Broadband Backwater: Don't let AT&T and ALEC keep South Carolina broadband down.

AT&T and the corporate-funded front group American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) are making progress banning community broadband in South Carolina with the second reading of H.3508, the AT&T Profit Protection Act.

This bill has been debated in the state legislature since early last year, and despite protestations from local community leaders in broadband-impoverished areas of the state, AT&T’s money and lobbyists can buy a lot of support.  South Carolina cannot afford to have its broadband options limited. It remains among the worst states in the country for broadband adoption, with just a tad over half of all households hooked up to the Internet. The rest either cannot afford the prices incumbent providers charge, or in many cases, nobody is willing to provide the service.

With the passage of H.3508, South Carolina’s broadband future will effectively be left in the hands of Time Warner Cable, which has some presence in larger cities, and the former BellSouth, which is now AT&T. But unless you live in greater Charleston, Columbia, or Greenville, AT&T’s investment in your future has been limited to smatterings of slow speed DSL.

Despite claims that the “private sector” will provide, South Carolina remains a broadband afterthought for telecommunications companies in the state, especially outside of major cities. H.3508 stops communities from electing to drain the broadband backwater they are forced to endure and build better service other companies simply won’t provide.

You can’t discourage investment from providers who won’t invest in South Carolina’s broadband in the first place.

Use this tool to find your state senator and take a few minutes to call their office and let them know you oppose H.3508 and what it represents — broadband stagnation and corporate protectionism. Let them know you want broadband decisions for your community made in your community, not by a lobbyist for AT&T or the cable industry. Ask why any legislator would want to support a measure that would allow an out of state corporation to dictate what South Carolina can do about its own telecommunications future.

Ask them to stand up for you as a constituent and do the right thing.  AT&T, a multi-billion dollar corporation does not need their help. Broadband in South Carolina does!

Lingle

Oceanic Cable, a division of Time Warner Cable, will soon be devoting some prime channel real estate to former Republican governor Linda Lingle. Lingle is getting her own cable channel that will feature nothing but on-demand programming produced by the Senate candidate’s campaign.

While neither the campaign or Oceanic Cable will currently disclose how much Lingle is spending to rent the channel space, Oceanic viewers will have yet one more channel on their cable lineup they did not ask for or necessarily want.

The new Lingle Channel has been granted a prominent position on the cable company’s digital lineup on channel 110, right between Fox News Channel and Headline News.

The other candidates in the election admit they can’t afford to launch their own 24-hour cable channel or prefer to take issues direct to voters and not “filter them” through a carefully coordinated cable message produced by the campaign.

Lingle has raised $3.1 million for her campaign. She leads over John Carroll who has $23,000 on hand; Rep. Mazie Hirono, $2.3 million; and Ed Case, $615,000.

[flv width=”360″ height=”290″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/KHON Lingle Gets 24 Hour Cable Channel 6-6-12.mp4[/flv]

KHON in Honolulu reports Oceanic Cable customers are about to get a new channel on their lineup, whether they want it or not.  (3 minutes)

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Senate Hearing on Verizon-Comcast Deal 3-21-12.flv[/flv]

This afternoon, the U.S. Senate’s Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights held a hearing on the potential antitrust implications of a deal between Verizon and some of the nation’s largest cable companies that would deliver Verizon warehoused, unused wireless spectrum owned by four of the nation’s largest cable operators and open the door to Verizon Wireless pitching cable television subscriptions.  The hearing: “The Verizon/Cable Deals: Harmless Collaboration or a Threat to Competition and Consumers?” lasts 2 hours, 23 minutes.

Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas)

Republicans in the Senate are falling in line behind their colleagues in the House in voting to repeal the Federal Communications Commission’s anemic Net Neutrality rules.

Virtually every Republican in the Senate is expected to vote in support of a resolution introduced by outgoing Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Tex.) that would strip the FCC of its authority to impose the new rules, which would prohibit Internet Service Providers from interfering in the free flow of Internet content across their networks.  Nearly every Democrat in the Senate is expected to oppose the Republican-backed measure in a vote expected later today.

Republicans serving at the FCC and in Congress claim the federal agency has no congressional mandate to oversee the Internet.  The agency itself under Chairman Julius Genachowski has refused to fully enable its authority by reclassifying the Internet as a telecommunications service.  Because the agency’s role to oversee the conduct of the country’s service providers is at issue, it has left the FCC in a grey area, with its authority challenged both politically and in the courts.

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) claims Net Neutrality rules are completely unnecessary because providers have already promised they will not tamper with traffic and, in his words, “This is a another big government solution in search of a problem.”

Hutchison said enforcement of Net Neutrality would stall broadband Internet development.

“It will increase costs and freeze many of the innovations that have already occurred under our open Internet system,” she said in a statement.

Democrats like Sen. Maria Cantwell from Washington State think otherwise.

Cantwell pointed to Comcast’s secretive effort in 2007 to throttle the speeds of peer-to-peer file sharing traffic.  Comcast initially denied it was interfering with torrent traffic, until eventually admitting it was.  The FCC sought to fine Comcast for the practice, but the cable giant sued the FCC and won in federal court.  The judge in the case ruled the FCC didn’t appear to have the authority to regulate Internet traffic or impose the associated fine.

Cantwell believes sensible Net Neutrality policies will prevent further instances of provider interference.

“These providers think if [they] can control the pipe [they] can also control the flow,” Cantwell said. “Why allow telcos to run wild on the Internet charging consumers anything they want based on the fact that they have control of the switch?”

Reporters questioned Senate Commerce Chairman Jay Rockefeller about Net Neutrality, noting the measure opposing FCC involvement won support from several House Democrats.

Rockefeller pointed to the universal support for the anti-Net Neutrality measure on the Republican side as evidence this has become a partisan political issue.  Rockefeller hopes his Democratic colleagues in the Senate will see it the same way.

“There’s still 53 of us [Democrats], and if we stay together we’ll win,” Rockefeller said. “I think we’re going to prevail.”

Should the measure pass, President Barack Obama indicated he will veto it.

[flv width=”640″ height=”500″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/C-SPAN Net Neutrality 11-9-11.flv[/flv]

C-SPAN talks with National Journal reporter Josh Smith about Net Neutrality’s prospects and the background issues surrounding Net Neutrality.  (3 minutes)

Creative Redefinition of Today's Problems Into Tomorrow's Solutions

At around 7:00pm ET, Republicans in the North Carolina State Senate are expected to ram through H.129, Rep. Marilyn Avila’s (R-Time Warner Cable) anti-consumer, anti-community broadband bill.

You can listen to the Evening of Infamy right here: North Carolina Senate Audio.

With the cooperation of most of the state’s Republicans, and a handful of Democrats taking cable’s money, North Carolina intends to solve their state’s broadband availability problems in a novel way: by redefining those without broadband service as having broadband after all.

Through an amendment, H.129 will essentially declare the service as widely available if even a single resident in a particular census block has access to something resembling broadband.  That could be 768kbps DSL from CenturyLink.  If one person has the service, the thinking goes, everyone can get it, even if they can’t.

The Senate intends to deal with North Carolina’s broadband crisis by changing the definition of the word ‘crisis‘ into ‘accomplishment.’ Instead of allowing communities to provide service in unserved areas, simply declare all areas as being served, thereby negating the need for community broadband.  Another victory for the free market, and it was dirt cheap not to provide the service, too!

So when broadband-deprived North Carolina consumers call Time Warner, CenturyLink, or AT&T, they can be told:

“No, it’s not that we don’t have any broadband service to sell you, we’re simply providing it in a unique new way — by delivering it to someone else!  (Can’t you move in with them?)”

Problem solved.

As one legislator said earlier, “[TWC and CenturyLink] are calling all the shots.”