LUS Fiber is Lafayette, La., municipal broadband provider.

During remarks at the National Cable Show in Los Angeles, FCC chairman Thomas Wheeler promised he would stimulate more broadband competition by overriding state laws that presently restrict or ban municipal broadband networks.

“One place where it may be possible is municipally owned or authorized broadband systems. I understand that the experience with community broadband is mixed, that there have been both successes and failures. But if municipal governments—the same ones that granted cable franchises—want to pursue it, they shouldn’t be inhibited by state laws. I have said before, that I believe the FCC has the power – and I intend to exercise that power – to preempt state laws that ban competition from community broadband.”

After making the remarks, a debate has emerged over the exact definition of “preempt.” With at least 20 states limiting or banning community-owned broadband networks, the FCC would have to overturn or invalidate the state laws to render them moot.

At least one judge — Laurence Silberman — believes the FCC has the authority to take “measures that promote competition in the local telecommunications market or other regulating methods that remove barriers to infrastructure investment.” In a footnote, Silberman wrote that “[a]n example of a paradigmatic barrier to infrastructure investment would be state laws that prohibit municipalities from creating their own broadband infrastructure to compete against private companies.”

A FCC spokesperson, in response to inquiries about Wheeler’s remarks, was less conclusive.

“It’s too early to say how [Wheeler] will address existing state laws,” said the spokesperson.

That leaves open the question about whether the FCC intends to cancel existing state laws or simply prohibit new ones from being enacted. That distinction could make a tremendous difference in states like North Carolina, where a fierce battle over protecting municipal broadband was lost when Republicans took control of the state government. Telecom lobbyists, often working under the auspices of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) have either directly banned municipal broadband networks from getting off the ground or placed so many restrictions on service to make projects untenable.

The Consumerist points out in Pennsylvania, municipal broadband is only allowed in communities if a telephone company does not provide any type of broadband to anyone in their service area. In Nevada, only towns with fewer than 25,000 people or counties with 50,000 can host community-owned broadband networks — numbers likely too low to sustain such a venture financially.

Net Neutrality = Socialism?

The four leading candidates in North Carolina’s Republican U.S. Senate primary, including one heavily backed by the state’s largest telecom companies, all said Monday they oppose Net Neutrality and would not allow the federal government to intervene in the business interests of cable and phone companies.

Dr. Greg Brannon, Heather Grant, Rev. Mark Harris, and current state House Speaker Thom Tillis all agreed during an hour-long televised debate that the government had no business telling companies like Time Warner Cable and AT&T how to manage Internet traffic.

Thom Tillis, who became speaker of the house in 2011, is heavily backed with financial contributions from AT&T, Time Warner Cable, and Verizon. While speaker, Tillis supported the Time Warner Cable-backed bill to ban community-owned broadband networks in the state and helped shepherd the legislation through the General Assembly.

Tillis told viewers that North Carolina customers already have a choice of Internet Service Providers so there is no reason for the government to interfere.

“The last thing we need is the government to tell cable providers and Internet providers how fast or slow the content needs to be,” Tillis said.

Tillis was honored in 2011 as ALEC’s “Legislator of the Year” and received an undisclosed cash reward.

Last year, Tillis was accused of having a secret business relationship with Time Warner Cable by Rep. Robert Brawley (R-Iredell), who resigned his chairmanship of the Finance Committee over the matter.

Brawley’s district is served in part by MI-Connection, a community-owned cable company that was prevented from expanding by a state law restricting municipal broadband.

“You slamming my office door shut, standing in front of me and stating that you have a business relationship with Time Warner,” Brawley wrote in his resignation letter. “MI-Connection 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.”

Dr. Brannon said without the Constitution giving direct authority for the federal government to regulate broadband, it cannot legally get involved. There was no broadband service to regulate when the Constitution was signed on September 17, 1787.

“The worst thing in the world we could do is for the federal government to put in barriers to make things fair,” Brannon said. Any attempt to impose fairness on Internet traffic would be a clear-cut case of socialism, Brannon added.

Grant and Harris both agreed with the others.

The four candidates are vying for the Senate seat held by Democrat Kay Hagan. She holds a different view.

“I support Net Neutrality because it speaks to the values central to our American Democracy – free speech and equal opportunity,” Hagan said in 2008. “With an open Internet, we can ensure communities throughout the state of North Carolina and the nation receive equal access to the Internet as well as the information contained there, to help ensure our country can compete on a global level.”

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/UNC-TV NC GOP Senate Debate 2014 – Net Neutrality – Free Market or Socialism 4-30-14.flv[/flv]

Watch occasionally incoherent remarks from four Republican candidates debating the Internet and Net Neutrality as part of the North Carolina Senate primary. (4:31)

A 2011 state law largely written by Time Warner Cable will likely keep Charlotte, N.C. waiting for fiber broadband that nearby Salisbury has had since 2010.

North Carolina is dominated by Time Warner Cable, AT&T and CenturyLink. Google and AT&T recently expressed interest in bringing their fiber networks to the home in several cities in the state, but neither have put a shovel in the ground.

Fibrant, a community owned broadband provider in Salisbury, northeast of Charlotte, not only laid 250 miles of fiber optics, it has been open for business since November 2010. It was just in time for the publicly owned venture, joining a growing number of community providers like Wilson’s Greenlight and Mooresville, Davidson and Cornelius’ MI-Connection. Time Warner Cable’s lobbyists spent several years pushing for legislation restricting the development of these new competitors and when Republicans took control of the General Assembly in 2011, they finally succeeded. Today, launching or expanding community broadband networks in North Carolina has been made nearly impossible by the law, modeled after a bill developed by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

With fiber fever gripping the state, Fibrant has gotten a lot of attention from Charlotte media because it provides the type of service other providers are only talking about. Fibrant offers residents cable television, phone, and broadband and competes directly with Time Warner Cable and AT&T. Although not the cheapest option in town, Fibrant is certainly the fastest and local residents are gradually taking their business to the community alternative.

Charlotte, N.C. is surrounded by community providers like Fibrant in Salisbury and MI-Connection in the Mooresville area.

“A lot faster Internet speeds, a lot clearer phone calls,” said Sidewalk Deli owner Rick Anderson-McCombs, who switched to Fibrant after 15 years with another provider. His mother, Anganetta Dover told WSOC-TV, “I think we save about $30 to $40 a month with Fibrant and the advantages of having the speed is so much better.”

Julianne Goodman cut cable’s cord, dropping Time Warner Cable TV service in favor of Netflix. To support her online streaming habit, she switched to Fibrant, which offers faster Internet speeds than the cable company.

Commercial customers are also switching, predominately away from AT&T in favor of Fibrant.

“Businesses love us because we don’t restrict them on uploads,” one Fibrant worker told WCNC-TV. “So when they want to send files, it’s practically instantaneous.”

Fibrant offers synchronous broadband speeds, which mean the download and upload speeds are the same. Cable broadband technology always favors download speeds over upload, and Time Warner Cable’s fastest upstream speed remains stuck at 5Mbps in North Carolina.

AT&T offers a mix of DSL and U-verse fiber to the neighborhood service in North Carolina. Maximum download speed for most customers is around 24Mbps. AT&T has made a vague commitment to increase those speeds, but customers report difficulty qualifying for upgrades.

Time Warner Cable is a big player in the largest city in North Carolina, evident as soon as you spot the Time Warner Cable Arena on East Trade Street in downtown Charlotte.

Taxpayer dollars are also funneled to the cable company.

Time Warner Cable’s $82 million data center won the company a $2.9 million Job Development Investment Grant. Charlotte’s News & Observer noted the nation’s second largest cable company also received $3 million in state incentives.

When communities like Salisbury approached providers about improving broadband speeds, they were shown the door.

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WCNC Charlotte Fibrant Already Provides Fiber 3-5-14.mp4[/flv]

WCNC-TV reports that with Google expressing an interest in providing fiber service in Charlotte, Salisbury’s Fibrant has been offering service since 2010. (2:57)

“Our citizens asked for high-speed Internet,” says Doug Paris, Salisbury’s city manager. “We met with the incumbent providers [like Time Warner and AT&T, and that did not fit within their business plans.”

Salisbury and Wilson, among others, elected to build their own networks. The decision to enter the broadband business came under immediate attack from incumbent providers and a range of conservative astroturf and sock puppet political groups often secretly funded by the phone and cable companies.

Rep. Avila, a ban proponent, meets with Marc Trathen, Time Warner Cable’s top lobbyist (right) (Photo: Bob Sepe)

Critics of Fibrant launched an attack website against the venture (it stopped updating in March, 2012), suggesting the fiber venture would bankrupt the city. One brochure even calls Stop the Cap! part of a high-priced consultant cabal of “Judas goats for big fiber” (for the record, Stop the Cap! was not/is not paid a penny to advocate for Fibrant or any other provider).

Opponents also characterize Fibrant as communism in action and have distributed editorial cartoons depicting Fibrant service technicians in Soviet military uniforms guarding Salisbury’s broadband gulag.

In January of this year, city officials were able to report positive news. Fibrant has begun to turn a profit after generating $2,223,678 in the revenue from July through December, 2013. Fibrant lost $4.1 million during the previous fiscal year. That is an improvement over earlier years when the venture borrowed more than $7 million from the city’s water and sewer capital reserve fund, repaying the loans at 1 percent interest. The city believes the $33 million broadband network will break even this year — just four years after launching.

Fibrant is certainly no Time Warner Cable or AT&T, having fewer than 3,000 customers in the Salisbury city limits. But it does have a market share of 21 percent, comparable to what AT&T U-verse has achieved in many of its markets.

Fibrant also has the highest average revenue per customer among broadband providers in the city — $129 a month vs. $121 for Time Warner Cable. Customers spend more for the faster speeds Fibrant offers.

Some residents wonder if Fibrant will be successful if or when AT&T and Google begin offering fiber service. Both companies have made a splash in Charlotte’s newspapers and television news about their fiber plans, which exist only on paper in the form of press releases. Neither provider has targeted Salisbury for upgrades and nobody can predict whether either will ultimately bring fiber service to the city of Charlotte.

Those clamoring for fiber broadband speeds under the state’s anti-community broadband law will have to move to one of a handful of grandfathered communities in North Carolina where forward-thinking leaders actually built the fiber networks private companies are still only talking about.

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WSOC Charlotte Charlotte could gain from fiber optic network already in place 4-22-14.flv[/flv]

WSOC-TV in Charlotte reports Salisbury customers are happy with Fibrant service and the competition it provides AT&T and Time Warner Cable. (2:12)

AT&T U-verse with Gigapower is not coming to a home near you, although AT&T hopes you believe it will.

In the public and government relations arena, convincing everyone there is robust competition in broadband is a good prescription to keep the regulators at bay. To make that happen, AT&T continues to roll out more press releases than actual fiber to the home service, this time announcing it is planning to bring its fastest gigabit Internet service to “six cities in North Carolina” and more areas in and around Austin.

“The U-verse GigaPower fiber-optic service will be offered in parts of Carrboro, Cary, Chapel Hill, Durham, Raleigh and Winston-Salem, North Carolina,” AT&T said today in a statement.

But AT&T will not say exactly how many homes it will offer service to, but gave a clue mentioning it plans to connect as many as 100 businesses and 100 “public sites.” It also said it will provide a free, but slow-speed service to as many as 3,000 homes — something it can offer on its existing copper-fiber U-verse platform.

AT&T claims it is ‘racing’ to offer fiber service, but evidence suggests otherwise. Much of AT&T’s U-verse with Gigapower is turning up in condos, new housing developments, and other multi-dwelling units like apartments. Single family homes are evidently not a priority. AT&T’s costs to bring fiber to the back of a complex or large apartment building is lower than stringing or burying fiber to individual homes.

In Austin, one of AT&T’s major Gigapower expansions will come to communities under construction and condo complexes developed by PulteGroup. AT&T signed a favorable agreement with the developer to bring fiber into up to 3,000 homes. AT&T routinely signs similar agreements with developers that offer AT&T exclusive access to existing inside wiring and, in some cases, provide AT&T services to every resident, billed as part of the rent or neighborhood association service fees, deterring competition from cable operators.

AT&T likely selected the communities in North Carolina after receiving a Request For Proposals from a regional group called North Carolina Next Generation Network, which has enticed private providers to build gigabit fiber networks. The coordinated effort is led by six municipalities and four leading research universities and supported by local Chambers of Commerce and businesses in the Research Triangle and Piedmont regions.

With local governments directly involved in the initiative, AT&T was likely satisfied they would not face much difficulty from zoning and permitting procedures to expand their network, and might even receive favorable treatment.

An online-only television channel dedicated to interior design will become a traditional linear television channel available to some Time Warner Cable customers beginning today.

The Design Network, created by executives at the world’s largest furniture store — Furnitureland South — had managed to get 10,000 online subscribers since its launch in April 2013. But now the network will get a larger viewership on the lineup of some Time Warner Cable systems, starting in North Carolina.

“The Design Network was created for everyone who shares a passion for the home,” said Jason Harris, founder of The Design Network and executive vice president of Furnitureland South. “What I’m seeing on television has no correlation to the amazing home decor industry that I’ve grown up in and have been exposed to all my life.”

“We always look for opportunities to work with networks to enhance our diverse channel lineup,” said Mike Smith, area vice president of operations, Time Warner Cable. “The Design Network created a television network to engage consumers in decor and the world of interior design – we are excited to provide our customers with access to this unique source of programming.”

Furnitureland South – High Point, N.C.

In addition to The Design Network’s new television channel, the online version expands to further engage interior architecture design professionals and home enthusiasts by allowing them to create their own channels, similar to YouTube. Viewers can upload and annotate their own videos and photos and grow their own audience. Through these channels, designers and home enthusiasts may earn commissioned, promoted series on TDN TV.

The network also exists as a self-promotion of Furnitureland South, which may limit the network’s reach. The Design Network’s programming is heavily influenced by its parent company’s furniture business.

The Design Network was created to help people become more inspired and knowledgeable about designing, decorating and living in their homes. “We are uniquely qualified to create a network featuring entertainment, inspiration and instruction for the home,” Harris commented. “With our retail business, Furnitureland South, being located in the epicenter of the home furnishings industry, we furnish more than 25,000 homes a year with clients from all over the world and work closely with the finest furniture brands and design influencers.”

It isn’t known if Furnitureland South is paying Time Warner Cable to launch the network or if cable customers will be underwriting the channel through their monthly cable bill.

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