community broadband networks

Six minute interview from Susan talking about the failure of policy in America to expand access to fast, affordable, and reliable networks.

Imagine going to a gas station, putting 10 gallons into your car's 12 gallon tank, and driving off only to find your needle only approaches half a tank? This scenario is quite rare because government inspects gas stations to ensure they are not lying about how much gasoline they dispense.

But when it comes to the Internet, we have found measurements of how much data one uses is unregulated, providing no check on massive companies like AT&T and Time Warner Cable. And we are seeing the results -- AT&T is not open about what its limits are or how to tell when one has exceeded them.

Stop The Cap has noted that AT&T has advertised unlimited bandwidth for its DSL/ U-verse product while chiding and charging customers who exceeded certain amounts of monthly usage. Customers were quietly warned and charged $10 for each additional 50 GB over 150 GB for DSL subscribers or 250 GB for U-verse customers.  Clearly, "unlimited" has several definitions, depending on whether one is a customer or an ISP.

Complaints have also come in from SuddenLink customers and others. The ISP charged usage based customers for bandwidth usage when they didn't even have power. Simlarly, AT&T customers began to complain about inaccurate meters from the beginning of the program. This from a 2011 DSL Reports story - one of many comments from AT&T customers:

AT&T's data appears to be wholely corrupted. Some days, AT&T will under-report my data usage by as much as 91%. (They said I used 92 meg, my firewall says I used 1.1 Gigs.) Some days, AT&T will over-report my data usage by as much as 4700%. (They said I used 3.8 Gig, dd-wrt says I used 80 meg. And no, this day wasn't anywhere near the day they under-reported.)

Most of us don't keep track of our bandwidth usage, because there is no easy way to do it. For the most part, we have to take the word of our Internet service providers, but who is ensuring that they are accurate? Mismeasuring could be the result of incompetence or fraud, but the FCC has not stepped up to ensure consumers get what they are promised.

DSL Reports has extensively covered this AT&T bandwidth cap story and its refusal to open its meters to verification. One customer recorded a persistent pattern of inaccuracuracies, finding that AT&T was over recording the households daily usage by about 20-30%. The user contacted AT&T support to get a definition of "metered usage" because there was no definition on its website. From the article (and reposted from Slashdot):

Boy, did I get a surprise. After several calls, they finally told me they consider the methodology by which they calculate bandwidth usage to be proprietary. Yes, you read that right; it's a secret. They left me with the option to contact their executive offices via snail mail.

As long as there is no meaningful competition for broadband customers, AT&T will face no market penalty for abusing its customers. And unfortunately, the FCC has been asleep at this wheel as well. Also from Karl at DSLReports:

Worse perhaps, is that regulators in both the United States and Canada haven't shown the slightest interest in the problem despite the fact that ISPs are billing like utilities, with nobody but the consumer confirming whether their meters are accurate.

We have yet to hear of a credible reason to need bandwidth meters on wired networks. The companies that have invested in modern networks -- from community fiber to Verizon's FiOS -- see no need to count bits. It only seems to be those who don't want to invest and cable companies that want to slow the growth of over-the-top video pushing these limits.

We have already published a fact sheet on the critical role community broadband plays in job development. Now, ILSR presents a collection of how commnity owned broadband networks save money for local government, schools, and libraries while providing cutting edge services. The Public Savings Fact Sheet is now available.

Though schools, libraries, and other community anchors need access to faster, more reliable networks, the big cable and telephone companies have priced those services so high that they are breaking the budget. But when communities create their own connections, affordable high capacity connections are only one of the benefits. A community owned network offers the promise of self-determination -- of upgrades on the community's time table and increased reliability for emergency responders.

The Public Savings Fact Sheet is a great piece to share to mobilize other members of your community. Share it with decision makers and use it to start meaningful conversations. Distribute it widely and often.

We are always developing new resources. If you have an idea for a new fact sheet, we want to hear it.

A Business Journal story yesterday reveals that Time Warner Cable is adding 81 jobs in Kansas City, an increase of 9% over its present area workforce:

The company, which currently employs about 900 locally, wants to fill customer service, finance, sales and other positions.

These are the jobs that result from competition - which does not exist when the providers a limited to a complacent duopoly comprised of a single cable company and a single telephone company. This is one of the way that community networks create jobs.

Community Networks create traditional jobs to offer their own services (and a multiplier effect by using local accounting, local marketing, and other services). But they also create more revenue for local papers (advertising) and job opportunities with rival companies that suddenly need to fight for subscribers.

On a different track, Light Reading says it has a copy of Google's franchise with the city and notes that Google is under no obligation to serve everyone in the city. However, Karl Bode rightly notes that it was the state legislature in Kansas, flush with AT&T campaign contributions, that revoked the authority of local governments to require cable providers to serve everyone.

Presently, 14 "fiberhoods" in Kansas and 49 in Missouri have met the registration goals and will be among the first served. Google will build to any fiberhood that meets the minimum threshold of interest.

One cannot blame Google then for only building where they will profit. In fact, this is what one would expect any rational profit-maximizing company to do. It is a failure of governance to require that everyone have access to an essential infrastructure. And we know what causes these failures of governance - systematic legalized bribery in our campaign finance system.

Light Reading does note that the franchise is far more generous to Google than overbuilders can typically negotiate. This is a result of Google offering such a unique product. Local leaders decided to effectively subsidize Google's network with favorable terms in the right-of-way, including making inspections as quick and painless as possible. Someone has to pay for these costs, and we expect it will be local taxpayers. Such a cost may or may not be "fair" to taxpayers, we leave it to them to decide. However, we believe the taxpayers should have some measure of control over any infrastructure that is built with their money.

As we have said before, we watch Kansas City with interest and hope Google succeeds (anything else would be incorrectly used to justify our pathetic status quo in broadband). But we believe the communities that build their own networks will do much better in the long term.

Correction: We originally reported 91 jobs, not 81.