Telecom Reins Belong in Hands of Local Citizens

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 (https://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” (https://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.