Kentucky Cable Companies Point Out That Connected Nation Isn't All That

from the well,-look-at-that dept

It's seemed like a foregone conclusion that the US gov't was going to hand over lots and lots of cash to Connected Nation -- a group favored by the telcos -- to handle all of the "broadband mapping" needed for a better national broadband plan. There have been plenty of concerns about Connected Nation's close relationship with the telcos, as well as its proposal which wouldn't give a very fair or accurate picture of actual broadband offerings around the US. But a funny thing just happened. Connected Nation is really based on Connect Kentucky, where this experiment was first run, and the cable companies there have suddenly stood up to oppose Connect Kentucky, questioning its ability to accurately map broadband in the state. Looks like maybe the telcos should have cut the cablecos in on the deal before backing Connected Nation.

Filed Under: boondoggle, broadband, broadband policy, cable companies, kentucky
Companies: connect kentucky, connected nation

FCC Apparently Not Very Concerned About Consumer Views On Broadband

from the keep-quiet-and-take-what-we-give-you dept

We recently expressed our concerns with the state of the government's attempts to increase broadband in the US. Karl Bode, over at Broadband Reports has now hit quite a homerun with his analysis of 5 signs of why the broadband plan is in trouble. The whole thing is worth reading, but I wanted to highlight number 5 on the list, because it's a big problem:

The FCC continues to hold "workshops" to discuss the direction and scope of the national broadband plan. They're also recording presentations by all of the FCC's "constituents," and offering consumers instantaneous access to all of the documents being presented at the workshop at the Broadband.gov website. All of this is absolutely great. What's not so great?

There are 51 panelists attending the latest 8 workshops. Out of those 51, there are just five people not directly associated with a company: Dave Burstein, Craig Moffett, George Ford, Victor Frost and Henning Schulzrinne. Moffett is a stock jock who's positions (such as upgrades are unnecessary and consumers should be paying more money) are clearly not going to serve anyone but investors. Ford works at the Phoenix Center, an AT&T-funded "think tank," who's job is to parrot AT&T policy positions.

Of the remaining three, only Burstein, a long-time telecom beat reporter, will likely ask any hard questions -- and then again his job is to get scoops, not to represent the public interest. Zero of the originally scheduled attendees acted as public interest witnesses. After complaints by consumer groups, Dr. Mark Cooper from the Consumer Federation Of America was added at the last second, but the fact that this was an afterthought raises questions about how "transparent and inclusive" this process really is.

This definitely seems like politics as usual. And it's a problem, not just for the FCC, but for the very businesses involved in these discussions. Ignoring consumer will these days is increasingly a suicide pact. The businesses leading this discussion would be well-served to look at what's happening in other industries (music, newspapers) where business execs have been trying to ignore consumers' rights and interests, in the belief that they have some sort of monopoly control over their market. Those things can disappear quickly, and when stripped of such artificial protections, it's amazing how fast the consumers you mistreated will move elsewhere.

Filed Under: boondoggle, broadband, broadband policy, broadband stimulus, consumers
Companies: fcc

Broadband Stimulus Plan Keeps Looking Worse And Worse

from the that's-not-stimulus dept

From the beginning, we've questioned the broadband stimulus plan, which was designed not to actually stimulate broadband so much as it was designed to stimulate jobs by getting people to install broadband in places where people weren't that interested in getting broadband. It had little to do with actually increasing broadband in a meaningful way. For that... all we kept hearing about was about how we'd also get some magical broadband mapping solution with hundreds of millions of dollars given to Connected Nation -- an organization favored by incumbents, because it lets them retain control over the mapping process. And, indeed, it looks like the broadband stimulus remains something of a boondoggle. As Stacey Higginbotham notes, there's "no map for success," and the plan itself has been watered down. The mapping plan has been cut back to appease telcos, and the focus of stimulus money will go to those not served by broadband, rather than those underserved by broadband. Installing broadband in far off places where there's no current access may sound good, but those are sparsely populated areas where broadband doesn't do all that much. Meanwhile, folks in densely populated regions have only one or two very slow options. Focusing on boosting broadband competition and speeds in those areas would seem to have a lot more bang for the buck... but doesn't seem to be in the current plans.

Filed Under: boondoggle, broadband, broadband policy, broadband stimulus
Companies: connected nation

Exploring The Connected Nation Boondoggle

from the sneaky,-sneaky dept

Last year, we discussed whether or not Connected Nation broadband mapping group, was really just a big telco boondoggle designed to get gov't money and allow telcos to avoid really providing broadband data. For some reason, politicians are absolutely in love with Connected Nation, though. When I was in Washington DC recently, they talked about it like it was the solution to our country's broadband needs. That seems quite bizarre no matter how you look at it. First, it's just a "mapping" organization and it's run by the telcos themselves, allowing them to continue to fudge the data to make markets look a lot more competitive than they really are. And, yet, thanks to all the political love that goes out to Connected Nation, it looks like they're about to get hundreds of millions of dollars in broadband stimulus money.

Broadband Reports points us to Art Brodsky's "final warning" about Connected Nation, before we hand over tons of tax money to it, and it's not pretty. He notes the ridiculousness of politicians complaining that the gov't agency in charge of getting accurate maps has failed (solely because the telcos refuse to give them the data) and deciding the best "response" to this is to simply hand the whole project (and lots of money) over to the telcos who refused to give the data up in the first place:

The fruit is not the product of the state agency, however. Faison used his announcement to criticize e-NC: "Until now, we have not had a map showing street address availability of broadband. e-NC has generated maps based on information disclosed by the providers which are based on the average number of customers with broadband access in a wire center. Unfortunately, information provided in this fashion does not allow you to see where broadband is and where it is not, it does not allow you to see the holes in the Swiss cheese, and depending on the area the hole may be larger than the cheese."

Note the circular logic here. Faison and other members of his committee are criticizing e-NC for their maps, which were based on information supplied, or not, as it were, by the telecom industry. The state agency has been hampered by AT&T's unwillingness to supply broadband data and its insistence on a very restrictive non-disclosure agreement for information the company did supply.

Instead of pushing the industry to stop stonewalling e-NC, Faison and the others trashed e-NC's work and commended the work of – AT&T, the very company that hamstrung e-NC. Here is Faison’s praise for the industry: "In the face of legislation recommended by the Committee which would have required the providers to disclose precise information to the Legislature for our staff to generate a detailed map of availability, the providers have come together and collectively decided to provide the information through Connected Nation, to not only provide the "street address" map but also to make the map both accessible and interactive through the internet. Special recognition should be given to AT&T, Embarq, Sprint, Time Warner Cable, The Cable Association, the Telephone Co-op association, and Alltel for their work on this matter."

Brodsky goes on to show a Connected Nation map, and note how useless it is in actually giving granular data, and then compares it to another group's map, with much greater detail. I certainly agree that better data is important, but I have to admit I'm still somewhat confused as to what real problem we end up solving with mapping alone? Yes, it will give us more data to figure out just what the current situation is when it comes to broadband deployment, but that's got little to do with actually improving our broadband infrastructure.

Filed Under: boondoggle, broadband, broadband policy
Companies: connected nation

EU Gives France Permission To Waste Even More Money On Mythical Google Killer

from the yo-quaero-taco-bell dept

It's been nearly two years since we pointed out that the EU's "Quaero" project appeared to be nothing more than a scam to trick clueless bureaucrats into funnelling tons of money into private companies hoping they would somehow create a "Google-killer." There were no plans. There was no website. There was no technology. There was merely a bunch of random companies all saying they would do something vague, if only the government gave them money. Well, the EU has now granted the wish, giving France permission to distribute $152 million to a bunch of companies. Note, again, that they're not giving this money to some startup that thinks it has a Google killer. In fact, everyone admits that the various companies involved all have divergent interests. In other words, this money is going into a black hole where it will be spent on whatever each company wants to spend it on. The idea that a Google-killer will emerge is laughable. Just the fact that it's been many years since the project was first proposed and they're just getting around to funding it now should give you a sense of how backwards this plan is. You don't create a Google-killer by announcing such plans, getting a bunch of big companies to line up for a handout and then taking years to actually give out way more money than is needed.

Filed Under: boondoggle, eu, france, google killer, quaero, search engine