Google has announced it will bring its fiber broadband service to four new cities — Atlanta, Charlotte, N.C., Raleigh-Durham, N.C. and Nashville, Tenn., according to a report on Google’s Fiber blog.

In a familiar pattern, Google recently sent invitations to local news organizations in those four cities to attend events this week, without identifying the subject.

As with earlier similar events, the topic was the local launch of Google Fiber.

The cities were all on Google’s 2014 list for possible expansion. Those left out (for now) include Salt Lake City, San Antonio, Phoenix, Portland, Ore., and San Jose, Calif. Google recently told city officials in those communities it was still contemplating projects, but remain undecided for now.

After the announcements this week, it will take at least one year before Google is ready to light up the first “fiberhoods” in the cities, usually selected based on customer signups.

Google will challenge Comcast and AT&T in Georgia, Time Warner Cable and CenturyLink in North Carolina, and Comcast and AT&T in Nashville. In Atlanta, the fiber build will not only include Atlanta, but also Avondale Estates, Brookhaven, College Park, Decatur, East Point, Hapeville, Sandy Springs and Smyrna.

Google will offer unlimited gigabit broadband service for an expected $70 a month. AT&T limits U-verse customers to 250GB in Georgia and Tennessee, and Comcast has subjected both Atlanta and Nashville to its compulsory usage cap experiments, setting a monthly usage allowance at 300GB.

Time Warner Cable does not limit broadband customers in North Carolina, but the Republican-dominated state government is also hostile to community-owned broadband, making it unlikely either Raleigh-Durham or Charlotte will see public broadband competition anytime soon.

Google officials have also been reportedly sensitive to local government red tape and regulation. In Portland, the Journal reports Google has put any fiber expansion on hold there because Oregon tax-assessment rules would value Google’s property based on the value of their intangible assets, such as brand. That would cause Google’s property taxes in Oregon to soar. Until the Oregon state legislature makes it clear such rules would not apply to Google Fiber, there will be no Google Fiber in Portland.

Google has also once again shown its reluctance to consider any community or region where Verizon FiOS now provides fiber optic service. The entire northeastern United States, largely dominated by Verizon, has been “no-go” territory for Google, with no communities making it to their list for possible future expansion.

Among the collateral damage are Verizon-less communities in northern New England served by FairPoint Communications and Comcast and portions of western New York served by Frontier Communications where Time Warner Cable has overwhelming dominance with 700,000 subscribers out of 875,000 total households in the Buffalo and Rochester markets.

Wall Street continues to grumble about the Google Fiber experiment, concerned about the high cost of fiber infrastructure and the potential it will create profit-killing price wars that will cut prices for consumers but cost every competitor revenue.

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WSOC Charlotte Mayor Google Fiber is coming to Charlotte 1-27-15.flv[/flv]

Charlotte city manager Ron Carlee spoke exclusively to WSOC-TV’s Jenna Deery about how Charlotte won Google over to bring its fiber service to the community. Having a close working relationship between city infrastructure agencies and Google was essential, as was cutting red tape and bureaucracy. (2:10)

Buy a vocal supporter for your merger deal.

The Los Angeles Times published a piece this week noting that the Comcast/Time Warner Cable merger does have its supporters:

To be sure, dozens of groups also support the proposed Comcast merger, including the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce, Orange County Business Council, the L.A. County Economic Development Council and the National Urban League. Television networks including Ovation, Hallmark Channel and Starz also support the deal.

But the article never informs readers the groups in support of the transaction all have direct financial ties to Comcast, Time Warner Cable, or both cable companies. It would only be news if these groups opposed the merger.

Stop the Cap! has found almost no support for the merger deal among independent organizations that are not on the payroll of either merger partner. The myriad of civil rights organizations, trade associations, and non-profit groups penning letters to regulators supporting the deal are nearly all recipients of contributions from Comcast or Time Warner.

Comcast is notorious for capitalizing on their charitable corporate giving by mailing advocacy packages to donor recipients that urge support for the company’s public policy and corporate agendas. Comcast even includes sample letters a group can use to create their own letter of support, which explains why so many are nearly identical.

Although Comcast never threatens to cut off groups that don’t follow through, the company does know who sent letters and who did not, as they all become part of the public record.

In less than 30 minutes, Stop the Cap! was able to trace direct economic ties between Comcast and/or Time Warner Cable and the groups the LA Times story mentions. Readers deserve to know this information and it should have been included in the story.

Let us review:

The LA Chamber of Commerce: Time Warner Cable is a “Diamond Club Member,” which the Chamber claims represents the “largest member investors.”

The Orange County Business Council includes a Time Warner Cable executive on its Board of Directors and is a major “investor” in the group.

Not only is Time Warner Cable on the executive committee of the LA Economic Development Council, it also serves on the group’s board of governors. Comcast is also a member.

The National Urban League advocates in favor of almost everything Comcast wants, no doubt because the organization that sold out to big corporate donors long ago is also on Comcast’s payroll. The group has received at least $12 million in in-kind contributions from Comcast, as well as receiving checks for more than 70 local chapter projects. Comcast’s executive vice president David Cohen has sat on the Urban League’s board of trustees since 2008. In addition, the Comcast Foundation, headed by Cohen, gave the National Urban League and some of its more than 100 affiliates almost $2 million from 2012 to 2013, according to an analysis of IRS tax filings by the Center for Public Integrity.

As for Ovation, Hallmark Channel and Starz — they are all cable networks dependent on carriage agreements with the nation’s first (Comcast) and second-largest (Time Warner Cable) cable operators for their economic survival.

Phillip “I Want My Money Back” Dampier

For months, Time Warner Cable has deployed its legal team to prevent public interest groups from gaining access to the company’s exhibit of rural broadband buildout plans it had for New York, sent confidentially to the Public Service Commission as part of its proposal to merge with Comcast.

“This information would be difficult and costly for a competitor to compile, such that disclosure would significantly harm Time Warner Cable’s competitive advantage,” Time Warner Cable’s lawyers complained to regulators handling the case. “To allow competitors to have access to this information before Time Warner Cable has had a chance to market customers for which it speculatively built the line would not only negate any competitive advantage, it would allow its competitors to reap the benefits of Time Warner Cable’s investment, causing substantial competitive and financial injury to Time Warner Cable.”

“The compilation of information on all the Time Warner Cable New York deployments, distances, and passings into one document would be of enormous value to a competitor,” the lawyers added. “This information could not be developed independently by competitors, and any estimates developed through publicly available data or data from third-party sources, if possible at all, would be expensive and burdensome to assemble, and less accurate than the data provided in Exhibit 46. […] Therefore, disclosure of the compilation of information on the New York Rural Builds would cause substantial competitive injury to Time Warner Cable, and should be granted exception from disclosure.”

One might expect the mighty Exhibit 46 to contain all of Time Warner’s deepest secrets — secrets that if made public would hand the “competition” the keys to the cable kingdom.

Despite the haughty demands that such information was not to be shared with the public, Stop the Cap! secured our copy of the “top-secret” Exhibit 46 (and here is a copy for you as well).

After reviewing it, it quickly became clear the only thing Time Warner Cable intended to keep secret is how little expansion (and money) the company is devoting to rural New York. The nine-page spreadsheet shows Time Warner spent $5.3 million of New York’s money to expand service to, at most, 5,320 homes or businesses that had no access to cable before. The largest beneficiary of this expansion was the rural (and more affluent than its neighbors) town of Grafton, in Rensselaer County, where 1,152 homes now have access to Time Warner Cable if they want it. An additional 875 homes in Carlisle, Schoharie County now have access as well. Despite dire warnings from Time Warner, “competitors” are hardly rushing to the scene to engage in hand-to-hand combat with the cable company, which is the only provider of broadband service for many of these residents.

As for the rest of upstate New York, Exhibit 46 offers about as much relevance to “competitors” as it does to the rural residents still being bypassed by the cable company. Most of the entries show Time Warner’s expansion projects reached fewer than 10 homes in any particular area. In a large number of those instances, the expansion ended up serving just one additional home or business.

Some examples:

• Town of Clarence, Erie County – 4 homes or businesses
• Town of Henrietta, Monroe County – 1
• Town of East Bloomfield, Ontario County – 22
• Town of Paris, Oneida County – 1
• Town of Manheim, Herkimer County – 1
• Town of Kirkwood, Broome County – 7
• Town of Tupper Lake, Franklin – 116
• Town of Gouverneur, St. Lawrence County – 29
• Town of Brookfield, Madison County – 139
• Town of Jefferson, Schoharie County – 3
• Town of Big Flats, Chemung County – (either 2 or 4 – the entry is duplicated)
• Town of Pompey, Onondaga County – 1

Of the 5,320 homes or businesses now provided access to Time Warner service, 4,104 were subsidized up to 75 percent by the State of New York. Just 1,216 locations were apparently reached exclusively at Time Warner Cable’s own expense.

New Yorkers paid most of the bill because Time Warner Cable couldn’t find $5.3 million in their company coffers to bring broadband to rural residents. But Time Warner Cable could find $80 million to cover the golden parachute compensation package available to just one employee – CEO Robert Marcus, if the company is successfully sold to Comcast for around $45 billion.

Priorities.

No wonder Time Warner Cable’s attorneys fought so hard to keep the “expansion” effort a secret.

No approval for the Comcast-Time Warner Cable merger proposal in New York for yet another month as the state Public Service Commission has once again delayed making a final decision until the end of February.

“Pursuant to a request from Department of Public Service staff in the above-referenced matter, Comcast Corporation and Time Warner Cable Inc. agree to action by the Public Service Commission on the Joint Petition at a Commission Session held on or by February 26, 2015, with a final order being issued no later than March 3, 2015,” is the word from Comcast and Time Warner Cable’s law firm.

New York will see at least $1 billion in investments to expand and improve rural broadband in upstate New York to bring Internet access to every home in the state by 2019, if the state legislature approves the budget for Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s New-New York Broadband Program.

New York Lieutenant Gov. Kathy Hochul traveled to the North Country to unveil the spending plan in the broadband-challenged Adirondack region.

“Governor Cuomo’s program will be the largest universal broadband deployment in the nation,  investing up to one billion dollars in both public and private resources to connect every New Yorker to high-speed Internet,” Hochul told the audience. “With a state investment of $500 million in capital funds from bank settlements the program will incentivize the private sector to expand high-speed broadband access to under-served New Yorkers. The plan will elevate broadband speeds in under-served areas to previously unheard levels including a minimum speed of 100Mbps, more than ten times the federal definition of broadband.”

New York’s newest broadband initiative comes courtesy of an unexpected windfall of more than $5 billion in legal settlements with crooked banks and mortgage companies that defrauded state residents and helped trigger the Great Recession.

At least $500 million of the settlement fund would be set aside for broadband expansion, with providers required to match any funds received from the state. Time Warner Cable is likely to be awarded a significant percentage of the money, used to expand cable infrastructure into sparsely populated areas that have never met the company’s Return On Investment requirements.

The Cuomo Administration expects little opposition to the plan, because the bulk of the broadband money would be spent in Republican-controlled rural districts and won’t come from taxpayers’ pockets.

Hochul

Republican assemblyman Dan Stec’s 114th district is a case in point. Hamilton County has little or no access to broadband service and Stec’s constituents in nearby Essex, Saratoga, Washington and Warren counties have spotty coverage. He’s thrilled the state will likely spend money on broadband in his district.

“There are towns in my district that don’t have good access to the Internet,” Stec said. “Moms and dads will drive their son or daughter and park in the parking lot of the public library or park in the parking lot of Town Hall to access a broadband wireless connection. That’s crazy.  It’s nice to see the governor making the infrastructure investment that needs to be made in the North Country and frankly in all of upstate.”

Although speaking in the Adirondacks, the former congresswoman turned lieutenant governor said there are plenty of areas in western New York that also desperately need broadband access. Regional economic development committees will be responsible for identifying the most broadband-challenged areas where funding should be prioritized.

“I had [served] seven counties including Wyoming, Livingston, Ontario, Niagara, and Genesee,” Hochul said, referring to parts of the 26th Congressional District between the cities of Buffalo and Rochester she lost in the 2012 election. “The Southern Tier has challenges as well. We have a map that shows the areas which do not have the access and so we know where to have a laser focus on increasing that availability. We know New York City is in good shape. The urban areas are in good shape. So this is very much a rural initiative.”

Despite the unlikely case for any significant broadband funding headed downstate, the governor is attempting to carefully balance his overall spending initiatives between upstate and New York City, the latter now demanding a larger share of the settlement money for downstate. To avoid a budget battle between the two regional factions, Gov. Cuomo intends to bundle his spending programs together in a package presented to the state legislature as part of today’s State of the State address.

New York’s latest Broadband Availability Map, excluding well-covered downstate regions – Areas in white have no broadband access.

“He’s going to present them as part of a package: the New York State Opportunity for All program,” said Hochul. “This is one of the most significant announcements he’s going to make because it’s going to affect the lives of so many millions of people in our state. In this day and age the fastest road to opportunity is the information highway. Probably the comparable analogy would be the interstate highway system back in the 1950’s. That was able to connect communities and enhance commerce. It was transformative. It was essential in its day. That’s the opportunity that lies before us.”

Ironically, the state-funded initiative is likely to deliver faster broadband to rural New York than their more urban neighbors receive. Under the program, grant recipients will have to pledge to deliver at least 100Mbps speeds to customers, except in the most rural areas where the minimum speed requirement will be set at 25Mbps, with upgrades to come later. Most urban residents receive between 3-10Mbps DSL from Verizon or Frontier Communications and 10-15Mbps from Time Warner Cable, the largest cable company in the state. Verizon FiOS delivers even faster broadband to customers in New York City and Long Island, and selected suburbs in Buffalo, Syracuse, and Albany.

Providers will be encouraged to use state-owned institutional fiber networks, including one laid along the length of the New York State Thruway, and other government infrastructure wherever possible. That is likely to mean fiber broadband will constitute a major part of the initiative. That pleased the Fiber to the Home Council, which advocates for fiber to the home broadband service.

“The [council] commends Governor Andrew Cuomo on an ambitious plan to hit 100 Mbps in every New York home by Jan. 1, 2019,” read a statement from the Council. “This $500 Million investment into the NYS Broadband Program Office will make high-speed Internet affordable in underserved communities by incentivizing private investment, something the FTTH Council strongly supports.”

The state’s chief digital officer Rachel Haot claimed New York is doing more than any other state to invest in high-speed broadband.

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/2015 Opportunity Agenda NY Statewide Broadband Access for Every New Yorker 1-16-15.mp4[/flv]

Upstate New York officials discuss the broadband problems in rural New York and how they spent years trying to get attention in a state where government is often focused primarily on the interests of New York City. Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul announces a $1 billion statewide broadband improvement program. (44:42)