AT&T, Comcast Fight Utility Pole Reform To Slow Google Fiber's Arrival In Nashville

from the get-the-hell-out-of-the-way dept

We've talked a few times about how incumbent broadband providers often use their ownership of city utility poles (or their "ownership" of entire city councils and state legislatures) to slow Google Fiber's arrival in new markets. In California and Texas, AT&T has often been accused of using the process of pole attachment approval to intentionally block or slow down the arrival of competitors. AT&T also recently sued the city of Louisville for streamlining utility pole attachment rules intended to dramatically speed up the time it takes to attach new fiber to poles.

This week this fight extended into Nashville, where Comcast and AT&T are again fighting pole attachment reform. Google Fiber supports "one touch make ready" pole attachment rules, which lets a licensed, insured third party contractor move any ISP's gear on a utility pole (often a matter of inches) to install new fiber. Being incumbents with networks already deployed, Comcast, AT&T and Charter obviously have a vested interest in making sure this doesn't happen. As such, they've started loudly bitching about Google Fiber to local Nashville news outlets:

"Just because you spell your name with eight different colors doesn’t mean you can’t play by the rules that everybody else has to fucking play by,” says one operative, venting about Google’s reputation for wooing local officials in various cities into accommodating the company.

These incumbents have, as a refresher, spent a generation paying for, writing and lobbying for state and local rules that make it hard or impossible to actually compete with them. That anybody would believe these companies' complaints about "fairness" is dumbfounding, yet given their political power, these arguments go much further than they should. AT&T, for example, is telling Nashville politicians they only oppose Google Fiber's reform plan because they care so much about unions:

“While we have not seen the proposed ordinance, we are concerned that a make-ready ordinance would interfere with our contractual commitment to have our skilled employees represented by the Communications Workers of America perform make-ready work on our behalf,” says AT&T Tennessee spokesperson Joe Burgan. “Beyond that, we have serious concerns with other companies being allowed to perform work on our facilities without providing us notice, which could put service reliability and public safety at risk in some circumstances. Additionally, jurisdiction to regulate pole attachments rests with the FCC, and municipalities have no authority under federal or state law to enact the ordinance being proposed here.”

To be very clear, such "one touch make ready" reform rules are broadly supported as a way to speed up broadband deployment. Contrary to AT&T's claim, under most implementations of these rules, incumbent ISPs still receive forewarning about upcoming work, they just have to respond and approve (or reject, with reasons) these requests on a much shorter time scale so they can't use the system to unfair advantage. And it's not "other companies" performing the work, it's independent, licensed and insured third party contractors that have already been doing this kind of work all over the country -- often for the incumbents themselves.

These are the same companies that bitch endlessly about "burdensome regulations," yet consistently write, lobby for and pass regulations that hinder competitors from disrupting the market. In this case, AT&T's next likely step is to file a lawsuit against Nashville just as it did in Louisville, all the while pretending (despite a generation of contradictory evidence) it's just a stickler for level playing fields.

Filed Under: broadband, competition, fiber, google fiber, incumbents, nashville, pole attachments
Companies: at&t, comcast, google

Once More: The TPP Agreement Is Not A Free Trade Agreement, It's A Protectionist Anti-Free Trade Agreement

from the get-your-story-straight dept

We've pointed out a few times in the past that while everyone refers to the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement as a "free trade" agreement, the reality is that there's very little in there that's actually about free trade. If it were truly a free trade agreement, then there would be plenty of reasons to support it. But the details show it's not, and yet, time and time again, we see people supporting the TPP because "well, free trade is good." The Washington Post, for example, pushed out a ridiculous editorial arguing that the TPP is cause for celebration because it will "slash tariffs and harmonize regulatory regimes."

But it's that "harmonizing regulatory regimes" thing where the real nastiness lies, and where you quickly discover that most of the key factors in the TPP are not at all about free trade, but the opposite. It's about as protectionist as can be. That's mainly because of the really nasty corprorate sovereignty clauses in the agreement (which are officially called "investor state dispute settlement" or ISDS in an attempt to make it sound so boring you'll stop paying attention). Those clauses basically allow large incumbents to force the laws of countries to change to their will. Companies who feel that some country's regulation somehow takes away "expected profits" can convene a tribunal, and force a country to change its laws. Yes, technically a tribunal can only issue monetary sanctions against a country, but countries who wish to avoid such monetary payments will change their laws.

Remember how Eli Lilly is demanding $500 million from Canada after Canada rejected some Eli Lilly patents, noting that the new compound didn't actually do anything new and useful? Eli Lilly claims that using such a standard to reject patents unfairly attacks its expected future profits, and thus it can demand $500 million from Canadian taxpayers. Now, imagine that on all sorts of other systems.

And, add in a bunch of other rules that have absolutely nothing to do with free trade -- like granting more exclusivity on pharmaceuticals or extending copyright terms. As Tim Lee writes in a detailed report on the TPP, what's really happening here is empowering the elite incumbents:

As the opportunities for trade liberalization have dwindled, the nature of trade agreements has shifted. They're no longer just about removing barriers to trade. They've become a mechanism for setting global economic rules more generally.

This trend is alarming to Simon Lester, a free trader at the Cato Institute. "We've added in these new issues that I'm skeptical of," he says. "It's not clear what the benefits are, and they cause a lot of controversy."

And this system for setting global rules has some serious defects. We expect the laws that govern our economic lives will be made in a transparent, representative, and accountable fashion. The TPP negotiation process was none of these — it was secretive, it was dominated by powerful insiders, and it provided little opportunity for public input.

The Obama administration argues that it's important for TPP to succeed so that the United States — not China — gets to shape the rules that govern trade across the Pacific. But this argument only makes sense if you believe US negotiators have been taking positions that are in the broad interests of the American public. If, as critics contend, USTR's agenda is heavily tilted toward the interests of a few well-connected interest groups, then the deal may not be good for America at all.

Again, it's hard to see how this has anything to do with free trade. While it may have begun as a free trade process, the entire "trade agenda" has long since been almost entirely co-opted by special interests who realized that the easy way to pass legislation globally is to sneak it into a "trade agreement" behind closed doors with no public discussion or debate -- and then get it approved because it's under the banner of "free trade," even if the policies actually are protectionist for large industries.

It would almost be a clever move if it wasn't so destructive for competition and innovation.

So, remember, any time you see someone saying they support the TPP because they support "free trade," they're either lying or totally uninformed. The TPP is not about free trade. It's about the opposite. It's about locking in protectionist rules for incumbent providers, which is exactly the kind of thing free trade is supposed to take away.

Filed Under: barriers, free trade, incumbents, innovation, protectionism, regulations, tpp, trade agreements

Incumbents Blocking Broadband Stimulus Efforts Because They Don't Like Competition

from the leave-us-alone dept

Back when the $7.2 billion broadband stimulus plan was announced, we were a bit worried that it was really just a bailout plan for incumbent broadband providers. The focus of the plan was on "shovel ready" projects in an attempt to create jobs, and that generally meant incumbent providers who could hire a lot of people. The last thing the government wanted to do in the middle of a recession was help fund an innovative startup that would disrupt a big employer. But there was one interesting aspect of the stimulus package: it suggested that anyone taking the government money would have to share access to infrastructure -- something that makes a lot of sense, if you're encouraging competition.

But, of course, the incumbents don't want competition at all. They've based their entire business models on the very lack of competition in the marketplace. So, it quickly became clear that they would not only resist taking any of the money, but they would actively seek to block upstarts from taking it as well. And... that's exactly what appears to be happening. lavi d points us to the news that lots of smaller companies are applying for the federal funds, and (surprise, surprise) the incumbents are not applying for the funds at all, but are drafting legislation in various local governments to prevent any upstart competitors from getting those funds. So, not only is it not stimulating the creation of jobs, it's not really providing much more broadband or competition.

Filed Under: broadband, broadband stimulus, competition, incumbents

Is Obama's Broadband Plan Anything More Than A Free Gift To Incumbent Providers?

from the increasingly-looking-that-way dept

Just a few weeks ago, we warned that, while the thought of increasing broadband is a good idea, the details of any sort of "broadband stimulus" plan was important -- especially if it just looked like giving money to the same old incumbent players who have a long, and rather disgusting, history of accepting tons of public money and then not delivering. At other times, those incumbents have spent a lot of money trying to stop the actual spread of broadband. Broadband Reports is warning the incoming administration that the incumbent players are going to be spinning all sorts of stories about how they'll provide all sorts of new broadband improvements, while ignoring their history of fighting against broadband expansion. Unfortunately, Business Week points out that the broadband stimulus plan is almost certainly heading in that direction, meaning that it will almost certainly reward the incumbents, despite the fact that they're a part of the problem.

For years, plenty of people have been pointing out that the real problem with broadband in the US is the lack of competition in the market -- and a big part of the reason there's so little competition is because of these sorts of government handouts that favor a single player in a market. It's difficult to see how continuing that tradition changes anything -- other than making a few legacy providers even wealthier. If we want to see more and better broadband in this country, we need to see more competition, not the strengthening of existing legacy players.

Filed Under: broadband, competition, incumbents, obama, stimulus