local rural broadband

see older/main municipal wireless

-=-=

MPU 10 26 MUSK STARLINK

GRABBED BEAD $ REWRITE RULES 700M$? 98%

-=-=

no twt lnx

https://www.alternet.org/2022/05/gigi-sohn/

'Infuriating': Telecom lobbyists spending big money to keep Gigi Sohn off FCC

Julia Conley and Common Dreams May 01, 2022

Consumer rights defenders are warning that telecom companies and lobbyists are taking advantage of the U.S. Senate's delay in confirming Gigi Sohn to the Federal Communications Commission by spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to pressure corporate Democrats to vote against the longtime public advocate.

"There's an unseemly amount of money being spent to promote disinformation about her," Greg Guice, director of government affairs for Public Knowledge, the group founded by Sohn, told MarketWatch this week. "These criticisms aren't based in fact whatsoever."

As Karl Bode wrote at Techdirt last week, former Democratic Sen. Heidi Heitkamp's rural-focused non-profit group recently launched a $250,000 social media ad campaign targeting at least two Democrats who have not yet confirmed how they plan to vote on Sohn's confirmation, even though it would give the party three of the five FCC seats for the first time in six years and would end the current deadlock.

The group's ads are aimed at Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) and Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), neither of whom have indicated how they will vote on Sohn's nomination and both of whom are facing reelection campaigns in November.Politico has reported that Heitkamp is also running ads in West Virginia, where right-wing Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin was "undecided" on Sohn after meeting her.

Heitkamp's group, the One Country Project, is claiming that Sohn has been insufficiently committed to improving broadband access in rural communities, pointing to congressional testimony in which she said Congress has been "disproportionately focused on broadband deployment in rural areas."

As Chris Matthews wrote at MarketWatch, Sohn's testimony didn't "argue that the federal government shouldn't fund broadband deployment, but that the main hurdle for Americans accessing broadband in both rural and urban areas is affordability, not infrastructure."

Heitkamp started One Country Project with "leftover campaign cash" to start her political action committee, Matthews noted, and counted AT&T and Comcast as two of her biggest donors when she was in the Senate.

"Telecom monopolies are now terrified that the Sohn appointment won't just break 2-2 commissioner gridlock (they created) at the agency, it will mean the restoration of meaningful federal oversight over one of the least popular and least competitive industries in the Internet ecosystem," wrote Bode at Techdirt.

Andrew Lokay, an analyst with independent policy research firm Beacon Policy Advisors, told MarketWatch that opponents of Sohn in the telecom industry appear to be "taking advantage of Biden's delay in nominating Sohn and the crowded Senate calendar in an attempt to sink her nomination."

Craig Aaron, president of media and technology advocacy group Free Press, accused the telecom industry and its allies of waging a "dishonest astroturf campaign" against Sohn and called the effort to derail the nomination of a strong net neutrality defender "infuriating."

In addition to One Country Project's efforts, the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC)—which has long partnered with AT&T—published an op-ed in the Arizona Daily Star earlier this month accusing Sohn of having a "deeply problematic track record on media diversity issues."

The group wrote that as a senior staffer at the FCC, Sohn "masterminded a plan to give Google a government permission slip to steal, repackage and monetize TV programming without paying one cent to its creators"—a move which angered "diverse creators" and lawmakers over "how her proposal would impact vulnerable, underrepresented communities."

In fact, Bode wrote, "the FCC's goal was to kill the cable box monopoly and save consumers about $20 billion annually in bullshit rental fees," adding that "framing it as a handout to 'big tech' is an intentional misrepresentation."

LULAC denied to MarketWatch that its opposition to Sohn has anything to do with its relationship with AT&T, and the company said it has not donated any money directly to One Country Project.

But as Bode argued, "Sohn's so popular, and the goals of telecom monopolies (less competition, more revenue, no oversight) are so viciously unpopular, they've been forced to fabricate flimsy complaints and funnel them through proxy organizations in a bid to derail the popular nomination."

"If Sohn's nomination is scuttled, it will come at the hands of Senators Joe Manchin, Catherine Cortez Masto, Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), or Mark Kelly, who will, not coincidentally, parrot the false justifications for opposing Sohn's nomination concocted by the telecom lobby," Bode added.

"It will leave a permanent and violent scar on the political and policy landscape," he added, "loudly advertising once again that the voice of the public (which overwhelmingly supports holding telecom and media giants meaningfully accountable) simply doesn't matter in our purported democracy."

no lnx

One of the things that the FCC and FTC have not done effectively over the last few decades

is hold telecommunications companies like AT&T and Verizon accountable for their tax-subsidized infrastructure obligations. In fact, the FCC under Trump's choice and former Verizon lawyer Ajit Pai, have done everything possible to protect big telecommunications from being held responsible for their fraudulent behaviors. The Republican-run FCC has done all of this in the name of deregulation and the promise that the invisible hand of the market will provide. Unsurprisingly, so far deregulating the system, giving out massive tax breaks to big telecoms and destroying net neutrality consumer protections have led to the opposite effect.

On Thursday, Mississippi Public Service Commission (PSC) officials sent a letter to the FCC calling on the corrupt body to investigate AT&T's claims of "providing internet service to 133,000 locations in Mississippi using federal aid from the Connect America Fund." How much federal-aid money did AT&T get their hands on? According to Arstechnica, thetelecommunications company has pulled in a sweet $283,000,000 "from the Federal Communications Commission's Connect America Fund to expand its network in Mississippi," since 2015. Ah, that sweet corporate welfare!

According to the PSC's letter, their investigation has turned up nothing but examples of AT&T falsely claiming to have created new broadband service in places they have not, for people that are not receiving broadband access. More specifically, saying you have provided internet access to 133,000 "locations" is incredibly vague when the point is to provide human beings with good service. Considering that AT&T has a history of taking taxpayer money to provide broadband and wireless services, only to not do that, and also make false claims of having done that, the news out of Mississippi isn't particularly surprising.

The PSC has been pushing the telecom giant for more information regarding their service providing in Mississippi since subpoenaing them in September, demanding "production of documents showing the number of actual subscribers to AT&T's fixed wireless service within the 133,000 locations where the company claims to have provided service, the number of complaints filed with the company by customers who have taken service and the number of Mississippians who applied for fixed wireless service based on AT&T's assertion that it was available and were later determined not to be in an area covered."

In 2015, AT&T made a deal with the U.S. government where they would get almost half a billion a year to bring very meager broadband 10MB service to rural areas. That money has been pulled from the Connect America Fund.

AT&T will get the money over six years with an option for a seventh, potentially bringing the total to about $3 billion, according to Multichannel News. AT&T and other carriers getting Connect America funding have to deploy Internet service to 40 percent of funded locations by the end of 2017, 60 percent by the end of 2018, 80 percent by the end of 2019, and to 100 percent of locations by the end of 2020, the article said.

For a very long time now AT&T has argued—somehow very successfully—that letting localities or individuals build out their own broadband networks stops the telelcom from taking our tax money. Seriously, they have argued that. AT&T has also argued that when they say one thing but do another thing, like not provide broadband service while taking federal money by saying they've provided that infrastructure, they haven't lied or mislead anyone because reporters have investigated them and exposed them. Seriously, they really have argued that.

The FCC has taken out its own teeth but ending net neutrality protections. Ajit Pai has argued that the FCC cannot regulate the industry that it was created to regulate. This, of course, means that without a new president and a new FCC, any chance of getting telecommunications companies to do what they're supposed to do for the general public is unlikely.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/when-will-we-stop-screwing-poor-and-rural-americans-on-broadband/

no lnx

When will we stop screwing poor and rural Americans on broadband?

Written by Nancy LeTourneau / Washington Monthly January 3, 2020

Here is the lede to a Wall Street Journal story that ran on Christmas Eve:

Americans in low-income neighborhoods and rural areas get slower broadband speeds even though they generally pay similar monthly prices as their counterparts in wealthy and urban areas.

The country’s biggest broadband provider charges more in markets without competition.

Most people don’t have a choice.

These are among the findings of a Wall Street Journal analysis of America’s internet bills.

The story, based on an examination of 3,300 bills for broadband service in 50 states, detailed how customers in low-income neighborhoods wind up paying the same monthly rates as those in wealthier areas, but for service that is 40 percent slower (it’s slower still for folks in rural areas). Plus, lower-income and rural customers are routinely hit with extra fees that others aren’t. To make matters even worse, two out of three Americans live in areas where there is only one provider of high-speed internet service—in other words, under a monopoly.

High-speed broadband is to the 21st century what electricity became in the 20th—a service so essential that lacking it means not fully participating in modern life. So the fact that people in poor and rural communities are being made to pay more for crappier broadband service, and most of us are being overcharged by monopolists, is no small thing. Imagine trying to run a web-reliant business in a small town and having to go up against firms in larger cities that have a built-in advantage on internet speed and cost. As you slowly find yourself unable to compete, you might get a little, you know, resentful. You might come to the conclusion that the rules are rigged against you by those urban people. And you might decide to vote for someone who promises to give those people hell.

Of course, no one saw this problem coming. No, wait, that’s not true. The Washington Monthly warned about the undermining of competition in the broadband market, and how to fix the problem … in 2001! And then again in 2002, 2006, 2009, 2015,and 2016. In fact, it was our ongoing investigations of anti-competitive behavior and pro-monopoly policies in the broadband market that led us to the understanding, long before any other publication, that corporate consolidation was a huge and growing problem in the economy more broadly

Fortunately, a number of 2020 Democratic presidential candidates have taken up the cause of broadband reform—just as they have the issue of monopoly generally—and their positions on the issue reflect almost perfectly their individual political profiles: Bernie Sanders wants to throw the most money at the problem: $150 billion for what he calls “high speed internet for all”; Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg propose spending around half as much but in characteristically smarter and wonkier ways—for instance, by funding the FCC to create detailed broadband pricing “maps” so that antitrust regulators have the evidence they need to crack down on anti-competitive behavior; Amy Klobuchar has gone a step beyond all of them by actually introducing legislation in the Senate, the Improving Broadband Mapping Act; and Joe Biden, predictably, has not had much to say on the matter, though he has proposed spending $20 billion to build out rural broadband infrastructure.

That’s way more than Donald Trump has done. He campaigned in 2016 on delivering broadband to rural America but has so far provided only a $600 million USDA pilot project while his FCC appointees have cracked down on efforts by municipalities to offer free wifi.

The high-speed broadband issue encapsulates the kind of journalism we try to practice at the Washington Monthly. We endeavor to be ahead of the curve on matters of public policy—to provide readers with, as my colleague Phil Longman likes to say, solutions to problems they don’t know they have. And then we keep covering those issues, year after year, until the rest of the press notices them—and elected officials start acting on them

...

https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/some-people-in-kentucky-still-dont-have-broadband-because-their-former-governor-chose-an-investment-bank-over-experts/

no lnx

Some people in Kentucky still don’t have broadband because their former governor chose an investment bank over experts

Former Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear image via MSN.

Written by Alfred Miller / ProPublica December 18, 2019

This article was produced in partnership with the Louisville Courier Journal, which is a member of the ProPublica Local Reporting Network. Sign up for the Miswired newsletter to receive updates in this series as soon as they publish.

Former Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear’s administration repeatedly ignored expert advice before embarking on KentuckyWired, the massively over budget statewide broadband project that will leave rural residents waiting months, if not years, for the improved internet access they were promised, a new state audit says.

The report, released Monday by state Auditor Mike Harmon, says consultants and outside lawyers warned Kentucky officials more than four years ago that negotiations with the Australian investment bank Macquarie Capital could lead to a higher price tag and fewer protections for the state.

It also confirms a joint Courier Journal-ProPublica investigation that revealed a flawed bidding process and projections that oversold the amount of federal funds available for the project.

“The evidence of how pitiful it is is just continuing to trickle out,” state Sen. Chris McDaniel, a Republican who chairs the Appropriations and Revenue Committee, said in an interview after the report’s release. “Those of us who were paying attention knew this six years ago. That’s why I’ve tried to get the thing stopped ever since.”

In the report, Harmon recommended that state officials be required to document reasons for ignoring expert advice in future negotiations. He also said penalties for violating state bidding policies should be included and enforced in contracts.

KentuckyWired, the state’s ambitious plan for providing enhanced internet connectivity to rural residents, has been plagued by delays and cost overruns since the project began. It is now two years behind schedule and could cost taxpayers $1.5 billion over the next 30 years, according to the state’s auditor.

The auditor’s report suggested such problems could have been mitigated had state officials heeded expert warnings from July 2014 to September 2015, the period between when they first sought bids for the project and when they reached a final agreement with Macquarie.

Macquarie did not respond to a request for comment. A spokeswoman for Gov. Andy Beshear said the state’s top official had not yet reviewed the audit, adding that he looks forward to “further briefings.” Beshear, who was sworn in this month, is the former governor’s son.

Jim Baller, a telecommunications attorney, was one of the experts who told the state it should be more cautious in negotiations with Macquarie, a company known for organizing big infrastructure projects around the globe.

Concerned about the cost of Macquarie’s services, state officials sought to narrow the scope of the company’s work.

Negotiators decided that the state would take on the time-consuming and expensive task of obtaining regulatory permits for the project and that it would seek permission from KentuckyWired’s main competitors, AT&T and Windstream, to hang fiber from poles.

Baller and Maryland-based CTC Technology & Energy, consultants hired by the state to assist in the process, warned that such an agreement could end up costing the state more money.

“Macquarie is expert at negotiating agreements that minimize or eliminate its own financial risk,” CTC officials told the state in a December 2014 memo.

Baller said he feared such agreements would force the state to compensate Macquarie and its partners for any delays in obtaining permits.

“This stuff really scares me,” Baller wrote in an email on July 14, 2015, according to the audit. The report does not specify to whom the email was sent, and Baller did not respond to a request for comment.

State officials moved forward despite the warnings.

In September 2015, shortly after signing the deal with Macquarie, officials realized they couldn’t persuade AT&T and Windstream to cooperate promptly, the auditor said. Those delays and others forced the state to pay Macquarie and its partners $93 million in penalties as part of a settlement that was finalized in February 2019.

Officials also dismissed concerns from CTC about relying on federal money to fund the project, according to the auditor.

A plan to boost funding for the project with federal money intended for school internet service was “too good to be true,” a CTC executive wrote in May 2015. The CTC executive was not named in the report.

“I have concerns about how optimistic these projections are,” the executive wrote, adding that the state “would presumably hold the risk in the event that these funds did not materialize.”

They were right to be concerned.

The Courier Journal and ProPublica reported in September that Macquarie hired Frank Lassiter, the husband of Beshear’s cabinet secretary, Mary Lassiter, as a consultant.

Lassiter’s company, HealthTech, assured state officials that Kentucky could obtain federal funds designated to improve internet access in schools for the project. The company produced a report suggesting millions of dollars were readily available from the federal government to offset construction costs for building the network. The Lassiters, through their attorney, Guthrie True, have denied any wrongdoing.

The state later learned that KentuckyWired wasn’t eligible for the program, and the federal funds never materialized.

The state auditor also expressed concern about a “deeply flawed” bidding process that created a back channel for negotiations with Macquarie, bypassing the state employee who should have been the main point of contact.

Negotiations between Macquarie and the state were led primarily by former Deputy Finance Secretary Steve Rucker, according to the report. He died in 2016.

Those negotiations scrapped the language in the initial bid that laid out the expectations for the project. Attorneys with the law firm Polsinelli, which the state hired to consult on the public-private partnership, repeatedly told the state that the change would cause it to lose protections previously required of all bidders.

Bernard “Deck” Decker, then the interim head of the state agency in charge of overseeing KentuckyWired, said in an official response that was included in the auditor’s report that Finance Secretary Lori Flanery’s office did not have the legal authority to waive policies that govern the bidding process.

Decker was fired last week by the governor. No reason was given for his dismissal.

“By ignoring those that actually knew what they were talking about, those involved in this contract have increased the cost to the Commonwealth by hundreds of millions of dollars that they did not have a right to risk,” Decker wrote.

In an interview with The Courier Journal on Monday, Harmon called Flanery’s actions “very disconcerting” and “outside the norm” but said it was not his place to determine their legality.

Flanery and Lassiter have so far not been tapped for roles in the new Beshear administration, but a former deputy state budget director, John Hicks, has been appointed budget chief. Hicks previously defended the state’s negotiations with Macquarie, and it was his job in 2015 to find a way to stretch the nearly $30 million the state was already spending annually on internet service to fund KentuckyWired, Flanery told attendees of a September 2015 conference.

“No one had done this before, so there wasn’t any knowns to the timeline,” he said in a July interview.

4/16

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/z43493/how-the-telecom-lobby-rewrites-americas-laws

A telecom-funded policy paper slamming local government-owned broadband networks published Wednesday is masquerading as a serious "economic analysis," but is yet another example of the dominant players in telecom manipulating the political system to suit their interests.

In the last couple years, there's been a strong push by local municipalities to provide Gigabit fiber internet connections for their residents, whether that means incentivizing a company like Google to come to their city, partnering with a startup ISP, or building the entire network by themselves using taxpayer money. The "municipal-owned" broadband networks are the ones taken on by *The Impact of Government-Owned Broadband Networks on Private Investment and Consumer Welfare*, and are, at least in theory, the ones that present the biggest threat to existing ISPs.

Municipal networks are also the easiest targets for telecom lobbying—taxpayer money being used to build a service that competes with private companies make an easy mark for small-government types. And when muni broadband networks fail, they often fail spectacularly. That's why, over the past few decades, the most severe and destructive broadband lobbying has happened at the state level, as incumbent internet operators have found it easier to get state and local level policies against municipal broadband. So far, 23 states have passed anti municipal broadband laws, and often times, the legislation itself is written by lobbying groups such as the American Legislative Exchange Council.

The Federal Communications Commission is working to preempt some of these laws to allow greater municipal investment in some states, a crisis for telecom that has led to a bevy of pending lawsuits.

It's in this context that the paper is released, and there's no doubt that it will be used as a study to support telecom-written legislation that are passed to governors and state lawmakers as evidence that taxpayer-funded internet services just don't work.

This is not my opinion, this is the stated purpose of the paper, published by theState Government Leadership Foundation, a group that, like ALEC, "has assisted state elected leaders around the country in crafting sound policy solutions and promoting their successes."

On a conference call with reporters Wednesday, former Congressman Tom Reynolds, the chairman of the SGLF, said the purpose of the paper is to "protect taxpayers."

"When the FCC decided to preempt state laws in March of last year dealing with municipal broadband, SGLF realized it needed to lend its voice to help [state legislators] craft economically sound laws that protect taxpayers from undesired consequences of government-run broadband," he said.

The SGLF was founded in part with donations from AT&T and Time Warner, and has since made its funding sources unknown. As a lawmaker, Reynolds counted Verizon and AT&T among his top donors, according to Open Secrets. George S. Ford, the man they tapped to write the report, spent the late 1990s and early 2000s working for telecom companies MCI and Z-Tel. He now works for the Phoenix Center for Advanced Legal and Public Policy Studies, a think tank that grew out of AT&T's old research arm and has regularly received telecom support throughout its history.

Last year, the organization filed a legal brief in support of the US Telecom Association's challenge of the FCC's net neutrality rules, and both Ford and his boss, Lawrence Spiwak, have written a dizzying array of op-eds and reports in support of the telecom industry.

This paper, then, will be fed to lawmakers and governors under the guise of a serious economic analysis that proves that local governments have no place becoming internet service providers. But if you actually read the study, it quickly becomes clear that there's little substance here.

The study itself paints municipal broadband networks as a financial disaster for taxpayers, for the communities that install them, and for the telecom companies that Ford argues should be receiving the subsidies that are used to build out municipal networks.

"If subsidies are to be used, theory indicates that subsidies to existing firms to increase output to achieve externalities is likely to be a more efficient approach," he wrote.

"People are kooky for broadband … there's no rational broadband thinking at the FCC and people are carrying on about it so much"

While Ford is correct that not every municipal broadband project has succeeded—there have been some catastrophic failures beset with scandal that have undermined the movement in general—there are many examples (Chattanooga, Tennessee; Lafayette, Louisiana; and Leverett, Massachusetts come to mind) of it working quite well. So far, at least 83 cities in the US have offered fiber to their citizens. Many—most—are not economic disasters.

The most glaring problem with Ford's paper is that he uses economic theory over and over to prove his point, without doing any deep dives into the economics of these real-world examples. Time and time again, cities have been thrilled with the fact that investment in broadband technology has led to businesses relocating to take advantage of fast and reliable internet. Ford dismisses this phenomenon as "business stealing" that may be good for one city but is bad for the rest of the country.

"Chattanooga and other cities were perhaps wise to get a first-mover advantage in stealing businesses from other cities, but as the deployment of fiber networks becomes more pervasive the first- or early-mover advantages of cities with municipal broadband networks is diminished," he wrote. "Most troubling is that the federal subsidies used to support financially municipal networks are funded through federal taxation; therefore, the people in cities losing businesses are perversely funding the broadband networks that are destroying their economy."

Municipal broadband is a repudiation of the status quo, an emphatic statement by voters and their representatives that the free market has not worked for them.

This is a bizarre argument does not leave room for the idea that top-of-class broadband can spur and support the creation of new businesses that take advantage of higher bandwidth connections; it also does not take into account research that suggests faster connections lead to higher real estate values and more educational opportunities for residents, which are associated with better economic outcomes overall. Finally, it operates on the assumption that the status quo should be good enough going forward—that America's businesses can and should continue to compete globally with companies based in countries with broadband that runs laps around ours.

Ford wrote that labeling broadband a "necessity" or "a human right" is "melodramatic" and wrote in the paper that "downloading a movie in five seconds rather than five minutes is a private issue, not a social good worthy of taxes and subsidies."

He also says that competition alone has not been proven to increase the quality or quantity of any given good, then uses this to suggest that building municipal networks will not be enough to improve someone's internet experience. But he does this in a totally abstract economic theory sense without looking at the fact that new fiber networks—be they run by Google, a startup, or the local government—are objectively leaps and bounds faster than the existing infrastructure.

"We're almost 'high' on it," Ford said in the conference call. "People are kooky for broadband … there's no rational broadband thinking at the FCC and people are carrying on about it so much."

Ford argues that existing telecom companies often can't compete with taxpayer-subsidized networks and thus don't end up trying, leading to less overall competition.

The thing is, there are multiple paths toward a sufficient broadband experience: In a perfect world, private companies would compete with each other and would offer fast cheap internet to its customers. In cities where that's happened, such as Kansas City and Austin, there is no clamoring for municipal networks.

Alternatively, a city—and its residents—can decide that they're tired of being underserved and overcharged and can opt, with their own tax dollars, to do something about it. Municipal broadband is inherently a repudiation of the status quo, an emphatic statement by voters and their representatives that the free market has not worked for them.

Municipal broadband certainly isn't right for every city, but it's an option that individual communities should be legally allowed to explore. State-level laws that put up significant barriers to exploring that option serve no one but the telecom companies that helped write them.

So Ford is right: Municipal broadband is bad for telecom companies. He says they can't compete with municipal providers who are "truly not interested in profit maximization." But after years of watching big telecom care about profits and nothing else, who can blame communities for taking control of their broadband destiny?

ref bs paper

http://sglf.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/04/SGLF-Muni-Broadband-Study-1.pdf

Since its founding over a decade ago, The State Government Leadership Foundation (SGLF) has served as the premier national conservative policy organization equipped to engage state leaders at all levels of state government. SGLF has worked proactively to promote sound policy throughout the states, educate the public and state government officials, and defend key policy ideas, state leaders and legislation when they come under attack. SGLF devotes resources in the form of research and training, public issue advocacy engagement, public communications, policy analysis, conferences and other means of dialogue among conservative state leaders and the public with specific emphasis on free market solutions, education reform, tort reform, labor reform and American energy freedom. SGLF believes that America is at its most prosperous and productive when there is limited government, free enterprise solutions, less spending, less taxes, less dictation from Washington and less encroachment into the states. SGLF is dedicated to educating the public and policy makers on these issues and advocating for officials who support strong conservative policies that greatly benefit society. SGLF is a 501(c)4 social welfare organization.

...

Dr. George S. Ford is the Chief Economist of the Phoenix Center for Advanced Legal and Public Policy Studies (www.phoenix-center.org), an internationallyrespected Washington D.C.-based non-profit public policy think-tank specializing in the law and economics of the digital age. Since receiving his PhD at Auburn University, Dr. Ford has worked in both the public and private sectors, including positions at the Federal Communications Commission and multiple private communications providers. Dr. Ford has conducted numerous technical business and economic studies—an effort which has resulted in over sixty published journal articles, many more unpublished works, and many internal business reports, some of which drove significant investments in telecommunications infrastructure. Dr. Ford has authored over one hundred reports released by the Phoenix Center. In addition to his publication record, Dr. Ford regularly testifies on economic matters in forums such as the U.S. Congress, the U.S. Copyright Royalty Judges, the Canadian Royalty Board, and numerous state regulatory agencies. Over the years, he has advised governments, both domestic and foreign, consulted to large companies, and delivered academic papers and public addresses at conferences around the world. Dr. Ford is a leading expert in the areas of government regulation, the technology industry, intellectual property, and economic development, advising governments and private parties on issues involving economics, econometrics and business and regulatory strategy. Dr. Ford has studied municipal provision of communications services for over twenty-five years, both in academic research and as a consultant. His research on the topic is frequently cited. The views expressed in this paper are the author’s alone and do not represent the views of the Phoenix Center or its staff. The author indebted to Phoenix Center President Lawrence J. Spiwak and to Phoenix Center Senior Fellows Professors Randy Beard and Michael Stern for their assistance and comments on earlier drafts of this paper. As is customary, Dr. Ford takes full responsibility for any remaining errors or omissions.

https://www.alec.org/model-policy/municipal-telecommunications-private-industry-safeguards-act/

ALEC BS boilerplate: note sequence:

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) recognizes the importance of the widespread deployment of advanced communications services. For the vast majority of citizens, these services are provided by private sector entities, consistent with ALEC’s core principles of limited government, free markets and federalism. In some limited instances, municipalities or their agents have sought to provide such services. To the extent these offerings are directed to unserved areas – where no private sector entities offer service or has the economic incentive to offer such services – this may be understandable. As a general matter however, such services should not be offered by government in competition with private sector providers.

In the event that a municipality elects to deploy a government-owned broadband network (GON),safeguards are necessary to ensure that private sector providers with whom the municipality competes, and taxpayers from whom the municipality derives its funding, are not harmed or disadvantaged by the municipality in the exercise of its bonding and taxing authority, management of rights of way, or assessment of fees or taxes. To those ends, ALEC has developed the following principles regarding municipal/government owned networks:

I. Competitive Marketplace is Working: America’s broadband providers have invested $1.5 trillion of private at-risk capital over the last two decades to deploy networks that reach nearly every corner of the US. By contrast, government-owned broadband networks in the U.S. have a record of failure, oftentimes due to, lack of a sustainable business plan, and/or a lack of long-term resources to make upgrades to ensure they are keeping up with rapidly-evolving technology.

II. Municipal Networks: Many municipal and government owned networks have records of failure, often times due to lack of a sustainable business plan, or a lack of long-term resources to make upgrades to ensure they are keeping up with rapidly-evolving technology.

III. No Cross Subsidization: A municipality that deploys a broadband network should not be able to cross subsidize the proposed network with tax dollars, income from other municipal or utility services, or below-market rate loans from the municipality. In addition, it should not be permitted to seek reimbursement for network-related expenses by attempting to include those costs in its parent-utility’s rate base. Services should only be provided by a separate operating entity with separate employees to minimize the risk of cross subsidization.

IV. Deliberative Process to Examine All Options: Before it moves forward with a GON, a municipal or government entity should first:

a. Issue a request for proposal (RFP) seeking provision of such service(s) by private provider(s). If no reasonable response(s) are received, the entity should then:

b. Seek a public-private partnership (PPP) thatminimizes government involvementand expenditures. If no reasonable response(s) are received, the entity should then:

c. Hold public hearings, and conduct in-depth inquiries to determine (i) the level of demand the proposed services (ii) the level of commitment to actually purchase the proposed services, and (iii) whether forecasted average annual revenues of the GON would exceed average annual costs by an amount necessary to meet bond obligations and repayment of loans or any other funding sources. Before proceeding further the entity should then:

d. Ensure that taxpayers are fully aware of the level of risk and cost of building a GON.

V. Level Playing Field: A municipality that competes with private entities to provide broadband, telephone, and/or video services, should not be afforded any advantages that are not available to all competitors in the local market.Accordingly, the municipality and any affiliate or private partner should adhere to all federal, state, and local laws, policies and requirements relating to: (i) service obligations, including franchise requirements; (ii) access to public rights of way and municipal utility poles and conduits; (iii) permitting; (iv) performance bonding; (v) reporting; and (vi) quality of service. In the event that changes or amendments are made to these policies in an effort to facilitate a GON’s deployment, then those same terms and conditions should be made available to all providers in the local market.

VI. Ensuretransparencyof Government Owned Networks for private sector and taxpayers:. A municipality, or its affiliate, engaged in the provision of advanced communications services shall demonstrate that average annual revenues of the GON exceed average annual costs by an amount necessary to meet bond obligations and repayment of any loans or other funding sources. Records demonstrating compliance with the requirements of this section shall be made available for inspection and copying by the public.

VII. Standing: Any person who believes that a locality or its affiliate are in violation of the above sections, or who is in the business of providing services within the locality, shall have the standing to bring an action in the circuit court for the Locality, to seek to require the locality to either comply, or cease to provide services, and no bond shall be required for injunctive relief against the Locality.

eshoo sponsor

BILL

2. H.R.2785 — 116th Congress (2019-2020)Community Broadband Act of 2019Sponsor: Rep. Eshoo, Anna G. [D-CA-18] (Introduced 05/16/2019) Cosponsors: (4)Committees: House - Energy and CommerceLatest Action: House - 05/16/2019 Referred to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. (All Actions):{:{Tracker: }:

This bill has the status Introduced

Here are the steps for Status of Legislation:

Introduced
Passed House
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To President
Became Law

BILL

3. H.R.2784 — 116th Congress (2019-2020)Clearing Local Impediments Makes Broadband Open to New Competition and EnhancementsSponsor: Rep. Eshoo, Anna G. [D-CA-18] (Introduced 05/16/2019) Cosponsors: (0)Committees: House - Energy and CommerceLatest Action: House - 05/16/2019 Referred to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. (All Actions):{:{Tracker: }:

This bill has the status Introduced

Here are the steps for Status of Legislation:

Introduced
Passed House
Passed Senate
To President
Became Law

5. H.R.2692 — 116th Congress (2019-2020)Broadband Conduit Deployment Act of 2019Sponsor: Rep. Eshoo, Anna G. [D-CA-18] (Introduced 05/14/2019) Cosponsors: (18)Committees: House - Transportation and InfrastructureLatest Action: House - 05/15/2019 Referred to the Subcommittee on Highways and Transit. (All Actions):{:{Tracker: }:

This bill has the status Introduced

Here are the steps for Status of Legislation:

Introduced
Passed House
Passed Senate
To President
Became Law