DIGITAL NATION: Telecom Reins Belong in Hands of Local Citizens

[Gene Hastings <hastings@info-ren.org>]

--------- Begin forwarded message ----------
From: Gary Chapman <gary.chapman@mail.utexas.edu>
To: chapman@mcfeeley.cc.utexas.edu
Subject: L.A. Times column, 6/21/99
Date: Mon, 21 Jun 1999 09:32:04 -0500
Message-ID: <v04205100b393fa008058@[24.93.55.235]>

Friends,

Below is my Los Angeles Times column for today, Monday, June 21,
1999. As always, please feel free to pass this on, but please retain
the copyright notice.

------------------------------------------

If you have received this from me, Gary Chapman
(gary.chapman@mail.utexas.edu), you are subscribed to the listserv
that sends out copies of my column in The Los Angeles Times and other
published articles.

If you wish to UNSUBSCRIBE from this listserv, send mail to
listproc@mcfeeley.cc.utexas.edu, leave the subject line blank, and
put "Unsubscribe Chapman" in the first line of the message.

If you received this message from a source other than me and would
like to subscribe to the listserv, the instructions for subscribing
are at the end of the message.

------------------------------------------

Monday, June 21, 1999

DIGITAL NATION

Telecom Reins Belong in Hands of Local Citizens

By Gary Chapman

Copyright 1999 Los Angeles Times. All Rights Reserved

Last week, Federal Communications Commission Chairman William Kennard
took the podium at the National Cable Television Assn. convention in
Chicago to rail against local control of high-speed, broadband
telecommunications and assert that only the FCC should have the
authority to regulate this business.

"The information superhighway will not work if there are 30,000
different technical standards or 30,000 different regulatory
structures for broadband," he said. "The market would be rocked with
uncertainty. Investment would be stymied. Consumers would be hurt."

With all due respect, Mr. Chairman, you're wrong on this issue.

Local control of telecommunications is an important right for
citizens. And local control, contrary to Kennard's assertions, will
stimulate competition and innovation and help preserve the open
character of the Internet.

The background for Kennard's remarks, which were greeted by loud
applause from the cable company executives in attendance, was
provided by a recent federal court decision in Portland, Ore., where
AT&T requested routine approval of its takeover of TCI, the city's
dominant cable provider. The city of Portland and its surrounding
county, Multnomah, conditioned the approval on AT&T assurances that
its cable network would be opened to alternative Internet service
providers.

AT&T immediately sued both Portland and Multnomah County. But on June
4, U.S. District Judge Owen Panner sided with the two local
governments, ruling that "the open-access requirement is within the
authority of the city and county to protect competition." AT&T's
attorneys called the decision "inexplicable." Last week, AT&T said it
would appeal.

Meanwhile, a new public interest coalition called No Gatekeepers
(http://www.nogatekeepers.org/) took out a large ad in the Portland
Oregonian headlined: "Thank You, Portland, for Breaking the Chains of
Monopoly Control Over the Internet." The ad hailed the judge's
decision as an important step in "upholding the right of the people
to an open, diverse and affordable Internet."

No Gatekeepers is a coalition of national and local organizations
that includes the Center for Responsive Law, Computer Professionals
for Social Responsibility, the Center for Media Education, Consumer
Federation of America and the Media Access Project.

The Portland dispute is the leading edge of a fight over open access
to broadband telecommunications, especially cable. Cable operators
such as AT&T want their multibillion-dollar investments in new
Internet connections to pay off by locking customers into their own
information services, such as the @Home service in which AT&T now has
a large stake. They're opposed by America Online, Mindspring and
other independent ISPs, which argue that they will be devastated if
consumers have to buy the cable company's Internet service when they
sign up for a cable modem connection.

So far, the FCC has declined to change the rules, even though many
communities, including Los Angeles, are looking for guidance from the
agency. Kennard seems to hope that cable companies will open their
networks voluntarily, without regulation, although many people wonder
where he finds reason for such hopes. But his comments last week
raised an equally important issue, one that is also close to the
hearts of cable executives. That is, how much regulation can be
imposed on telecom companies by local governments and citizens acting
in local organizations?

Telecom leaders simply hate allowing local governments to have
authority over telecom franchises, because local governments control
the rights-of-way, or the land used for wiring networks.
Rights-of-way typically apply to underground space for wires, or the
lines on telephone poles, as well as the ability of companies to tear
up streets or other parts of a community to bury or string new wires.
Companies pay for rights-of-way access, which in most communities is
a nontrivial share of municipal revenues.

Local governments can also impose limited content requirements, such
as by requiring cable companies to carry TV channels for public
access, local government, schools, churches, etc. The reason telecom
companies find this irritating is that it means they spend a lot of
money on attorneys and negotiators who have to deal with thousands of
separate municipalities and their individual requirements. Cable
executives, in particular, would like to see this feature of the U.S.
political scene go away. They would rather aim their big guns at
Washington, with the FCC as a single, fat target.

Chairman Kennard seems to have adjusted to this idea as well. But
local control of telecommunications has the potential to foster more
innovation and competition than the big telecom carriers have so far
demonstrated. Most local leaders now understand the importance of the
Internet and quite correctly view telecommunications as a component
of community infrastructure every bit as significant as streets,
water, power or public transportation. Implementing high-speed
telecom infrastructure is by now an essential part of strategic
economic planning for local governments.

Miles Fidelman, editor of the Journal of Municipal Telecommunications
in Newton, Mass., said: "If you think of the Internet as just
'infotainment,' then government probably doesn't have a role. But if
you think of it as critical infrastructure, then government certainly
does have a role."

That's really the crux of the problem. The big telecom companies view
the Internet not as public infrastructure, but as a means for
capturing a consumer market and for vacuuming people's wallets -- not
unlike television, a business they understand. It is now local public
officials who grasp the importance of the Internet as infrastructure,
and that's why the most innovative experiments are being conducted by
local governments and citizen groups.

In Harlan, Iowa, for example, a community of only 5,000 people, the
municipal utilities company and the local telephone co-op have built
a fiber-optic network that gives the town, according to Fidelman,
"the most advanced telecommunications infrastructure on the planet"
(http://www.harlanchamber.org/techserv.htm).

Small communities, in particular, are increasingly fed up with
waiting for telecom companies to build state-of-the-art networks, so
they're doing it themselves.

Moreover, it is at the local level where citizens can have the most
impact on policies that shape the character and future of their
communities. If we relocate authority for telecom to the federal
level, citizens will face the combined resources of immense companies
with enormous stakes on the table. This may enhance the influence of
the FCC, but it will drive a stake through the heart of democracy.

What has made the Internet so powerful is that it dramatically
improves communications for everyone, while favoring no single actor.
But that could change, and the recent trends are not encouraging.
It's ominous that Kennard, who is charged with protecting the public
interest, doesn't seem to understand how to do that yet.

Gary Chapman is director of the 21st Century Project at the
University of Texas at Austin. He can be reached at
gary.chapman@mail.utexas.edu.

      ------------------------------------------

To subscribe to a listserv that forwards copies of Gary Chapman's
published articles, including his column "Digital Nation" in The Los
Angeles Times, send mail to:

          listproc@mcfeeley.cc.utexas.edu

Leave the subject line blank. In the first line of the message, put:

          Subscribe Chapman [First name] [Last name]

Leave out the brackets, just put your name after Chapman.

Send this message.

You'll get a confirmation message back confirming your subscription.
This message will contain some boilerplate text, generated by the
listserv software, about passwords, which you should IGNORE.
Passwords will not be used or required for this listserv.

Mail volume on this listserv is low; expect to get something two or
three times a month. The list will be used only for forwarding
published versions of Gary Chapman's articles, or else pointers to
URLs for online versions of his articles -- nothing else will be sent
to the list.

To unsubscribe from the listserv, follow the same instructions above,
except substitute the word "Unsubscribe" for "Subscribe."

Please feel free to pass along copies of the forwarded articles, but
please retain the relevant copyright information. Also feel free to
pass along these instructions for subscribing to the listserv, to
anyone who might be interested in such material.

Questions should be directed to Gary Chapman at
gary.chapman@mail.utexas.edu.


--------- End forwarded message ----------

--- end forwarded text