community broadband networks

Time Warner Cable's bill to kill competition by limiting the right of communities to build their own broadband networks will have a committee hearing this week in North Carolina's Senate. Stop the Cap! has details in its action alert -- we encourage people to continue contacting their Senators as well as contacting local officials and telling them to contact Senators.

We have seen some interesting news coming out of North Carolina recently, including Salisbury connecting its 500th customer to its publicly owned Fibrant network [pdf]. Additionally, some nine nearby communities have told Raleigh they want to preserve their right to be served by Fibrant (the bill would greatly limit the territory in which Fibrant can expand, unlike private companies which have the freedom to expand across the state). The story starts with a church in one of the communities, Faith:

Mahoney said his church, Faith Baptist, would like faster Internet speeds but can’t afford the $20,000 Time Warner Cable would charge to build a business-class circuit for the church.

Church members are not satisfied with DSL service from Windstream, Mahoney said. But it’s their only option since they can’t afford Time Warner’s price tag, he said.

If Salisbury extends Fibrant to Faith, the church would have another choice for high-speed Internet, said Mahoney, who owns Rowan Onsite Computer Solutions in downtown Salisbury and has Fibrant.

This bill, inaptly named "Level Playing Field" creates new restrictions for publicly owned networks like Fibrant, which under current law can offer services to any community requesting them.

Stop the Cap supplemented this article with more information from a local resident:

“Isn’t it simply amazing that Fibrant is being bashed as a failure-waiting-to-happen by the sponsors of this bill while mayors across two counties are absolutely clamoring to get the service to their residents,” said Stop the Cap! reader Andy Brown who lives near Landis. “How can Marilyn Avila and Tom Apodaca have the slightest bit of credibility on this issue when you see town leaders literally falling all over each coveting a service that these legislative-Friends-of-Time-Warner-Cable have predicted is a certain failure?”

“I want Fibrant in Landis myself, if only for the competition,” Andy shares. “You know, the kind of competition legislators are supposed to support.”

A new bill has been introduced in the Senate to more heavily regulate community networks but in a less heavy handed manner than H129. This bill would totally exempt the existing networks, as opposed to H129 where the sponsors have consistently lied about how it impacts existing networks.

Salisbury, Wilson, Morganton, Mooresville and Davidson argue it’s not fair for the state to change the rules after they borrowed millions of dollars to legally build or buy broadband networks.

“The state approved our debt and Salisbury’s debt,” Shows said. “To retroactively go back and change that is simply unfair. Municipal broadband operations must be run like a business, and like a business, either they’re growing or dying.”

Chapel Hill has joined the list of communities showing concern about how H129 will damage their long term plan to build the essential infrastructure for their digital future.

The town is trimming trees to make way for fiber optic cable, primarily so it can be used for traffic signals. The town plans for the cable to eventually connect town buildings and the wider community with high speed Internet.

But with the possibility of the broadband bill passing, Kleinschmidt said the cable might not be used to its full potential.

“The worst case scenario is that the fiber optic cable will only be used for our traffic signal and its full use will never be tapped,” he said. “The best case scenario is also using it for municipal services too, but even that could be at risk.”

Chapel Hill has been opportunistically adding fiber assets as opportunities arise and having a discussion about whether it wants to create a town-wide publicly owned network. This bill will take that decision out of their hands -- a bunch of politicians in Raleigh will decide for them, after taking a ton of campaign donations from Time Warner Cable and other incumbent telecom companies.

For those who are curious, Chapel Hill is currently doing what a number of other communities have done, adding fiber-optic connections to run traffic signals. As long as the fiber is going in, they might as well get more use out of it and are planning to leverage it over time… if the Legislature doesn't tell them to but out of TWC's exclusive club.

Several days at the National Conference for Media Reform in Boston gave me time to reflect on the importance of protecting local authority to build, own, and operate their own networks connecting people and businesses to the Internet. Multiple presentations focused on the importance of and strategies for ensuring access to the Internet is not controlled by a few companies -- and most of these strategies are focused at federal government agencies and Congress.

While we support these efforts, the Institute for Local Self-Reliance is not a DC-centric organization. We try to help folks in DC learn about what is happening outside the beltway, but our passion and work focuses directly on helping local communities invest in themselves and preserve their self-determination. 

Access to the Internet will likely be the key infrastructure investment that determines how well communities fare in the coming years. Unfortunately, they have very little control over how those investments are made when the networks are owned by private, absentee companies. Efforts like Universal Service Fund reform, fixing the FCC, re-writing the telecom act, and ensuring network neutrality depend on overcoming incredibly powerful (due to their scale and lobbying power) interests in Washington, DC. But local communities have very little power outside their borders... with some in state capitals and practically none in the nation's capital.

Attacks at the state level on the fundamental right of communities to build this essential infrastructure are intended to eliminate their one means of gaining some control over their digital future. Too many states already ban or limit local authority to build these networks -- and with the Time Warner Cable bill to crush community networks in North Carolina picking up steam and South Carolina's similar attack even on broadband stimulus projects, we will see hundreds more communities with no power to ensure their citizens and businesses have access to fast, reliable, and affordable access to the Internet.

This is deeply concerning.  Taking away the one tool communities have to meet connectivity needs locally reducses them to begging providers to invest.  Many communities have already traveled this route and the results are rarely good.  

We strongly encourage you to talk to your legislators - (if you are in North Carolina, you need to do this IMMEDIATELY - the Senate is poised to act; see Stop the Cap! for more information) to say that communities must have the freedom to choose locally whether a community network is appropriate (and what that would mean, as there are a variety of approaches).

Talk to city leaders too, to make sure they are communicating with state officials, national officials, and relevant organizations (like National League of Cities, National Association of Counties, etc). Cable and telco lobbyists are constantly spreading lies and trying to preempt local authority. If decision-makers do not hear from you, the lobbyist message resonates all the more.

Opponents of public ownership like to claim that publicly owned broadband is somehow hostile to business -- this is a a major Time Warner Cable talking point in North Carolina. The reality is that community networks are incredibly biased in favor of local businesses. Most community fiber networks resulted out of economic development needs, when public leaders realize the fast, reliable, and affordable access to the Internet is a key to attracting businesses (and that massive absentee incumbents rarely care to invest enough to attract those businesses).

Unfortunately, the argument resonates among a public that rarely remembers the U.S. economy was built on key public infrastructure investments -- from roads and highways to water works to universal electrification, if the public didn't own the infrastructure outright, it attempted to regulate in the public interest. And though regulators are frequently captured by those they regulate, the outcome is still better than allowing unaccountable electrical trusts to arbitrarily decide how much to gouge their customers.

When Google was search for a community partner in building its gigabit network, it was not shy about public ownership -- we now know that a key factor in the decision was Kansas City's publicly owned electrical company. Being owned by the City allowed Google a single point of contact and an assurance that they could all work together to build the network.

Surveying businesses in three early FTTH communities revealed dramatic savings:

In terms of fiber-enabled cost savings, 120 businesses in Bristol reported an average of $2,951 in savings per year, while, in Reedsburg, 33 cited annual cost savings averaging $20,682. Twenty Jackson businesses reported cost impacts due to fiber, with one large organization reporting a total of $3 million in savings. The other 19 Jackson respondents reported a net average cost increase of $3,150 per organization.

Make no mistake, public ownership of infrastructure is not anti-business, it is pro-business. There are a handful of businesses that benefit tremendously when they control infrastructure -- but it comes at the expense of the vast majority of businesses and citizens.

Greensboro is the latest to officially call on the North Carolina Legislature to not pass H 129, a bill pushed by Time Warner Cable to limit the right of communities to choose to build their own broadband networks.

A RESOLUTION OF THE CITY OF GREENSBORO CITY COUNCIL URGING MEMBERS OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY AND GOVERNOR PERDUE TO OPPOSE H129 AND S87 (LEVEL PLAYING FIELD/LOCAL GOVERNMENT COMPETITION ACT) AND ANY LEGISLATION WHICH WOULD PROHIBIT OR LIMIT THE ABILITY OF LOCAL GOVERNMENTS TO PROVIDE BROADBAND OR ANY OTHER COMMUNICATION SERVICES OR SYSTEMS

WHEREAS, Senate Bill 87 and House Bill 129 have been introduced in the 2011-2012 Session of the General Assembly of North Carolina; and

WHEREAS, these bills do not provide a level playing field to cities, to cities, towns and counties, but greatly hinder local governments from providing needed communications services, including public safety networks, and especially advanced high-speed broadband services, in unserved and underserved areas; and

WHEREAS, these bills impose numerous obligations on cities and towns that private broadband companies do not have to meet; and

WHEREAS, while private companies declare top-quality broadband service is cost prohibitive, the United States continues to lose ground to other nations in broadband access, user cost and growth in number of users, falling behind the United Kingdom, Korea, France, Japan, Canada, Estonia, and now China, each of which provides Internet access at speeds that are some 500 times faster than what the private providers in the United States and at less cost; and

WHEREAS, the bills would prohibit North Carolina cities and towns from using federal grant funds to deploy or operate locally-owned or operated broadband systems, thereby denying N.C. residents access to federal assistance available to the rest of the country and hindering employment opportunities; and

WHEREAS, deployment of high-speed Internet is a new public utility vital to the future economic development, educational outreach and community growth in North Carolina necessary to replace lost textile, tobacco, furniture and manufacturing jobs; and

WHEREAS, the General Assembly has already established: (1) rules governing Public Enterprises (NCGS Chapter 160A, Article 16); (2) strict rules in the Budget and Fiscal Control Act governing all municipal budgets and expenditures, including hearing and disclosure requirements (NCGS Chapter 159, Article 3); and (3) strict oversight of municipal borrowing by the Local Government Commission (NCGS Chapter 159, Article 2); and a local government must comply with all of those requirements in order to undertake providing an enterprise service to its community ; and

WHEREAS, the bills are counter to the Local Development Act of 1925 in NCGS Chapter 158 that allows local governments to aid and encourage economic development in communities throughout North Carolina; and

WHEREAS, North Carolina law has long permitted local governments to engage in public enterprises, and there is no justification for treating communications enterprises differently from other public enterprises that are essential for healthy local economies; and

WHEREAS, historically it was government that funded much of the current corporate telecommunications infrastructure in the United States and government paid for and developed the Internet on which these providers depend for their profit; and

WHEREAS, there are telecommunications designers, equipment manufacturers and suppliers, in North Carolina who will be negatively affected if local governments are not allowed to provided needed communications services, meaning North Carolina will lose more jobs as a result of prohibiting public investment in high-quality, advanced broadband infrastructure; and

WHEREAS, H129 and S87 will effectively shut down existing municipal fiber and wireless broadband systems, stop new municipal broadband systems, interfere with and limit smart grid and other energy management systems, prevent collaboration among local governments through regional public safety networks, hinder the deployment of intelligent transportation and other traffic management systems, bar municipalities from working with school districts and community colleges on shared networks, and in partnership with private providers to bring broadband to our underserved, interfere with basic government operations, and will thereby stifle job development and investment in our local communities, undermine the ability of communities in our state to compete in the global economy and respond to local needs, and interfere with the effective and responsive operation of local governments; and

NOW THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED BY THE CITY OF GREENSBORO CITY COUNCIL THAT:

1. The City of Greensboro opposes Senate Bill 87 and House Bill 129 and urges all members of the North Carolina General Assembly to vote “no” in committee and, if necessary, on the floor of the General Assembly.
2. Copies of this resolution be sent to the Governor, the Secretary of Commerce, the General Assembly’s House and Senate leadership, the sponsors and co-sponsors of H129 and S87, and our local House and Senate representatives.

The foregoing resolution was adopted by the City Council of Greensboro, NC on March 15, 2011.