The possible merger between Comcast and Time Warner Cable and the FCC's recent announcement to review state barriers have created a significant buzz in the world of telecommunications. Two recent NPR interviews with Susan Crawford and Jim Baller provide insight into how the merger may affect consumers and why a new light is shining on municipal networks.

Crawford spoke with Brooke Gladstone for a recent interview for On the Media. The two addressed some of the consequences of the potential merger. Crawford also discussed the option of municipal broadband investment is an alternative gaining traction. As our readers know, Crawford authored Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age. Crawford joined us in a past episode of the Communiy Broadband Bits podcast.

Jim Baller, President of the Baller Herbst Law Group, also joined On the Media when he spoke with Bob Garfield. Baller and Garfield talked about the cable and telecom lobby's efforts to block municipal authority to build networks. Baller supplied a few of the many examples of successful communities that have blossomed as a result of their investment. We have interviewed Baller three times for our podcast.  

Each interview is a little over six minutes.

"Unless somebody in the system has industrial policy in mind, a long-term picture of where the United States needs to be and has the political power to act on it, we'll be a Third World country when it comes to communications."

Susan Crawford recently spoke with Dave Davies on NPR's FreshAir. During the conversation Crawford touches on a variety of interrelated topics that affect telecommunications in the U.S. The interview is worth a listen; Crawford and Davies discuss her book, Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age, and get into U.S. telecommunications policy.

Crawford discusses the recent U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit decision on network neutrality. Davies and Crawford also tackle the inteplay between the court decision and role of government in bringing access to more people:

I think the problem is actually much more profound than mere discrimination by a few cable actors when it comes to high-speed Internet access. We seem to currently assume that communications access it a luxury, something that should be left entirely to the private market, unconstrained by any form of oversight.

The problem is, that's just not true in the modern era. You can't get a job, you can't get access to adequate healthcare, you can't educate your children, we can't keep up with other countries in the developed world without having very high capacity, very high-speed access for everybody in the country. And the only way you get there is through government involvement in this market.

That's how we did it for the telephone. That's how we did it for the federal highway system. And we seem to have forgotten that when it comes to these utility basic services, we can't create a level playing field for all Americans or indeed compete on the world stage without having some form of government involvement.

We first reported on Leverett in the spring of 2012. Leverett, a small town of 2,000, also attracted Susan Crawford's attention. Crawford and Robyn Mohr recently wrote a case study on the community's efforts to build its own fiber network. The Berkman Center for Internet & Society released the paper on December 16, 2013.

Readers will remember that Leverett, tired of being dismissed by large providers, decided to build a FTTH network to each home in town. Construction of the network, funded by a modest tax increase, is now underway.

The report, Bringing Municipal High-Speed Internet Access to Leverett, Massachusetts offers these main findings, as reported on Crawford's blog:

LeverettNet is a last-mile fiber to the home network that will be operated by a publicly controlled Municipal Light Plant entity. The MLP will operate independently of Leverett’s political infrastructure, but will be required by state law to charge subscribers no more than the cost of providing service.

The network will connect every household in Leverett. Although every residence and business will be linked to LeverettNet, individual homeowners will have the discretion to decide whether to subscribe.

LeverettNet was planned to take advantage of MassBroadband 123, a publicly funded fiber network recently built to connect towns (but not individual homes and businesses) in Massachusetts.

Long-term leadership, planning, and community engagement by Leverett’s public officials prompted the citizens of Leverett to approve a modest property tax increase in return for the long-term benefits of a FTTH network.

Nilay Patel: In this context, to say that you're hopeful about the government doing anything seems extremely foolish. And, you know, I'm an advocate of net neutrality. I enjoyed the book thoroughly. But I have no hope that our government will accomplish any of these goals.

Susan Crawford: Well, there's government, and there's government. I'm totally focused on mayors these days. I've given up on federal policy for the time being.

Patel: But why are you focused on mayors?

Crawford: Because mayors are sovereigns. Mayors can act. They have control over their rights of way. They can say, "We need fiber in our area."

In a New Republic article, John B. Judis compared Susan Crawford's focus on expanding access to fast, affordable, and reliable Internet networks with Senator Elizabeth Warren and her pursuit of Wall Street financial reform.

Judis discusses Crawford's book, Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age, and the grassroots effort to convince President Obama she should be the next FCC chair:

“My name comes up in discussions about the new FCC chair. I’m on lists,” Crawford has said—but she expects the job to go to telecom entrepreneur and Obama bundler Tom Wheeler. “It’s obvious to me that they can’t [appoint me],” she told me. “The incumbents would go bananas.”

The article shares a little about Crawford's personal background and how she came to follow the mantra, "Life is short, get in the way." One part that resonated with us is this paragraph:

In 2009, Obama appointed Crawford the White House special assistant for science, technology, and innovation. It upsets her to talk about her time in government. “Every time I remember this White House stuff, it has a real effect on me,” she says. “You think that policy is going to be made on what the American people need, but what I was surprised by was how much of this was about reelection from the very beginning.” When she was asked to figure out how to spend stimulus money for broadband access, she had to resist suggestions to extend “crappy wireless through the country because that would look good in the reelection,” she says. “The idea that there was something different about Internet access as a market, that its quality would be available at a reasonable cost, that did not resonate in the White House.” She resigned after barely eight months.

Judis links to our Community Network Map, a tool Crawford cites on a regular basis. We hope to see more mainstream articles on Crawford and the muni movement as more people realize how local self-reliance can help cure our connectivity challenges.

On May 14th, Susan Crawford will speak at the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) in San Francisco. The event will be hosted by the Division of Ratepayer Advocates (DRA) of the CPUC, and the theme of the discussion will be "Digital Communications in the United States: Should Broadband Communications be a Public Utility Service?”

The event runs from 2 p.m. - 3:30 p.m. PDT. The CPUC auditorium is located at 505 Van Ness Ave. in S.F. For those of us who can't make it in person, the event will be webcast and archived.

From the invite:

Professor Crawford will speak on the current status of broadband communications including the state of competition, affordability, availability of high speed internet, and whether cities should be allowed to build their own municipal fiber broadband networks.  Attendees are encouraged to participate in the dialogue. 

Questions for the Forum may be posted on Twitter using #DRAForum. We look forward to seeing all your great questions and may even ask some of our own.

Susan Crawford sat down with Bill Moyers to talk about Internet access in America. The two touch on net neutrality, the digital divide, and how access is now a critical component to our economic development.

In the words of Bill Moyers, "This is pretty strong stuff." Bill and Susan also talk about how we have come to this point through lack of competition advanced by telecommunications companies' lobbying and legislative ennui.

They spend some time looking at Lafayette, Louisiana, one of the cities that we covered in our 2012 case study, Broadband At the Speed of Light: How Three Communities Built Next-Generation Networks.  The two also dig into ways policy change can improve access and efforts we can all make to heighten awareness of the issue. This is a great discussion for any one, regardless of their place on the Internet access learning curve.

This March 21-22, the SouthEast Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors (SEATOA) will be hosting the "Networking Communities for the New South" conference. The conference will be held at the Omni Charlotte Hotel.

We are excited to see Susan Crawford as the keynote speaker. From the conference page:

She will provide a broadband policy reality check, and answer – among other questions –whether current so-called “level playing field”, “free-market” policies are leaving us with a second class network that only the rich can afford.

(For a preview, listen to Susan in a recent Broadband Bits Podcast. She talked about her recent book and discussed the need for long term U.S. telecom policy change.)

Check out the schedule and list of other speakers [PDF] and start planning your itinerary. You can also register online.

Some of the issues discussed will be:

• Public and private resources
• How to offer services to schools and other government institutions as a way to save costs and yet build a platform for high bandwidth use
• Info on the Research Triangle Park's North Carolina Next Generation Network, (NCNGN - sounds like NC Engine)
• The National Public Safety FirstNET and municipal network
• How to build, operate, and integrate social media into, local Public, Education and Government (PEG) channels, and into your organization's lobbying campaigns to obtain optimal reach

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