telecommunications industry.  Your consumer needs are irrelevant.

Last Friday’s meeting was once again a stage play from Time Warner Cable and their sidekick, the much-smaller CenturyLink.  After the cable company laid down the law to a stunned audience of representatives from communities across the state, fooled into thinking they were there to discuss an honest compromise, things went from bad to worse.

“It literally got down to the point where the cable company was dictating terms about what cities can and cannot do with their networks, even discussing which streets the networks would be allowed to serve,” our source tells us.

Avila’s stubborn streak was on full display, as she rejected proposal after proposal.

What about public private partnerships with full exemptions for pre-existing networks?

Rep. Avila's Message to North Carolinians: Live with what you've got or go without.

Not on Big Telecom’s approved list, so rejected out of hand, even after offering that she agreed with the concept.  Her reasoning?  She wants to go with her original bill.

The result of the one-sided discussion was two pages of legislative word jumbling in the form of a substitute amendment.  The word salad delivers substantially no real change to Avila’s original bill.  It contains virtually all of the same onerous provisions guaranteed to destroy community broadband networks, taking the state’s reputation for being a good credit risk with it.  It also delivers red meat to an industry meme “community broadband networks are business failures.”  Now you know why.

We predict Avila will use the farcical affair to claim her substitute amendment was the product of a “hard-fought compromise” with cities and providers.

In fact, it represents nothing more than a shameful broken promise to the citizens of North Carolina.  Their interests are completely secondary to Avila and her legislative allies, willing to listen to a telecommunications industry prepared to hand out campaign contributions to enact their agenda.

The collateral damage of Avila’s struggle to eliminate better broadband and keep competition to a bare minimum cannot even be measured yet. Should Avila’s bill become law, the clear message sent to would-be entrepreneurs is that North Carolina values their cable and phone companies over the needs of entrepreneurs contemplating the next generation of digital economy businesses.  Ms. Avila’s message to them, and to residents who want better broadband: live with what you’re getting from my friends or go without.

Many will choose a third option — avoiding setting up shop in a state where a handful of providers maintain a comfortable duopoly delivering the least amount of service for the highest possible price.

Time Warner Cable is finally getting around to announcing its DOCSIS 3 “wideband” broadband upgrades in the Triad region of North Carolina.  Already available in Charlotte, Time Warner will offer 30/5Mbps service for $10 more than its Turbo service, and 50/5Mbps will also be available for $99.95 a month.

Customers in High Point will be the first to get access to the service in the spring, while other Triad cities will get the service later this year, according to a news release from the cable company.

The Triad region was part of Time Warner Cable’s 2009 Internet Overcharging experiment, which would have tripled pricing for unlimited broadband service to $150.  An outcry from residents forced the company to shelve its plans.

Triad residents are not impressed by Time Warner’s foot-dragging ever since.

Stop the Cap! reader Gene in Greensboro hasn’t forgotten the cable company promised speed upgrades in 2009 as part of its usage cap experiment.

“Other cities in North Carolina that were not on the list for their ripoff pricing got the upgrades while Greensboro drags at the same speeds we’ve had for several years now,” Gene says. “I think this announcement has more to do with the imminent arrival of AT&T’s U-verse in some areas of the Triad.”

AT&T is slowly expanding its U-verse footprint in central North Carolina.

The state is currently embroiled in a political debate over Time Warner-sponsored legislation that would largely eliminate community-owned broadband competition across North Carolina.

“I would trade Time Warner and AT&T for Wilson’s GreenLight fiber in a second,” Gene says. “Both AT&T and Time Warner are playing a snail’s game of incremental upgrades in this state that makes us also-ran when compared to New York, New Jersey, or Connecticut.”

Time Warner Cable Broadband Pricing, North Carolina

North Carolina Legislature

Stop the Cap! has obtained the audio from Wednesday’s Public Utilities Committee meeting that quickly pushed through H129, Time Warner’s custom-written, anti-competition and community broadband destruction bill.

Listening to the 44 minute hearing will be disturbing to anyone who supports open government and the concept of voting for or against a complete bill, not one Rep. Marilyn Avila (R-Time Warner Cable) openly admits is going to be changed.  For her, that represents no reason to delay the bill — her good friends at Time Warner need this legislation passed today, not tomorrow or next week.

As you listen, we’ve included a voter’s guide with time-indexed comments to help draw your attention to some critical points, and some much-needed fact checking.  It will also help you identify the members of the legislature that need to stay, and those that need to go.

Our apologies for the distorted audio at times.  When a member leans into the microphone, as some clearly do, it creates significant audio distortion.  It gets worse in the last 10 minutes, so watch your volume.

North Carolina’s House Public Utilities Committee Meeting on H129 – Wednesday, March 2, 2011. (44 minutes)
You must remain on this page to hear the clip, or you can download the clip and listen later.

Your Audio Guide to The Committee Meeting

The shocking conclusion of this legislative travesty is the chairman adjourning before a recorded vote can be taken.  Without it, constituents can’t identify how their member voted and hold them accountable at the next election.

[Update 3:05pm Monday — Stop the Cap! misidentified Rep. Warren as Rep. Rowan at the 40:00 mark.  We have corrected the audio log above and regret the error.]

Time Warner Cable’s custom-written bill banning community-owned broadband networks in North Carolina this afternoon received a favorable vote in the Public Utilities Committee — the first to consider the bill.

Rep. Marilyn Avila (R-Time Warner Cable) decided that openly distorting the record of success community broadband has had would be a good way to proceed.  In comments before a jam-packed room this afternoon, Avila claimed fiber optic broadband systems have a long history of “failures,” which is ironic considering her promise to exempt these so-called failures from her bill’s anti-competitive regulatory regime.

Honestly, it was the first time we can recall a sitting legislator openly trashing her own state’s advanced broadband network successes.  (You can’t fault her for going all out for her friends at Time Warner Cable, but you can hold her accountable at the next election.)

Avila would never and could never admit the truth after wading this far in: these state of the art fiber networks are successful enough to have waiting lists from time to time just to get service installed.  Even those who don’t subscribe are benefiting. Just look at GreenLight, operated by the community of Wilson.  While GreenLight subscribers benefit from broadband far superior to what the cable company offers, those staying with Time Warner have seen an end to relentless annual rate increases.  Apparently Ms. Avila wants you to pay higher cable bills now and forever.

Republicans and Democrats from rural districts harshly criticized the proposed legislation for bringing no answers to the perennial problem of inadequate broadband in rural North Carolina communities, as well as the fact this bill contains customized exemptions to protect Time Warner and other Big Telecom companies from regulatory requirements dumped on community networks like a ton of bricks.

That’s favorable treatment for the cable company Ms. Avila seeks to protect at all costs.

Avila

Despite the important arguments raised by those objecting to the bill, the Committee Chair gaveled the debate to a sudden close, held a perfunctory voice vote and adjourned the session without a recorded vote.  That leaves citizens of the state with no idea how individual members voted.  Apparently they do not want to hear from unhappy constituents.

The Time Warner Cable Legislative Railroad next stops at the Finance Committee.

Although Rep. Julia Howard (R-Davie, Iredell), senior chair of that committee and Avila promise changes in the bill to protect existing community broadband operations, we are more than a little skeptical.

Last week, Avila called a meeting of city officials and several Big Telecom companies, including Time Warner and CenturyLink, partly to discuss exemption issues.  To give readers an idea of just how far Avila is in Time Warner’s corner, minutes into the meeting, she turned it over to the lobbyist from Time Warner Cable for the duration.

That’s a public-private partnership any voter in North Carolina should take a dim view about.  If Ms. Avila finds her work in the legislature too difficult to handle, perhaps she can find another line of work.  The only good thing about turning over your legislative responsibilities to the cable company is it cuts out the middleman.

Howard

The fact is, Time Warner has no interest in protecting -your- interests in North Carolina, much less those of the cutting edge fiber networks now up and running in the state.  They want them gone… or better yet, available for their acquisition at fire sale prices.  Yes, they even made sure of that in their bill, which guarantees a city can sell a fiber network hounded out of business to a Big Telecom company without a vote.

Exempting existing networks has turned out to be a highly subjective notion for Ms. Avila anyway.  She originally claimed to exempt them in her bill when it was introduced, but then subjected them to crushing regulation the cable companies do not face.  Any community contemplating starting a new network for their citizens can forget it either way.  Time Warner will not hear of it.

Although a growing number of Republicans and Democrats see Avila’s bill as a classic example of corporate overreach, without your voice demanding this bill be dropped, there still may be enough members of the state legislature willing to do the cable industry’s bidding.  If you make it clear that may cost them your support in the next election, they can be persuaded to do the right thing and vote NO.

But time is running out.  Your job is to begin melting down the phone lines of the Finance Committee members starting this afternoon.  Call and e-mail them and make it absolutely clear you expect them to vote NO on H129 and that you are closely watching this issue.  Ask each legislator for a commitment on how they plan to vote.

Finance Committee Members