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AT&T Takes Its Astroturf Show on the Road, Midwest Edition

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As AT&T tries to buy out its competition via the T-Mobile merger, it has sent out its allies and minions to push the company line in communities around the country. Here are two events in Minnesota and Wisconsin you should be aware of. On Monday, October 3rd, the Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota is going to host a debate between Amalia Deloney (MAG-Net Coordinator and friend of MuniNetworks.org) and Former Congressman Rick Boucher on the subject of AT&T's attempt to buy T-Mobile (which just happens to be the low cost provider in the wireless space). A few short years ago, one would have expected Rick Boucher to champion opposition to this anti-competitive merger, but alas, the good citizens of his district rewarded his many years of hard work in Congress by voting for his opponent in the last election. As one often expects to see in DC, Rick took a new job and now works for a law firm with AT&T as a client. Suddenly Rick Boucher is the Honorary Chairman of the "Internet Innovation Alliance," a group that has a name that sounds like he should head it. But the IIA is little more than a puppet for AT&T and like interests. They use it as part of their astroturf campaigns to further AT&T's agenda -- ensuring that most Americans are stuck using a network designed for AT&T's interests rather than the public interest. We wish Amalia the best in the debate. This is a far better program than the last time AT&T came to the U's Public Policy school, which featured a blatantly one-sided program attacking inter-carrier compensation rules that have been essential for supporting rural network investment. If you want to attend, you should RSVP to the Center for Science and Technology Public Policy. It will be at 2:00 in the Wilkins Room.
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AT&T Stumbles in Purchase of "Grassroots" Support

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Public interest advocates in the telecom arena have long been frustrated with a parade of large, powerful non-profit organizations blindly supporting the positions of powerful telecom companies that just happen to make large donations to those non-profits. A story this week confirmed the worst of our suppositions: these groups often have little idea of what they are supporting. The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation seemed pretty enthused about the AT&T T-Mobile takeover a few weeks ago. Odd for GLAAD to be excited about its constituency paying higher prices for wireless services, but whatever. Until a few days ago, when we got a look behind the scenes -- AT&T wrote their statement and it was simply signed by the organization's President -- who apparently had no idea what it was about. But he knew that AT&T gives big money to the org. He has since resigned. Around the time that we learned of the GLAAD shenanigans, we learned how super excited Cattle Ranchers are for the AT&T takeover of T-Mobile. There is absolutely no evidence to suggest this merger will do anything for rural residents but increase the prices they pay. There is no shortage of spectrum in rural areas so T-Mobile offers nothing AT&T cannot do on its own. And while the Cattle Ranchers are clamoring for higher monthly prices from AT&T, the single best hope for rapidly expanding wireless broadband access in rural areas - the unlicensed white spaces - is being quietly killed. Ironic, ain't it? I have long supported the efforts of the Media Action Grassroots, which works to organize and educate people about essential issues in telecom and media. They work with real people and represent real people's interests all the time, not just when it doesn't conflict with a big donor.
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Another Example of Regulatory Capture

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As you observe (or hopefully, participate in), the debates around network neutrality or universal service fund reform, remember that many of the loudest voices in support of industry positions are likely to be astroturf front groups.  Between extremely well-financed astroturf organizations and industry-captured regulatory agencies, creating good policy that benefits the public is hard work.  It helps to study how industry has gamed the FCC in the past -- as documented by David Rosen and Bruce Kushnick in a recent Alternet article.

At the risk of being sarcastic, we can thank the FCC for working with the industry to make our phone bills to easy to read - an example is available here.

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Opelika Votes Yes, Will Build Smart-Grid Fiber Network

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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: This video is no longer available. 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. The day before the election, Stop the Cap! ran a fantastic article about Charter's manufactured opposition to the community 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.
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Rules Matter - Network Neutrality and Transparency

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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.
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More Astroturfing Shenanigans

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I hesitate to say, "know your enemy," because the carriers should not be our enemy. There are many ways these carriers can continue profiting even without damaging America's standing in international broadband rankings. However, they are instead attacking our efforts to regain parity with peer nations by forming astroturf groups to argue that only they can save us from the problems their lack of investment have created - and then only by reducing regulations on them. How convenient for them... Thanks to Karl Bode for discussing how they operate:
This claim that their membership list is stocked with "consumer groups" turns out to be as bogus as their stated goals, given there's not a single viable consumer advocacy firm among the group's 100 members. BfA [Broadband for America] does, however, include dozens of "co-opted" minority, disability and other industry-funded groups. Said groups are used by lobbyists to pretend the interests and opinions presented to lawmakers have broad public support, and aren't just the monotonal whining of a handful of corporations interested solely in protecting revenues. For example, a group that needs funding for a new events center will agree to parrot Verizon policy positions in public press releases. The National Association of the Deaf [NAD] did as much for the baby bells when Verizon and AT&T were trying to eviscerate existing TV laws, even though the law the group was busy cheerfully supporting resulted in cherry-picked next-generation broadband deployment for NAD's constituents.
Photo used under Creative Commons license - thanks to flickr's limonada.
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More Short Shots

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There are so many interesting articles recently (some are actually a bit older than recent, I guess).

And finally, Timothy Karr at Free Press has been unmasking astroturf groups funded by major carriers. Learn more with this fun widget (available here).

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Wolves in Sheep's Clothing

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From Common Cause report description: Cable, telephone and Internet industry giants are fiercely lobbying, using every tool at their disposal to gain a competitive advantage in telecom reform legislation. Some of those tools are easy to spot - campaign contributions, television ads that run only inside the Beltway, and meetings with influential members of Congress. Other tactics are more insidious. One of the underhanded tactics increasingly being used by telecom companies is "Astroturf lobbying" -- creating front groups that try to mimic true grassroots, but that are all about corporate money, not citizen power. Another industry approach is to fund "think tanks" and nonprofit groups with innocuous sounding names to write reports and policy papers. These groups accept subsidies or grants from corporate interests to lobby or produce research when they normally might not, but too often fail to disclose the connection between their policy positions and their bank accounts.
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