Follow That Porkulus
This made my blood boil. John Dunbar writes at American U's Investigative Reporting Workshop that lobbyists are keeping the public in the dark about broadband:
The government is spending up to $350 million of taxpayer money to create a map that will show where there is high-speed Internet service in the United States and where there is not.Despite the large expenditure of taxpayer funds, it will display no information on price or subscriber numbers. Internet connection speeds will be averaged over an entire metropolitan area and an as-yet unknown portion of the data collected to make the map will be off-limits to the public.
And in an odd twist, state grantees getting paid to collect the information are expected to get some of their data from the Federal Communications Commission, begging the question - why not require the FCC to create the map and save $350 million?
The mapping program is being paid for by the Obama administration's 2009 stimulus package, which includes $7.2 billion for broadband projects. The text of the plan, though, comes from a different piece of legislation: the Broadband Data Improvement Act, a 2008 law passed by a Democratic Congress and signed by Republican president, George W. Bush.
The lack of a requirement for robust, public data in the legislation is no accident.
It is a testament to the lobbying power of the nation's providers of high-speed Internet service, which for the past decade have stifled government efforts to collect and make public data that could help the nation determine the width and depth of the so-called digital divide.
Here's telecom analyst Bruce Kushnick at Nieman Watchdog on how we're all being rooked good by the cable monopolies:
AT&T and Verizon claim there's plenty of competition, but you can't select your own Internet provider over the broadband networks and local phone prices have gone up -- 90% in New York and New Jersey, for example -- over the last 5 years. If there was competition, prices couldn't increase like that. The absence of competition has also raised Net Neutrality issues, as a provider's ability to block or degrade or favor its own service over others wouldn't be a problem if you could simply leave and go somewhere else.
But the real kicker is this: By 2010, America should already have been rewired. Taxpayers have spent about $320 billion for fiber-based networks since the 1990s but have nothing to show for it. In fact, in many states, all schools, libraries and hospitals should have been rewired with fiber optic service as part of changes to state laws that gave AT&T and Verizon billions per state to remove the old copper wiring with new fiber optic wiring. Worse, the money is still being collected today in the form of rate increases, tax breaks and other perks the companies got.
So what now? The FCC's plan is to increase your taxes yet again, by adding broadband to the Universal Service Fund Tax -- rewarding the same companies that harmed you by giving them more of your money and a free pass....No one is investigating the monies currently or previously collected by AT&T, Verizon et al, nor their failure to properly upgrade the utility phone networks they were paid to upgrade. No one is going to confront the 900-pound gorillas. There will be no mention of serious competition, but there will be billions more for the companies that already overcharged you. The FCC's plan is a vision of the year 2020 that is antiquated today.
With the 2020 remark, he's talking about the very-high-speed broadband that other countries have today -- with our goal to match them being a decade out.
Doesn't anybody understand that this and so much other lobbyist-driven sleaze, as of late, has far-reaching implications for our country's survival?
Helloooo? Helloooo? Anybody out there?
My phone bill has gone up, but it is all in taxes. Well, that and I can no longer get the great LD plan I had. $5/year but a minimumm of $.50/min. I never used it...I always called LD on my cell. Oh well.
The Former Banker at March 18, 2010 12:48 AM
Typical, greedy corporate scum grabbing unconstitutional federal funds and misusing them. Nothing to see here...
mpetrie98 at March 18, 2010 3:14 AM
This is strategic - America is already a heavily service-oriented economy.
It's amazing to me that Israel has a more competitive market and/or better managed gov't oversight of internet services than the US.
Only about 20 years ago, we had a gov't. monopoly phone company - and typical month-long waits for a new phone line, etc. I remember as a visiting student having to buy special tokens at the post office for the antiquated pay phones.
Israel simultaneously privatized landline while implementing free-market bidding for cellular and internet infrastructure. We have Motorola, Orange, and Cellcom competing for consumer/business cellular, and major network players like France Telecom competing to implement parts of our telecoms infrastructure.
I technically live in the West Bank - and I have reaonably-price ADSL line, cellular coverage, and satellite-based cable in my exurban village.
I don't doubt for a minute that this contributed to our hi-tech booms over the past decades.
Orange's presence alone has revolutionized the Israeli cultural attitude to customer service - in customer expectations, understanding its business value, and execution.
And I am amazed at the stories from my friends back in the States.
Ben-David at March 18, 2010 3:54 AM
We've got plenty of competition here. You can choose from the big phone company that doesn't give a fuck or the cable company that doesn't give a fuck.
Same with cell phones. I've got at least 4 providers in my area, and they all suck.
Competition isn't always an impetus to improve. Sometimes it's just impetus to fuck harder.
brian at March 18, 2010 4:43 AM
side note: the people that whine about how much better broadband is in, say, Korea than here are missing some important context:
1) our phone system covers a much larger land mass
2) our phone system is nearly a half-century older than theirs.
We've managed to keep the infrastructure active through all the new technology, for which I suppose I can give props.
brian at March 18, 2010 4:45 AM
Just more of the crony capitalism we mistake for free market capitalism. When crony capitalism works against us and in favor of the well-connected, as it inevitably does, those who don't like capitalism at all are quick to cite these cases as some kind of failure of free-market capitalism, as part of their argument for the necessity of nanny state control of everything. When, in fact, free-market capitalism, where the government stands back, does not play favorites, and intervenes only when someone's rights are violated, has actually never been tried. Best example today: health care.
cpabroker at March 18, 2010 5:21 AM
It is the same with electric and cable companies. In order to get electricty to your home in my county, you MUST go through FP&L. There are other companies that CAN provide electrical services, but only FP&L is ALLOWED to. They have a monoploy on the market down here and no one else is allowed to even compete. So, we have no choice but to pay thier rates, which increase by a ridiculous amount regularly. The increases are suppossed to make our emergency services better, ideally for Hurricane season but so far, all we have seen is squat. In fact, they just recently raised our rates and then did a series of layoffs at the company. Now, they have less employees on the ground to provide the emergency services we are paying the rate hike for and yet, I am still being charged that extra bit of money every month.
Sabrina at March 18, 2010 8:22 AM
This burns me too. If I want broadband, I have to use Comcast. DSL, Qwest (and Qwest is the devil around here, let me tell you).
Whatever happened to not allowing monopolies? I should be able to pick and choose who I want to provide service to me, not just get stuck with whatever fatcat company got in first and took over.
Ann at March 18, 2010 8:37 AM
@Ann -
You're stuck with the physical reality of delivery.
Since power, gas, water, phone, and cable are all delivered by physical media, and there is a limited amount of space upon which to place very expensive transmission lines/pipes. It's possible to do what has been done (by fiat, no less) for electrical by saying that the transmission lines are owned by one entity who must lease transmission on them to competitive generators, or that the telephone company must allow other providers to send signal on their networks.
But those solutions are simply the government telling the owner (and usually the ones who financed the infrastructure) that they must now take a haircut on the costs of development to allow someone to undercut them on their own network.
Unlike Korea (I'm guessing, if I'm wrong, substitute an appropriate nation) where the lines are all owned by the government, we have private ownership of the infrastructure here. Wireless and satellite are really the only areas for true competitive service delivery since the infrastructure is not tied to your physical residence.
Which is why we end up with entities like the DPUC (department of public utility control) - to oversee and regulate the natural monopolies to ensure that they aren't just raping their customers because they have no place else to go.
brian at March 18, 2010 10:46 AM
What really bothers me more than the timeline (because, as Brian said, we're covering vastly more area here) is the fact that the information is pretty much already available at sites like http://dslreports.com
It might not be a map, but you can find out what service is available in your area with their search tool.
WayneB at March 18, 2010 11:03 AM
"We've managed to keep the infrastructure active through all the new technology, for which I suppose I can give props."
THANK you, Brian. I had a conversation about Brazil recently with someone who had taken their first trip there - "ohmygawd everyone has wireless everything!" -- well duh. They just finally installed it. Jump back ten years and they had very little of anything. You try slogging through the jungle dragging phone poles and cable and you'll understand why they kept finding 'lost' tribes until the 1990's. They weren't lost, nobody wanted to hike out fifty miles to find a pay phone!
Say what you like about Ma Bell but she got the job done for us here.
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at March 18, 2010 2:38 PM
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