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Media Roundup: Broadband Around the Nation - Week of August 15, 2014

This week in Community Broadband coverage, Eldo Telecom is helping debunk some fiber fallacies. Blogger Fred Pilot responds to a typical Comcast claim that government should not compete with private sector telecommunications providers, saying the argument is economically false:

"When the public sector steps in to build and/or finance telecommunications infrastructure, it does so because this market environment combined with the previously mentioned business model limitations of investor-owned telephone and cable companies produces market failure on the sell side. That failure has left millions of Americans unable to order modern Internet landline-delivered services at their homes and small businesses."

And, as the debate heats up about whether cities can restore local authority to build networks, cities, towns and counties around the nation took action to expand or develop community broadband networks. 

Many media outlets, including Syracuse.com reported Mayor Stephanie Miner's frustration with a lack of broadband options. Miner announced this week that a publicly owned network may be in the city's future. Though many questions are ahead for Syracuse, including how it would be run and who would pay for it, the mayor agreed that high speed internet should be a public service: 

"Almost as important as trash pick-up and water... [it is] the modern day equivalent of infrastructure... It's clear that broadband is going to be a foundation of our new economy."

And, if Kanabec County, Minnesota officials have their way, they could expand broadband in unserved areas with a partnership and revenue bonds. The Kanabec Broadband Initiative asked county officials this week to consider selling revenue bonds to expand its high speed Internet. Marc Johnson, chair of the Kanabec Broadband Initiative:

Five Cities Denounce Verizon/Comcast Spectrum Deal

If you live in Boston, Baltimore, Albany, Syracuse, or Buffalo, you won't be getting FiOS from Verizon. Absent any public investment, you will likely be stuck with DSL and cable... like 80% of the rest of us.

Not long after Verizon announced it would cease expanding FiOS, we learned that Verizon was coming to an arrangement with the cable companies that would essentially divide the broadband market. Verizon won't challenge cable companies with FiOS and the cable companies won't challenge Verizon's "Rule the Air" wireless domain.

For a while now, the FCC has reviewed a potential deal for a Verizon purchase of Comcast's wireless spectrum. The possible deal involves multi-layered questions of anti-competitive behavior, collusion, and corporate responsibility. 

Along with many other interested parties, such as the Communications Workers of America, Free Press, Public Knowledge, and  the five towns are publicly opposing the deal. They have expressed their derision to the FCC but whether or not they will influence the result remains to be seen.

From a FierceTelecom article by Sean Buckley:

Curt Anderson, chair of the Baltimore City Delegation to the Maryland House of Delegates, expressed...outrage on the agreement the telco made.

"Under this transaction, Baltimore will never get a fiber-optic network, and the city will be at a disadvantage," he said. "The direct job loss will be the hundreds of technicians that would be employed building, installing and maintaining FiOS in the area. The indirect costs of this deal are even higher: the lack of competition in telecommunications will raise prices and reduce service quality.

And:

The deal, said Albany Common Council President Carolyn McLaughlin, "is not in the best interest of those who need to get and stay connected the most and is "a step backwards in bridging the digital divide."

Syracuse Community Broadband Initiative Changes Name

The folks in Syracuse who are organizing for a community-owned network have changed their name from the Syracuse Municipal Broadband Initiative to Syracuse Community Broadband Initiative:

Syracuse Community Broadband Initiative is the new name of the project. This was done because the use of "municipal" seemed to create a number of misconceptions in the minds of some institutional leaders. We used the term "municipal" generically to mean community-owned, and community ownership and control is what we wish to emphasize. Moreover, the form of business entity we favor is not a municipal authority but a 501(c)(12) utility service, a special type of consumer cooperative designed for, e.g., telecommunications, power, and water utilities (there are over 2,000 such utilities in the U.S. today). We hope the new name will better convey the nature of the project.

In talking to people and journalists, I have also found some confusion around the term "municipal." Some assume this means a muni network would only serve city departments, schools, libraries, etc.

Making a network a coop rather than being owned by the local government may help win some support from those who are hostile to the government owning anything, but there are downsides as well.  Local governments have hundreds of years of experience building infrastructure and therefore have more financial tools available.  Funding a new coop can be a daunting challenge.  

We are very supportive of both approaches in our efforts to ensure broadband networks are structurally accountable to the communities they serve. As groups like these folks in Syracuse find solutions to these problems, we hope they will share their successes as well as lessons learned.  

Roundup: Lafayette, Syracuse, Incumbent Bailout, and MAIN

Another roundup of semi-recent news:
  • Lafayette's groundbreaking network is exciting the folks at Governing.com - they say, "The Future of the Internet is in Lafayette, Louisiana." Ellen Perlman hints are future coverage of the network as well:
    To put it in perspective, that's 10 times faster than already very fast Internet. And more than 100 times faster than the Internet "starter" plan that, for example, Verizon is offering. Basically, Lafayette will have a city Intranet, the way universities and technology companies do. So residents will have a very fast connection within the city-parish "campus." Critics wonder why residents need such speeds and why the city had to build its own network. An August story in Governing will get into detail about that.
  • Green Party Candidate for the Syracuse City Council speaks out on the need for a publicly owned fiber network in the city:
    Hundreds of US cities have municipal ownership of their broadband utilities and their customers pay 30% less on average for cable TV, internet, and phone. Time Warner’s cable franchise is up for renewal. Now is the time to municipalize our broadband utility for (1) lower fees, (2) community control of available channels (from Democracy Now to the NFL Network), (3) quality Public Access, Education, and Government (PEG) programming, (4) universal access to high-speed internet, and (5) up-to-date public access video and web-based media creation centers. Every Syracuse should have first-class, affordable access to internet, cable, and phone communications. The Syracuse economy needs first-rate affordable broadband to progress. The profits now exported to Time-Warner can stay in the community for our own benefit through municipal cable.

    Advocates for such a fiber network in Syracuse have a website loaded with resources.