Senator Hoyle still relies on his two mutually exclusive talking points: "cities should not do this because they are terrible at it" and "it is not fair for cities to do this because they will crush private providers who are unable to compete." Of course, if cities really did fail at this with any sort of regularity, they would not pose a threat to private providers.
When the I-Team asked him if the cable industry drew up the bill, Senator Hoyle responded, "Yes, along with my help."
When asked about criticism that he was "carrying water" for the cable companies, Hoyle replied, "I've carried more water than Gunga Din for the business community - the people who pay the taxes."
Big companies like Time Warner employ a lot of smart accountants to avoid paying even their fair share of taxes -- perhaps Senator Hoyle should not confuse them with the many small businesses that do pay their share.
Yikes. In Hoyle's defense, this sort of practice is not uncommon—legislators often work with interest groups on particular pieces of legislation or on letters that go out under their name. But letting those who stand to benefit financially sit down and actually draft the bill protecting their interests, then bragging about how you carry more water for them "than Gunga Din"—well, you don't see that nearly as much.
It will be interesting to see who carries water for Time Warner next now that Senator Hoyle is retiring. Let's hope that Hoyle's honesty actually makes it more difficult for other Senators to sell out their citizens for massive corporations.
Craig Settles kicks off this event with a 45 minute presentation discussing what community networks should do to succeed financially and how they can go beyond simply making broadband access available to more people.
Bryan Sivak, Chief Technology Officer of the District of Columbia; Joanne Hovis, President-Elect of NATOA and President of Columbia Telecommunications Corporation; and Gary Carter, Analyst at City of Santa Monica Information Systems Department responded Craig Settles' presentation.
One of the key points is something we harp on here: if community broadband networks run in the black according to standard private sector accounting procedures, that is great. But it is a poor measure of how successful a community network is. Community networks create a variety of positive benefits that are not included in that metric and those benefits must be considered when evaluating such a network.
Despite a coordinated campaign by cable incumbent Charter that offered little honest debate or accurate claims, the citizens of Opelika voted yes on their referendum to allow the city to build a broadband network. The City's public power utility will use the network for smart-grid services and a private company will likely contract to deliver triple-play services.
Opelika's Mayor had this reaction:
Mayor Fuller also said:
It’s a great day for Opelika. It’s a great day for our future. It’s a terrible day for Charter,”
One gets the sense that the Mayor took some umbrage at Charter's tactics to prevent the community from building its own network.
Phillip Dampier investigated the background and claims of prominent opponents, including Jack Mazzola, who might as well have written some of the articles in the local paper about the Smart-Grid project for how often he was quoted by the reporter (who often failed to offer a countering view from anyone in support of the network).
Jack Mazzola claims to be a member of Concerned Citizens of Opelika and has become a de facto spokesman in the local press. He claims he is “30 years old and have been a resident of Opelika for almost two years.” During that time, he evidently forgot to update his active Facebook page, which lists his current city of residence as Atlanta, Georgia. Suspicious readers of the local newspaper did some research of their own and claim Mr. Mazzola has no history of real estate or motor vehicle taxes paid to Lee County, which includes Opelika.
Any community considering a referendum on this issue should read this Stop the Cap! post and learn from it because massive cable companies like Charter all use the same tactics in community after community. When communities do not have a response ready, they can suffer at the polls.
If you are suspicious about the viability of municipal fiber, simply ask yourself if they are such failures, why do phone and cable companies spend millions to lobby against them? Why the blizzard of scare mailers, robocalls, astroturf opposition groups, and lawsuits — all to stop what many opponents continually claim are competitive and operational failures?
The answer is, most municipal projects, like co-ops and community owned utilities, are more than viable.
Opelika is the latest to refute any notion that community broadband networks are a partisan issue. The City Council President noted:
“As a council we have never been more unified on a single matter than we have been on this,” Smith said. “Now we’re going to go to work, do things right and do things transparently.”
When it comes to these local issues of self-determination, Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives agree that self-reliance is far superior to continued dependence on absentee-owned incumbents.
If you can, come on out to influence public policy. The future of the Internet is indeed at stake - with massive corporations spending millions in a power grab for the future of the Internet. Take a few hours to show up and tell the FCC we want the Internet to be open to everyone. We'll be there to tell the FCC to ensure all communities have the right to build the network they need.
Thursday, August 19 from 6-9PM at South High School.
South High School
3131 19th Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN 55407
A short video of Sascha Meinrath discussing the power of community networks, the need for broadband competition, and why the National Broadband Plan misses the mark.
John at Lafayette Pro Fiber posted about an upcoming Lafayette TV ad. Apparently, this is an advance copy. It emphasizes the ways in which LUS differs from privately owned networks.
Community networks, no matter how technically superior to incumbent offerings, must have an outreach or advertising strategy. Having the best network does little good if few people know about it.
The city of LaGrange has long been offering top-notch telecom services to local businesses. I just stumbled across this video describing their new colocation facilities. They are approaching 400 business customers and serve the local cellular towers. They do not provide residential services.
This is a presentation I gave at FiberFête on April 20 in Lafayette, Louisiana. Unfortunately, the slides are not available in the recording, but most of my comments do not rely upon them.
Paradoxically, the incumbents argue that public sector broadband is both an unfair competitor and obviously an inferior service doomed to failure in the market.
