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Longmont Fiber Ring Referendum
Residents in Longmont, Colorado are preparing for a municipal referendum to utilize an existing fiber optic network.
The referendum is set for Tuesday, November 1, 2011.
At issue is how the city can use a ring of fiber-optic cables it built around the city in the late 90's as part of its electrical infrastructure. Much of the capacity on the ring remains unused but the city requires approval of the voters in a referendum before it can offer services to local businesses -- which will encourage economic development by creating more telecommunications choices in the community for businesses and residents (some background here).
This is referendum question 2A:
Ballot Question 2A: Without increasing taxes, shall the citizens of the City of Longmont, Colorado, re-establish their City's right to provide all services restricted since 2005 by Title 29, article 27 of the Colorado Revised Statutes, described as "advanced services," "telecommunications services" and "cable television services," including any new and improved high bandwidth services based on future technologies, utilizing community owned infrastructure including but not limited to the existing fiber optic network, either directly or indirectly with public or private sector partners, to potential subscribers that may include telecommunications service providers, residential or commercial users within the City and the service area of the City's electric utility enterprise?
Big cable and telco operators have wasted no time in spreading fear and false information to scare voters into voting against using a valuable asset owned by the community. When the community organized a debate for the end of September, the only people willing to defend Comcast's position came from far outside the community to do it.
Trying to get in the mind of the big incumbents of Longmont, we developed this cartoon (the style is an homage to the "Get Your War On" comic).
Longmont Referendum Take Two: It Starts With a Debate
As we previously noted, the city of Longmont, Colorado, is preparing for a referendum to allow the City to offer telecommunications services to local businesses and residents using a fiber ring it built long ago. This is due to a 2005 law (the "Qwest" law) that was pushed through the Colorado Legislature by incumbents seeking to prevent competition.
That law has succeeded -- most Colorado communities can only choose between slow DSL from the incumbent telephone company and comparatively faster services from the incumbent cable company. And when Longmont last attempted to pass a referendum to share its fiber infrastructure with local businesses, Comcast and Qwest swamped the town with unprecedented sums to confuse residents -- leading to the referendum failure with 44% voting yes.
But after the referendum passed and people had time to better understand the issue, many who voted against it realized they had been duped. We have seen the same dynamic elsewhere -- in Windom, MN, for example, where the second referendum succeeded. WindomNet has since saved a number of jobs and is expanding to eight other underserved rural communities around it.
Longmont built its fiber ring in the late 90's but it still has a lot of unused capacity that could be used to attract economic development if the publicly owned power utility were authorized to offer services to businesses. Without this authority, the community has a valuable asset that they are forced to leave unused -- even as local businesses could benefit greatly from it.
The Longmont Times-Call outlined the situation in July:
Without that vote, the city can't let homes or businesses use that fiber without a vote, thanks to a 2005 state law. It's a fight the city's lost once before in 2009, when opponents -- including the Colorado Cable Telecommunications Association -- spent $245,513 to urge the measure's defeat. This time out, there's a different tack. The city has been underlining in discussions that the measure would "restore its rights" to provide telecommunications service.
AT&T CEO Admits DSL is Obsolete
In a Q&A following a speech at the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, AT&T CEO Randal Stephenson candidly called DSL obsolete. This echoes not only our view, but that of hundreds of communities who have built their own networks upon realizing they cannot be competitive in the modern world with DSL.
Interestingly, AT&T still has millions of customers that use its DSL product. And it has announced its super-DSL offering called U-Verse is finished -- no doubt surprising many state-house policymakers that AT&T had convinced they would invest in communities.
The context of his comment was that DSL is no longer competitive with cable in broadband capacity (and often reliability) -- something we documented in our video comparing different types of networks. We would argue that U-Verse itself is not competitive with cable due to its greatly constrained upstream speeds -- even worse than cable networks typically experience.
So, to recap -- we have yet another admission from the private sector that it is delivering obsolete broadband services to our communities. How can there be any surprise that so many more communities are considering building their own networks to create economic develop, increase quality of life, and generally be competitive in the digital economy.
If AT&T can barely keep up with the investment necessary for our communities, how can far less profitable companies like CenturyLink and Frontier? They can't. But that doesn't stop them from advertising the hell out of their obsolete networks. Smart communities will choose self-determination rather than betting on last-generation networks run by distant, unaccountable corporations.
Longmont Considers Second Vote on Community Fiber Network
Colorado requires a referendum before a local government can build a broadband network as a result of a 2005 law pushed by Qwest to prevent communities from building next-generation networks. So when Longmont wanted to expand its fiber ring to offer residential and business services, they put it to a vote.
They lost with only 44% supporting the measure. But now, more people understand the issue and the community is considering voting again.
We saw the same dynamic in Windom, Minnesota. Almost ten years ago, Windom held a vote to build a muni FTTH network and it failed to gain the Minnesota-required 65% supermajority. After the vote, a number of people wanted to revote because they realized they had been conned by the incumbent phone provider (ahem… Qwest) and only truly understood the issue after the vote had occurred.
City officials wanted no part of another referendum but community champions eventually prevailed and they had a second vote that authorized the community to build the network.
We'll see if Longmont follows suit. An article discussing the re-vote notes that Comcast and Qwest have dumped unprecedented sums into preventing the community from having a new choice:
The first attempt at getting that approval didn't go so well in 2009. According to city records, opponents -- including the Colorado Cable Telecommunications Association -- spent $245,513 to defeat that ballot measure, the largest amount ever spent on a Longmont city election. By contrast, the city legally couldn't campaign on its own behalf, and the explanations that were out there didn't explain well, according to Longmont Power & Communications director Tom Roiniotis.The cable and phone companies created an astroturf group called "No Blank Check" that then used standard fear, uncertainty, and doubt tactics to spread misinformation around the community.
New Video: Community Fiber Networks Better than Phone, Cable Networks
Update: You can also watch the video over at the Huffington Post, in our first post as a HuffPo blogger.
While we were battling Time Warner Cable to preserve local authority in North Carolina, we developed a video comparing community fiber networks to incumbent DSL and cable networks to demonstration the incredible superiority of community networks.
We have updated the video for a national audience rather than a North Carolina-specific approach because community fiber networks around the country are similarly superior to incumbent offerings. And community networks around the country are threatened by massive corporations lobbying them out of existence in state legislatures.
Feel free to send feedback - especially suggestions for improvement - to broadband@muninetworks.org.
Without further ado, here is the new video comparing community fiber networks to big incumbent providers:
Time Warner Cable Monopoly Protection Act Heads to North Carolina Governor
It took far more longer than expected, due to the many phone calls from concerned citizens opposing it, but Time Warner Cable's investments in the North Carolina Legislature have finally paid off. A bill that will crush its only potential broadband competition in the state is sitting on the Governor's desk. We join with SEATOA, the vast majority of businesses in North Carolina who depend on broadband, and local communities in calling on the Governor to veto it.
The NC House had to approve it again due to changes made in the Senate -- including a change that absolutely gutted the rural exemption for communities who are lacking access broadband access to the Internet. Representative Avila and other sponsors have made many promises throughout this process that they never intended to hold true to.
SEATOA has long organized to preserve local authority in this matter and reported:
We made certain Rep. Avila understood that that clarification gutted the exemption and she did not care. e-NC reports that the private sector providers are permitted to report an entire Census Block as having access to internet, if only one home in the block actually has it. In essence, North Carolina will have no "unserved areas" or communities will have to do their own door to door surveys, an expensive and monumental feat.But what do you expect from elected officials who calls something a "level field" while bragging that they are crafting rules (such as limited service territories) that only apply to the community networks, which already operate at a disadvantage to a $19 billion a year competitor like bill author Time Warner Cable? When the bill passed the Senate, a newspaper in Davidson noted its unequal approach that further handicapped communities:
Davidson Mayor John Woods said Tuesday MI-Connection deserves to be treated the same as private companies. “We strongly object to the territory limits that this bill will impose on MI-Connection which are not imposed on other broadband providers. In addition, MI-Connection would remain subject to open meeting laws, which do not apply to those other providers,” he said. Mr. Venzon also said local governments already face other rules that put them at a disadvantage to private competitors, including the requirement to operate under the N.C. Public Records Law.
Another Telecom Exec Calls for Less Competition
As part of our continuing effort to shed light on the tendency of privately owned telcos and cablecos to consolidate rather than compete, we would like to note comments from Qwest's Chief Financial Officer. Stop the Cap! has the story:
Chief Financial Officer Joe Euteneuer said the time was right for Qwest to sell operations in the north-central and mountain west region because there were too many competitors in the marketplace. Euteneuer said the telecommunications market needs to resemble the cable-TV business, which has been heavily concentrated into two huge powerhouses — Comcast and Time Warner Cable.So not only do these executives think there is too much competition (find me a subscriber who believes that!), but believes we should have less and less competition moving forward. These folks are incredibly candid about their plans to diminish what little competition exists -- perhaps because the FCC has made it clear that it plans to take no actions to encourage further competition. The National Broadband Plan pretty much ignores this problem, perhaps its biggest failing. For those of us who care about the future of broadband and the communities that increasingly depend upon it, the spectre of even larger privately-owned incumbent providers (with increasingly distant headquarters) is daunting. Bigger and bigger incumbents mean it is that much harder to build better networks that will compete with them. These massive companies cross-subsidize their operations to dramatically cut rates in newly competitive areas specifically to drive out new competitors (public and private). Larger companies have greater advantages for securing discounts on key inputs, allowing them to offer lower prices than communities are naturally able. This is yet more evidence that the private-company approach to broadband infrastructure is bankrupt. If we are destined to have only a few entities owning the networks on which we depend, those entities must be directly accountable to the communities, rather than focused solely on increasing profits every year.