Thanks, Gov. Cuomo

In Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s zeal to take credit for broadband enhancements across New York State, he also took partial-credit for convincing Charter Communications to speed its plan to deliver internet speeds of 100Mbps across upstate New York by early 2017, calling it “sweeping progress toward achieving its nation-leading goal of broadband for all.”

Unfortunately for New Yorkers, the governor forgot to mention his plan, coupled with the state government’s approval of Charter’s merger with Time Warner Cable, will actually result in slower and more expensive broadband for all of upstate New York.

“Access to high-speed internet is critical to keeping pace with the rising demands of the modern economy,” said Gov. Andrew Cuomo. “The New NY Broadband Program is advancing our vision for inclusive, interconnected communities that empower individuals, support small businesses, and advance innovation. These actions are a major step forward in creating the most robust broadband infrastructure network in the nation, and ensuring that reliable, high-speed internet is available to all New Yorkers.”

While the governor’s goals for rural broadband expansion in New York are laudable and have actually produced significant results, his belief in Charter’s broadband enhancement plan is misplaced and will actually leave cities in upstate New York at a serious broadband speed disadvantage that could remain an indefinite problem.

It is difficult to admit that New York was better off leaving Time Warner Cable as the dominant cable operator in New York State. As we warned last fall in our testimony to the N.Y. Public Service Commission, Charter’s merger proposal included promises of broadband enhancements considerably less robust than what Time Warner Cable had already undertaken on its own initiative. Time Warner Cable Maxx would have brought upstate New York free speed upgrades ranging from 50/5Mbps for Standard internet customers (up from 15/1Mbps) to 300/20Mbps (up from 50/5Mbps) for customers subscribed to Time Warner’s Ultimate tier.

Charter only advertises its 60Mbps tier. You have to dig through their website to discover they also sell 100Mbps, for $100 a month and usually a $200 installation fee.

Charter this week made it clear those Maxx upgrades are dead, except in areas where they have already been introduced. Instead, upstate New York (and likely other Maxx-less areas around the country) will get two internet speed tiers instead: 60 and 100Mbps.

Getting 100Mbps is better than 50Mbps, at least until you check the price. Customers should be sitting down for this. Charter’s 100Mbps tier costs $100 a month after a one-year promotional rate and often includes a one-time $200 installation fee. In contrast, Time Warner Cable charges about $65 a month for 300/20Mbps internet-only service, which incrementally rises after one year if you don’t threaten to cancel service. There is usually no installation or upgrade fee.

This is the “benefit” Gov. Cuomo is touting?

In fact, with Charter Communications to be the overwhelmingly dominant cable operator throughout upstate New York, this leaves cities like Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, Albany, and Binghamton in a relative broadband swamp. While cities of similar sizes in other states are qualifying for Google Fiber, AT&T’s gigabit fiber upgrade, or fiber to the home service from community-owned broadband providers, Charter’s competition includes a barely trying Frontier Communications which still offers little more than slow speed DSL, Verizon Communications which stopped expanding FiOS in New York (except Fire Island) in 2010, and a handful of small independent phone companies and fiber overbuilders serving very limited service areas.

Charter is still required to offer 300Mbps service… by 2019 in New York as part of a commitment to regulators we fought for and won. That represents a speed equal to Time Warner Cable Maxx, but Charter has three years to offer what many New Yorkers either already had or were slated to get by next year from Time Warner Cable for much less money.

It takes chutzpah to proclaim broadband victory from this kind of avoidable defeat. Gov. Cuomo’s plan for better broadband allows Charter to cheat millions of New Yorkers out of Time Warner’s much better upgrade that was scheduled to be finished this summer in Central New York and ready to commence in Rochester this fall and Buffalo early next year. The governor should be on the phone with Charter management today insisting that all of New York get the 300Mbps internet service Time Warner Cable was planning for this state. Anything less leaves New York worse off, not better.

Consider again this cold, hard reality: Time Warner Cable was the better option — that is how bad things are in New York.

Upstate cities considering their economic future must not rely on the state or federal government to solve their broadband problems. Considering what Charter and Gov. Cuomo are proposing, waiting for the cable company to make life better isn’t a solution either. The only alternative is for local community leaders to start taking control of their own broadband destiny and launch community-owned, gigabit-capable, fiber to the home service. Charter won’t do it, Frontier can’t, and Verizon is too busy making piles of money from its wireless network to worry if your city will ever have 21st century internet access it needs to compete in the digital economy.

Governor Andrew M. Cuomo yesterday announced that the “New NY Broadband Program” is well on its way to achieving “sweeping progress toward achieving its nation-leading goal of broadband for all” New Yorkers.

The governor claimed that 97% of New York residents will have access to high-speed internet access by 2017, with a vague goal of serving 100% of New Yorkers by the end of 2018.

To do this, Gov. Cuomo relies heavily on the state’s new and overwhelmingly dominant cable operator – Charter Communications, which closed on its acquisition of Time Warner Cable earlier this summer. A press release promoting the governor’s efforts quotes Charter’s executive vice president of government affairs Catherine Bohigia as being excited to work with the governor and his administration to expand service to about 145,000 households currently not served by Time Warner Cable or Charter in New York.

Charter officials are working with the Public Service Commission to identify the households to be served, and highly redacted documents suggest Charter is identifying new housing developments and areas immediately next to existing Charter/Time Warner Cable service areas for this expansion.

A second separate plan to subsidize private cable and phone companies to help cover the costs of reaching another 34,000 homes that won’t be served by Charter is only expected to reach 50% of the remaining unserved homes and businesses in the state. A further round of funding will target the the remainder of unserved areas, including certain rural landline areas where Verizon has shown no interest in offering customers internet access of any kind.

Charter Communications

Charter Communications has effectively canceled the Time Warner Cable Maxx upgrades that were either underway, in progress, or in the planning stage in upstate New York. Instead, Charter plans to speed up the roll-out its own originally proposed upgrade, which includes two tiers: 60 and 100Mbps, for more than two million upstate homes and businesses by early 2017 in Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, Binghamton and Albany.

Customers in Central New York are likely to be left in limbo, some already getting Maxx upgraded 300Mbps internet access while others were scheduled to get the speed upgrade the same week Charter froze further Maxx upgrades. Those customers are now likely to receive a maximum of 100Mbps service sometime next year under Charter’s new plan.

Charter is also negotiating with state officials about where it will deploy broadband to 145,000 currently unserved homes in upstate New York over the next four years.

State-funded Rural Broadband Awards – Round I

New York State will help subsidize broadband rollouts to approximately 34,000 homes and businesses currently not served (or not served adequately) in rural areas. All but two of these projects will rely on fiber to the home service and each will offer service to a few thousand people:

Applicant Name	Technology	REDC Region	Census Blocks	Housing Units	Total Units	State Grant Total	Private Match	Total Project Cost
Armstrong Telecommunications, Inc.	FTTH	Finger Lakes, Southern Tier, Western NY	176	1,135	1,162	$3,930,189	$982,549	$4,912,738
Armstrong Telephone Company	FTTH	Southern Tier, Western NY	74	466	504	$1,778,256	$444,564	$2,222,820
Citizens Telephone Company of Hammond, N.Y., Inc.	FTTH	North Country	146	1,789	1,860	$3,316,810	$829,202	$4,146,012
Empire Access	FTTH	Southern Tier	124	719	724	$1,797,894	$449,474	$2,247,368
Empire Access	FTTH	Southern Tier	117	1,202	1,268	$1,598,480	$399,620	$1,998,100
Frontier Communications	FTTH	Southern Tier	1	62	65	$67,592	$16,899	$84,491
Frontier Communications	FTTH	North Country	3	188	216	$129,634	$32,409	$162,043
Frontier Communications	FTTH	Southern Tier	12	129	142	$197,104	$49,276	$246,380
Frontier Communications	FTTH	Capital Region	23	391	394	$318,304	$79,576	$397,880
Frontier Communications	FTTH	Mohawk Valley	30	402	405	$924,663	$231,166	$1,155,829
Frontier Communications	FTTH	North Country	105	1,928	2,096	$1,702,246	$425,562	$2,127,808
Germantown Telephone Company	FTTH	Capital Region	208	2,195	2,334	$2,512,562	$628,140	$3,140,702
Haefele TV Inc.	FTTH	Southern Tier	413	3,029	3,238	$271,568	$67,892	$339,460
Hancock Telephone Company	FTTH	Southern Tier	136	1,505	1,675	$4,915,920	$1,228,981	$6,144,901
Heart of the Catskills Communications	Hybrid-Fiber Coax	Southern Tier	216	2,836	3,177	$1,224,946	$524,977	$1,749,923
Margaretville Telephone Company	FTTH	Mid-Hudson, Southern Tier	209	1,882	2,002	$4,791,505	$2,053,503	$6,845,008
Mid-Hudson Data Corp	Fixed Wireless	Capital Region	60	647	663	$950,184	$237,546	$1,187,730
Mid-Hudson Data Corp	FTTH	Capital Region	6	354	362	$59,155	$14,789	$73,944
State Telephone Company, Inc.	FTTH	Capital Region	231	3,801	4,134	$5,805,600	$1,451,400	$7,257,000
State Telephone Company, Inc.	FTTH	Capital Region	101	516	595	$2,914,960	$728,740	$3,643,700
TDS Telecom	FTTH	Southern Tier	156	2,369	2,423	$1,895,390	$1,895,390	$3,790,780
TDS Telecom	FTTH	North Country	74	506	543	$1,084,000	$1,084,000	$2,168,000
TDS Telecom	FTTH	Central NY, Finger Lakes	106	996	1,038	$1,424,793	$1,424,793	$2,849,586
TDS Telecom	FTTH	Southern Tier	395	3,528	3,551	$4,989,570	$4,989,570	$9,979,140
The Middleburgh Telephone Company	FTTH	Capital Region, Mohawk Valley	250	1,596	1,651	$5,562,548	$1,390,637	$6,953,185

*FTTH = Fiber-to-the-Home

Federally Funded Rural Broadband Awards – Round II

After Verizon abdicated any interest in participating in rural broadband expansion funding through the FCC’s Connect America Fund, New York’s Broadband Program Office (BPO) and the Public Service Commission urged the FCC to keep the original funding intended for rural New York intact and open to other applicants seeking to build rural broadband projects. The FCC has not fully committed to do this, but it is an agenda item. Assuming this funding becomes available, it will be used to help pay for independent broadband providers or rural cable operators to begin delivering broadband service into still unserved parts of New York not included in the Charter expansion or Round I projects noted above. Many Verizon territories are expected to be included.

Applicants will have to provide at least 100Mbps service in most places or a minimum of 25Mbps in the most remote corners of New York. The application form discourages applicants from delivering broadband over DSL or wireless and clearly favors fiber to the home or cable broadband technology. Price controls will be in place for the first few years to assure affordability and those winning funding are strictly prohibited from introducing usage caps or usage-billing.

A vaguely defined “third phase” is scheduled to launch early next year to offer internet access to all remaining unaddressed service areas. Nobody mentions where the money is coming from to cover the last 1-3% of unserved areas, which are likely to be notoriously expensive to reach.

Gov. Cuomo explains progress on his New York Broadband for All program. (26:31)

Stall, stall, stall. While Charter Communications and AT&T are working towards improving their broadband service offerings for Kentucky’s largest city, both companies are doing everything possible to slow down the arrival of their nemesis: Google Fiber, which is preparing to wire Louisville for gigabit fiber to the home service.

This past February, Louisville Metro Council unanimously passed a new ordinance called “One Touch Make Ready,” designed to streamline telecom provider access to utility poles, which are getting crowded with at least three telecom companies vying for consumers’ business. The ordinance was passed with the support of Google, which seeks a minimum of red tape from local permit and zoning bureaucracies and its competitors while network engineers begin installing fiber optics across the city. Installing Google Fiber on utility poles may involve moving other providers’ wiring to make room for Google, which in some cases could mean 4-5 different utility companies having to visit each pole to move their wiring. In the past, Google asked the pole owner for access, which has not always been forthcoming on a timely basis. The new ordinance requires the pole owner to respond to access requests within 30 days. If no response is forthcoming, Google can approach the city for a permit to hire a contractor to do all the relocation work on their behalf.

“Such policies reduce cost, disruption, and delay, by allowing the work needed to prepare a utility pole for new fiber to be attached in as little as a single visit—which means more safety for drivers and the neighborhood,” Google wrote on its blog. “This work would be done by a team of contractors the pole owner itself has approved, instead of having multiple crews from multiple companies working on the same pole over weeks or months. One Touch Make Ready facilitates new network deployment by anyone—and that’s why groups representing communities and fiber builders support it, too.”

Louisville, Ky. (Image: Chris Watson)

About two weeks after the ordinance passed, AT&T made it clear they did not support it and took the city to court, claiming it had no right to regulate its utility poles.

“Louisville Metro Council’s recently passed ‘One Touch Make Ready’ Ordinance is invalid, as the city has no jurisdiction under federal or state law to regulate pole attachments,” said AT&T spokesman Joe Burgan. “We have filed an action to challenge the ordinance as unlawful. Google can attach to AT&T’s poles once it enters into AT&T’s standard Commercial Licensing Agreement, as it has in other cities. This lawsuit is not about Google. It’s about the Louisville Metro Council exceeding its authority.”

Time Warner Cable (now Charter Communications) joined AT&T, adding the city is violating the cable company’s corporate constitutional rights by effectively seizing their property (cable lines) and granting a right for third parties to manipulate, move, or manage those lines without Time Warner Cable’s permission.

“The ordinance is simply unworkable,” said Time Warner Cable’s attorney Gardner Gillespie, a partner in the D.C. law firm Sheppard-Mullin. “It does not provide any meaningful way for Time Warner Cable to know what changes have been made to its existing facilities or to assure any damage is promptly cured.”

Gillespie also claimed customers could endure poorer service and outages as a result of unauthorized contractors relocating Time Warner Cable’s equipment, often without the cable company’s knowledge.

City officials dismissed the concerns, but failed to get either lawsuit dismissed.

Charter executives have also opened a new opposition front against Google Fiber’s presence in the city, accusing city officials of unfairly favoring the search engine giant while continuing to burden Charter with a franchise agreement that requires the cable company to provide free cable in city buildings and offer channel space and studio facilities for the city’s Public, Educational, and Government Access channels.

At present, Google is not obligated to provide any of those services and has also won a unique regional franchise that covers the city of Louisville and nearby suburbs in a single agreement. The Metro Council has also granted Google its own public right-of-way access for installing various communications infrastructure. Both AT&T and Charter claim they are only getting involved because they believe they should be given equal treatment. Critics contend they are attempting to slow down Google Fiber, which could begin offering service by fall of 2017.

Time Warner Cable began offering Maxx-upgraded service in March 2016, offering residents up to 300Mbps. AT&T is gradually expanding its U-verse with GigaPower gigabit broadband service in locations around Louisville.

Apple TV

Apple’s ability to successfully force its way into the pay television business with a cord-cutter’s streaming TV solution has been left languishing since 2009, thanks to some of America’s largest cable and entertainment companies who think Apple is arrogant and out of touch.

The Wall Street Journal today published a story showing how Apple’s plans to challenge the cable TV industry much the same way it revolutionized digital music has rubbed the big and powerful the wrong way. Apple’s desire to launch a cheaper streaming video service with a slimmed down TV lineup and robust on-demand options has flopped, because executives have no interest in bending to Apple’s way of thinking.

In 2009, Apple decided it wanted in on the streaming pay-TV business. At the same time Time Warner Cable began experimenting with data caps, Apple was approaching local stations and broadcast networks and offering them premium payments — higher than what the cable industry itself paid — for Apple’s choice of stations and cable networks. The deal meant Apple would alone be free to pick only the channels it wanted to carry, a major departure from the industry practice of contract renewals that bundled popular networks with spinoff and lesser-known channels cable operators didn’t want to carry. Apple’s hard-charging negotiator, Eddy Cue, seemed to believe that if Apple was at the negotiating table, that alone would be enough to get a deal done. It wasn’t.

Two years later, Time Warner Cable approached Apple seeking to launch a joint TV venture that could compete nationwide with satellite and phone company competitors. The talks were at the highest levels at both companies, involving Time Warner Cable’s then-CEO Glenn Britt, Cue, and Apple CEO Tim Cook. Cook also approached Brian Roberts, CEO of Comcast, promising him the service would only be sold through cable operators — good news for Comcast but bad news for open competition.

This time, Apple sought money from the cable companies, not the other way around. Cable operators were told they would need to pay $10 a month per subscriber to Apple, with no guarantee that fee would not increase in the future. Just as concerning was Apple’s insistence that subscriber authentication would require customers to use their Apple IDs, a departure from the cable industry’s push to adopt TV Everywhere, where customers could unlock streaming video from any cable network simply by logging in with the username and password they set up with their pay TV provider. Apple was also characteristically secretive about their user interface and left cable industry executives flummoxed when they asked Apple to sketch out what the service would look like on a napkin. An Apple official would only respond that their interface would be great and “better than anything you’ve ever had.” The fact Apple refused to answer the question did not go unnoticed.

Nor did Cue’s unconventional way of negotiating with some of the most powerful entertainment executives in the country. When Jeff Bewkes, CEO of Time Warner (Entertainment) agreed to meet with Cue about Apple licensing Time Warner’s critical networks — which include HBO, CNN, and TNT — Apple’s negotiator showed up 10 minutes late. While Time Warner’s negotiators were smartly dressed in business attire, Cue turned up wearing jeans, a Hawaiian shirt, and sneakers with no socks. It went downhill from there, because Apple insisted on valuable on-demand rights to full seasons of hit shows and permission to let viewers store their favorite recordings on a massive cloud-based DVR that included features like automatic recordings of hit shows and advanced ad-skipping technology.

Crickets.

More than a few programmers used to having their way with cable operators were shocked by Apple’s ‘arrogance’ and unconventional way of doing business. The newspaper reports one former Time Warner Cable executive watched with amusement as stone-faced programmers were unimpressed with Apple’s demands.

Jon Lovitz offers a visual hint what Mr. Cue must have looked like meeting with high-powered execs at Time Warner (Entertainment)

“[They] kept looking at the Apple guys like: ‘Do you have any idea how this industry works?'” said the former executive.

Apple responded ‘doing new things requires changes that often are unsettling.’

A year later the negotiations were on life support, as Apple struggled with the arrival of 2015 with no slimmed down streaming TV package to offer Apple TV owners.

Apple’s demands flew in the face of decades of cable industry business practices, which give channel owners virtual guarantees of rate hikes with each contract renewal, the right to force their spinoff networks on the cable lineup in return for a comfortable renewal process, and the cable industry’s right to an assurance everyone was getting the same kind of deal (except volume discounts). Any deviation from this would result in panic on Wall Street, as investors’ dependence on perpetually improving quarterly financial results based on revenue boosts from new or higher fees would come crashing down if a company like Apple got a better deal.

One industry insider suggested once a company like Apple got a deal on sweetheart terms, every other distributor would demand the same deal (and many have contract provisions that require it). Apple may have assumed that because it managed to get the recording industry to agree to its iTunes digital music distribution deal 15 years earlier, so the cable industry would go. Except the road to cut-throat deals for entertainment programming is littered with dead-end business plans that had to be quickly modified when the discounts ended.

Netflix and Starz both learned expensive lessons when early discounts on licensing deals ended after Hollywood saw how much money those companies made from streaming. When licensing contracts expired, entertainment companies sought massive increases in licensing fees to “fairly share” the proceeds. Netflix ended up walking away from several studios, seriously impacting their online streaming catalog. Eventually, Netflix decided if they cannot beat the studios, they should join them, creating original programming to attract and keep subscribers.

Cue in real life

After almost a decade spent trying to get into the online cable business, Apple now seems more likely to follow Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu, and devote time and money on developing its own original programming. Instead of trying to license and bundle network programming, Apple TV today supports independent apps created by various networks. Viewers still get to watch their favorite shows, Apple does not have to pay for streaming rights, and there is a joint effort to create and support a single login so viewers can get access to content without constantly re-entering usernames and passwords.

Apple’s original shows include “Planet of the Apps,” a reality series, a miniseries being developed by Dr. Dre, and a spinoff of CBS’ “Carpool Karaoke.” The shows serve a dual purpose — entertaining viewers and helping push sales in Apple’s App Store and streaming music service.

Also under consideration are big budget, critically acclaimed original shows and series that could generate positive buzz for Apple TV, like “House of Cards” has done for Netflix.

Developing programming keeps negotiators like Apple’s Mr. Cue from having to challenge a very profitable pay television industry on their terms and spares Apple from creating a cable package of linear TV channels subscribers increasingly don’t care about. Viewers want on-demand access to the shows they want to see and don’t care that much about who supplies them and how.

So in the end, the intransigence of Big Cable and Hollywood studios that are now worried about cord-cutting may have done Apple an enormous favor, sparing them from being entangled in a business that buys and sells channels to fill a bloated and expensive cable television lineup more and more consumers are now deciding they can do without.

Updated: Link to WSJ story corrected.

The community of Pinetops, N.C. has finally got 21st century gigabit broadband, but no thanks to a state legislature so beholden to Time Warner Cable, it let the cable giant write its own law to keep potential competitors away.

The passage of H129 was almost a given after Republicans regained control of both chambers of the state legislature in 2011 for the first time since 1870. The bill made it almost impossible for any of the state’s existing community-owned broadband networks to expand out of their immediate service areas. It also discouraged any other rural towns from even considering starting a public broadband network to solve pervasive broadband problems in their communities.

It was not the finest moment for many of H.129’s supporters, who had to explain to the media and constituents why the state’s largest cable operator needed protection from potential competition and more importantly, why public officials were catering to the corporate giant’s interests over that of the public.

“I wish you’d turn the camera off now because I am going to get up and leave if you don’t,” said Rep. Julia Howard

Rep. Julia Howard (R-Davie, Iredell) found herself losing her cool when WNCN reporters in Raleigh caught up with her and confronted her with the fact her campaign coffers had been filled by the state’s largest telecom companies. She didn’t have an answer for that. Moments later, she appeared ready to flee the interview.

“I wish you’d turn the camera off now because I am going to get up and leave if you don’t,” Howard told the reporter.

Rep. Marilyn Avila was so close to Marc Trathen, then Time Warner Cable’s top-lobbyist in the state, we decided five years ago it would be more accurate to list Time Warner Cable as her sole constituent. Avila’s name appeared on the bill, but it was readily apparent Time Warner Cable drafted most of its provisions. The nearest city in Avila’s own district wanted no part of H129, and neither did many of her constituents.

The bill managed to pass the legislature and after becoming law effectively jammed up community broadband expansion in many parts of the state.

It would take the Federal Communications Commission to pre-empt the legislation on the grounds it was nakedly anti-competitive and prevented broadband improvements in communities major telecom companies have ignored for years.

As a result of the FCC’s actions, the community of Pinetops now has access to gigabit broadband, five years late, thanks in part to Rep. Avila who got a $290 dinner for her efforts and was honored as a guest speaker at a cable industry function in recognition of her service… to Time Warner Cable.

Rep. Avila with Marc Trathen, Time Warner Cable’s top lobbyist (right) Photo by: Bob Sepe of Action Audits

Greenlight, Wilson’s community-owned fiber to the home provider, switched on service in the community this spring to any of the 600 Pinetops homes that wanted it, and many did.

“We just love it!” said Brenda Harrell, the former acting town manager.

In fact, Greenlight is now delivering the best broadband in Edgecombe County, and deploying fiber to the home service was hardly a stretch for Greenlight, which was already installing fiber optics to manage an automated meter infrastructure project. The only thing keeping better broadband out of the hands of Pinetops residents was a law written by an industry that loathes competition and will stop it at all costs. Time Warner Cable didn’t bother to offer service in the community even after its bill became law and residents endured years of unreliable DSL or dialup access instead. Talk about a win-lose scenario. Time Warner Cable got to keep its comfortable cable monopoly while many families had to drive their children to businesses miles away just to borrow their Wi-Fi signal to finish homework assignments.

Faster broadband is likely to be transformative for the quiet rural community. Current town manager Lorenzo Carmon sees more than nearby fields of sweet potatoes and soybeans. With gigabit fiber and cheap local housing, Pinetops could become a bedroom community for upper income professionals now living in Greenville, a university town heavily populated by doctors, students, and high-tech knowledge economy workers. If and when they arrive, they’ll find a tech-ready community, right down to the local Piggly-Wiggly supermarket, which now has fiber fast internet service too.

Pinetops offers proof of the obscenity of bought-and-paid-for-politicians supporting corporate protectionism that harms people, harms education, harms jobs, and leaves rural communities with no clear path to the digital economy of the 21st century. Legislation like H129, which continues to be enforced in more than a few U.S. states, needs to be pre-empted nationwide or even better repealed by state legislators.

But North Carolina’s legislature still isn’t getting the message. They are outraged the FCC outsmarted Time Warner Cable and them, and are now wasting time and resources to have the FCC’s pre-emption overturned in court, evidently so that rural North Carolina can continue to tough it out with DSL indefinitely. That’s political malpractice and North Carolina voters need to show the door to any elected representative that cares more about the interests of a giant cable company than what is good for you and your community. Reps. Avila and Howard don’t have to live with 3Mbps DSL, so why should you?

“If the private sector is not providing the services, the government has to step in,” said Carmon. “The internet is just like electricity. You can’t live without it.”

We couldn’t agree more.