Big Telecom Spent $200,000 to Try to Prevent a Colorado Town From Even Talking About a City-Run Internet

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jojo
Posts: 21
Joined: Fri Feb 20, 2015 5:00 pm

Big Telecom Spent $200,000 to Try to Prevent a Colorado Town From Even Talking About a City-Run Internet

Post by jojo » Thu Oct 26, 2017 4:41 am

seriously why spend so much trying to prevent a city from even talking about such things?


reference:
big-telecom-spent-dollar200000-to-try-to-prevent-a-colorado-town-from-even-talking-about-a-city-run-internet



Big Telecom Spent $200,000 to Try to Prevent a Colorado Town From Even Talking About a City-Run Internet


Fort Collins, Colorado is set to vote on a ballot measure that would open the door for municipal broadband, and Big Telecom is fighting mad.


Kaleigh Rogers


Kaleigh Rogers
Oct 26 2017, 1:16am


Politics is an expensive game, but when an oligopoly is at stake, there's no price tag too high for Big Telecom. In Fort Collins, Colorado—a town of about 150,000 north of Denver—Big Telecom has contributed more than $200,000 to a campaign opposing a ballot measure to simply consider a city-run broadband network. It's the latest example of how far Big Telecom is willing to go to prevent communities from building their own internet and competing with the status quo.



"It's been wild," said Glen Akins, a Fort Collins advocate for municipal broadband. "We're overwhelmed by the amount of money the opposition is spending."

When the residents of Fort Collins vote on November 7 they'll have a couple of ballot measures to consider, including one on city-run internet. If that measure is approved, Fort Collins will be able to change the city charter to allow it to run a municipal broadband utility. This doesn't mean it will happen for sure, and the city still hasn't finalized what that utility would look like, but it opens the door to further discussions.

It's part of a process that is necessary because Colorado is one of 23 states that have laws restricting the development of municipally owned broadband (all of which have been lobbied for by telecom companies). Colorado's law can be bypassed with a ballot measure, and in recent years this action has become particularly popular. Last year, 26 communities in Colorado voted on municipal broadband measures—all of them passed, meaning those municipalities can now explore building their own networks. In total, more than 100 communities in Colorado have voted in favor of measures to bypass the state's restriction. Fort Collins passed this hurdle in 2015, and the new vote would take the next step of amending the town charter.


But there are surprisingly strong forces at play lobbying against the Fort Collins measure, and funding a campaign that includes TV and radio ads, Google search ads, and flyers.



The biggest contributor to the anti-municipal broadband measure is the Colorado Cable Telecommunications Association, a trade group representing the traditional telecom providers in the state.

"We are involved in the chamber of commerce and in the Colorado Cable Telecommunications Association," Leslie Oliver, Comcast's director of external communications for its west division, told me over the phone.

The CCTA forked over $125,000 to Priorities First Fort Collins, the anti-municipal broadband campaign, according to filings published Wednesday. But there's also been a $85,000 contribution from Citizens for a Sustainable Economy, a local nonprofit run by the city's Chamber of Commerce, which include local provider CenturyLink as a member.

"There are two explanations: one is that all of the cable companies in the state feel very strongly about drawing a line in the sand now, after 100 communities have already made this decision," Christopher Mitchell, Community Broadband Networks initiative director at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, said over the phone. "Or Comcast is the one pushing it, and we've seen that in countless states before."

Oliver told me Comcast had not made any public statements about the ballot measure. Motherboard reached out to Centurylink but did not receive an immediate response.



The "no" campaign's main argument is that the city shouldn't waste money on projects like a municipal broadband network where there are other, more important, issues at hand. But the ads don't seem to acknowledge that if Fort Collins did decide to go forward with city-run internet—at an estimated cost of $150 million—it would be funded through utility bonds, which wouldn't be available to use on other issues, like road repairs.

"The broadband budget is going to be funded 100 percent through subscriber fees," Atkins noted. "If you don't build the network, it doesn't magically create $150 million to spend on something else."



And, again, the ballot measure is just to open the door to possibility; Why put so much effort and money into a campaign against starting a conversation?

But Big Telecom has a history of opposing municipal broadband initiatives. It has gone to extreme lengths, from suing the FCC to throwing around money in local elections, including in nearby Longmont, Colorado. In 2011, a remarkably similar anti-muninet campaign, also supported by the CCTA, spent more than $300,000 to oppose a ballot measure in Longmont. But Longmont residents voted in favor of the measure, and the town's municipal broadband network lit up in 2014.

Akins is eagerly awaiting November, when the city will find out if voters followed in Longmont's footsteps. He told me his totally unofficial guesstimate: the measure will pass, but just barely.

RichardMIT
Posts: 21
Joined: Thu Mar 09, 2017 3:57 pm

Re: Big Telecom Spent $200,000 to Try to Prevent a Colorado Town From Even Talking About a City-Run Internet

Post by RichardMIT » Thu Nov 09, 2017 6:46 am

A followup to this story.


https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/arti ... -vote-2017

Nearly Half of Colorado Counties Have Formally Rejected a Comcast-Backed Law Restricting City-Run Internet
After Tuesday’s elections, a total of 31 counties have voted to be exempted from a state law against municipal broadband networks.


Kaleigh Rogers
Nov 8 2017, 11:17pm

A lesson for Colorado's state government: telling Coloradans they can't have something is a surefire way to make them do whatever it takes to get it.

In Tuesday's Coordinated Election, two Colorado counties voted on ballot measures to exempt themselves from a state law prohibiting city-run internet services. Both Eagle County and Boulder County voters approved the measures, bringing the total number of Colorado counties that have rejected the state law to 31—nearly half of the state's 64 counties.

Senate Bill 152—which was lobbied for by Big Telecom—became law in Colorado in 2005, and prohibits municipalities in the state from providing city-run broadband services. In areas with lots of internet infrastructure and a competitive market, that's not a big issue, but for many communities in Colorado, high-speed internet is limited, expensive, or non existent.


Some cities prefer to build their own broadband network, which delivers internet like a utility to residents, and is maintained through subscription costs. But ever since SB 152 was enacted, Colorado communities have to first bring forward a ballot measure asking voters to exempt the area from the state law before they can even consider starting a municipal broadband service. So that's what many of them have done.

In addition to the 31 counties that have voted to overrule the state restrictions, dozens of municipalities in the state have also passed similar ballot measures. Including cities, towns, and counties, more than 100 communities in Colorado have pushed back against the 12-year-old prohibition, according to the Institute for Local Self Reliance.

There are still hurdles for these communities to hop before city-run internet can actually be rolled out, but other Colorado towns have shown it's possible, including Longmont, where the city-run internet was rated the fastest internet service provider among US cities this year by PC Magazine. If the trend continues, Colorado may soon have a lot more cities at the top of that list.

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