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Content tagged with "transparency"
HB 2108 Opposition Bipartisan, Passes VA House
On February 7th, the Virginia House of Delegates voted 72 - 24 to pass HB 2108, otherwise known as "Byron’s Bad Broadband Bill." The text of the bill was a revised version substituted by Del. Kathy Byron after Governor Terry McAuliffe, local leaders across the state, and constituents very handily let her know that they did not want the bill to move forward. The bill now moves to the Senate.
Byron’s original “Broadband Deployment Act” has been whittled down to a bill that still adheres to its main purpose - to protect the telephone companies that keep Byron comfortable with campaign cash. There is no mention of deployment in the text of the new draft, but it does dictate that information from publicly owned networks be made open so anyone, including national providers, can use it to their advantage.
According to Frank Smith, President and CEO of the Roanoke Valley Broadband Authority (RVBA),
...Virginia Freedom of Information Act stipulations already codified in the Wireless Services Authority Act are sufficient and the new requirements in Byron’s bill could require the broadband authority to reveal proprietary information about its customers.
...
“There’s nothing hidden under the table,” Smith said. “The Wireless Services Authority Act is sufficient because you all did your job in 2003.”
The broadband authority’s rates, books and board meetings already are open to the public.
Private providers would never be required to publicize information that could jeopardize their operations. The objective here is to discourage public private partnerships and prevent local governments from investing in the type of infrastructure that would attract new entrants into the region.
Not "Us" vs. "Them"
HB 2108 Revised Passes Through Committee, Up For Vote In House Today
Republican Delegates in the Virginia House Labor and Commerce Committee advanced HB 2108 yesterday, despite opposition from constituents, local leaders, and members of the telecommunications industry. A revised version of Byron’s Bad Broadband Bill now heads to the House Floor today for a vote from the entire body.
A bill titled the “Virginia Broadband Deployment Act” by its sponsor now contains nothing about “deployment” but retains provisions forcing publicly owned networks to reveal proprietary information that limit competition. In the hearing yesterday, President and CEO of the Roanoke Valley Broadband Authority (RVBA) testified that this bill is overkill:
In front of the committee, Smith argued the Virginia Freedom of Information Act stipulations already codified in the Wireless Services Authority Act are sufficient and the new requirements in Byron’s bill could require the broadband authority to reveal proprietary information about its customers.
Under this bill, the broadband authority could have been forced to reveal information about Meridium — that GE Digital was planning to purchase the Roanoke-based company for $495 million, Smith said.
“There’s nothing hidden under the table,” Smith said. “The Wireless Services Authority Act is sufficient because you all did your job in 2003.”
The broadband authority’s rates, books and board meetings already are open to the public.
Our Christopher Mitchell noted that the attempt to force publicly owned networks into a state of "ultra-transparency" was also a thinly veiled attempt to ward off competition from potential public-private partnerships:
Calories? Carbs? Data Caps? ISP Nutrition Labels From BroadbandSearch
Depending on where you live, you may be able to choose between two or three big name ISPs. No matter which one you ultimately select, you might face some difficulty obtaining the kind of service you deserve. If you know what to expect, it’s easier to prepare yourself and, in the event you DO have a choice, pick the one that’s right for you.
BroadbandSearch has likened transparency in the telecommunications industry to nutrition information on food packaging. They have produced a set of “Nutrition Labels” for your Internet access diet.
They describe the project:
We believe that anything that makes buying broadband Internet service easier is a good thing, and for that reason we've created these ready-made broadband nutrition labels to help you choose from the biggest providers in the nation.
Here is Comcast’s Xfinity label, a big provider in our Minneapolis area.
Of course, rates from Xfinity and other providers vary from place to place and they offer introductory deals that depend on a number of factors. For more on how BroadbandSearch obtained their data, check out their Sources page.
Now that the FCC’s network neutrality rules have been challenged and upheld in the Appellate Court, providers are required to be more transparent. These labels can help them share the information that subscribers need to make informed decisions. Check out the complete set at BroadbandSearch.
Kitsap County Asks Residents Where to Expand
The Kitsap Public Utility District (KPUD) is turning to residents to plot the course for expansion, reports the Central Kitsap Reporter. In order to find out where the greatest interest lies in municipal fiber connectivity, KPUD will be using the COS Service Zones survey system.
“Since this is a public network, we do not feel comfortable relying on anecdotal data to determine the next phase for broadband expansion,” said Bob Hunter, Kitsap PUD General Manager. “What’s most appealing with the COS Service Zones is that it enables us to let the gathering and push come from the citizens. We want to be sure the residents are driving this.”
We have reported on the KPUD, mostly as it related to other stories. The publicly owned open access fiber network in Kitsap County Washington began providing wholesale only service in 2000. The goal was to provide better connectivity to public facilities and improve emergency communications and the KPUD has reached that goal.
Readers will remember Seth, who almost had to sell his Internet-less dream home due to mapping errors and the general failures at Comcast. When he approached the KPUD, they found a way to bring him an Internet connection. An increasing number of residents have asked the agency to find a way to serve their homes. Currently, PUDs in Washington are prohibited by state law from offering retail service, which can limit financially-viable investments, but Kitsap is trying to get a sense of the size of the interest.
The COS Service Zones system will help KPUD plan for any potential buildout by determining where customers are most likely to subscribe. The system will also allow the public to see where the KPUD plans to expand as a result of the survey.
Kitsap County residents can go to the website kpud.servicezones.net to fill out the online survey.
Utah's Xmission Keeps Customer Data Private
We have not wirtten much on the NSA spying scandal but encountered a recent article in the Guardian that our readers can appreciate. Rory Carroll reports that Xmission, one of the local Internet service providers working with UTOPIA, has long refused to turn over private data to local, state and federal officials absent a proper warrant.
"I would tell them I didn't need to respond if they didn't have a warrant, that (to do so) wouldn't be constitutional," the founder and chief executive, Pete Ashdown, said in an interview at his Salt Lake City headquarters.
Since 1998 he rejected dozens of law enforcement requests, including Department of Justice subpoenas, on the grounds they violated the US constitution and state law. "I would tell them, please send us a warrant, and then they'd just drop it."
Xmission recently published a transparency report, which the Electronic Freedom Foundation referred to as "one of the most transparent we've seen."
We spoke with Pete Ashdown of Xmission last year in the third episode of our podcast and hold him and his firm in high esteem.
Unlike large, distant corporate providers focused on short term profit, local providers like Xmission understand the value of accountability and character. Big corporations are generally more interested in winning big government contracts than protecting the rights of their subscribers.
[Insertion by editor Christopher:] After all, what does Comcast care if I hate its assistance in shredding the Constitution, it isn't like I have another choice for high speed Internet access in my home.[end Insertion]
According to Ashdown:
The agency's online snooping betrayed public trust, he said. "Post 9/11 paranoia has turned this into a surveillance state. It's not healthy."
MI-Connection Shows Solid Growth in North Carolina
Ever since the towns of Mooresville and Davidson purchased and began fixing the failed Adelphia franchise in their part of North Carolina, private sector purists have tried to portray their efforts as a disaster. MI-Connection has had some serious difficulties amid higher than expected costs, but just reported a promising increase in revenues.
At their monthly board meeting at Davidson’s Town Hall on September 22, Transition Manager David Auger said that, from July through September, the system had increased its voice customers by 48 percent over the first quarter last year, its video customers by 296 percent and its data customers by 2,248 percent. 83 days of the gains, said Auger at the time, were actual, and 9 were projected, since September was not yet over. The final customer numbers, which the system released today, showed that the last few days of September growth activity exceeded projections: voice customers grew by 60 percent over the first quarter last year, video customers by 319 percent, and data customers by 2257 percent.This network was targeted time and time again by Time Warner Cable and its allies in pushing the anti-competitive bill that has effectively stopped any investment in next-generation networks in the state by killing local authority to make broadband investments. They regularly blamed the network's problems on the local governments owning it while providing no context -- the network was in terrible shape because its prior private-sector owner saw little reason to invest in it. The network is now far superior because the local governments care more about encouraging economic development and creating local jobs than producing a quick profit for out-of-state shareholders. As MI-Connection continues to correct its problems, Davidson's government is remarkably open and transparent. You can read just about all the documents relating to the network, finances, and history here.
Citibank Finally Files Suit Against Burlington Telecom
After more than a year of expecting Citibank to file suit against Burlington, they finally did. Burlington Telecom, a muni FTTH network, now illustrates the worst case scenario for muni broadband. After the founder of the network left following disagreements with the Mayor, the Mayor's Administration ran the network into the ground (leading us to recently publish the report "Learning from Burlington Telecom: Some Lessons for Community Networks."
Burlington had financed its network with a municipal capital lease, rather than the more commonly used revenue bonds, meaning that the actual network secures the loan. In this arrangement, the network is technically owned by the lender (Citi) and Burlington leased it. So when Burlington decided to stop paying the lease for the network, it became Citi's problem.
And Citi had a lot of problems due to the games massive banks were playing having killed the economy. BT became just one more non-performing asset. They did nothing while the City continued to run the network without making lease payments. Now Citi is suing for the world (this is how these things work) but it isn't clear that Citi can actually get what it demands (the State has a say in whether the network simply gets shut down, which Citi is presently asking for). And if the network did get shut down, Citi would be in a worse position to recover any of its losses because the value of the network is far greater than the sum of its parts.
State law says that losses from a public telecom venture cannot be carried by taxpayers, which is where we return to an interesting document prepared by the Mayor's Administration.
FCC on Net Neutrality: More Bush than Obama
Whenever the discussion of Network Neutrality comes up, we like to remind everyone that when the network is locally owned and accountable to the community, anti-subscriber discrimination is not a problem. That said, we are strong supporters of proper safeguards to ensure massive companies like AT&T cannot abuse their market power and discourage innovation.
As the FCC prepares to discuss a half measure to preserve parts of the open Internet, a number of us have been frustrated that while we cannot read the proposal, AT&T appears to be helping write it. Karl Bode's take:
[T]he question shouldn't be whether or not consumers can now view a neutrality proposal after it was hashed out in private meetings (predominately with only the largest, wealthiest carriers), it should be: why weren't consumers absolutely integral in crafting it? AT&T has met with the FCC half a dozen times in the course of three weeks and likely knows precisely what's in this plan -- do you?We've written to FCC Commissioners to make it clear that they must not compromise on the future of the open Internet. You should too. Photo used under Creative Commons license from AdamWillis.
Rules Matter - Network Neutrality and Transparency
I was briefly checking out the Open Internet Workshop when I got into a short tweet-argument with someone I did not know. Bear with me as I recount the discussion then explain why I think it worth delving into for a post. This person caught my attention by tweeting, "Which means the Net is already open, right?"
I responded, "Yes Internet is open. Trying to keep it that way. Idea that net neutrality is 'new' is absurd."
Shortly thereafter, I got a response that fits a standard script: "Then how about proving actual harm first? Burden of proof to hand Net to govt is on you guys."
I responded, "Comcast, RCN, Cox block applications ... why must we wait for you to break the Net further to fix it?"
The final response was that the market forces will solve the problem and my "examples are outdated."
I later discovered that I was wasting time responding to someone from an astroturf think tank. Odds are that this person was simultaneously tweeting that cigarette smoking is not correlated with cancer and that burning coal actually cleans the air.
But this is a common argument from those who want to allow companies like Comcast and AT&T to tell users what sites they can visit and what applications they can use. Some "free market" advocate (who is actually defending firms with serious market power, the antithesis of a free market) says that no private network owner would violate network neutrality. Then, when presented with companies that have violated network neutrality, the response is invariably that those are "old" examples" or somehow not relevant.
To sum up:
Person A: No company would violate network neutrality. Person B: What about Comcast, Cox, RCN, and the famous Madison River Communication? Person A: Those don't count.Aside from the absurdity, the larger problem is that we do not always know when companies are violating network neutrality. Comcast was violating network neutrality for at least a year before tech journalists successfully outed the practice. Over the course of that year, many subscribers called Comcast and asked why they were having problems with certain applications. Comcast lied to them and said the company was not interfering with them. When finally backed into a corner with incontrovertible evidence, it admitted it was.
Rules Matter - Burlington Telecom
As someone who has long researched and followed developments in Burlington Telecom (BT), the city-owned triple-play full fiber-to-the-home network in Vermont, recent developments between BT and the Mayor's office have been deeply disappointing. For those who haven't heard, BT is in the middle of a major controversy -- and it is hard to tell just what is going on (for background prior to current problems, read my Burlington Telecom Case Study and Fact Sheet).
I have wanted to comment on the situation for many weeks but have been waiting as each day seems offer another piece of the BT puzzle. I'll be offering more commentary about it in the future. However, I do not want to the let the current problems lend any credence to the idea that BT has failed. BT is caught in the middle of a political controversy around the Mayor but should continue providing the best telecom services available in the community.
BT has two main problems currently:
- It has not passed the entire city within the timeline to which it agreed in receiving its Certificate of Public Good (CPG)
- BT has, apparently, borrowed $17 million from the city's pool (used generally for short-term financing of projects) in contravention of its CPG which states that any money borrowed from the City must be paid back within 60 days. This CPG condition makes running a network more difficult for BT than it would for a company like Comcast - who can readily self-finance short-term borrowing. Across the U.S., communities have to deal with laws and regulations that benefit private companies over public networks. When the economy fell apart, BT was unable to refinance its debt to continue its expansion and chose to borrow from the City to continue connecting new customers. This was the right decision - the CPG did not anticipate such conditions and the terms for outside financing in late 2008 were wretched.