The corporate-funded American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) took a hit in the Georgia legislature last week as the clock ran out on several initiatives backed by its members and supporters on behalf of the group’s corporate clients.

While H.B. 282, a municipal broadband ban introduced by Rep. Mark Hamilton (R-Cumming) was soundly defeated in an unusual, bipartisan 94-70 vote, two other measures supported by Hamilton never came up for votes, including one that would have placed restrictions on city employees speaking out against corporate-ghostwritten bills like the public broadband ban he introduced.

Hamilton is no stranger at ALEC. He received $3,527.80 in ALEC “scholarships” in 2008 alone, according to the Center for Media and Democracy. Those payments covered certain travel expenses, wining and dining, and entertainment for state lawmakers (and often their families) bought and paid for by ALEC’s corporate members which include large telecom companies. After 2008, ALEC no longer had to disclose their scholarships and neither do many politicians who receive them.

In the last cycle, Hamilton cashed checks well into the thousands of dollars from AT&T, Charter Communications, Comcast and Verizon. That doesn’t include $1,000 from the Georgia Cable TV Association.

Rep. Don Parsons, another bill supporter, happens to be an active member of the ALEC Telecommunications and Information Technology Task Force. He has received $5,735.48 during his first three years in that role.

ALEC’s principle role is to get corporate-backed legislative ideas written into state laws. The group maintains a large database of pre-approved legislation ready-made for introduction in any statehouse. Simply change a few words here and there and suddenly it isn’t AT&T, Verizon, Time Warner Cable or Comcast introducing the bills they helped draft, it is Reps. Hamilton and Parsons.

In 2013, these two representatives went over the top for their corporate friends at ALEC.

Mark Hamilton’s H.B. 228: The “Keep Your Mouth Shut Else or Else” Act

Hamilton

Among the most overreaching bills introduced in the 2013 session was Rep. Hamilton’s H.B. 228 – an untitled bill that would prohibit local government employees from using government computers, fax machines or email to promote or oppose legislation by the General Assembly. It would also prohibit employees from contacting members of the General Assembly or the governor to discuss the impact of pending legislation on local governments, unless the employee is registered as a lobbyist or information is requested directly by a member of the General Assembly.

The greatest wish-come-true of ALEC is introducing legislation supported by unshackled corporate interests while muzzling local governments from objecting to the legislation.

In the community broadband battle, large cable and phone companies have limitless budgets to spend opposing public broadband with scare mailers, push polling, newspaper, radio and even television ads. Local officials fighting to defend their interests in better broadband do not. Hamilton’s bill would have taken this imbalance even further, making it a crime for any agencies, authorities, bureaus, departments, offices, and commissions of the state or any political subdivision of the state to provide members of the General Assembly with information about their broadband problems. Communities could not correct misinformation, explain a bill’s unintended consequences, or request changes to the bill.

“HB 228 is utterly ridiculous,” said Conyers City Manager Tony Lucas. “When did a local government, contacting one of our representatives or our governor, become professional lobbying? It’s respective governments conducting business for or on behalf of our citizens.”

Don Parsons’ H.B. 176: AT&T’s “Put Your Cell Tower Wherever You Want” Act

Rep. Parsons had trouble coming up with a good name for his latest legislative gift to AT&T. Originally entitled the “Advanced Broadband Colocation Act,” that title was eventually scrapped because it was not snappy enough. In its place, the “Mobile Broadband Infrastructure Leads to Development (BILD) Act” was suddenly born.

Parsons

But after reading both it and a substitute amendment, we call it the “Put It Anywhere Act,” because the bill’s real intent is to largely strip away cell tower location authority from Georgia’s local governments.

Parsons does not host an AT&T cell tower in his backyard in Marietta, but other Georgian homeowners might had the bill passed.

H.B. 176 allowed cell towers to be placed anywhere a wireless company wanted with very limited local input. Companies were under no obligation to prove that the new towers were needed. Local governments could no longer veto their choices, much less limit additions to existing towers or suggest more suitable alternative locations.  Parsons’ bill even removed authority from local governments to insist that companies remove abandoned towers before constructing new ones.

Parsons went all-out for AT&T. Knowing that resource-strapped local governments often have bigger priorities, he set a deadline on cell tower applications at 90 days for existing towers, five months for new ones. Unless the community rejects a proposal showing good cause, it would be deemed automatically approved.

Amy Henderson, director of communications for the Georgia Municipal Association, scoffed at claims the bill was designed to streamline the cell tower application process.

“Dictatorship is just streamlined government,” she told the Rockdale Citizen. “It doesn’t necessarily mean it’s in the best interest of the public.”

[flv width=”480″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Youtube – Rep Parsons on HB176 3-2-13.flv[/flv]

Rep. Parsons’ rambling YouTube video featuring a laundry list of AT&T talking points about the need for cell companies to throw up cell towers wherever they please because it is good for business (even if it isn’t so good for you or your neighbors). Parsons’ video then launches into a hissyfit directed at the Georgia Municipal Association, unhappy with Parsons’ sweeping transfer of authority away from local communities in favor of AT&T and others. Al Gore never sighed this much. It garnered a whopping 41 views on YouTube to date and in the spirit of open dialogue, Parsons disabled comments on the video.  (17 minutes)

Private vs. Public: A Phone-y Debate

At the heart of most of ALEC’s legislative initiatives is a sense that public institutions are somehow hampering private enterprise. Community broadband is considered an especially dangerous threat because incumbent providers claim public broadband represents unfair competition.

But as ALEC itself demonstrates, corporate welfare is alive and well in the statehouses of even the reddest states. The idea that taxpayers should not be footing the bill for things the private sector can do without costing taxpayers a nickel just doesn’t fly with reality.

As Free Press reports, phone and cable companies have been on federal welfare since their inception. A 2011 Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy study shows AT&T and Verizon receiving more than $26 billion in tax subsidies from 2008–2010.

The FCC’s 2012 report on Universal Service Fund subsidies shows nearly $3 billion in federal payments to AT&T, Verizon and Windstream. In 2010, Windstream — a telecommunications company with services across the South — applied for $238 million in federal stimulus grants to improve its service in 16 states. More than 16 million taxpayer dollars went to upgrade the company’s services in Georgia.

“Phone and cable companies would not be recording the soaring profit margins that they do, if there were truly a free market,’” said Free Press Research Director S. Derek Turner. “They have created an unlevel playing field that gives them massive first-mover advantages. The real-dollar benefits of that can’t be quantified.”

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.

Mayor Guest

Despite protests from major technology companies, consumers, and local communities across Georgia, the House Energy, Utilities and Telecommunications Committee passed a slightly-revised HB 282, a bill that would largely ban communities from building their own networks to deliver 21st century broadband service. The bill has been moved out of the Rules Committee and will be debated on the House floor Thursday. Readers can find and contact their state representative (preferably leaving a phone message opposing HB 282) through this website. Do it this afternoon!

Last Thursday, community leaders appeared in Atlanta to oppose the corporate welfare protectionism that HB 282 represents.

“Let’s talk about economic development,” said Elberton Mayor Larry Guest. “Georgia should be promoting a pro-business, inclusive approach to broadband deployment, especially in rural areas of the state,” he said. “Competition ensures market-based pricing and faster delivery of state-of-the-art services. We have to do everything we can to attract jobs. If we don’t do that, business will not select rural Georgia. High speed access is essential to us.”

Mark Creekmore depends on his Internet connection in his Dawsonville home as part of his job and Windstream has let him down for at least three years. He pays for 12Mbps service and regularly receives around 600kbps service after 3pm because Windstream has hopelessly oversold its DSL service.

“No one should have to pay for Internet speeds they are not receiving and be told that because they live in a rural area, getting them fixed is just not a priority,” Creekmore complains. “That’s like saying: ‘Because you live in the sticks, you do not deserve what the city folks deserve despite the fact that you pay the same money for service that they do.'”

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WGCL Atlanta New Bill Hinders Broadband 2-26-13.mp4[/flv]

WGCL, the CBS station in Atlanta, is asking tough questions about HB 282 and exactly who it will benefit. Some suspect the bill will protect Windstream from having to upgrade its broadband services, something essential to Dawsonville resident Mark Creekmore, who has to turn customers away because Windstream’s DSL service is so poor in his area.  (3 minutes)

Creekmore is incensed Windstream is behind a push to pass HB 282, which bill supporters claim will “stimulate investment in rural broadband,” at the same time the phone company leaves him and others with substandard speeds and service.

“I do not think it is ethical for companies like Windstream, already benefiting from taxpayer dollars, to back a bill that will keep municipalities from offering their residents something better,” said Creekmore.

Creekmore opposes government waste, but is not opposed to local communities stepping up when telecommunications companies have let their customers down.

Despite claims HB 282 will promote rural broadband expansion, Windstream’s CEO Jeff Gardner told investors the opposite Feb. 19 in a conference call.

“We will finish most of our broadband stimulus initiatives which expands our addressability to roughly 75,000 new households,” said Gardner. “As we exit 2013, we will see capital spending related to these projects decrease substantially.”

Windstream’s broadband problems are not limited to rural Georgia. In rural Missouri, Windstream’s DSL service has performed so poorly in certain communities local businesses have had to shut down operations for the day when kids are out on “snow days” because service deteriorates to the point it becomes unusable.

Thomasville, Ga., runs a public fiber to the home network that delivers the speeds it advertises.

“Windstream has made it clear that they have no plans to invest in areas where they don’t feel they can be profitable,” said Piedmont Area Chamber of Commerce president Scott Combs.

Because rural broadband problems remain so pervasive, a group of technology companies including Google and Alcatel-Lucent sent a letter to the chairman of the Georgia House Energy, Utilities and Telecommunications Committee protesting the bill:

The private sector alone cannot enable the United States to take full advantage of the opportunities that advanced communications networks can create in virtually every area of life. As a result, federal and state efforts are taking place across the Nation, including Georgia, to deploy both private and public broadband infrastructure to stimulate and support economic development and job creation, especially in economically distressed areas. HB 282 would prevent public broadband providers from building the sorely needed advanced broadband infrastructure that will stimulate local businesses development, foster work force retraining, and boost employment in economically underachieving areas.

Thus far, the only response has been to slightly ease the language in the bill, now defining suitable broadband at 3Mbps service, up from 1.5Mbps. Communities with municipally owned utilities would also be exempt from the prohibition on selling telecom services. But that is hardly enough.

“Three megabits is not adequate to do functions in a modern telecommunications world,” said Thomasville mayor Max Beverly.

Thomasville has its own public broadband network and the difference between it and providers like Windstream are quickly apparent.

While Windstream sells rural Georgians service at 12Mbps but actually delivers less than 1Mbps, Thomasville residents are excited about forthcoming upgrades to 20Mbps service that actually means 20Mbps service. Thomasville’s fiber network has proved so financially successful, the community eliminated its local property tax. If HB 282 passes, other communities will find constructing such networks nearly impossible.

Democracy Now! featured Chris Mitchell and Catharine Rice on March 4, who talked about how large telecom companies are lobbying to ban community-owned broadband networks, including those in Georgia. AT&T, Comcast, Time Warner Cable and others are having success in the southeastern United States with the help of Republican state lawmakers and conservative groups with ties to the Koch Brothers. (10 minutes)

You paid for it, but you can’t access it.

Once again, taxpayers are underwriting expensive state-of-the-art fiber broadband networks that are strictly off-limits to residential and business customers living with substandard broadband on offer from the phone and cable company.

The Obama Administration’s big plans for broadband expansion have proved underwhelming for consumers and businesses clamoring for access across rural America. Local media reports deliver false promises about improved broadband access from new fiber networks under construction. But all too often, these expensive, high-capacity networks go underutilized and offer service only to a select few institutional users.

Case in point: Last week, the expensive Iowa Communications Network (ICN) went up for sale to the highest bidder.

At least $320 million taxpayer dollars have been spent on more than 8,000 miles of fiber connecting government buildings, schools, and healthcare facilities. Your tax dollars paid for this network, but unless your kids go to a school connected to ICN or you happen to work for a government agency, you are not allowed to use it.

One state legislator admitted even at the best of times, ICN never exceeded more than 10 percent of its available capacity. What an incredible waste of a precious resource!

In a recent public-relations effort, ICN has been used by military families videoconferencing with their loved ones serving overseas. But for the rest of Iowa, the network hasn’t done much of anything to improve Internet service in homes or businesses.

The Iowa Communications Network is off-limits to ordinary Iowans.

David Roederer, director of the Iowa Department of Management said the idea was never to let the state serve as an Internet provider, a fact that makes life wonderful for the state’s dominant telecommunications companies. But the decision has left rural Iowa in a broadband ditch.

“The vision was this would be something available in all 99 counties […] It would connect the schools and institutions in places that the private marketplace wasn’t,” Roederer told the Sioux City Journal. “We don’t buy satellite or cable television for everybody.”

But that is like arguing the state should only build roads and bridges for a select handful of government-owned or institutional vehicles, not those driven by the ordinary taxpayers who paid for it.

Too many politicians remain completely out-of-touch with what broadband really represents: critical infrastructure for the 21st century digital economy.

The city of Bettendorf only did marginally better, eventually allowing businesses on their fiber network while keeping local residents away. Capacity is hardly a problem: Bettendorf’s fiber network did little more than help the city manage traffic signals before they admitted a few business customers.

Butch Rebman, president and chief operating officer of Central Scott Telephone told The Quad City Times consumers don’t need fiber broadband speeds.

Apparently someone does. Bettendorf’s fiber network is now being upgraded to provide up to 10Gbps service, but it remains off-limits to local residents, raising questions about the commercial vendor that only sells to area businesses.

City administrator Decker Ploehn claims businesses use more broadband than residential homes (a ‘fact’ not in evidence), and that there were already companies specifically targeting the residential market. Those providers have performed so well that local citizens petitioned to access to the city network instead.

Think about that for a moment. A significant number of Bettendorf residents in red state Iowa preferred buying broadband service from the government, not America’s worst-rated cable operator Mediacom. So much for proclaiming private companies always do it better.

Meanwhile in Illinois, local officials are hurrying to spend $15.6 million in federal taxpayer funds on the Central Illinois Regional Broadband Network — another institutional network designed for the exclusive use of schools, local governments, and hospitals.

…but not people and businesses.

Scott Genung, director of telecommunications and networking at Illinois State University says the network’s leaders never planned to compete or undersell what other broadband servers are providing. Instead, their plan is to deliver high-capacity, high-speed broadband to rural Illinois. But taxpayers who are paying for the network are being bypassed, even when the fiber cable supplying the service hangs on utility poles in their front yards. Apparently, for the rural consumer, DSL from the phone company is plenty good enough.

In the community of Normal local officials admit they, like everyone else, are currently stuck with very slow DSL service. But Normal city manager Mark Peterson is celebrating CIRBN’s potential benefit to 52,000 local residents — which include connecting local fire stations, municipal swimming pools and the local water plant.

While those uses may be beneficial,  none of them are likely to boost the digital economy of Normal. There will be no entrepreneurial development of new online businesses that require a higher speed network than the local phone company will provide. Only the most limited at-home tele-learning courses will be available, and no improvements in broadband are forthcoming for home-based businesses and telecommuters. Local residents will continue to drift along at whatever snail-speed service is on offer from private companies that see more profit investing in larger communities.

Although these networks provide measurable benefits to the institutional users they serve, the fact remains they can be obscenely expensive on a per-user basis. Since our tax dollars fund these networks at a time of budget-busting deficits, would it not make better financial sense to open these networks up for public use? If a local community decides they want to provide better service than the local phone and cable company utilizing these networks, why not let them? If a community does not want to spend the money but a neighborhood agrees to pay for connectivity and wiring, why not allow them?

Restricted-use institutional fiber broadband has too often resulted in vastly oversized networks that go underutilized. It is time taxpayers have the right to use networks that they paid to build, particularly in rural areas where the only alternatives are stonewalling phone and cable operators who charge top dollar for bottom-rated service, if they provide service at all.

Halloween scare stories are back!

It is amazing the length some incumbent broadband providers will go to stop publicly-owned networks from getting off the ground and competing with the “good enough for you” service on offer from the local phone or cable company.

This morning, Stop the Cap! received word from a Minnesota reader who reports their dinner hour was interrupted by an unsolicited phone call from a group called “Americans for Sensible Broadband,” which as far as we can tell does not exist as a formal group. The caller used ridiculous scare tactics worthy of a bad Halloween movie:

• Did you know that fiber broadband networks are expensive to run and will increase your electric bill to pay for the high powered lasers needed to send the signal to your home?

Fiber broadband projects now expanding in Minnesota have no relation to your electric bill because most are run by independent community-owned co-ops, not electric utilities. Even if they were run by an electric provider, the cost to power a fiber network is far smaller than the network of signal amplifiers and other transmission equipment needed by traditional cable and phone companies. The only electrical expense to the homeowner is powering any set top boxes or other related equipment to make use of the service. These costs are comparable to what one would pay with cable or phone services.

• Most fiber networks are not actually fiber at all. The largest companies in America actually let you keep your current wiring, but that is not fiber, so why spend tax money on a risky fiber network?

While AT&T U-verse has chosen the route of “fiber to the neighborhood,” which still relies on existing copper wiring from nearby poles to your home, many fiber to the home projects take fiber… straight to the home. Some community networks do make use of very short lengths of pre-existing copper wiring inside your home, but this has more to do with your convenience. You don’t need a fiber connection to your landline phone, for instance. Compare the broadband speeds and services on offer from the community provider vs. incumbent cable and phone companies. Choose the one that delivers the best services for the price.

• America’s cable and phone companies are working hard for pro-growth, pro-expansion policies in Washington that will allow your community to get the benefit of billions of private investment, at no risk to you.

An in-home threat to your children or incumbent provider profits?

Incumbent phone and cable companies already enjoy a higher level of deregulation than ever before. If they have not spent money to improve broadband in your area before, there is nothing that will open their wallets to provide the service now, unless someone else subsidizes part of the cost. Guess who “someone” is? That’s right. You the taxpayer or ratepayer. Whether in the form of broadband subsidies paid for by taxpayer dollars or ratepayer subsidies from the Universal Service Fund, only subsidies or competition prod incumbents to deliver better broadband to rural Minnesota (or anywhere else). If you fail a “Return On Investment” test, you will not get broadband no matter how much deregulation gets approved in Washington.

The question for rural consumers is whether AT&T, Frontier, CenturyLink, Comcast, or Charter Cable has your best interests at heart or whether a community co-op you partly own will.

• In socialistic countries, the government runs the broadband service and can monitor your web browsing. Do you want your local community checking up on your online activities?

“Socialistic” is in the eye of the beholder. Most broadband networks are run by private telecommunications companies, some with state subsidies, others entirely on their own. The federal government’s security agencies already have access to monitor Internet traffic under warrantless wiretapping laws, and that extends to every provider in the country, private or public. That said, there is no evidence local government officials would monitor your web browsing habits, much less have the budget or technical expertise to do so.

• Fiber cables create more hazards on utility poles designed for phone, cable and electric service. Is it worth risking those services for an unnecessary and expensive fiber network?

Electric and phone companies used the same scare stories to try and keep cable television lines off utility poles more than 30 years ago. Cable operators fought for and won the right to use utility poles to no ill effect, and at fair prices. It is ironic some cable companies want to use the same argument against municipal fiber that phone and electric companies used against them.

• In these difficult economic times, do you realize your local taxes could triple to pay for unnecessary fiber Internet?

Most public broadband projects are financed by municipal bonds obtained in the private free market. Investors can decide for themselves if they represent a safe investment, and many do. If the networks fail, private investors typically take the hit.

But the most ridiculous claim of all was that “recent news reports warn that lasers could blind your children if they happen to play with the fiber cables in your home.”

The only “news report” we could find on this subject was an Engadget news story from 2011 about an S3 Krypton laser that could blind astronauts without proper safety equipment. But those lasers are not powering broadband networks.

In reality, fiber to the home networks are safer than traditional copper phone wiring, which can send a significant electric shock to anyone playing with the wiring when a telephone rings. Many fiber networks rely on Class 1, low power lasers — the lowest risk level. Even if a customer stared at the lit end of an optical fiber connector, the visible light would be diffused into a cone pattern that would be completely harmless by the time it reached the retina. Many networks also include a secondary safety mechanism that quickly shuts down the laser light once the connection has been broken. Certain higher-powered laser communications networks can have some safety risks, but almost entirely for workers working on primary cables that deliver service to dozens of homes. Those workers are well-trained to avoid those risks.

Minnesota seems to be one of the latest hotbeds of incumbent wrath over expanding community-owned broadband networks. Despite efforts to label them insidious creeping socialism, they are actually no more threatening than a traditional co-op, except perhaps to incumbent cable and phone companies that have been running to the bank cashing checks from customers enduring low broadband speeds at high prices.