Cheyenne Mayor Marion Orr

An effort to pass legislation that would award state grants to help rural Wyoming communities get high-speed internet was dead on arrival as far as telecom industry lobbyists were concerned.

So they “fixed it” with a secret substitute bill quietly written by the state’s telecom companies.

The replacement legislation effectively turns the state grant program into a fund for the state’s dominant telecom companies — CenturyLink and Charter Communications.

Stop the Cap! has learned the replacement bill gives high priority to eliminating potential competition by blocking funding for communities to establish their own public broadband alternatives to the phone and cable company if those companies already offer service anywhere inside the community.

The bill also seeks to define the Wyoming government’s involvement in broadband as a non-adversarial partnership with the telecom industry, according to Wyoming Senate Minority Leader Chris Rothfuss (D-District 9).

Under the substitute bill, Rothfuss said the telecom industry will now have a say over how the state awards grant funds. The industry is concerned tax dollars could be given to their competitors to offer service in communities where CenturyLink and Charter already provide modest service. But nothing in the bill would keep either company from collecting state funds for themselves, to expand broadband into unserved areas.

The attempt to switch the bills during a state senate committee meeting was met with surprise and outrage by Cheyenne Mayor Marion Orr.

“I shouldn’t have been surprised to learn industry completely re-wrote proposed broadband legislation to their favor as a ‘substitute bill’ in legislative committee today,” Orr wrote on her Facebook page on Feb. 19. “The substitute bill is substantially different than the original bill. And it wasn’t posted online or anywhere for anyone except insiders to have access to. CenturyLink and Spectrum are bullies. It’s wrong, and they are hurting Cheyenne and other Wyoming communities from gaining affordable access.”

The committee working on the bill may have hoped to switch the bills without notice, but Orr was having none of that.

“As soon as I realized the committee was working a different version that none of us had access to – I spoke up,” she said. “The committee set it aside and will hear it again tomorrow night. This is NOT good governance and the committee realized it. I will stay on this. Guaranteed.”

The substitute bill appears to have subsequently passed and is still facing review by the state legislature.

Orr remains furious Wyoming’s telecom companies that have not delivered on ubiquitous, affordable broadband will now have more power than ever to determine who gets service, who pays to extend service, and what companies can provide it.

“It’s as important as turning on electricity, it’s as important as turning on a tap and having water, it’s an absolute must if we’re going to grow,” Orr said.

C Spire, an independent wireless company providing service in the southern United States is partnering with electric utility Entergy to jointly construct a new fiber optic network in remote sections of Mississippi to manage an electric smart grid and fiber broadband service.

C Spire will own and build the network, with Entergy contributing construction costs, according to C Spire vice president of government relations Ben Moncrief. The partnership grants Entergy leasing rights to use the fiber optic network to develop smart grid technology for rural Mississippi electric customers. Five individual fiber routes will be build, each with a capacity of 144 or more strands of fiber. Entergy will have exclusive use of its own fiber strands, but C Spire will get most of the capacity to power its backhaul facilities, including its network of cell towers, and eventually deploy the network for commercial and institutional users, with the possibility of expanding service to home and small businesses customers if there is adequate demand.

The fiber network will be uncharacteristically placed in some of the most rural parts of the state’s push to redevelop its rural economy to support digital businesses. C Spire itself has been in transition over the last five years, diversifying its core cellular business into fiber to the home broadband, phone, and television service targeting underserved, smaller communities across the state.

“A robust broadband infrastructure is critical to the success of our efforts to move Mississippi forward by growing the economy, fostering innovation, creating job opportunities and improving the quality of life for all our residents,” said Hu Meena, CEO of C Spire.

C Spire/Entergy Mississippi’s new fiber project

The construction project will involve placing fiber optic cable along five separate routes:

• Delta: 92 miles of fiber through Sunflower, Humphreys, Madison and Hinds counties and near the cities of Indianola, Inverness, Isola, Belzoni, Silver City, Yazoo City, Bentonia, Flora and Jackson.
• North: 51 miles in Attala, Leake and Madison counties, including the communities of McAdams, Kosciusko and Canton.
• Central: 33 miles in Madison, Rankin and Scott counties and near the towns of Canton, Sand Hill and Morton.
• South: 77 miles passing through Simpson, Jefferson Davis, Lawrence and Walthall counties and near the towns of Magee, Prentiss, Silver Creek, Monticello and Tylertown.
• Southwest: 49 miles in Franklin and Adams counties near Bude, Meadville, Roxie, Natchez and Eddiceton.

C Spire got the idea to collaborate with the electric utility after the Mississippi Public Service Commission inquired if Entergy’s plans to build a fiber optic smart grid network could also be used to develop improved broadband service for rural Mississippi. Entergy and C Spire decided to collaborate on the project to deliver both services over the same network.

There are three tiers of Citizens Broadband Radio Service users – incumbent users (usually military) that get top priority access and protection from interference, a mid-class Priority Access License group of users that win limits on potential interference from other users, and unlicensed users that have to share the spectrum, and interference, if any.

Charter Communications wants to license a portion of the 3.5 GHz Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) band to launch a new wireless broadband service for its future mobile customers and potentially also offer its own rural broadband solution.

The CBRS band has sat largely unused except by the U.S. military since it was created, but now the Federal Communications Commission is exploring opening up the very high frequencies to attract wireless broadband services with Priority Access Licenses that will assure minimal interference.

One of the most enthusiastic supporters of CBRS is Charter/Spectrum, which has been testing a 3.5 GHz wireless broadband service using CBRS spectrum in Centennial and Englewood, Col., Bakersfield, Calif., Coldwater, Mich., and Charlotte, N.C. Those tests, according to Charter, reveal the cable company “can provide speeds of at least 25/3 Mbps at significant distances,” which it believes could become a rural broadband solution for customers outside of the reach of its wired cable network.

But Charter’s interest in CBRS extends well beyond its potential use to reach rural areas. Charter’s primary goal is to offer wireless connectivity in neighborhoods for its forthcoming mobile phone service. Charter plans to enter the wireless business this year, selling smartphones and other wireless devices that will depend on in-home Wi-Fi, CBRS, and a contract with Verizon Wireless to provide coverage everywhere else.

Charter wants to keep as much data usage on its own networks as possible to reduce costs. It has no interest in building a costly, competing LTE 4G or 5G wireless network to compete with AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile. But it is interested in the prospect of using LTE technology on CBRS frequencies, which are likely to be licensed at much lower costs than traditional mobile spectrum.

Primary Economic Areas

There are several proposals on the table on how to license this spectrum. Large wireless companies want Priority Access Licenses (PALs) based on Partial Economic Areas (PEAs) — 416 wireless service areas the FCC established as part of its spectrum auctions. PEAs are roughly equivalent to metropolitan areas and typically cover multiple counties surrounding a major city. Major wireless carriers are already familiar with PEAs and their networks cover large portions of them.

Charter is proposing to license PALs based on county lines, not PEAs, which will likely reduce the costs of licensing and, in Charter’s view, will “attract interest and investment from new entrants to small and large providers.” If Charter’s proposal is adopted, its costs deploying small cell technology used with CBRS will be much lower, because it will not have to serve larger geographic areas.

The FCC envisioned licensing PALs based on census tract boundaries, which would result in licenses for areas as small as portions of neighborhoods. That proposal has not won favor with like wireless companies or cable operators. The wireless giants would prefer licenses based on PEAs, but companies like AT&T seem also amenable to the cable industry proposal.

Charter’s proposed CBRS network would likely allow the cable company to offload a lot of its mobile data traffic away from Verizon Wireless, reducing the company’s data costs. Charter’s deployment costs are relatively low as well, because the backhaul fiber network used to power small cells is already present throughout Charter’s service areas.

Just how far into rural unserved areas Charter’s CBRS network can reach isn’t publicly known, but it would likely not extend into the most difficult-to-serve areas far away from Charter’s current infrastructure. But if the FCC establishes county boundaries and a requirement that those companies obtaining priority licenses actually serve those areas, it could help resolve some rural broadband problems.

Kansas House Bill 2563 would require content providers that sell products and services in Kansas to pay into the state’s rural broadband fund.

ISPs and any website that generates at least $500,000 in revenue from Kansas residents would be required to pay into a state fund to subsidize rural broadband, if a bill introduced by a Lawrence Republican becomes law.

Rep. Thomas Sloan’s House Bill 2563 — a bill requiring broadband and content providers to pay into the Kansas Universal Service Fund (KUSF), drew immediate fire from cable and telephone companies across the state, and Sprint Corp. told state officials the bill was illegal.

“Rural residents lack the same broadband opportunities as urban residents because of the high cost to serve low-population density areas,” Sloan said. “We have a classic case of rising customer expectations for capabilities delivered through a broadband communications system and a fiscally stressed telecommunications provider network’s ability to serve high-cost rural customers.”

As in many rural states, finding the funding to solve the rural broadband problem gets more difficult as those hardest to serve are also the most expensive to reach. Kansas currently spends about $40 million annually to reach homes and businesses that are still using dial-up or forced to invest in satellite internet service. Most KUSF money is given to incumbent rural telephone, wireless or cable providers to subsidize expansion, keeping costs in line with each company’s Return On Investment expectations.

But as demand for faster and more robust broadband accelerates, and as the definition of broadband itself has evolved, rural providers are increasingly challenged reaching both unserved customers and those now considered underserved because older technologies like DSL often do not meet the current FCC definition of broadband: 25/3 Mbps service.

Sloan said his bill is designed to address both problems by wiring unserved areas and improving access to reliable, high-speed internet service where only slower alternatives now exist. The bill would provide funding to more than 90 Kansas counties with a population density of less than 100 people per square mile (excepting the county seat). In an agricultural state like Kansas, that would directly inject cash for upgrades into large sections of the state. Sloan says his law would cover at least 40% of a provider’s wiring and upgrade costs.

Rep. Sloan

House Bill 2563 would fund a rural broadband project that:

• is capable of minimum download speeds of 25 Mbps and minimum upload speeds of three megabits per second;
• provides an average latency of less than 100 milliseconds to enable the use of real time communications; and
• provides subscribers with a minimum monthly data allowance of 150 gigabytes per month.

“Poor connectivity to the internet undermines operation of businesses, filing of government documents, school research projects, viewing of entertainment and other day-to-day activities,” Sloan said.

ISPs would likely pass along the costs of the new broadband universal service fund charge to subscribers, which means urban Kansans will be contributing a portion of their monthly internet bill to benefit their rural neighbors.

Sloan’s bill would also take the unprecedented step of taxing internet content companies and for-profit websites that generate at least $500,000 in revenue attributable to Kansas customers and use the money for rural broadband expansion as well. Websites like Amazon.com, Netflix, and Hulu would certainly be liable, but so would thousands of other smaller website ventures, including porn websites and online publishers like newspapers.

Telecom industry lobbyists quickly descended on state lawmakers in Topeka to encourage them to kill Sloan’s bill:

• Catherine Moyer, chief executive officer of Pioneer Communications in Ulysses, represents the interests of the State Independent Telephone Association for Kansas and the Kansas Rural Independent Telecommunications Coalition. She is strongly opposed to the bill because she claims it would weaken the current Kansas Universal Service Fund (KUSF) model that has given rural companies confidence and certainty their rural expansion investments will be backed with adequate state subsidies. Under Sloan’s bill, the disbursement formula and the areas entitled to receive state support would be expanded, potentially reducing funds that were payable to projects under the old KUSF subsidy system.
• Patrick Fucik, national director of legislative affairs for Sprint Corp. in Overland Park, is concerned about broadening the universal service fund to tax content providers and other websites, claiming the state lacks the legal authority under federal law to impose such taxes.
• John Idoux, a lobbyist with CenturyLink, which serves more than 100 Kansas communities with fewer than 1,000 residents, said the bill would likely make lawyers rich from the “prolonged” and inevitable legal challenges that will begin if the bill becomes law, “all while creating false hope of rural broadband availability.” Idoux also wants to make sure none of the KUSF money will be spent in areas already served by a fixed broadband provider (like CenturyLink). He does not want to see public money competing with private investment, even if it results in better service.

An audio-only hearing of the Committee on Energy, Utilities and Telecommunications of the Kansas State Legislature on HB2563, held Feb. 5, 2018. (35:53)

New York’s Broadband for All Program yesterday announced the third and final round of grant winners to expand rural internet access across the state.

Verizon Communications was the top grant recipient, winning a total of $106,642,787 in combined state, federal, and private dollars to expand internet access to 15,515 residential homes, businesses, and institutions primarily in the Capital Region, Central New York, and the North Country.

Stop the Cap! has learned these funds will be spent on fiber internet expansion, which could mean direct fiber to the home (FTTH) connections or a combination of fiber and existing copper telephone wiring (FTTN). To meet the state’s requirements, Verizon will likely have to use optical fiber as much as possible, although some advanced forms of DSL are capable of meeting minimum speed requirements.

But where exactly will Verizon start building out its network? The state’s grant program includes census block data on the exact areas where Verizon will commence upgrades or bring internet service for the first time.

By far the biggest winner of Verizon upgrades is New York’s North Country where over 1,000 Census Blocks will be wired for service.

Here is a general breakdown on where Verizon will begin working on rural broadband expansion:

Capital Region

• 78 Census Blocks in Rensselaer County
• 59 Census Blocks in Schenectady County
• 132 Census Blocks in Washington County

Central New York Region

• 196 Census Blocks in Cayuga County
• 47 Census Blocks in Cortland County
• 5 Census Blocks in Onondaga County

Mohawk Valley Region

• 1 Census Block in Montgomery County

North Country Region

• 686 Census Blocks in Clinton County
• 203 Census Blocks in Jefferson County
• 279 Census Blocks in St. Lawrence County

Southern Tier Region

• 5 Census Blocks in Tompkins County

We are not well-schooled on mapping applications or integrating the data into a searchable tool or larger map (if you can, we’d love to hear from you). So for now, readers will have to search the database manually. Here are two ways to search:

Identify your Census Block ID and see if broadband improvements are coming to your area

1. Visit this website and enter your street address.
2. From the resulting list, click the  icon adjacent to the “Block” Geography Type, which will bring up a pop-up table containing additional information.
3. Find the “Code” line which will show a long number like this: 1000000US300500197056002. If you Copy everything to the right of “US”, in this example 300500197056002, that represents your Census Block ID. Omit everything else (including the ‘US’).
4. You can compare your Census Block ID number with the master list (click to download – .xlsx spreadsheet format) of New York’s third round census block winners. Just use the Search function and enter your Census Block ID number. If it matches with anything in that spreadsheet, your address is almost certainly to be serviced by Verizon (or another telecom company, as specified in the spreadsheet.)

To view coverage maps of winning Census Block IDs

1. Download the master list (click to download – .xlsx spreadsheet format) of New York’s third round census block winners.
2. Copy any Census Block ID listed, visit Melissa Data and paste the ID into the search box.
3. A map of the Census Block will appear. Not all Census Blocks have homes or businesses within them and will appear undeveloped. In many cases, this means a grant winner is being given funds to develop their network to pass through one Census Block to reach other areas nearby where customers live and work.