With AT&T again pushing a bill in South Carolina to revoke local authority to build community broadband networks, the National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisers has sent a letter to the Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee [pdf] opposing H3508. The bill will be considered by that committee on Thursday, January 26. South Carolina already restricts local authority to build networks but this bill would essentially close off any possibility of doing so.

Dear Senator Rankin:

The National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors (NATOA) joins the growing chorus of business, consumer, and government groups and associations in opposing H. 3508 (Government Owned Communications Service Providers). This bill will harm your state’s economic growth and do little if anything to promote competition or to bring advanced communications services to the citizens of South Carolina. Hamstringing local government efforts to provide fiber networks will simply result in the further flow of millions of investment dollars to neighboring states such as Tennessee.

NATOA has long supported community broadband networks because they offer the promise of increased economic development and jobs, enhanced market competition, improved delivery of e-government services, and accelerated and affordable Internet access for all. Communities across America are ready and eager to bring the economic and social benefits of broadband access to their citizens. But private providers alone will not bring these advanced services to all parts of our country, especially to those communities that do not fit into the companies’ business plans.

As a result, hundreds of cities have launched community broadband initiatives, either with private partners or on their own, and many more are now in the planning stages. Communities should be encouraged to step forward to do their part to ensure the rapid deployment of broadband to all Americans, and they should have the freedom to choose what makes the most sense for their citizens. H. 3508 will simply make it more difficult for public broadband providers from building the advanced broadband infrastructure necessary to stimulate local business development, work force retraining, and employment in economically depressed areas.

Among other things, the bill’s definition of “broadband service” – 190 kilobits per second (“kbps”) at least one direction – is extremely low. In its 2010 Sixth Broadband Progress Report, the Federal Communications Commission raised its decade-old minimum broadband speed threshold from services in excess of 200 kbps in both directions to services enabling actual download speeds of at least 4 Mbps and upload speeds of at least 1 Mbps. But even this threshold is viewed by many as too slow to support the applications available in the marketplace today, as well as rapidly emerging technologies and applications for teleworking, distance learning, and telemedicine. Unfortunately, even with this minimum threshold speed, South Carolina, according to a recent FCC Internet Access Services report, has the fifth worst level of broadband in the United States (out of 44 states with data reporting) with only 17% of households having that level of access available.

Rather than erecting further barriers to entry, South Carolina should be encouraging community leaders to develop networks that make sense for their communities, including public-private partnerships and systems wholly owned by municipalities.

Thank you for your consideration.

Thanks to Catharine Rice, who tipped me off to FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn's presentation at the SEATOA Conference yesterday. SEATOA is a regional group of states from the southeast of the US that are part of NATOA. Commissioner Clyburn noted that the FCC and the National Broadband Plan oppose state preemption of local broadband networks.

Thus, the Plan recommends that Congress clarify that State and local governments should not be restricted from building their own broadband networks. I firmly believe that we need to leverage every resource at our disposal to deploy broadband to all Americans. If local officials have decided that a publicly-owned broadband network is the best way to meet their citizens’ needs, then my view is to help make that happen.

One example of a town that took control of its own digital destiny – Bristol, Virginia saw additional jobs created in that area. And last month I heard Lafayette, Louisiana’s City-Parish President, describe the development of economic opportunities in his city, that were a direct result of the fiber network built by the community. Right here in North Carolina, I understand that Wilson and Salisbury are trying to invest in fiber optic systems, that they hope will transform their local economies.

When cities and local governments are prohibited from investing directly in their own broadband networks, citizens may be denied the opportunity to connect with their nation and improve their lives. As a result, local economies likely will suffer. But broadband is not simply about dollars and cents, it is about the educational, health, and social welfare of our communities. Preventing governments from investing in broadband, is counter –productive, and may impede the nation from accomplishing the Plan’s goal of providing broadband access to every American and every community anchor institution.

I can only hope that North Carolina's Legislature listen to this speech before they vote on preempting communities from building broadband networks. However, as documented at Stop the Cap, Time Warner and other telcos are able to talk pretty loudly with their campaign contributions.

Commissioner Clyburn's full comments are available here.

Craig Settles recently wrote "Debunking Myths about Government-Run Broadband" to defend publicly owned networks (the title is unfortunate as many networks are publicly owned but not necessarily run directly by the government). Nonetheless, he tackles several false claims commonly levied against public networks and offers an entertaining rebuff to those rascally incumbents down in North Carolina that keep trying to buy legislation to protect themselves from competition:

Time Warner tried to get a bill passed in the state legislature this year to prevent cities from offering broadband service. They claimed community networks create an un-fair playing field. Personally, if I ran a bezillion dollar company and a small town of 48,000 with no prior technology business expertise built a network 10 times faster than my best offering, I’d be embarrassed to be associated with the bill. If incumbents want to level the playing field, maybe they should outsource their engineering operations to Wilson.

He revealed an upcoming list of ten smart broadband communities that has since been published here. This is a mixture of communities that have taken action to improve broadband - a variety of models and community types.

Without detracting from this list, I want to note that some networks are missing important context. For instance, Wilson NC, lists an unimpressive number of subscribers currently, but the network is still being built and many who want to subscribe are not yet able to subscribe. Additionally, it would be nice to see the prices offered for each speed tier -- many of these networks keep higher speed tiers much more affordable than do traditional carriers. That said, many kudos to Craig for putting this list out there (he will be putting similar lists up in the near future).

While on the subject of impressive community networks, NATOA has announced its community broadband awards. I am excited to see the city of Monticello recognized for its courage in responding to shady incumbent-led attacks and frivolous lawsuits -- primarily by TDS -- attempting to deny the community the right to build its own network.

Though the other award recipients are also excellent, I want to congratulation MI-Connection for their award of Community Broadband Project of the Year. Years ago, I wrote an op-ed in favor of that network and I am glad to see it succeeding.

MI-Connection was born after the demise of Adelphia Cable. Local towns bought the system and rehabilitated it, offering a publicly owned local alternative for broadband and cable.

Image Credit: Domen Colja - Fotolia.com

Folks who are mostly interested in broadband are probably unfamiliar with video franchising laws. Many people still apparently believe that cable companies are able to get exclusive franchises from the city (granting them a monopoly on providing cable television). However, that is not true and has not been true for many years.

Most cable companies still have a de facto monopoly because it is extremely difficult to overbuild an existing cable company - the incumbent has most of the advantages and building a citywide network is extremely expensive. This is not a naturally competitive market; it is actually a natural monopoly.

However, most people want a choice in providers (something that goes beyond a single cable company and a satellite option or two depending on whether you rent/own and your geographic location. In talking with many local officials and the National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisers (NATOA), it seems that almost every local government wants more competition in its community too.

This is where telephone and cable company lobbyists have stepped in - more successfully at the state level than at the federal level. They have convinced legislators that the barrier to more competition is local authority over the franchise (the rules a company agrees to in return for the right to use the community's Right-of-Way in deploying their network). These rules include red-line prohibition (you cannot refuse to serve poor neighborhoods), an affordable "basic" tier of service, local public access channels, broadband connections at public buildings, etc.

Some states have listened to the lobbyists and enacted statewide franchising - where local communities are stripped of the authority to manage their Right-of-Way and companies can offer video services anywhere in the state by getting a state franchise from the state government. Every year, we gather more data that this practice has hurt communities, raised prices, and barely spurred any competition. Most of the competition it is credited with spurring came from Verizon's FiOS deployments, which would have occurred regardless of state-wide franchise enactment.

This touches directly on broadband because the statewide franchises often give greater power to companies like Verizon to cherry-pick who gets next generation broadband. Wealthier neighborhoods will increasingly get access to faster networks as private companies are allowed to cherry pick. This practice not only leaves poorer parts of town behind, it makes them even harder to serve when those areas cannot be balanced with higher-revenue sections producing sections of town (who already have service).

Recently, this issue resurfaced with new evidence that state-wide franchising was little more than a giveaway to private companies who are increasingly profits at the expense of communities who still have no choice in providers.

Both Phillip Dampier at Stop the Cap and Karl Bode at DSLReports have deeply linked posts on this matter that cover Michigan, Tennessee, and Wisconsin. Stop the Cap also delves into how Comcast spends in millions lobbying - you didn't think we get hit for rate increases every year for nothing, did you?

The Detroit Free Press ran Brian Dickerson's "With Regulation like this, who needs Monopoly?"

Now, three years after AT&T's champions in the Legislature crowed that Comcast's reign as the 800-pound. guerrilla of Michigan cable service was over, Comcast remains the state's dominant provider, maintains a de facto wire-line monopoly in most its franchise areas, charges higher rates for basic cable service, and has far fewer legal obligations to the subscribers and communities it serves.

What most of this comes down to is accountability. Local governments are accountable to the citizens. Companies like Comcast and AT&T are accountable to their shareholders. There is no perfect arrangement, but I would err on the side of a network being accountable to the community.

Photo courtesy of photocamp.