Michigan Lawmaker Doesn't Understand Her Own Bill Hamstringing Broadband Competition

from the best-leadership-money-can-buy dept

Fri, Oct 20th 2017 6:23am — Karl Bode

For the better part of a decade we've noted how if America really wanted to improve its horrible broadband problem it would stop letting industry giants like Comcast write shitty protectionist state telecom law. Over the last fifteen years, more than twenty states have passed laws preventing towns and cities from building their own broadband networks even when no incumbent broadband provider will. In many instances these bills also hamstring public/private partnerships, which are often the only way to creatively bring better broadband to under-served or unserved areas of the country.

Michigan is the latest to highlight this problem. Freshman Representative Michele Hoitenga this month introduced HB 5099, a bill that would make it difficult if not impossible for local towns and cities to build their own broadband networks. The bill would ban towns and cities from using taxpayer funds to improve local telecom infrastructure. According to the Institute for Local Reliance, an organization that fights these protectionist measures and helps municipalities improve broadband coverage, the bill would also deter towns and cities from striking public/private partnerships with the likes of Google Fiber:

"The exception allows local communities to engage in public-private partnerships, but the bill’s ambiguous language is likely to discourage local communities from pursuing such partnerships...Rather than put themselves at risk of running afoul of the law, prudent community leaders would probably choose to avoid pursuing any publicly owned infrastructure initiatives.

ISPs defend these bills by insisting they're just really concerned about wasting tax dollars (despite historically wasting far more taxpayer money than potentially any other industry in America). Lobbyists and hired telecom policy hacks have spent fifteen years demonizing all municipal broadband projects as boondoggles. In reality, their goal is to protect regional duopolies from anything even closely resembling real broadband competition by ghost writing awful state law. They want their cake and to eat it too: they refuse to offer quality service or upgrade their networks, but they want government to prevent anybody else from doing so either.

In reality, municipal broadband networks are like any other business plan. Some are good, some are bad, and all are highly dependent on the particulars of a region. But it should be up to local voters and the towns and cities themselves to make that determination -- not AT&T and Comcast lobbyists and hired policy flacks sitting half a world away.

As people have grown more frustrated with shitty broadband, bipartisan opposition to these kinds of bills has only grown. After all, disdain for Comcast and its abysmal customer service is one of only a few things that can truly bridge partisan divides. Most people seem to realize we need to get creative to compensate for ISPs that feel fully deploying broadband networks (especially to rural markets and the poor) isn't worth the time and money. As a result, Hoitenga this week began facing some notable blowback on Twitter (you really should read this entire exchange while it still exists) for her proposal.

Hoitenga quickly made it clear she doesn't actually understand the proposal she's supporting. For example, while her bill would take rights away from local voters by hamstringing how they can fund their own local infrastructure, she insisted she was somehow protecting voting rights:

Hoitenga then proceeded to display her profound misunderstanding of the broadband market by insisting municipal broadband networks aren't really necessary, because Michigan voters somehow have access to 37 different competing broadband providers:

How did the lawmaker come to this conclusion? Bing (yes, Bing!) apparently told her so. While most people usually have the choice of only one or two broadband providers that barely compete with each other, the lawmaker posted a screenshot in the bizarre belief she was contradicting this reality:

Of course, if you actually visit the page that she saw in her Bing search, it tells, well, a very very different story. It's useful, first, to scroll to the bottom to look at the actual map of Holland, which shows how many providers are where.

Note that most of Holland has only 2 or 3 providers. Not 37. Again, this is from the very link she claims supports her "37 providers" claim. And, of course, if you look at the details of where that "37" number came from, you'll quickly understand why it's bogus. First, it includes wireless and business-only broadband providers. That's totally unrelated to the residential market. Second, it counts different kinds of broadband from the same company (e.g. "DSL" and "fiber") as a separate provider, despite clearly being the same. Finally, and most importantly (and obviously from the map above) it ignores that the vast majority of these providers cover very, very little of the city of the city -- to the point that they're barely offering service in the city at all. Below are the residential offerings, and if you focus on that "availability" column, you'll note that most of them cover well less than 5% and a bunch are around 1%.

At most you could argue people would likely have a choice of 3 providers in their location. And one of them -- TDS DSL -- is apparently limited to 4mbps which, you know, is not broadband according to the very definition provided by the FCC. And, how can we not mention the "customer ratings" column? The whole point here, and the very reason why so many people are clamoring for competition from municipal broadband, is because they hate their expensive, crappy, limited choices.

The biggest problem here however is that these bills are usually quite literally written by incumbent ISPs, then shoveled through the legislative process via organizations like ALEC. Said ghost-written legislation then stumbles through approval with lawmakers barely understanding what they're pushing, which is something we've seen time and time again. If ISPs are so opposed to municipal broadband, there's an easy way to stop these efforts: offer a better, cheaper product and improve their historically-awful customer service.

But in the United States, it's far easier to ghost write legislation, hand it off to a cash-compromised lawmaker that has no idea what it means, then sit back and enjoy the financial benefits of regulatory capture while America falls farther behind the broadband curve. This really is, as they say, why we can't have nice things.

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Filed Under: competition, michele hoitenga, michigan, muni broadband

36 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 20 Oct 2017 @ 6:29am

"For the better part of a decade we've noted how if America really wanted to improve its horrible broadband problem it would stop letting industry giants like Comcast write shitty protectionist state telecom law."

lol, the FCC was created around 1934... it all started way back then. And if your politicians keep getting purchased, maybe try something different than say... voting them back in?
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Anonymous Coward, 20 Oct 2017 @ 6:33am

Wow. That's so weird. Holland has two choices for "Cable" internet. Charter and Comcast. When you add up their total "availability" it comes out to 99.6%!

And I bet 0% overlap.
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TheResidentSkeptic (profile), 20 Oct 2017 @ 6:45am

Just more proof
Politicians believe only what they are paid to believe.

And poly sci classes report such high rates of cheating in Ethics 101...
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Vidiot (profile), 20 Oct 2017 @ 6:49am

She's making things better for citizens by pretty much locking-in a 2.5-out-of-5 star rating. State-mandated mediocrity, to protect the poor, uninformed locals.
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Anonymous Coward, 20 Oct 2017 @ 6:56am

Nice work Representative Michele Hoitenga - I hope your state is aware of you accepting bribes.
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Anonymous Coward, 20 Oct 2017 @ 6:59am

If I were elected president
If I were elected, I would mandate that every town, city and county is now allowed to create their own municipal broadband and any law stating otherwise is null and void. I would also break apart these cable conglomerates and let the people have actual competition.
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Anonymous Coward, 20 Oct 2017 @ 7:00am

Quote from Rep Hoitenga (trying to defend her accepting of bribes):

"what about cities building networks who underfunded their empl. pensions and are cutting necessary service like police b/c investing in bb."
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Anonymous Coward, 20 Oct 2017 @ 7:02am

It is difficult to get someone to understand something that they are getting funded not to.
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limbodog (profile), 20 Oct 2017 @ 7:27am

Let's be clear
You call it "her own bill", but in reality she is just the messenger.
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Dan (profile), 20 Oct 2017 @ 7:41am

Re: If I were elected president
If I did pass laws like this, I sure as heck would add very specific mandates for upgrades ans expansions. It would be their one and only chance, to retain the market. Otherwise, the city takes it over.
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Shilling, 20 Oct 2017 @ 7:54am

Re: Re: If I were elected president
If they are priced better and delivering a better service is that then a bad thing? It's called competition for a reason.
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Ed (profile), 20 Oct 2017 @ 7:59am

Hoitenga has seen the AT&T "appreciation" dribble down Marsha Blackburn's chin and wants to gargle on some of that spunk herself.
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Jason, 20 Oct 2017 @ 8:23am

Being that the screengrabbed map includes my home, I wondered why I'd never heard of this Representative before. It's because her district is a few counties to the north and doesn't actually include any of Holland.

So yeah, I'm really not sure why she's trotting out Holland as an example to try and make her point, especially because there actually is a municipal broadband system here in town.
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ShadowNinja (profile), 20 Oct 2017 @ 9:17am

It's time to look at spending taxpayer money differently
The arguments by ISP's and their political hacks about how these proposals 'save' taxpayers money shows how wrongly most people think about taxpayer money.

Lack of ISP competition costs taxpayers a lot through their slow Internet connection, and the monopoly pricing the ISPs can charge them for garbage service and speed. It makes the whole area a lot less appealing for businesses to, which costs taxpayers even more money long term (though indirectly).

So yes, allowing governments to spend money on better ISP infrastructure is a good use of taxpayer dollar, and it SAVES taxpayer money, even if it might require raising taxes to pay for it. It's like paying up an extra $10 in taxes to save $20 on your ISP bill all while improving your quality of life and making your community more attractive for businesses.
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Anonymous Coward, 20 Oct 2017 @ 9:27am

Re:
So her grasp of who she represents is about the same as he knowledge of what the law she is promoting actually says.
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That Anonymous Coward (profile), 20 Oct 2017 @ 9:29am

No wonder she thinks the bill, the telcos gave her to push, is awesome, she only looks at summaries & ignores the actual data.

Maybe if we forced them to actually read the entire bill they are putting up & take a test on what it means.
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Jack Furlong (profile), 20 Oct 2017 @ 10:01am

They're all the same
All politicians are the same, it appears. If you vote one out, the next guy will do the same (anti consumer) thing, for the same reason.
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Anonymous Coward, 20 Oct 2017 @ 11:18am

Re: They're all the same
Ah... the someone is going to do it anyways argument? Sounds like you have already been defeated.
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Anonymous Coward, 20 Oct 2017 @ 11:26am

"the lawmaker posted a screenshot"

"A screenshot [...] may also be created by taking a photo of the screen."

She took a photo of her screen, like old people do.
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Anonymous Coward, 20 Oct 2017 @ 12:50pm

but instead of doing something about it when the chance to vote for someone else is there, the stupid public doesn't take it! then you get multitudes of the same problem. even more politicians with even less understanding of what is THE TRUTH and even more concern on how much is being shoved into their own coffers, political and otherwise!!
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Daniel Morrison, 20 Oct 2017 @ 12:57pm

Re:
Yes, 0% overlap between Charter and Comcast.
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ThatDevilTech (profile), 20 Oct 2017 @ 1:44pm

Anyone else notice...
Visit her twitter feed and see that she thanked AT$T for the backpacks in a post? Gee, wonder who is paying her? As if we didn't already know.
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Thad, 20 Oct 2017 @ 2:37pm

Re: Let's be clear
I didn't build my house, but when I signed a legal document taking ownership, I became the owner.

She's the sponsor; it's her bill.
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That One Guy (profile), 20 Oct 2017 @ 2:55pm

"Here's the bill, here's the talking points, now get cracking."
My guess as to why she's apparently clueless is because it's likely not 'her' bill, and she's just repeating what she was told.

If she's just repeating the talking points that were handed to her it wouldn't be at all surprising that they would be so obviously stupid, such that she and the bill she's pushing comes out looking even worse after she tries to defend it than before.
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R.H. (profile), 20 Oct 2017 @ 6:24pm

Re:
Michigan has term limits (three terms) for state politicians. The person introducing this bill is a freshman Representative who, due in part to these limits, is the chair of a committee. How, exactly, should a Michigan voter deal with this situation? We have a full turnover of the entire House every 6 years so there aren't any career politicians anymore.

Sometimes, simply choosing someone different doesn't fix the problem.
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harbingerofdoom (profile), 20 Oct 2017 @ 6:25pm

Re: If I were elected president
allowed?
id require it. and require that local highschools have some sort of ROP style program to teach students how to run it.
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harbingerofdoom (profile), 20 Oct 2017 @ 7:04pm

Re:
and my answer to that is... so what? are you trying to tell me that every city that has underfunded these things did so because of muni broadband investments?

failing at running a city is not tied to muni broadband... just ask stockton ca.
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Anonymous Coward, 21 Oct 2017 @ 2:14pm

Re: Re:
So, monopoly then
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Anonymous Coward, 21 Oct 2017 @ 2:15pm

Re: If I were elected president
only to be overturned by a following, very frustrated, administration.
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Anonymous Coward, 21 Oct 2017 @ 2:21pm

Re:
She sounds like a real go getter in the gop! No wonder the excuse is so ridiculous, it's like they don't even try anymore. In the past they all did this sort of thing but it was covered up much better, maybe they need classes on how to cover up their shit.
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Anonymous Coward, 21 Oct 2017 @ 2:22pm

Re: Let's be clear
I doubt any of them write their own bills, hell - we're lucky if they even read the damned thing before signing it.
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Anonymous Coward, 21 Oct 2017 @ 2:24pm

Re: Re:
I think they're all on drugs. I suggest that the police conduct a surprise inspection of their offices, lockers, ... everything because I just know they are on drugs.
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Anonymous Coward, 21 Oct 2017 @ 2:25pm

Re:
Hey - not all old folk are ignorant.
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Anonymous Coward, 22 Oct 2017 @ 2:47am

Re: Re: They're all the same
There are plenty of people who, as Mencken wrote "are tempted, at times, to hoist the black flag and being slitting throats"

Most people just don't know enough about the matter to know exactly how badly they are being fucked.

If your governor rolled up to your door with two guys in tow and said, great news, these are the only guys you can buy groceries from now, he wouldn't last the week. People understand that well enough.

The most positive trend I can see is a total disgust and lack of faith in democracy. The system is hard coded to suck, but people's reactions changing is encouraging.
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Anonymous Coward, 22 Oct 2017 @ 7:41am

Re:
you can't handle the truth
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Derek Kerton (profile), 23 Oct 2017 @ 12:23pm

Re:
Of course, since this is how the cable franchise deals were handed out decades ago.

https://www.mackinac.org/10118

Franchise deals made sense then...now, less so. The article explains some reasons why.
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