Escapable Logic

It's not often that a Utah Republican makes a political contribution to affect the New York City Democratic Primary, but Phil Windley agrees with me that our muni wireless future is that important, as a movement and as a bellwether for other efforts. So yesterday, Phil reached out and touched the Andrew Rasiej campaign, in a post called Community Broadband or Roach Motels:

Britt’s piece isn’t just an essay, however, its a call to action. Specifically, a call to support Andrew Rasiej’s campaign for NYC Public Advocate. If we are not willing to support (vote and donate) to people who understand technology and what powers innovation, then we’ll get the nation we deserve. (See my post on Beating Hatch.) I went over to Rasiej’s site, found him to be just that kind of guy and made a donation.

So let me get this straight. A lot of the people in Utah, who love progress more than ideology, are tired of being passive consumers while their Internet budget is being consumed by Qwest and ComCast at a rate 10-25 times what it would cost in Japan:

Qwest, Comcast, and other private providers of service want you to think it’s about keeping government out of competition with private providers. But as Britt rightly points out, it’s really about public discourse and building the infrastructure to support it.

I’ve written about this same issue before in regards to iProvo and Utopia (two community broadband projects in Utah), although not as eloquently as Britt. One of my main points has been that carriers are building walled gardens, not the agora, as Britt puts it, that we need to enable so many important public activities. What’s more important, they never will.

I sat in an Orem City Council meeting over a year ago and listened to a representative from Comcast tell them about all the wonderful things Comcast was doing for Orem residents. And it was wonderful—on the surface. If you listened carefully, however, the message, loud and clear, was this: we build the products, you pay us money to consume them. In other words, Comcast’s vision was completely unidirectional. There was no sense of the broadband network as an infrastructure where anyone could produce interesting things (like blogs, video, podcasts, etc.) and distribute them. Comcast’s vision was all about a one-way street where deliveries were made but packages were never picked up. Maybe instead of “walled gardens” a more apt metaphor would be “roach motels.”

You may know that Phil is the former CIO for the state of Utah, who was a prolific blogger in that role, giving the state's IT program instant credibility through his common sense and knowledge and the authenticity of his voice. He and Doc Searls had a seminal conversation as they waited for a cab together at the end of OSCON 2003. Their conversation led directly to the O'Reilly Digital Democracy Teach-in that was added to ETech in February 2004.

With Phil and Dwight Eisenhower as spokesmen for uniting our people through connectivity, this could turn into a Republican-led effort. I know Glenn Reynolds is on board (I wonder if it's a good idea to tell the knee-jerk NYC Dems):

Mr. Rasiej wants to see New York follow Philadelphia, which decided it wouldn't wait for private companies to provide connectivity to all. Instead, Philly made it a city-led project - like sewers and electricity. The whole city will be a "hot zone," where any resident anywhere with a computer, cellphone or P.D.A. will have cheap high-speed Wi-Fi access to the Internet.

Mr. Rasiej argues that we can't trust the telecom companies to make sure that everyone is connected because new technologies, like free Internet telephony, threaten their business models. "We can't trust the traditional politicians to be the engines of change for how people connect to their government and each other," he said. By the way, he added, "If New York City goes wireless, the whole country goes wireless."

Mr. Rasiej is also promoting civic photo-blogging - having people use their cellphones to take pictures of potholes or crime, and then, using Google maps, e-mailing the pictures and precise locations to City Hall. . . .

"One elected official by himself can't solve the problems of eight million people," Mr. Rasiej argued, "but eight million people networked together can solve one city's problems. They can spot and offer solutions better and faster than any bureaucrat. ... The party that stakes out this new frontier will be the majority party in the 21st century. And the Democrats better understand something - their base right now is the most disconnected from the network."

Our shared point is that real broadband is a need that every ClueTrainee agrees with, regardless of their politics. The politicians who are avoiding this bandwagon are signaling that they're in the pockets of the phone and cable companies.

Can you Gouge me Now?

That was the theme of a rally held by Andrew Rasiej yesterday in Bryant Park, across from Verizon's Headquarters. Andrew's message is concise and clear: New Yorkers have a right to real broadband, real cheap, real soon. Most Americans are surprised to hear that we have none of those because industry and government say we're the best at everything. It seems that most countries in the developed world have broadband that costs a fraction of what we pay. And New York is particularly soaked by the telecoms.

High-speed Internet service is no longer a luxury. As it becomes a necessity for all Americans, control of this vital service has fallen into the hands of fewer and fewer corporations.

This consolidation of broadband power is not through the natural ebb and flow of the free market, but through political influence-peddling by corporations who seek to monopolize the multibillion-dollar industry.

Today, we stand before the headquarters of one of the biggest influence-peddlers of them all.

According to the Center for Public Integrity, Verizon Communications, Inc. has spent more than $12 million on political candidates and party committees since 1998. Add to this the more than $82 million Verizon spent on political lobbyists.

For New Yorkers, Verizon’s million-dollar shopping spree means fewer choices, higher costs and slower speeds.

It’s the same across the country. Over the past two years, this company has bought up politicians in statehouses, Congress and the FCC to support Verizon-friendly policies that eliminate ISP competitors, squashes local broadband alternatives and bar towns and cities across the country from providing citizens their own high-speed Internet services.

Tim Karr is the Campaign Director for Free Press, and he presented a new report prepared for a consortium including Free Press, Consumers Union and the Consumer Federation of America: Broadband Reality Check (pdf). These institutions joined together to produce facts that expose the FCC's recent white wash of the mess our bandwidth is in. On July 7, The FCC issued a report (pdf) required by law, describing broadband penetration in the U.S. Things can look good when liars start figuring: The FCC decided that 200kbps (bits, not bytes) is broadband and that any zip code with just one connection that fast counted as being a broadband zip code. By that logic, 95% of America is in bandwidth heaven:

At the end of 2004, the service providers that report to the Commission had at least one high-speed service subscriber in 95% of the nation’s zip codes. Our analysis indicates that 99% of the country’s population lives in these zip codes.

Of course the net measures itself well enough to easily expose that kind of fraud, so you wonder why the FCC even bothers with the spin. The Broadband Reality Check makes 6 main points:

Here's how the data look when the FCC isn't cooking the books (longer is better):

You get the picture. Some of us will be examining whether this amazing city's citizens can be cowed by a bunch of middle managers into placing their business plan before our kids' future. If you'd like to be part of this conversation, we'll welcome the help.

Oil and Water, Shaken and Stirred

Can you Gouge me Now?