Municipal Broadband – Not a Walk in the Park

President Obama supporting Municipal Broadband

President Obama recently called upon the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to use its authority to pre-empt state laws restricting municipal broadband.   At least 19 states have laws prohibiting cities from constructing municipal broadband networks providing Internet access for businesses and citizens.  Tom Wheeler, Chair of the FCC and a former telecommunications industry executive, has been publicly talking about doing just that for almost a year.   On January 22 three Democratic Senators introduced the Community Broadband Act which would explicitly make it illegal for states to prohibit “public providers” (cities, counties) from offering broadband.

But if municipal broadband is so great, why haven’t cities in the other 31 states been building broadband networks right and left?

To be fair, some cities are building high-speed broadband networks, usually with fiber optic cable to every home and business. In Chattanooga Tennessee, the Electric Power Board – a rough equivalent of Seattle City Light – has built fiber broadband and is offering gigabit (one billion bits) per second service.   In New York City, Citybridge, under the City’s authority, is replacing up to 10,000 payphones with free gigabit Wi-Fi hotspots which include free phone calls nationwide, tablet computers and charging stations.  Tacoma, Minneapolis, Riverside (California), Lafayette (Louisiana) and even places like Cedar Falls, Iowa, have municipal broadband.

2005 Report on Seattle Municipal Broadband

Seattle has had an on-again, off-again, love affair with the concept of a municipal broadband network (and in full disclosure, I’ve led some of that effort).  Now a local group is forming to push politicians to actually make it happen, although that campaign still lacks a name.  UPTUN (Upping Technology for Underserved Neighborhoods) has long advocated for fiber broadband networks for Beacon Hill, the Central Area and nearby neighborhoods.

But, for most places in the United States, including Seattle, municipal broadband is like a shining city on a distant hill:   alluring and inspiring yet distant.

Implementing municipal broadband is not simple or easy.   In fact, the path to municipal broadband is strewn with a whole series of landmines and gotchas similar to the “simple” idea of tunneling a freeway under downtown Seattle.

People are attracted to government-owned and operated broadband networks primarily because the incumbents are so roundly despised.

The cable companies continually raise their rates.  Comcast’s rates have risen 50% faster than inflation since 1996 according to Mark Cooper of the Consumer Federation of America.   People hate their customer service, as well – the 2014 American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) rated Comcast, which serves most of Seattle, as the “worst-rated company in the worst-rated industry”.   Well, that isn’t exactly true.   Time-Warner Cable was rated worse than Comcast, but Comcast is proposing to buy Time-Warner, perhaps to cement its bottom ranking.

Telecommunications companies like CenturyLink provide some competition for the cable companies in Internet service provision.   But the ACSI rates CenturyLink, AT&T and Verizon only slightly above the cable companies.

It is an amazing situation when private citizens demand government get into competition with private companies to improve customer service and lower prices.

What benefits could city government bring to the cable business?   Here are a few:

1. Wired broadband is a natural monopoly.
   

   “You could try another cable company if there was one.” Jeff Stahler, 2014.

   It is expensive to run fiber optic cable to every home and business, just as it is expensive to run gas, water, sewer and electric lines.   Most local governments either provide such monopoly services themselves, or heavily regulate the private providers, including regulation of rate increases.   But the Federal Telecommunications Act of 1996 prohibits local or state regulation of Internet service. While the law does allow local or state government regulation of cable television, it severely restricts that authority.  Local cable franchising authorities, for example, can only regulate the most basic, lowest cost, tier of service.  Municipal Broadband would be as “natural” as municipal ownership of sewer, water or other utility services.

2. The cable industry has abused its monopoly. Susan Crawford, former technology adviser to President Obama, describes how, in 1997, the cable companies met and decided not to overbuild each other’s systems, cementing the monopoly on cable in most areas.   Comcast has purchased a number of other cable companies – including the pending purchase of Time Warner – further cementing its monopoly and profitability.  Comcast also has purchased a lot of the content delivered over cable TV channels and the Internet.   It owns or partly owns NBC Universal, Oxygen, MSNBC, History, PBS Kids, Sprout and many more producers of programming.   While all of this is legal, the continued concentration of cable networks and content leads to rising rates.   A municipal broadband network would be governed by the local elected Mayor and city council, rather than a board of directors in a faceless corporation in a distant city.
3. Municipal broadband is good for the economically disadvantaged. A municipal network – controlled by elected officials – could offer discounts and other special services to low income residents, or for children in school, thereby reducing the digital divide and improving economic opportunity.
4. Competition is good. If several different service providers offer any service, customer service should improve, rates should drop, and Internet speeds should increase.   We’ve seen this already, as Comcast’s rates in Tacoma are lower due to the presence of Tacoma Click (although Click! loses money).  Comcast has increased the speeds of its internet service, perhaps because CenturyLink recently announced it will provide fiber broadband to certain locations in Seattle and elsewhere, and Wave Broadband is also offering gigabit service.
5. Theoretically, municipal broadband would have lower rates. A municipal network would not have to make profits, pay shareholders and pay exorbitant executive salaries.  Comcast’s CEO Brian Roberts made $31.4 million in 2013.  CenturyLink’s Glen Post made almost $9 million.  Comcast’s part-time directors made $173,000 each.  Seattle Mayor Ed Murray makes less than $184,000, and Seattle City Council members make less than $118,000 each.
6. Municipal networks would be higher speed and have fewer technical problems. Cable company networks typically are fiber optic cable to each neighborhood, with older coaxial cable down streets and alleys and into each home or premise.   Coaxial cable has connectors, is made of copper (which rusts), and can be decades old, all factors contributing to poor signal quality and technical problems.   Telephone companies usually deliver their DSL broadband over copper wires with similar kinds of technical problems combined with lower speeds.   In contrast, a new network – such as those in Chattanooga, Lafayette and Cedar Falls (but not Tacoma) – would be fiber optic cable throughout.   Fiber carries signals with light, not electricity, and is much more resistant to aging and technical issues.
7. Municipal networks can serve other city needs.
   

   Smart Grid (photo: NIST)

   Municipal networks could support smartgrids for water and electric utilities, where all the transformers, meters, distribution centers and valves in those networks are both automated and managed via the network.   Smartgrids reduce repair times because outages can be quickly located to a specific location.  Smartgrids also allow residents to control their costs because they can see their electric or water use in real time, minute-by-minute or appliance-by-appliance.   This also supports municipal goals for conservation and reduction of climate change.

But if municipal networks are nirvana, why aren’t they also sprouting like mosquitoes in a swamp?

1. Incumbent internet providers would oppose cities tooth-and-nail. And they have deep pockets.   Comcast has $5 billion cash on hand for lowering rates, advertising and legal expenses.
2. A new network is expensive. Building a fiber optic network to every one of 320,000 homes, apartments and businesses in Seattle might cost $800 million or more.  Now, that’s not much compared to the $4 billion price tag of Seattle’s ill-fated tunnel under downtown – and a fiber network would serve every home and business in the City, not just cars and trucks using the tunnel.   And $800 million is roughly the equivalent of building a new football or baseball stadium.  But getting voters to approve a $800 million bond issue.
3. Legal challenges are certain. Lafayette had numerous challenges from Bell South and Cox (Cable) Communications, with both victories and losses in district and appellate courts, but ultimately prevailed in the Louisiana Supreme court after three years of litigation.  Chattanooga did not have as much difficulty, but the Tennessee legislature passed a law limiting its ability to expand its $70 a month gigabit fiber service.   Any major city which tried to implement a fiber broadband network must be prepared to litigate for years.  And Mayors and City Council members would probably have to stand re-election during the legal battles.
4. The business case for subscribers to pay network costs doesn’t work. A 2011 study conducted by the City of Seattle estimated a municipal broadband network – if supported solely by subscriber fees for television, Internet and telephone – might need to attract 50% of the subscribers from existing service providers.  But a company like Comcast could use its huge cash reserves to cut its rates for Seattle customers for years, essentially starving the municipal network of operating capital until elected officials either gave up or were not re-elected.  The lower rates would be great for consumers and businesses, of course.
5. Other business models have political risk. There are other models – using a property tax or property assessment to supplement the income of the municipal broadband network.  This makes good economic sense, as a high-speed broadband network in a high-tech city should attract technology workers from Amazon, Microsoft and other companies, improving property values.   But higher property values also means higher rents and housing prices, driving middle and low-income residents from the City.   And again, such an assessment – if passed by Seattle voters – would certainly face legal challenges.  (Note:  it is clearly illegal under state law to use electric utility or water utility rates to support a broadband utility.  Electric rates cannot even be used to provide streetlights, and water rates can’t be used for water flowing through fire hydrants).
6. Some municipalities have struggled.
   

   Google saves Provo

   Provo, Utah, built a $39 million fiber network in 2004, but, unable to create a successful broadband utility, sold the network to Google for $1.  UTOPIA, a coalition of suburban Salt Lake City cities, has $500 million in debt but no successful network.

7. Content costs for a municipal network will be higher. The large cable companies have tens of millions of subscribers and, as mentioned above, often own or partially own content providers such as NBC or ESPN.   Their wholesale rates for such content will be lower than the rates a city would pay.   They can also extort payments from some content providers, such as Netflix, which recently agreed to pay Comcast so its movies and video would be delivered faster and more reliably.  This “net neutrality” debate rages in Washington DC, but today provides additional income for incumbent providers.
8. In Seattle’s case, many of these risks, plus the different business models, are clearly laid out in a 2011 study.
9. Governments aren’t good at operating entrepreneurial businesses. Governments are great at police and parks and fire and water utilities.  But providing Internet service is a business which has changed radically in the past 20 years, and will undoubtedly change radically again over the next 20.  Is a city government nimble and flexible enough to enter such a marketplace?

Municipal broadband has captured the imagination of Barack Obama and the Federal Communications Commission.  It’s had some notable successes.  Many Seattle consumers want an alternative to the existing monopolies.  But is municipal broadband right for Seattle?   Perhaps the next study by the Murray administration will find the right mix of politics and business to make it work.

– Why Don’t Cops just use Cell Phones?

The National Plan

Police officers and firefighters carry $5000 radios.  Local and state governments spend hundreds of millions of dollars to build public safety radio networks.  Yet, today, cell phone networks seem to be everywhere, most people carry a mobile phone and many of us think paying $199 for an iPhone is expensive.  

Why can’t cops and firefighters and emergency medical technicians (EMT) use cell phones like everyone else?   A Washington State legislator from Seattle recently public argued for this approach in his blog.  And, at first, this appears to be a simple way for governments to save a lot of taxpayer dollars.

Here are a few reasons public safety officers need their own dedicated networks:

1. Priority.  Cellular networks do not prioritize their users or traffic.   A teenager’s cell phone has the same priority as a cell phone used by a police officer or, for that matter, the BlackBerry used by President Obama.  We’ve all experienced “no circuits available” or “network busy” when using a cell phone.  When I’m being assaulted or have been injured in an automobile accident or even have had my house burglarized, the last thing I want is to have the network be “busy” so a police officer or EMT couldn’t be dispatched.   Public safety needs dedicated frequencies where police officer sand firefighters have priority and even, perhaps, exclusive rights to for use, without calls being clogged by the public.
2. Reliability.  Seattle’s public safety radio network, part of the larger King County-wide 800 megahertz public safety radio network, handles more than 60,000 police, fire  and emergency medical calls every day.  It operated last year with 99.9994% reliability – that’s about 189 seconds of downtime out of more the than 31 million seconds which composed the year 2009. On the average, only about five out of the 60,000 calls were delayed for any reason, and even then the average delay was about two seconds.  What cell phone network has that kind of reliability?   How many times have you experienced “no service” or “call dropped” with your cell phone?   Do we want firefighters who are reviving a heart attack victim and talking to the emergency room on the radio to all-of-a-sudden have their call dropped?  Or should police officers lose service when drunk drivers clog the roads and bars are closing at 2:00 AM because a cell phone company decides to do maintenance because “no one uses the network then”?
3. Disasters.  Even small disasters cause cell phone networks to collapse.   In Seattle, we’ve had swat team actions or car accidents which have shut down a freeway.   Suddenly cell phone service abruptly ceases in that area because EVERYONE is on their phone.  A few years ago a rifleman was loose and shooting people in Tacoma Mall.  Responding police and EMTs had communications because they had dedicated networks and frequencies, but again cell phone networks were overloaded and down.   In a larger disaster such as an earthquake or hurricane (with associated evacuation of large cities), commercial networks will be overloaded or jammed for days by people trying to escape the affected areas. Do we want police and fire departments – or even transportation, electric utilities and public works departments – to be trying to use those same networks while they are are responding to the disaster? I don’t think so.
4. Talk-around. A key feature of most government-operated networks is something called talk-around or simplex or “walkie-talkie” mode. In this mode, individual radios talk directly to each other, without using a radio or cell tower. This is very important at incident scenes – firefighters commonly use it at the scene of a fire, because the radios will operate at the scene even if there isn’t a tower nearby. But this NEVER a feature of cellular phone networks. If the cell tower is down or out of range, that cell phone in your hands is a useless lump of plastic. But the radios of publicsafety officers still work and will talk to each other even without the tower.
5. Ruggedness. No firefighter in his/her right mind would fight a fire using a cell phone for communications. The heat, water and ruggedness of the environment would quickly destroy the device. Yet most public safety radios will survive being dropped repeatedly on the ground or being immersed in water for 30 minutes or more. No standard cell phone can survive the rigorous work of firefighting or policing.

Are there problems with the current dedicated public safety networks? Absolutely. The use proprietary technologies, for example “Project 25“. Theoretically all “Project 25” radios work on any “Project 25” radio system. But only a few of those are deployed around the nation. These proprietary technologies are one reason the radios cost up to $5,000 each.

Representative Carlyle, in his blog, proposes that we deploy “Tetra” radios for public safety. While Tetra is common in some parts of the world, it is not used at all in the United States. This is a dangerous proposal, because it means Tetra networks we buy would not work with the equipment used by any other government or telecommunciations carrier anywhere in the United States. If called to respond to a diaster overseas, we could talk to firefighters in Hong Kong or the police in Ireland, however.

Another problem we face is the small market – the total market for public safety is perhaps 10,000,000 radios which are replaced, say, once every 10 years. On the other hand, the cell phone market is huge – 260 million cell phones replaced every two years in the United States alone. The economies of scale means consumers will have a lot more choice, and their cell phones will be relatively cheap.

So is there some way to reduce the sky-high cost of these dedicated public safety networks while at the same time not endangering cops, firefighters, EMTs and the public in general?

Absolutely. The FCC, in its national broadband plan, and the federal Department of Commerce, with its forward-thinking grant program for broadband, are lighting the way for a new public safety network which will be more robust, national in scope, and interoperable. By “interoperable” I mean the new public safety equipment will probably operate almost anywhere in the nation, wether on a dedicated government network or on a commercial cell phone network. Here are some features of the new networks:

• The FCC and major public safety organizations have called for the new public safety networks to be built using a fourth generation (4G) technology called LTE – long-term evolution. Not coincidently, this is the same technology which will be used by the major cell phone companies Verizon and AT&T when they construct their 4G networks. The commercial networks will operate on different frequencies than the public safety networks, but they will all be built in same general area of the wireless spectrum – the 700 megahertz (MHz) band.
• Because they are all using the same technology (LTE) and are in a similar slice of radio spectrum (700 MHz) potentially they will all interoperate. That means that public safety officers will use the government networks and frequencies when they are within range, but could “roam” to a commercial network if necessary. So cops and firefighters will have the best of both worlds – coverage from dedicated government networks and coverage from multiple private carriers. The FCC is even considering rules which would require the commercial companies to give public safety priority on the commercial LTE networks.
• Because everyone – consumers, cops, firefighters and even general government workers such as transporation and utilities – are all using LTE, constructing the networks can be much cheaper. Commercial telecommunications carriers could put government antennas and equipment at their cell sites, and vice-versa. Perhaps the network equipment at the cell site, or even the central switches could be shared as well. Public safety will still be using its own frequencies and have priority, but could share many other network elements.
• And the radios used by individual public safety officers or placed in police vehicles and fire trucks can be much cheaper as well. Because manufacturers are all making equipment for the same technology – LTE – it could cost just a few hundred dollars. Again, there will be specialized and ruggedized devices for firefighters and others working in punishing environments, but the “innards” – the electronics – will be much less expensive.
• Next, we have to get all first and second resopnders to use the same or common networks. Here in Washington State, for example, we have multiple overlapping and duplicate networks. City and County police and fire in the region have one network, each electric utility (e.g. Seattle City Light) have another network. Transportation departments have their own networks (e.g. Seattle Transportation and Washington State Transportation each have their own separate network). The Washington State Patrol has its own separate network. The State Department of Natural Resources has its own network. Fish and Wildlife has its own network. And federal government agencies (FBI, cutoms and immigration) have their own networks. This is patently stupid and expensive. As we build these new fourth generation LTE networks, we need to build a single network with lots of sites and a lot of redundancy and hardening to withstand disasters. And everyone – first and second responders from all agencies – should use it.
• Finally, and perhaps most importantly, all the networks will be nationally interoperable. The lack of communciations interoperability was a major finding of the Commission which investigated the September 11th World Trade Center attack. But with these new networks, a Seattle police officer’s 4th generation LTE device will also work on New York City’s LTE network or New Mexico’s :LTE network or on any Verizon or AT&T network anywhere in the nation. As disasters happen anywhere in the United States, and first and second responders are rushed to the scene of the disaster, they can take their communications gear with them and it will work.

The City of Seattle is one of a handful (about 20) forward-thinking governments leading the way to deploy these new networks. Seattle’s public safety LTE network, hopefully launched with a federal stimulus grant, will eventually expand throughout the Puget Sound region and across the State of Washington. The State of Oregon also has authority and a grant request to build an LTE network, and we are working with Oregon to make sure our networks work with each other seamlessly.

Is all of this a pipe dream? I don’t think so. A number of public and private companies, governments and telecommunciations carriers and equipment manufacturers are working together to realize it. Many of them are in the Public Safety Alliance. In the Federal government, the FCC is working with the National Institute of Standards and the Departments of Commerce and Homeland security are providing grant funding. It will take a lot of work and many years to realize this network.

But when it is finished, we’ll have public safety networks which work to keep us safe, and consumer networks which work to keep us productive and linked to our friends and families. These networks will be separate yet connected. They will be built from common technologies. And they will be less expensive for taxpayers than the networks we have today.

– Fibering, UnFibering America

On August 25th I had a chance to participate in a workshop at the Federal Communications Commission discussing what should be in the National Broadband Plan. The FCC is charged by the President and Congress to create that plan by February, 2010. To that end, they are conducting a series of workshops to gather input.

The workshops are the standard fare of a government sausage-making machine. The usual vaudeville performers with their usual songs-and-dances protecting their usual patches of the stage and their seats in the theater called the telecommunications market. There are very few representatives of city and county governments, but lots of representatives of “industry”.

On the other hand, I’m heartened by the Obama administration’s choices to lead the FCC. Julius Genachowski is the new FCC chair and is one of the primary authors of the broadband portion of the “stimulus act” (ARRA). Admiral Jamie Barnett is the new Chief of the Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau. He listened intently during the workshop, and the staff of that Bureau appears to be genuinely engaged and interested in this task.

These are all good signs that, with the National Broadband Plan, we’ll not get the usual lowest-common-denominator beaurcratized pabulum, but something truly visionary – a roadmap to take the United States from its present second-world Internet infrastructure to an electronic network suitable for the remainder of the century.

In my mind – and this was the essence of my talk – that roadmap is simple: build a fiber optic network to every home and business in America. As that network is built, create a fourth-generation wireless network on top of it by placing radio towers at key points throughout the network. I’m sold on fiber optics because of its virtually limitless capacity. As electronics improve, new switches and routers can be replaced on a fiber network, driving it to ever higher speeds. Signals from multiple different competing service providers (Internet, television, video, music, security, telephone etc.) can ride this network, just like anyone’s car or trucking company can ride the public highways.

Telephone and cable companies will oppose this vision tooth-and-nail. They have immense investments in existing copper-cable networks and will want to wring every last dollar of profit from those networks. But those copper cable networks are old and slow, literally dinosaurs in the world of fiber optics. South Korea, Japan, Singapore, Australia, Paris, Sweden, Amsterdam, see the value of fiber and are investing in both municipal and national networks. If we listen to the copper-wire-dinosaurs, the United States will continue to fall behind.

A fiber network has numerous advantages. I’ve already mentioned the potential to break the telephone and cable monopolies which grip our present electronic infrastructure. By fostering competition, we’re not only going to be improving service, consumer choice and reducing prices, but we’re being “capitalist” in the most fundamental meaning of the word.

Really high speed fiber networks have the potential to transform our world – literally. Homes and businesses will increasingly have high-definition television sets. By adding high-definition television cameras to them, along with a fiber network, every home becomes a video studio. Telecommuting, tele-education, tele-medicine, video telephony all become possible. Virtual classrooms from home, routine visits to the doctor, and video-calls with family all could improve our quality of life.

Furthermore, with true two-way, high-definition video a possibility, perhaps we can coax people out of their automobiles, to attend classes via video, to telecommute and conduct business at home, traveling less. This, in turn, means greater productivity, less time wasted in traffic jams, less consumption of precious gasoline, fewer greenhouse gas emissions and less dependence on foreign oil. And that means improved homeland security.

This transformation simply echoes previous transformations in our history, where the telegraph allowed long-distance communications between cities or continents, the telephone allowed homes across the nation to be interconnected for voice, and the internet brought the web, e-mail and social networking into the lives of almost every American. We’ve done this before – and it has always changed America for the better, serving as an engine of economic development as well as making us more safe and secure. We’ve built national telegraph and telephone networks, and, more recently, the Internet. We’ve built national broadcasting networks for radio and television and cable television. We’ve constructed cellular telephone networks and public safety radio networks. We’ve built the national highway network and then the Interstate highway network. Sometimes we’ve built these networks with entirely public investment, sometimes with entirely private investment, and sometimes a combination of the two. Wise regulation and spectrum management by the FCC has often paved the way. And we can do it again, if the National Broadband Plan is innovative and visionary.

Will the FCC and the Obama administration have the vision, the innovation, the leadership and the guts to be this bold?

Additional Information:

• My thanks go to the Association of Public Safety Communications Officials (APCO) for sponsoring my attendance at this workshop. APCO has 15,000 members and is the largest organiziation with a mission to improve communications for our first responders.
• The full schedule of FCC workshops is here.
• My presentation is on slideshare here.
• A more complete version of this blog in essay form is here or link to it in the essay box at the right side of this post.

– Shocked, SHOCKED to learn …

Shocked over the FCC Chairman?

I am schocked, SHOCKED to learn that an senior official of the Bush Administration would abuse his power, withhold information from the public and members of his agency, and attempt to manipulate data and information to advance his personal agenda, perhaps directing excess payments of up to $100 million to private companies.

Or, to continue the parallels with the 1942 movie classic Casablanca, “play it again, W”. (Yeah, I know the line “play it again Sam” was never in the movie!)

I’m not referring to the bungled management of Iraq in 2003-4 or the vast sums of money funneled in no-bid contracts to companies like Halliburton. I’m referring to the majority staff report of the United States House Committee on Energy and Commerce, released this week, and its primary subject, the management of the Federal Communications Commission by Chair Kevin Martin.

My comment: DUH. The report is NOT news to those of us in local government who’ve had to deal with the FCC Chairman and the outfall of a few of his decisions over the past eight years.

Exhibit 1: Congress authorized the removal of UHF television channels 52 through 69, freeing 108 megahertz of spectrum in the 700 megahertz (MHz) band for other uses. This spectrum was really valuable because it has good penetration of walls and into buildings. The FCC auctioned most of this spectrum to wireless telecommunications companies with the money going into the federal treasury.

About 10 megahertz was reserved for public safety use: police, fire, and emergency medical services. Traditionally, cities and counties and regions have licensed and used spectrum allocated to them to build radio systems for public safety and general government. Spectrum allocated only for voice radio systems, that is. We expected the same kinds of licensing rules to apply to this valuable new chunk of spectrum, which could be used for “broadband” – essentially wireless Internet. Such spectrum could send building maps to firefighters, video from crime scenes, patient telemetry from medic units.

Under Martin, however, even that small piece of the 700 MHz spectrum was ripped from the hands of local government and was to be auctioned into the control of private companies. Only in the last few weeks – since the November 4th election and impending changes at the FCC – has this plan been derailed.

Exhibit 2: Martin demonstrated an active prejudice on behalf of telecommunications carriers by altering the rules for cable franchising. Under the Constitution, states, cities and counties control their streets and rights-of-way. Under the Telecomm Act of 1996, cities and counties franchise the companies who string cables on poles in those rights of way and then offer cable television and related services to consumers. The franchises funnel revenues and services (e.g. Internet access and cable TV at community centers) to the local governments.

But the FCC, under Martin, changed the rules – cities and counties are now forced to grant cable franchises within 90 days, but ONLY to telecommunications carriers who already operate within the jurisdiction. Anyone else wanting a cable franchise goes through the traditional process!

Under Kevin Martin, the FCC’s mantra apparently was “no telecommunications carrier left behind”. And cities and counties lost the ability to manage their own rights-of-way and airwaves on behalf of the public safety and welfare.

Certainly the FCC has done a lot of good work regulating the airwaves, telecommunications and cable, and there are a lot of talented FCC staff who are dedicated to serving the public.

They deserve a Chair of the Commission with similar values and ethical leadership.