from the manufactured-dissent dept

Telecoms Bankroll More Misleading Attacks On Community Broadband Networks

I’ve written for years about how U.S. broadband is expansive, patchy, and slow thanks to mindless consolidation, regulatory capture, regional monopolization, and limited competition. That’s resulted in a growing number of pissed off towns, cities, cooperatives, and city-owned utilities building their own, locally-owned and operated broadband networks in a bid for better, cheaper, faster broadband.

Regional giants like Comcast, Charter, or AT&T could have responded to this organic trend by offering better, cheaper, faster service. But ultimately they found it far cheaper to undermine these efforts via regulatory capture, congressional lobbying, lawsuits, protectionist state laws, and misleading disinformation.

They’re big fans of creating fake consumer groups that then attack community broadband networks under the pretense of being “locally concerned citizens,” which you might recall is something Charter recently got busted for in Maine.

They also enjoy funding various “think tanks” who don’t “think” about policy issues, so much as they parrot false industry attacks. Usually under the pretense of being objective, concerned locals simply looking out for the public welfare.

Like in Idaho and Massachusetts, where telecom-financed groups like the Taxpayers Protection Alliance (TPA) and the Mountain States Policy Center have been peppering local news outlets with misleading local editorials that lie to locals, and portray community broadband as some sort of inherent government boondoggle. Like this editorial by the TPA in the Cape Cod area:

“The Taxpayers Protection Alliance (TPA) has reported on the dangers of GONs to taxpayers and electric ratepayers through such reports as “GON with the Wind: The Failed Promise of Government Owned Networks.” GONs frequently fail to achieve their coverage goals and taxpayers of the municipalities where they exist often end up paying for the revenue shortfall themselves.”

So there are countless different types of community broadband networks, including municipal networks, cooperatives, city-owned utilities, or even public-private partnerships. There’s also a broad variety of ways to fund them, many of which never touch a dime of taxpayer money. A lot of these networks have been helped greatly by the billions in subsidies included in 2021 COVID relief and infrastructure bills.

Telecom giants like AT&T and Comcast are concerned that some of the $42.5 billion in looming infrastructure bill broadband subsidies might (gasp) fund competition in their existing, stagnant markets. Or worse (double gasp) that the money might me used to help fund a broadband network actually owned by local community members with a vested interest in actual locals (shiver).

So they’ve been priming the policy pump all over the country to ensure the lion’s share of money gets dropped into their back pocket, and vilify community broadband as a waste of taxpayer money wherever and however possible.

Popular telecom and media reformer Gigi Sohn, who you might recall was booted from an FCC nomination after the telecom industry ran a successful smear campaign against her in the media, is now the Executive Director of an organization called the American Association For Public Broadband. Her org has been busy trying to counter the disinformation telecom-backed groups are pushing to the public.

Chief among them being that community broadband networks are inherent boondoggles (surely a surprise to hugely popular networks like Longmont Colorado’s Nextlight, Utah’s UTOPIA or Chattanooga’s EPB):

“The groups roll out outdated claims, insisting that public broadband networks are failures. Yet they ignore that the vast majority of community broadband networks are thriving, including two of the oldest and most successful public networks in Idaho Falls and Ammon Idaho.”

These community owned networks usually have broad, bipartisan support. And they routinely offer locals symmetrical gigabit fiber for as little as $70 a month, without usage caps, weird fees, long-term contracts, and other misleading crap. They tend to treat broadband as an essential utility and public good, with a priority on consumers. You can see why AT&T and Comcast wouldn’t like that.

One popular trick AT&T and Comcast like to employ is to fund these groups pretending they’re just super concerned about taxpayer waste. But you might notice their attacks only attack community broadband. They never take aim at the billions upon billions in tax breaks, regulatory favors, and subsidies giants like AT&T and Comcast receive in exchange for fiber upgrades that are routinely half delivered. Notes Sohn:

“They also argue that it’s unfair for so-called “private networks” to compete with “government-funded” networks. This is laughable. Every single one of the largest broadband providers has taken millions and in some cases, billions of state and federal dollars. And they are all champing at the bit for a piece of the $42.5 billion in BEAD funding that the states and territories will soon distribute.”

If you’re a local monopoly like AT&T, it’s pretty trivial to throw a few thousand dollars at some dodgy proxy organizations, think tanks, and consultants in order to create a sound wall of illusory “astroturfed” opposition to what’s actually a very popular idea.

But it’s a pretty tired playbook at this point. Regional telecom giants dismantle all meaningful competition via regulatory capture, take billions in subsidies for networks they don’t consistently upgrade, raise prices endlessly, and then fund covert attacks on anybody that might dare do things differently, whether that’s reformers at key regulatory agencies, or locals trying to build their own reliable fiber network.

None of this is to say that community broadband networks are some kind of magic panacea. Like any business plan, they’re highly dependent on smart budgeting and savvy local leadership. But they’ve proven time and time again that not only are they a useful way to upgrade long-neglected communities, they’re a lovely motivator for entrenched regional monopolies that simply stopped trying years earlier.