Bills, legislation, and ordinances

Congress says "Yes" to community broadband

acohill — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 05:17:26 -0800

Both houses of Congress have passed the Community Broadband Act of 2007. The bill fixes a defect in the 1996 Telecom act that says "any entity" may offer telecom services. The meaning of "any" was challenged repeatedly in state level lawsuits, and some misguided state legislatures went even farther and made it illegal for local governments to start telecom service offerings.

In general, I think it is better for communities to invest in "digital road systems" and let the private sector use those digital roads to sell telecom services directly to customers. This creates a public/private partnership that does not put local government in direct competition with the private sector. But communities should still have the option of offering retail telecom services if they think that is the best way to proceed. In some areas, that may be required for certain services, like TV programming, because of market size.

Could Internet taxes show up?

acohill — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 06:39:52 -0700

A 1998 ban on taxing services provided over the Internet is due to expire next month. Congress has three options: make the tax ban permanent, extend the ban for several more years, or start raking in a whole new source of cash.

If Congress decides to tax Internet access, everyone's access provider bills (dial up, DSL, cable modem, wireless, Blacksberry, etc.) could jump as much as fifteen to twenty percent.

The big picture issue here is whether Congress ought to be making the telecom industry tax collectors at all. For business, telecom taxes are pure overhead that crimp a company's ability to create jobs and pay for expansion. And if the company is profitable, it is still going to pay taxes on the profits. From an economic development perspective, telecom taxes are a drag on jobs development and business growth. Design Nine, as an example, gets phone bills with as much as 30% of the charges just taxes of various kinds, from local, state, and the Federal government.

Given the weak state of the economy right now, let's hope Congress does the right thing and extends the ban on Internet taxes for services.

Here we go again...

acohill — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 05:28:09 -0700

Senator Ted "the Internet is made of tubes" Stevenson is at it again, calling for "universal" filtering of the Internet to protect us all from pornography. The Internet pornography problem is a serious one, and deserves serious attention, but Senator Stevens is not making a serious proposal.

First, the Federal government has no business filtering and checking everything we look at; it is as if the government planned to put an agent on our doorstep and insisted on looking at every book, magazine, and letter that we tried to carry in the house, and had the power to arbitrarily remove any item without explanation, including the pictures of your one year old niece in the bathtub that your sister in law sent in the mail (it would classified as child pornography).

Second, Senator Stevens reveals that his understanding of the Internet has not evolved much past the "tubes" analogy. There is no one central location for the "Internet." It is everywhere and nowhere. It does not stop at national boundaries. U.S. laws have no effect on servers and content providers in other countries. Stevens' proposal smacks of political grandstanding ("...it's for the children") at a time when there are much more serious issues that beg for attention.

Grappling with technology

acohill — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 06:37:09 -0800

An Illinois legislator has introduced a bill to outlaw "social networking" sites in Illinois libraries and schools. The bill is extremely broad, and probably will never be passed, but it is an interesting exercise in lawmaking.

The problem is real. Sites like MySpace and FaceBook have user profiles that promote pornography directly and indirectly, and is that something we really want our kids to be looking at on school computers or in public library computers funded with taxpayer dollars? I have been dealing with this issue since the early days of the Blacksburg Electronic Village, and I think what is needed is more adult supervision of children--hands on adults--parents and teachers who pay attention to what is going on in the classroom or in the library and dealing with it appropriately and promptly. This law would make police responsible, and worse, it is not the kids who get punished for accessing inappropriate material, but teachers and librarians. This is just kooky. We are going to arrest a teacher because they failed to notice that a hormonally challenged fourteen year old boy was caught looking at something inappropriate? It is the kid who should be punished, not the teacher or the librarian.

A second problem with the law is that "social networking" is inescapably vague. This site has most of the same "social networking" features as MySpace; users can register and post comments and "talk" to each other. Millions of sites could be defined as "social networking" sites, so who decides what is acceptable and what is not? We need more reason and less grandstanding as we grapple with these new systems.

Forida votes for paper

acohill — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 04:06:33 -0800

The state of Florida is ready to toss electronic voting machines in the trash and go back to paper. The state plans to use paper ballots, where the voter makes a mark in an oval next to the candidate's name. The ballot is then scanned optically, just like the aptitude tests that have used this system for decades. The paper/optical scanning approach provides an audit trail that can be read manually if necessary but also provides for rapid vote counting by automated equipment.

The tragedy, of course, is that taxpayers get to foot the bill for this travesty--$30 million to purchase the new gear, and probably much more than that for the stuff destined for the landfill. And this was not even an honest mistake. Legislators had plenty of warning that the touch voting equipment was going to cause problems, and they went ahead and bought it anyway.

The core problem? Legislators believed the promises of equipment vendors, rather than getting advice from experts who would not benefit financially from the sale of such equipment. The same problem exists generally whenever you are buying any kind of network or computer gear: vendors, even the best ones, will sell you what they have, and that may not always match what you need. Make sure you understand your needs first, before talking to vendors about "solutions."

Local franchise fee fight brewing

acohill — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 04:46:45 -0800

The Roanoke Times has a front page article on a possible challenge to a recent FCC ruling that federalizes cable franchise fees. I could not find a link to it online, but it is an AP report, so it should start showing up in the search engines later today. I have been warning that local government rights were under attack for almost two years. The FCC wants to take away the ability of local government to manage right of way. Unfortunately, some communities have made the problem more difficult by using franchise fees for community perks rather than tying them directly to the cost of right of way access. Had they done the latter, it would be much more difficult for the FCC to change the rules.

The article today alleges that FCC Chairman Kevin Martin provided misleading information to FCC commissioners, and some communities appear ready to challenge the decision on those grounds. Whatever the outcome, I still believe the current approach to franchising, whether at the local or the Federal level, is old-fashioned. If communities want to manage telecom and spur economic development, there are better ways to do it than trying to tax some companies but not others. And for advocates of public access television, which is often supported by franchise fees, there are better ways to do that as well, that could greatly expand the reach and scope of local community media. But like the monkey with its fist stuck in the coconut, you have to be willing to let go of Manfacturing Economy economic models first.

Franchises and big boxes

acohill — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 06:10:44 -0800

AT&T is in fights with several communities over it's "U-verse" data service. It used to be called "Project Lightspeed," but the company dropped that name, probably when people noticed that the system actually delivered services over copper (speeded up DSL).

Some communities are fighting the firm over franchise fees. AT&T is offering a triple play (voice, video, and data) set of services, but wants to classify the new system as a "data" service rather than the two traditional classifications: telecommunications (used for telephone providers) or cable (used for TV services). The distinction is an important one, both for communities and for the companies that offer the services. Cable services have typically been subject to franchise fees, while data services are unregulated. AT&T wants to use the data classification to avoid franchise fees.

Some communities have come to rely too heavily on franchise fees, and want every new service provider to pay them. I have said for a long time that communities would be better off letting go of the forty year old tax system (that's all it is, really, a tax) and encourage competition for service in the community. Prices would go down, and everyone that buys telecom services would benefit. I think it is always a bad idea when you make certain businesses tax collectors, but not others.

The broader issue for franchise fees is that as the kinds of services we want extend beyond triple play, how do you tax them services and businesses, many of which have no physical presence in the community. The answer is that you can't, so do you really want to tax only those companies that actually make physical investments in infrastructure? The answer, again, is "No."

There are two alternatives to franchise fees. One is to charge companies that want to use public right of way a right of way fee. You charge the same fee to every firm that places cables and equipment in right of way. This is fair because every firm is treated the same way, regardless of the service they offer, and it is fair because there is a real cost to the community to manage public right of way. But it should not be used as a general fund revenue enhancement (tax) unless you want to inhibit competition and unless you like paying high prices for telecom services.

The second alternative to franchise fees (and right of way fees) is for the community to build its own digital road system and to let private companies use that road system to sell services. Companies that do use it will pay the community a portion of revenue to cover the cost of building and maintaining it. This is the best approach, in my opinion, because it preserves public right of way (a scarce resource) and these Open Service Provider Networks (OSPNs) lower the cost of telecom services in the community, saving both tax dollars and business dollars. More money is freed up for other uses across the entire community.

AT&T, in addition to the franchise fee fight, is also arguing with communities over right of way issues. The squabbles highlight why it is so important for communities to have a thoughtful and even-handed right of way policy before companies like AT&T show up with the big new equipment boxes that they want to scatter all over town. I identified this as a problem more than six years ago. I call these boxes NSAPs, or Neighborhood Service Access Points. These streetside cabinets house the electronics needed to deliver telecom services to homes and businesses.

AT&T does not want to tell communities where they intend to put the boxes (for fear competitors will find out), and they often appropriate right of way or even part of someone's yard for the boxes. A pro-active right of way policy that anticipates these kind of uses will help a community avoid lawsuits.

For more information on these NSAP boxes, take a look at this link and this one, to see the ugly side of not planning for these. One advantage of a community system is that you minimize the number of NSAPs needed. And this long article should be required reading for every town and county planner and every elected official.

How about your community? Is there a recently revised right of way policy in place that reflects the new realities of an unregulated telecommunications marketplace? What about NSAPs? Do you have a policy that requires all new subdivisions to plan for the placement of these units and that requires right of way set asides for them in locations that minimize their landscape impact? What about franchise fees? Have you developed a new approach to right of way management that reflects current and future telecom trends, rather than clinging to a forty year old tax model?

Social networking ban: good or bad?

acohill — Fri, 04 Aug 2006 04:28:54 -0700

A bill has been approved by the House of Representatives that requires K12 schools and libraries that receive Federal funding to block social networking sites, so that minors cannot access them.

It is a kind of darned if you do, darned if you don't situation. In general, I oppose government meddling in what we look at online. But sites like Facebook and MySpace are filled with hardcore pornography, and I don't think our kids really need to be exposed to that in the middle school computer lab. Worse, it is easy for sexual predators to browse such sites and pick out likely victims--kids are putting pictures, their names, and even their phone numbers and street addresses on the sites.

It would be better if these bans were voluntary, developed by schools and library staff in cooperation with parents, as local standards, rather than having the heavy and often arbitrary hand of the Federal government. Pornography really is the scourge of the Internet, and it is hard to figure out how to protect our right to access what we think is important versus the need to protect children.

Making ISPs snoop for the government

acohill — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 07:59:43 -0700

The FBI continues to lobby to try to force ISPs to snoop for the government. This is something the federal agency has been asking for for years, and has tried to get Congress and the FCC to go along with the plan.

What the FBI wants is for every ISP to provide private access to an ISPs entire network so that the FBI can just log in and snoop at its convenience. In theory, court orders would be required, just like wiretaps, but to have private backdoors is to invite abuse.

And if the FBI really believes they need access to the network of an ISP, they can get a court order today and go to the ISP and get whatever records they need. So it is not like they need the new regulations to get something they don't have. Even in a time of war, the FBI is asking for too much power.

USA Today on Net Neutrality

acohill — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 04:45:50 -0700

USA Today has a useful summary of net neutrality, with a two column, side by side comparison of the issues and the players. Congress continues to squabble over this issue, with what appears to be a notable lack of understanding of what is involved. The current legislation is now opposed by nearly every single municipal and county professional organization that represents either local government officials or local government generally, which should be a signal to legislators that something is not quite right. But Congress has never minded stripping communities of decisionmaking and control in the past, so we can only hope the sausage factory we call Congress, in the end, makes something palatable to communities.