More on Verizon's Misinformation Campaign.

Yet another example of Verizon providing false information (thanks to Annie for passing this along):

A quote pulled from www.saschameinrath.com/node/117 (This piece of misinformation) from Verizon...

"When Asked, Many Voters Don't Want Municipal Networks In Illinois, voters in Geneva, Batavia and St. Charles defeated measures authorizing local networks for the second time in two years- even though the November 2003 questions specified that the cities would not be allowed to spend any tax revenues on the project. Batavia Mayor Jeff Schielke said, "Even if the referendum had passed, it would have been problematic for us to act on it, given our current situation." The cost had been estimated at $62 million."

First of all, the referendum led by citizens in which tax-backed financing was to be prohibited by the cities was in November 2004, not 2003. Mayor Schielke's statement, as written here, leads the reader to assume that municipal broadband is problematic. That's not the case. What is ACTUALLY problematic in this case is Batavia's Home Rule Status - this had nothing to do with broadband utility success stories across the United States. Also, the cost of the broadband utility was estimated at $62 million for the April 2003 referendum. The citizens could not do a complete feasibility study for the Nov. 2004 referendum, but capitol budget numbers were donated by UTI (who did the original feasibility study for the Tri-Cities in 2002)and the numbers were around $57 million. A drop in price to attract private investors.

Maybe Tri-City voters defeated the 2004 referendums because SBC and Comcast continued to bombard the public with misinformation that the taxpayer would still be on the hook if the utility "failed"? Maybe that was accomplished through the continuous message that municipal broadband was a "risky" venture. See all the examples of SBC and Comcast claiming that the taxpayers would still be held liable, even though, as Verizon points out so nicely here, that the questions "specified that the cities would not be allowed to spend any tax revenues on the project". Isn't that nice? I wonder what Verizon's argument against our referendums would've been since they realized the taxpayer was not going to be "left on the hook"?

As for some of the other cities listed by Verizon, Fiber For Our Future has listed many of those cities on our web site for years because SBC and Comcast first tried to discredit them as being failures (http://www.tricitybroadband.com/failures.htm )during our Tri-City Broadband Referendums of April 2003. I spoke to many of those cities over the years and have updated their successes as needed. If the heads of their departments don't know if they are succeeding in business and are still successfully providing services to their residents, then I don't know who we are supposed to believe? Their competition? Aren't the people successfully running their municipal utilities the experts in these cases? Who are the folks at SBC, Comcast, Verizon and the Heartland Institute to say that municipal broadband doesn't work? Apparently it does, and it is. Just because some voters in our area don't choose to have muni broadband as an option does not mean municipal broadband itself is a failure. That simply means those folks lose out on municipal broadband competition, a wonderful economic development tool, a choice for services, a chance for local service accountability, and a chance to develop a sense of community pride about their "hometown utility".

Annie Collins
Chairman
Fiber For Our Future
www.tricitybroadband.com
630.938.7630