 deadzoned
Premium
join:2005-04-13
Baton Rouge, LA | Yeah right I'll believe it when I see it. When big money companies begin looking out for their paying customers and providing actual empowerments and lower bills wake me up. Until then, I will continue to be very suspicious of stuff like this. | |
| | achuchma
join:2001-04-11
Tampa, FL | What a crock... This is a complete crock of sh!t. | |
| Skippy25
join:2000-09-13
Hazelwood, MO
| Impossible Something that is backed by the telcos can't possibly empower consumers, give them more access to technology, and lower monthly bills.
The bill itself is specifically designed to remove power and technology from the people by preventing competition. This in itself raises monthly bills, not lowers them. They may have sugar coated it with a statewide franchise, but they certainly are not doing anything for the consumer. | |
| sirhailstone
join:2001-12-01
Indianapolis, IN
| The USTA commercials are annoying! Not to mention on the local radio and TV the USTA are running commercials constantly claiming that because the telecoms are "strictly regulated" that broadband is being held up and won't reach rural areas. The commercials all claim "we need to update our telecomm laws" .. as in gut them completely?
As Penn would say, B***S***. | |
| 
Dominokat
Premium
join:2002-08-06
Boothbay, ME
clubs:
 ·RoadRunner Cable
edit:
January 12th, @10:18AM
| Don't trust them From artical: "A telco-backed bill aimed at deregulating telcos, derailing municipal broadband
It said it is backed by the telco. Does anyone really think the telco is looking at the end users? They care about their bottom line, hence "derailing municipal broadband." Ie: Eliminating ANY chance of competition.
I don't trust anything that is "backed by a telco and supported by politicians." NEITHER ARE TRUSTWORTHY.
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Adelphia HSI*6000/768*Linksys BEFCMU10 v4 modem*Linksys WRT54G WAP/Router | |
| 
richardpor
Fur it up
join:2003-04-19
Portland, OR
| Thats How Boadband is Done, This is how broaband is done.
"Among other things, the proposal would deregulate basic phone service when providers reach 50-percent broadband penetration, it would create local property tax abatements for broadband infrastructure investments, it would exempt broadband services from regulation, it would mandate a state-wide video franchising system, and it would impose new conditions on municipal government-owned and -operated access and communications networks."
This creates an incentive for private companies to invest in broadband networks. This is much better that the government controlled Muni model where local government create a taxpayer funded monopoly. | |
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Yauch
join:2005-06-24 | Re: Thats How Boadband is Done, Tax Abatements for Ma Bell = Higher taxes for me
Taxpayer funded monopoly = Higher taxes for me
I'm not sure which one is better, but why do I have to choose one? | |
| | 
batageek
Slave To The Duopoly
Premium
join:2003-01-25
Batavia, IL
| "This is much better that the government controlled Muni model where local government create a taxpayer funded monopoly."
Most munis are built to fill a void where service doens't exist or to compete with the existing Bell or Cable Monopoly. If nothing else, muni provides another choice.
As to taxpayer funding, if the city votes for /city council creates that utility, that is the choice of the citizens that live there. If the citizens want this, then the government is doing exactly what the citizens desire.
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»www.tricitybroadband.com | |
| | 
JakCrow
join:2001-12-06
Palo Alto, CA | Why do multi billion dollar companies require additional "incentive"? Keeping their customer base should be enough "incentive". Why do supposed free market ideologues forget their professed ideals when it comes free hand outs to these companies? | |
| 
rudnicke
Premium
join:2004-10-23
Rantoul, IL
clubs: | Wow Senator Brandt really has his head up his arse. I'm starting to regret being a republican. | |
| deadzoned
Premium
join:2005-04-13
Baton Rouge, LA
·Cox HSI
| It seems... It seems that the only way to truly get the broadband that we want and need is through the Government and possibly with support from the big bell/cable companies. IF they would get together and roll out FTTH on a National level to everyone it would be great.
Maybe it centers on the question of Broadband being a utility or not being a utility? I dunno, but the current state of broadband is despicable and a direct result of the government and big business working together to only make money. | |
| 
cdru
Go Colts
Premium,MVM
join:2003-05-14
Fort Wayne, IN
 ·Verizon FIOS
| Argh...Which way am I suppose to think? I like and dislike various parts of this bill. Can I line-item veto it?
"deregulating telcos" - good for me as I work for a company that handles telco staffing as well as billing and contractual disputes between telcos. Deregulation always helps business.
"derailing municipal broadband" - Personally I think this is bad. While I don't think that governments should necessarily be in the business to provide telephone, video, or broadband services specifically, I also don't think that their is a problem with them being a key part of a community becoming wired. If telcos don't want to bring broadband, then the city should have the right to bring it in other ways. Heck, even if a city has other options, they should have the right to bring in alternatives if a financially viable business plan can be made. It shouldn't be a money pit though.
"creating a statewide video franchise" - Again, good for me personally as I'm patiently waiting FiOS TV to become available. I think that cities have a right to be compensated for right aways and the use of government owned poles (if any), but they don't have the right to double dip for both catv and phone if one or the other is already paid for. The added services, such as wiring schools or government buildings, should be handled just like any other business handles it...as an expense. Ultimately every consumer pays for it in the end...it doesn't matter if we make the check out to the State of Indiana or to Verizon.
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"What gives them the right to come in and do this?" she said. - Lady complaining that she was getting FIOS in her backyard. | |
| grantje
Premium
join:2003-05-07
Kokomo, IN
|  No way.
I would *prefer* a non-redlining buildout requirement for statewide video franchises - at least 85/15 or 90/10 urban/rural, but if I had to, I could live without it. It is absolutely necessary, however, if the muni ban stays in the law.
I agree with other commenters that cities, counties, and other municipal authorities who want to become broadband providers should be able to do so, provided that they have a sound business plan. | |
| 
fgrir
join:2005-04-15
Indianapolis, IN
| Quit hold them bacl Telco's are ready to dump billions into broadband deployment but they aren't going to if they have to share it with resellers. Do you think cable would pump that kind of money into upgrades if they had to share...Would any sane company? Take the handcuffs off and then you will see true competition and yes your bill will go down and cables constant rate increases will cease to exist if they want to compete. It's a proven fact that competition lowers bills. Un regulate and may the best man win! | |
| | nathill
join:2004-05-03
Bloomington, IN
| SBC = Insight! Explain to me how competition works for me?
Insight and SBC have the same owners here in Bloomington, IN.
Why should either one of them spend a dime to improve anything? I can't get DSL, even though I'm in the city limits and just a few miles from the city square.
Once this monopoly is turned loose, it will simply raise my rates for Internet access (any guesses? 10%? 20%).
I'm powerless!
This bill stinks. I am ashamed of "My Man Mitch." | |
| | | nathill
join:2004-05-03
Bloomington, IN | Re: SBC = Insight! Ashamed is too strong a term.
I'm disappointed with Mitch on this particular issue.... | |
| rich_joy
Premium
join:2004-10-17
Rockford, IL | Why are you surprised? When Washington has sold the government to the highest bidder, why should we be surprised at states doing the same thing? | |
| 
newguy1000
@insightBB.com
| another view Press Release
from the Institute for Policy Innovation
Telecom Testimony Presented Before Indiana Senate
IPI Testimony on Deregulating Indiana Telecom Policies
by Sonia Blumstein on 01/11/2006
(Indianapolis, Indiana): Institute for Policy Innovation (IPI) President Tom Giovanetti testified yesterday before the Indiana Senate on how deregulating the state’s telecom policies – specifically video franchising and municipal broadband – would result in immediate consumer choice and community investment.
“Today…[is an] an opportunity to provide consumers with enhanced choices and options in telecom, and at the same time an opportunity to rid ourselves of outdated regulations” said Mr. Giovanetti, a think tank scholar who also testified before the Texas legislature when that state was undergoing what has turned out to be highly successful, telecom deregulation reforms.
ON VIDEO FRANCHISING:
“The communications industry has changed. It’s no longer the phone companies who are the entrenched monopolies using regulation to protect their business. Today, the digital revolution has forced telecom companies to become competitors, and ironically, today the phone companies represent new competition for the entrenched cable monopolies.”
ON MUNCIPAL BROADBAND:
“Governments should not get into the business of broadband, and the country is littered with failed or failing municipal broadband systems. I support state and federal legislation to make sure that municipalities are forced to jump through hoops and over hurdles to restrain their broadband delusions, and my analysis of the municipal broadband provisions in this bill is that the bill contains just about the right amounts of hurdles for a municipality to jump over, yet enough assurances to please those who believe there are scattered instances of market failure.”
More details are available by reading the complete testimony, which is provided in full below. The author is available for interviews.
Testimony Text:
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee:
I appreciate this opportunity to comment on Indiana’s proposed telecom deregulation efforts, but more specifically to share with you what we’ve similarly done in Texas.
Let me first tell you that I am the president of the Institute for Policy Innovation (IPI), a free-market public policy think tank based in Dallas, Texas. Now in our nineteenth year, IPI specializes in issues of economic policy and technology policy. IPI is also the publisher of the State Legislator’s Guide to Telecom Policy, with which you may be familiar. I have brought with me copies of the Guide, as well as some copies of some recent op/ends we’ve published on the topic of telecom deregulation.
I am impressed with what has been recently done in Texas, and I am impressed with what the Committee is trying to do in Indiana. I would like to focus my comments in particular on the video franchise reform provisions, and the municipal broadband provisions.
ON VIDEO FRANCHISE REFORM
I live in a fairly upscale rural neighborhood in Copper Canyon, Texas, about 22 miles north of DFW airport.
Cable has never been offered in my town, despite the fact that my town is full of people who are interested in the service. Over many years our town has pleaded with local cable companies to serve our town, but the answer has always been “no.” Apparently the cable companies have made the decision that it wasn’t worth their investment to bring cable to Copper Canyon.
I respect that decision, because I believe in the rights of individuals and companies to deploy their capital however they see fit. I don’t have a right to cable service; cable is a consumer good, after all, not a right, and I don’t believe that Copper Canyon is being unfairly discriminated against. It’s important to note that no local, state or federal regulations discouraged cable from being offered to Copper Canyon. It was simply a business decision.
Fortunately, there is another video competitor in the marketplace, so I finally obtained Dish Network satellite service for my home.
Two years ago my Institute moved its offices to a different office building. After we moved we found that cable was not offered to our office building, though it was available in the building next door. Now, it is important for a public policy think tank to have access to CSPAN to monitor developments on Capitol Hill. We contacted the local cable company to see if we could get cable service to our building, but were told that it wasn’t, because the cable company didn’t think they’d get enough customers to make it worthwhile. So we turned to satellite for our office as well.
Two video alternatives certainly qualifies as competition, as my experience demonstrates. But a third competitor would be welcome, and today that competition is a reality. Today, telecom companies are able to offer video over broadband, and this third competitor has the potential to revolutionize the video market, for the benefit of consumers.
But one of the obstacles in the way of this new video competition is the archaic system of local video franchises, which the cable industry itself has complained about for years. Municipalities have frankly become experts at extortion when negotiating or renegotiating these franchise agreements. City and county buildings all over the nation are full of dark fiber and unused circuitry that cable companies were forced to install in those buildings in order to obtain or renew a local franchise.
The only justification for the franchise system was the awarding of monopolies. But with new competition from telecom companies, we are no longer in the era of video monopolies, so it makes sense for the local franchise system to bite the dust, and to allow fierce and aggressive competition and speedy rollout of broadband technology.
In my state of Texas, the legislature wisely recognized this opportunity, and recently passed video franchise reform legislation, which allows any video provider, not just telecom companies, to obtain a statewide franchise, rather than having to negotiate franchises jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction. The revenue formula remains untouched, so municipalities cannot complain that their revenues are being harmed.
The result has been immediate. All over my area, there are signs up explaining that the reason the sidewalk is under construction is that Verizon is rolling out its fiber-to-the-home network. The broadband rollout is happening, right now, in Texas, and it is uncanny how quickly things accelerated after Texas deregulated the video franchise business.
And all this work is simply the visible evidence of a critical economic commodity: new investment. New capital is flowing into Texas, and it is creating new jobs. This new investment will also result in new tax revenue being paid into the state’s coffers. This is the right kind of revenue increase: not simply raising the burden on existing entities, but actually raising new revenue through economic growth.
Companies do not do things without a good reason. Companies do not invest in rolling out broadband without a reason to do so. Up to this point, companies have had every reason not to do it, because of ridiculous regulations. Now, the opportunity to compete with cable for video customers gives the telecoms the reason to aggressively rollout and price broadband.
I am not surprised that some entrenched interests are opposing reform of the local franchise system. That is to be expected, though it is clear that they themselves will benefit from having this relic swept away.
I find it ironic, however, given my experience in trying to obtain cable both for my home and my office, that cable companies are demanding that the telecom companies be required to offer their services everywhere, and to not roll out their new offerings in a strategic manner.
Cable companies are charging that the phone companies are “redlining,” which is racially-charged language that implies that companies are discriminating in the way their rollout their new offerings. As someone who was repeatedly refused service by cable companies for both my home and office, I find this charge to be hypocritical at best.
In fact, the real reason for the opposition to reform in Texas is already clear: cable prices began falling immediately after the passage of video franchise reform. And while there is competing and conflicting data about just how much prices have fallen, the trend is clear: for the first time in memory, the prices of video to consumers is falling, and it’s the result of new competition entering the marketplace. So consumers get new product offerings and lower prices. Isn’t that what competition is all about? Such competition has come to Texas. Isn’t it about time that these benefits came to Indiana?
It’s important to note that opponents of reform claimed that consumer prices would increase as a result of deregulation. But, isn’t that what consumer groups always do? Come to think of it, have consumer groups ever thought any change would be good consumers? It seems that every time policy makers try to do anything, consumer groups claim that prices will go up. I’m thinking it’s about time that consumer groups tried to come up with some new rhetoric, as the falsehood of their current rhetoric is becoming increasingly apparent.
But what about those who are truly needy? Frankly, that’s easy. In Texas we made it easier for people to qualify for lifeline rates, and this is the way such problems should be dealt with. Don’t regulate an entire industry to protect a small subset of the population. Instead, protect the target population and free the rest of the market.
It’s also important to point out that cable companies got a leg up in their competition with telecom. From a legal and regulatory standpoint, it was very easy for cable companies to get into the voice business, but they selectively rolled out new voice service to markets where they thought the uptake would be high.
But for phone companies to get into the video business, there are these enormous regulatory hurdles to overcome, only one of which is the archaic local franchise system. It is time to eliminate it to allow new competition to sweep into the video marketplace as efficiently as possible.
The communications industry has changed. It’s no longer the phone companies who are the entrenched monopolies using regulation to protect their business. Today, the digital revolution has forced telecom companies to become competitors, and ironically, today the phone companies represent new competition for the entrenched cable monopolies.
Today, we have before us an opportunity to provide consumers with enhanced choices and options in the video business, and at the same time an opportunity to rid ourselves of outdated regulations, including local franchise authority.
I understand that your Regulatory Commission doesn’t think the time is right for them to surrender their authority to micromanage the telecom industry in Indiana. This does not surprise me; my horse didn’t think it was the right time to be gelded, either.
It doesn’t surprise me that cable companies don’t want to give up their monopolies, and it doesn’t surprise me that regulators don’t want to give up their regulatory authority.
Regulators make poor deregulators. But, after all, the job of policymaking rightly falls to the elected representatives of the people, not to appointed regulators. Deregulation of an entire industry is the kind of big-time policymaking that gives the legislature the opportunity to assert itself over the regulatory body.
ON MUNICIPAL BROADBAND
The municipal broadband issue presents us with two quandaries. First, what are we to do about communities where there appears to be market failure; i.e., where no private company has sufficient incentive to roll out broadband?
But second, how do we prevent local government officials from succumbing to the temptation to engage in neoMarxism; i.e., government ownership of the means of production? How do we keep aggressive local governments from getting into “business,” competing with local companies and shutting out private companies from the broadband business?
To the issue of market failure, I am always skeptical about markets failing. You’re probably tired of hearing of my home in Copper Canyon, Texas, but I beg your indulgence. As I told you, neither cable server nor DSL have been offered in my town. Is that market failure? Some would say so, but not the entrepreneur who has supplied my town with affordable and abundant broadband.
Residents of Copper Canyon and surrounding towns have access to wireless broadband provided by a company called Partnership Wireless. This entrepreneur saw the opportunity presented by the big guys failing to serve this market, and he has put wireless transmitters on the tops of water towers, cell phone towers, and even barns. I get my broadband from a shoebox-sized antenna on the top of my house. I get faster-than-DSL data rates at below-DSL prices.
The market did not fail.
Which is a better scenario? A private, taxpaying entrepreneur creating a new business and creating new jobs, providing broadband to neglected markets, or my town going into the broadband business, with taxpayer dollars, and putting taxpayers at risk? I think the answer is obvious.
Most of the time, when someone thinks a market has failed, what is really happening is that the market is still processing the information. Can a commodity be offered in a particular market for a price acceptable to consumers?
The solution to most perceived market failures is just a little time. The market solves most of its own problems. It’s part of why we believe in markets in this country, and not in government solutions. And, in the case of my local wireless provider, if he runs his business poorly, he simply goes out of business. But if my town runs its broadband business poorly, all the taxpayers, even those who don’t subscribe to the service, will end up paying higher taxes and not getting their potholes filled, because of their government’s foray into the risky world of the broadband business.
Governments should not get into the business of broadband, and the country is littered with failed or failing municipal broadband systems. I support state and federal legislation to make sure that municipalities are forced to jump through hoops and over hurdles to restrain their broadband delusions, and my analysis of the municipal broadband provisions in this bill is that the bill contains just about the right amounts of hurdles for a municipality to jump over, yet enough assurances to please those who believe there are scattered instances of market failure.
In conclusion, I appreciate the invitation to comment before this committee, and appreciate your indulgence. I would be happy to take any questions that the committee might have, and to make available written copies of my prepared testimony.
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Indiana Anti-Muni Bill Rolls On