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PR Watch Ties ALEC to Now-Dead Bill in Georgia to Limit Internet Investment
Brendan Fischer of the Center for Media and Democracy's PR Watch examines the ties between HB 282, the people behind it, and how it evolved into a threat to connectivity and local control. Brendan gave us permission to repost the story in full here. Since authoring this story, HB 282 was defeated in Georgia in a floor House vote. However, understanding where these bill comes from is critical, so we still wanted to run this piece.
Community-Owned Internet, Long Targeted by ALEC and Big Telecom, Under Fire in Georgia
Members of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) in the Georgia Legislature are pushing a bill to thwart locally-owned internet in underserved communities, an industry-sponsored effort that effectively reinforces the digital divide. A vote in the Georgia Assembly is scheduled for Thursday, March 7; if Georgia passes the bill it would be the twentieth state to eliminate community control over internet access.
Rural and Poor Communities Take Control of Internet
As many as one in ten Americans cannot get internet connections that are fast enough for basic activities like streaming video or file sharing, largely because big internet providers like AT&T and Time Warner Cable have refused to provide adequate service to communities where the population is too dispersed or too poor. As local economies become ever more dependent on internet access, though, this digital divide is leaving rural and low-income communities in the dust.
Georgia Bill to Limit Internet Investment Dies on House Floor
CBS Atlanta Asks Tough Questions of Georgia Anti-Community Broadband Bill
We finally see television news outlets asking the tough questions of bill pushed by powerful cable and telephone companies to prevent giving residents a real choice in cable and Internet service providers. We been covering this Georgia bill closely, and were glad to see this segment:
This video is no longer available. The segment makes an error in suggesting that tax dollars are commonly used by local governments in building networks. They are not. Most municipal networks are built using revenue bonds, where the community does not pledge its full faith and credit. Instead, they sell bonds to private investors who are then repaid by the revenues generated by the network. But this mistake is more than outweighed with the reveal at end of the video, that the municipal network in Thomasville allowed the city to drop its local property entirely. Yet another community benefiting tremendously from owning its own network.The Monopoly Magnate Helps Big Cable to Ban Community Networks in Georgia
Community Leaders Testify Against HB 282, Bill Passes Anyway
Community leaders from several Georgia cities made the trek to Atlanta to oppose HB 282 on Thursday, February 28th. Opposition to this bill to limit investment in Internet networks includes community leaders, high tech companies, and citizens all over the state. Nevertheless, legislators on the House Energy, Utilities, and Telecom Committee chose to ignore the needs of communities, prefering to tell them from afar how to run their towns. Winners? Incumbents Windstream, AT&T, CenturyLink, and Comcast.
A substitute bill [PDF] was introduced that exempts communities with municipal electric utilities from the prohibition to provide telecommunications. Additionally, the bill's definition of "broadband service" is now defined as service equal to or greater than 3.0 Mbps. "in the faster direction." While these look like compromises at first blush, they do very little to change the real world application of the bill.
Our earlier analysis of the bill addressed the fact that the expense and time required to prove locations of unserved areas as defined by the bill, would foreclose the possibility of communities making investments in this essential infrastructure. Likewise, communities that already have networks would be similarly burdened.
High Tech Companies Oppose Bill to Limit Internet Investment in Georgia
Atlanta Writer Looks to Chattanooga, Fears State Bill to Prevent Internet Investment
Chattanooga continues to receive attention because of the incredible community owned network they built for themselves. We recently came across an article from Tom Baxter of the Atlanta SaportaReport. In his article, Chattanooga: Eating our lunch in liveability, Baxter expresses the envy he feels as an Atlantan as he considers the way Chattanooga has transformed itself. From the article:
Yes, Chattanooga. Seldom do we think of our neighbor across the Tennessee line as much of a competitor. When they built an aquarium, we just built a bigger one. But for nearly three decades, since a group of civic leaders got together in 1984 and committed themselves to doing something about Chattanooga’s image as the dirtiest city in America, and in the view of some the dullest, they have been eating our lunch on the playing field of liveability.
Baxter mentions Georgia's HB 282, a bill we are following closely, and notes how its passage would drive more distance between livability in Georgia and the increasing quality of life in Chattanooga:
Chattanooga’s broadband system, the fastest in the Western Hemisphere, could run at a gigabyte a second, if anybody could really use that kind of speed. Meanwhile, in Georgia, there’s a bill currently proposed which would prohibit public broadband carriers like the one in Chattanooga from expanding into any area if even one consumer in an entire census block has private broadband service of 1.5 megabytes a second or larger. (A gigabyte is equal to 1024 megabytes.)
...Having a fiber-optic broadband system like Chattanooga’s in 2013 is like having an airport like ours was in 1963. And in 2057, given recent climate projections, having several decades of experience in energy efficiency and green growth will be priceless.
We ignore this at our peril. Cities we used to ignore, like Chattanooga and Greenville, S.C., have made enormous strides over the past few decades because they’ve tried harder. That’s what they used to say about Atlanta.
We are glad to see that Tom gets it, but we had to offer a gentle correction in that network speeds are typically measured in megabits, not megabytes. His analysis is spot-on, just a bit of word confusion.
LaGrange Muni Network Serves Business and Government in Georgia
As the Georgia legislature considers HB 282, a bill that will restrict local governments from investing in telecommunications networks, we are continuing coverage of the communities that will be harmed by passage of the legislation.
Should the restrictions become law, existing networks will not be able to expand. No expansion means fewer opportunities to reap the benefits that flow naturally from community networks. While this means few residents will receive access in places like Thomasville and Moultrie, it also means fewer businesses will receive access in places where networks exclusively serve commercial customers and government offices.
LaGrange's IT Director, Alan Slaughenhaupt, told us a little about its municipal network that began in 1996. The community decided to build its own network when no private provider would. The first goal was to get the K-12 schools connected. Bonds funded the network build out and were paid off within five years. At the time, the city partnered with ISN (Later Earthlink) to get the schools connected. LaGrange now partners with Charter Communications to bring connectivity to students.
The LaGrange network now connects hospitals, most city, county, and state government facilities, and provides connectivity for businesses. Alan describes how a T1 connection cost local businesses $2,300 per month in 1996. Now, thanks to competition created by the community owned network, local businesses can pay just $100 for a connection with better capacity. The municipal network serves about 400 commercial customers.
Alan explained that the automaker Kia moved a manufacturing facility near LaGrange in 2009 that used Just-In-Time inventory control. It needed a high-speed connection between the main plant and suppliers that LaGrange could deliver.
Georgia Mayor: "I Hate to Think What Our Community Would Be Like Without Our Network"
Recently on Gigabit Nation, host Craig Settles visited with Mayor Max Beverly from Thomasville, Georgia. As our readers know, the Georgia General Assembly is again considering a bill to limit municipal efforts to bring connectivity to local residents and businesses. That bill is currently scheduled to be heard on Tuesday afternoon, 2/26, but many people have already expressed their anger at it in Facebook comments on the bill page.
HB 282 sets a very low bar for what is considered "served" - 1.5 Mbps - and prohibits municipal networks from serving those areas while also imposing a new heavy cost on investing in unserved areas.
Mayor Beverly discusses how he and other Georgia community leaders are fighting HB 282 through education. Speaking from first-hand experience, he finds that elected officials often turn from support to opposition when they hear about the incredible success of Thomasville.
Mayor Beverly finds himself sharing the story of Thomasville's victories that are all tied with the network, created in 1999. In Thomasville:
In Georgia, Thomasville Combines Tradition and Technology for Downtown Success
In 2011, MSNBC reported on Thomasville, Georgia. The small community beat the odds to nourish a vibrant downtown. At the time, local independent businesses in the U.S. disappeared as quaint main streets lost mom and pop ventures to the economy.
Such was not the case with Thomasville. MSNBC's report, a little over 2 minutes and embedded below, looked at how Thomasville had managed to created a thriving downtown economy filled with independent businesses. Thomasville leaders partnered with the private sector, concentrated on preserving its historic identity, and built a next generation fiber optic network. Thomasville's ability to merge yesterday and today worked.
Thomasville began construction of its own fiber optic network in 1995 to serve schools, libraries, businesses, and hospitals. At the time, the private sector was not interested in serving the area. Several other communities in the region began similar projects and, in 1997, those communities joined together to form the South Georgia Governmental Services Authority (SGGSA). In 1998, Cairo, Camilla, Moultrie and Thomasville created Community Network Services (CNS) through the Authority in order to offer services to residents. Since then, the collaboration has expanded from telecommunications services only to also providing high-speed Internet and television.
As Georgia mulls over HB282, this video shows how a next generation network is vital in similar communities. The legislation will strip local authorities of the ability to build their own next-generation networks as long as the private sector is providing some below-basic level of service. If the bill passes, many Georgia communities that need the benefits of a local network will never get the opportunity. From the CNS website:
The best part about CNS is that it is funded locally, by the cities which it serves. This means if you are a CNS customer, you are investing in your own communities, not a corporation headquartered across the country.