Outing Astroturf Telecom Organizations (a.k.a. Simulacrums of the Public Interest)

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Esme Vos has uncovered (and has available for download) the model bill for state legislatures to ban municipal broadband: The inestimable Vos has emerged as a firebrand for fighting back the rhetoric of incumbent teleopolies that have put out the meme that there are unfair tax breaks and unfair advantages that a municipal operation has over private enterprise. This ignores the subsidies provided--estimated at over $700 per person in Pennsylvania over the last 10 years of a failed Verizon development plan, non-refundable--and "taxes" that telcos and cable companies are often able to collect for their own coffers. Vos now posts the bill that someone--she'd like to know the individual--wrote to distribute to various legislatures under the guise of competition. Competition means not taking money from taxpayers, charging them by overpriced tariffs defended to the death, collecting and keeping funds intended for rural or impoverished citizens to have universal access, and fighting for the right to squeeze the pipes to prevent interesting competitive services from rising. Competition does mean building neutral infrastructure paid for by access fees that allow all comers to compete on a level playing field to let the market determine the best use of resources. It's strange how businesses that hate regulation in theory love how it supports their business models. Also strange how many folks who claim to want real markets only really want big businesses to be able to dictate to their markets what things cost. I looked at the innards of the Word doc that Esme posted, but the only secret information it contains is about her computer, not any previous computers. On Monday morning, she posted the list of board members of the American Legislative Exchange Council, the group behind the model legislation. Update: Sascha Meinrath calls astroturf on three organizations, including ALEC, that are behind anti-municipal telco/cable/telecom service bills, pointing out that their boards' members are mostly made up of folks that more likely have their own companies' interests at heart despite the mission statements.......

It doesn't matter who they are; we know why they are doing it and they are doing it NOW. Whomever gets off the first shot usually wins in the court of public opinion. And we all know how hard it is hard to fight the spector of bad municipal management and government subsidies in these times.

Mixing metaphors for breakfast,
K

I've just posted some more information on the Heartland Institute -- I think it's incredibly enlightening who's funding that organization. It's sort of a who's who of corporate yuckiness...

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To make it easier for state legislatures to pass anti-municipal broadband laws, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has a......

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The NewStandard, an online progressive news service, is running a major article series on Wi-Fi and grassroots community networking. It......

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BusinessWeek's Tech Beat blog says muni bad, muni fall down and go boom: The fine folks at BusinessWeek seem to have fallen for tropes, sock puppets, and strawmen. In this post, they say that Philly probably shouldn't get into the business of offering municipal wireless Internet access because other municipalities have failed and shouldn't cities be putting their money elsewhere? The report they cite, not yet out, is from the New Millennium Research Council which is a sock puppet for the incumbent telecommunications interests. The Council, with three listed board members, is related to several other institutions that serve as ostensibly disinterested mouthpieces for industries that want less regulation and are afraid to speak directly to that point. Sascha Meinrath unearthed the connections at three institutes a few weeks ago. In fact, I believe I received an executive summary of this report co-branded with The Heartland Institute a few weeks ago aimed at op-ed pages. BusinessWeek believes the anti-municipal hype, which is that Philly is going to round up garbagemen and street cleaners and put them to work building out and maintaining the network. I exaggerate. But it's been clear for months that Philly is talking about finding a commercial, private partner which will build and run the network for the city on a contract basis, just as many cities don't empty the garbage themselves but hire firms (which can be fired) to do so. In the report I believe BusinessWeek refers to, several strawmen are set up, including the fact that two municipal broadband projects--one in Tacoma and one in Ashland--have failed to meet goals and have gone overbudget. But the "report" disregards, conveniently, that these two projects were in small, struggling cities trying to reinvent themselves as more than just lumber-smell central (Tacoma) and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (Ashland). They were ahead of the curve, deploying fiber optic connections without necessarily having clear goals. They wanted to attract more business. Ashland's situation is particularly complicated. The author conveniently ignores Palo Alto, an early fiber-optic deployer, and I have no idea whether that project was vastly successful or a huge failure. Based on what I know about the growth of Internet businesses around Palo Alto that have remained post dotcom bubble, it seems that fiber might actually attract business. Finally, we're talking about wireless here: no need to tear up the streets again and again. No need to......

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Harold Feld has posted an excellent and detailed analysis of the Indiana bill (HB 1148) that would kill municipal broadband......