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Fast, affordable Internet access for all.
universal access
Content tagged with "universal access"
December 19th D.C. Luncheon and Policy Discussion on the Future of Universal Service
On December 19, 2013, TechFreedom is celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Kingsbury Commitment with lunch and policy analysis. The event will include a luncheon keynote address by FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai followed by a panel of policy leaders moderated by TechFreedom President Berin Szoka.
The panel:
- Harold Feld, Public Knowledge
- Rob Atkinson, Information Technology & Innovation Foundation
- Hance Haney, Discovery Institute
- Jeff Eisenach, American Enterprise Institute
- Fred Campbell, Former FCC Commissioner
From the announcement:
Join TechFreedom on Thursday, December 19, the 100th anniversary of the Kingsbury Commitment, AT&T’s negotiated settlement of antitrust charges brought by the Department of Justice that gave AT&T a legal monopoly in most of the U.S. in exchange for a commitment to provide universal service.
The Commitment is hailed by many not just as a milestone in the public interest but as the bedrock of U.S. communications policy. Others see the settlement as the cynical exploitation of lofty rhetoric to establish a tightly regulated monopoly — and the beginning of decades of cozy regulatory capture that stifled competition and strangled innovation.
So which was it? More importantly, what can we learn from the seventy year period before the 1984 break-up of AT&T, and the last three decades of efforts to unleash competition? With fewer than a third of Americans relying on traditional telephony and Internet-based competitors increasingly driving competition, what does universal service mean in the digital era? As Congress contemplates overhauling the Communications Act, how can policymakers promote universal service through competition, by promoting innovation and investment? What should a new Kingsbury Commitment look like?
Crap Cable Threatens Cloud Services
For my money, the best headline of last week was "The U.S.'s crap infrastructure threatens the cloud." The rant goes on to explain just how crummy our access to the Internet is.
As a patriotic American, I find the current political atmosphere where telecom lobbyists set the agenda to be a nightmare. All over the world, high-end fiber is being deployed while powerful monopolies in the United States work to prevent it from coming here. Some of those monopolies are even drafting "model legislation" to protect themselves from both community broadband and commercial competition.He nails a number of important points, including the absurdity of allowing de facto monopolies to write the legislation that governs them. However, Andew Oliver's article is a bit muddled on the issue of "monopoly." I have argued with several people that the term "monopoly" has historically meant firms with large market power, not the more stringent definition of "the only seller" of a good. It is not clear how Oliver is using the term. Because of this confusion, you can come away from his piece with the firm idea that it is primarily government's fault we have a duopoly of crap DSL and less crappy cable. He repeatedly says "state-sponsored monopolies." However, no local or state government may offer exclusive franchises for cable or telecom services and the federal government hasn't officially backed monopolies for decades. This is a key point that many still fail to understand - a majority seem to believe that local governments bless monopolies when local governments actually are desperate for more choices. This is why they fall all over themselves to beg Google to invest in their community or they build they own networks (over 400 communities have wired telecom networks that offer services to some local businesses and/or residents). Poor laws and regulations have helped the massive cable and telephone companies to maintain their status - that is why they spend so much on lobbying and political contributions at all levels of government.
Understanding the Lifeline Program - Community Broadband Bits Episode #49
The United States has long recognized that everyone should have access to a telephone and has established a variety of government programs to achieve that end. In recent months, the Lifeline program has come under attack and some have labeled it the "Obamaphone" program.
In this week's Community Broadband Bits podcast, Sarah Morris joins us to explain how the program works. She is Policy Counsel for the Open Technology Institute at the New America Foundation. Additionally, Ana Montes with TURN (The Utility Reform Network in California) joins us to offer ground-level insight into the program.
As we work to ensure everyone has access to fast, affordable, and reliable access to the Internet, we should be aware of the programs that have been successful in expanding access to the telephone.
Read the transcript from this episode here.
We want your feedback and suggestions for the show - please e-mail us or leave a comment below. Also, feel free to suggest other guests, topics, or questions you want us to address.
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Listen to previous episodes here. You can can download this Mp3 file directly from here.
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Thanks to Eat at Joe's for the music, licensed using Creative Commons.
More Evidence for Looming Broadband Monopoly
DSLReports has accurately noted the continued decline of competition between DSL and cable providers. Heck, it seems like no large company wants to invest in the future of broadband in this country. Verizon and AT&T have chosen to focus on wireless technology, resulting in less true competition. Cable (or FTTH if you are lucky to have that option) tends to offer faster, more expensive connections and DSL is the slower, less expensive option for many.
As we noted in an earlier post, Verizon no longer offers stand alone DSL and is voluntarily losing customers to focus on their more profitable (and more expensive) fixed LTE service. Many of the companies providing DSL service simply lack the interest or capacity to invest in modern networks.
Windstream lost broadband subscribers last quarter for the first time ever losing 2,200 subscribers for a 1.36 million total. Verizon added just 2,000 net broadband users last quarter, the worst quarterly result in four years. The AP quotes Verizon as saying that the hit was due to Verizon's decision to stop selling standalone DSL.
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Meanwhile, smaller telcos like Windstream, Frontier, Fairpoint and CenturyLink find themselves unable or unwilling to upgrade their networks to keep pace with faster cable speeds. That's going to result in considerably more bloodshed for the telcos as additional subscribers jump ship (assuming they have the choice), resulting in cable's domination of the U.S. residential broadband market.
Continued reliance on these companies to build the essential infrastructure our economy and citizens need is foolish. The incentives are all wrong for their model and the amount of public money it will take to bribe them into building better infrastructure would offer far higher returns when invested in models that are democratically accountable to the community -- networks owned by local governments, cooperatives, or other nonprofit organizations.
Google Fiber Spurs Digital Divide Discussions
“I’m concerned that the digital divide” — the gap between electronic haves and have-nots — “will be exacerbated by the fact that you’ll have extremely fast Internet in some neighborhoods while people in neighborhoods with fewer resources will be left even further behind,” said Christopher Barnickel, an assistant director at the Kansas City, Kan., Public Library.
Christopher Barnickel, speaking with Scott Canon of the Kansas City Star, echoed the growing concerns of many in Kansas City. The Google fiber initiative, meant to offer the fastest broadband, may leave many behind. Google is connecting neighborhoods that met a minimum threshold for service, creating concern that low-income neighborhoods will not meet that threshold. Of the 202 possible neighborhoods, 22 will not be connected.
We discussed in a previous post how Google is in the unique position of being able to offer their gigabit service for such a low price. But one of the reasons they make it work is by building only in areas where people are ready to sign up today. Their agreement with the City is very clear that they do not have to serve everyone.
Google's Kansas City preregistration just ended. But Canon's words from 2 weeks ago remain important:
Two weeks remain for dozens of neighborhoods to sign up enough potential customers to qualify for Google’s service before a Sept. 9 deadline. But many neighborhoods — chiefly the least prosperous pockets of the metro area — remain far behind the pace needed to hit the Google-established thresholds of customer penetration.
That means many of the free connections Google agreed to make to public buildings, library branches and community centers won’t happen.
At that time, the map was fairly divided among income lines.
Building an Equity and Justice Movement for Communications
Following a four day retreat in September of 2010, Consumers Union and the Center for Media Justice released a report called Building an Equity and Justice Movement for the Internet, Mobile Phones, and Future Networks: A summary of goals, policies, strategies, and best practices by and for groups working for Internet policies that ensure opportunity, democracy, and equity for all.
From the introduction:
This report is a brief summary of the Knowledge Exchange, written for participants and to share with the field. It reflects the open and frank discussions that took place during the convening, as well as the ease of communication among the group. The words in this report are quoted, paraphrased, and combined from presentation and discussion notes. The document includes ideas raised by individuals as well as collectively agreed-upon points. Overall, the 2010 Knowledge Exchange reflects just one moment in time in the midst of ongoing, overlapping conversations on these issues. This document is one of several publication projects emerging from the 2010 Knowledge Exchange that will be produced by CMJ. Strategy ideas, tools, case studies, and more will be available to our network members online through the MAG-Net website, www.mag-net.org. Facts, statistics, and other data are as of September 2010. For up-to-date media/telecom policy and campaign information, visit www.centerformediajustice.org and www.mag-net.org.
Chattanooga Takes Broadband to the Sticks
Last week I had the good fortune of spending 24 hours in Chattanooga to get a better sense of what the community is doing with their impressive broadband network, EPBFi. It was pretty amazing, especially for an outdoorsy-kinda-guy like me. Chattanooga has an impressive air about it, a place on the up-swing.
I'll be writing more about my observations in the coming weeks (my schedule from last week to next week is jam-packed) but I wanted to note that Chattanooga looks to be one incredible place to be in coming years. They offer the fastest broadband in the nation at prices competitive to Comcast (which is to say, they cost a tiny bit more for a ton bigger, better, and faster service).
The Chattanoogan Hotel, where I stayed, was fed by community fiber and it was the best hotel broadband I have ever used.
The city is committed not just to offering top-notch broadband, but working with people in the community that want to do interesting things. In fact, they are more or less courting people who want to do interesting things. So many communities focus entirely on the need to build the network… not all appreciate the challenges of fully leveraging such a network.
When a community has arguably the best network available in the country, they want to let people know. Especially people who want to design the next-generation applications that will take advantage of everyone having extremely fast connectivity. They have plenty of space for co-location and still more room for expansion (they are as professional as you get in this regard).
But the reason for this post was a reminder in a local story, "Fiber-optic workers take to the woods." Chattanooga is only 25% of the Electric Power Board's footprint, but everyone served by EPB will have access to the same incredible broadband speeds.
Unlike big companies who only roll out services where profits are guaranteed, EPB contends it never considered only serving areas that would be profitable. I asked several times, noting that I frequently see comments from some that people who live in rural areas made a choice and they should simply have to pay more or not be connected as a consequence.
Local leaders reject that approach -- a fitting legacy in a state that was famously electrified by one of the most successful government programs of all times.
In Wisconsin, Residents beg for broadband
The private sector is not going to expand broadband to everyone. Some places simply do not offer enough promise of profit.
This story out of Wisconsin, "Residents Beg for Broadband" not only reinforces this truth, it looks at what happens when people depend on the private sector to control essential infrastructure.
Some Berry residents may have to move if they can't get high-speed Internet access, according to town officials, because their employers require them to have the service for working from home. "Parents have told us their children are at a disadvantage by not having high-speed connections," Town Chairman Anthony Varda wrote in a recent letter to TDS Telecommunications, the town's Madison-based telephone provider. "It is critical to the success of rural students, people working from home, and residents serving on nonprofit boards, committees and local government," wrote Varda, an attorney with DeWitt, Ross & Stevens.Their property values are going down because few people want to live someplace without fast and reliable access to the Internet. To cap it off, Wisconsin is one of 18 states with laws to discourage communities from building their own networks. TDS puts on an act about how difficult it is to tell these people that they aren't getting broadband ... but if they were to build it themselves, I wonder if TDS would sue them like it did Monticello. In asking the state PUC to require TDS to expand, the residents are taking a unique approach. I can't really see it working under the modern rules. It long past time we realize the limits of the private sector: The private sector is simply not suited to solve all problems. Matters of infrastructure are best served by entities that put community needs before profits. (Image: Liberty rotunda mosaic at Wisconsin State Capitol, Madison, Wisconsin, a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No-Derivative-Works (2.0) image from photophiend's photostream)
Bill to Limit Competition in North Carolina Clears Senate, Headed to House
Once again, Senator Joe Sam Queen again led the effort to legislate on behalf of the people of North Carolina rather than a few companies headquartered out of state. On Monday night, the Senator offered an amendment to remove the temporary ban on community networks (currently set to be one year - though powerful lobbyists will undoubtedly push to extend it). Unfortunately, the Senate ultimately passed the bill with the ban.
The Salisbury Post had covered the legislative battle last week, revealing yet another horrendous quote from Senator Hoyle, who has pushed the ban on community broadband infrastructure.
We're not going to get broadband to everybody in the state anytime soon.This was his response to a question noting the nature of private companies like Time Warner (who donate regularly to Hoyle) to ignore communities they deem unprofitable. To reconstruct:
- No one expects the private sector to serve the entire state - no one disputes that companies like Time Warner will refuse to invest in small, isolated communities
- Senator Hoyle, the main proponent of protecting Time Warner monopolies where they exist, simply says that these people just won't get Internet
- The majority of Senators vote with Hoyle to deny people, who have no broadband option, from building it themselves
Universal Access - History and Future
Last month, the Daily Yonder offered a short history of Universal Service in telecommunications in the U.S. Due to the high costs of providing services in many areas of the country, private network owners have never demonstrated an interest in providing universal service, leading to various government initiatives to expand access to telecom networks.
One of the reasons we support publicly owned networks is because we strongly believe in universal service. Universal access to fast and affordable broadband is an important goal for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is its potential to democratize and enhance educational opportunities.
Readers of this site undoubtedly recognize why fast and affordable access to broadband is important to people in rural areas. What is often forgotten is why people who already have access to such broadband should care about extending access to those who don't yet have it -- aside from simply caring about fellow Americans.
There are actually self-interested reasons why everyone should support extending networks into rural areas. Perhaps the best reason is something called the "network effect" which refers to the principle that the value of a network increases as more users join. One example of this is the telephone, where a telephone network becomes more valuable as more people are on it - allowing subscribers greater access to each other.
Another benefit rooted in self-interest is analogous to benefits of rural electrification. When publicly owned electrical networks electrified the country-side, new markets were created as people with electricity began buying appliances, creating a demand for more products and services. Though the effect may not be as strong with broadband, the new technologies will create new markets, creating more opportunities for everyone.
I do not suggest these self-interested motivations are the sole or best reasons for universal service, but I also want to make sure they are part of the discussion because we all benefit by ensuring everyone has access to these essential infrastructures.