wrythings

The so called “video competition” bill, HB 1500 is opposed by every community and advocacy group worth it’s salt. A lobby day is planned for Weds. April 18 under the Keep Us Connected coalition. From their site:

Join the Keep Us Connected coalition. Support pro-community video franchise laws that:

• Require build-out to all neighborhoods in a community
• Protect Public, Educational and Government (PEG) Access by ensuring carriage of existing and future PEG stations with adequate funding to operate
• Maintain local governments’ control over its rights of way, including the right to create communications networks
• Protect consumers with meaningful competition and strong customer service standards
• Maintain a free and open Internet

The Keep Us Connected coalition consists of nonprofits, municipalities, PEG Access stations, educational and government institutions, and Illinois residents.

Some civic voices including yours truly are given space on Community Media Workshop: Newstips - “Cable Deregulation Challenged”.

Here’s the full text from Newstips:

[UPDATE - The April 18 hearing on HB 1500 has been postponed, according to a report from the Keep Us Connected Coalition. The coalition is proceeding with its citizens lobby day on April 18 in Springfield. ]

Growing attention on a proposed statewide cable franchise bill could slow a legislative blitz by supporters of telecommunications giant AT&T.

State Representative James Brosnahan (D-Oak Lawn) was expecting the House Telecommunications Committee he chairs to vote Wednesday to approve HB 1500, the franchise bill he has sponsored, but the vote could be delayed. The bill would strip local municipalities of cable franchising power and create state franchises authorized by the Illinois Commerce Commission, going far toward deregulating the industry in Illinois.

AT&T has poured money into a full-court press by lobbyists in support of the measure, along with an extensive TV ad campaign suggesting that HB 1500 promises competition and lower cable rates.

But last week Ald. Edward Burke introduced a City Council resolution calling on the legislature to reject the bill. He plans to hold hearings on the issue with Attorney General Lisa Madigan and others, said spokesperson Donal Quinlan. A press conference called by Burke Tuesday morning (10 a.m. at City Hall, room 302) will raise the profile of opposition to the measure by the city and by municipalities across the state.

Public Access Channels Threatened

Wednesday morning, as the committee meets, community activists backing Chicago’s CAN-TV and public access channels across the state will arrive in Springfield for a citizen lobby day by the Keep Us Connected Coalition. (Community Media Workshop is a coalition member; CMW president Thom Clark hosts a show on CAN-TV.) The coalition says HB 1500 would undercut existing guarantees on funding, channel accessiblity and quality for public access cable, would provide for no new public channels in new service areas, and would establish stringent “no-repeat” requirements - not applying to commercial channels - allowing providers to eliminate public access channels.

“Instead of talking about strengthening public access, as we should be, we’re fighting to get back to first base,” said Barbara Popovic of CAN-TV.

Representatives of municipalities are challenging the basic concept of HB 1500 - that state franchises are needed to promote cable competition. They point out that by overriding local control, the bill eliminates basic customer service protections now enforced by municipalities, as well as local franchise requirements that entire communities be served.

Without anti-redlining provisions - which are probably only practical on a local basis - the measure won’t promote competition and lower rates across the board, but will create a dynamic where rates go down in affluent areas but are “subsidized by higher prices paid by residents in lower-income, non-competitive areas,” Burke argues in his resolution.

Eminent Domain for AT&T

Municipalities are outraged that for the first time they’ll have no oversight over contruction in their public right-of-ways, said Terry Miller, an attorney with the City of Naperville. Local officials worry about refrigerator-sized utility boxes which AT&T would have blanket authorization to install under the bill’s franchise, he said.

Under the bill the ICC can authorize franchises but has no enforcement power. Supporters of HB 1500 have promised “self-enforcement.”

Most shocking for many is the bill’s grant of eminent domain powers to AT&T and other state franchise holders, with no requirement for just compensation or avenue for appeal. HB 1500 “gives away the store regarding the ability of a private company to encroach on residential property in ways we’ve never seen before,” Quinlan said. “It’s extremely problematic.”

The eminent domain provision is not expected to survive current negotiations over amendments, but it’s indicative of the way Brosnahan’s bill contains “an a la carte sampling” of only the provisions in cable law that favor AT&T, Miller said.

“What’s clear about this bill is that it was written by telecommunications lobbyists,” according to technology analyst Sascha Meinrath, executive director of the Champaign-Urbana Community Wireless Network, on his blog. “I can only imagine that the goal was to fast-track this bill and sneak it through before the public got organized enough to demand that it be withdrawn.”

“AT&T wants to make this happen now because they know that with more time, more questions will be raised,” said Brian Imus of Illinois PIRG, calling HB 1500 “a sweetheart deal for AT&T.”

He points out, “There’s nothing now blocking competition, nothing stopping AT&T from negotiating cable franchises with local municipalities.”

‘Local Franchising Works’

“Local franchising works real well,” points out Roger Huebner of the Illinois Municipal League. He’s meeting with Brosnahan Tuesday to propose amendments to the Municipal Code and existing statutes that currently cover cable franchising, in order to address AT&T’s complaints about aspects of the process that are cumbersome, he said. The approach embodied in HB 1500 - creating a new article in the Public Utilities Act to give the ICC authority to issue state cable franchises - is unnecessary, he maintains.

Verizon, AT&T’s chief competitor for internet provider television (IPTV), has snapped up hundreds of local franchises on the East Coast, and according to Huebner, AT&T itself is seeking local video franchises in Illinois communities including Bellwood and Wheaton.

The municipal amendments should get full consideration, said Miller. That would mean no committee vote on Wednesday.

Brosnahan’s office said he was waiting for proposed amendments from the Attorney General’s office. Another hearing on the bill has now been scheduled for one week after this Wednesday’s hearing.

Illinois PIRG was joined by national consumer groups including Consumers Union in opposing the bill in its original form. “The unintended consequence will be systematic redlining on a statewide scale,” according to a letter from Consumer Union’s Jeannine Kenney and others to state legislators. They say other states with similar deregulation schemes have seen prices increase, “leaving consumers with nothing but empty promises.”

Consumer groups also emphasize the importance on non-discriminatory “net neutrality” provisions ensuring free access to content to the Internet.

Michael Maranda of the Chicago Digital Access Alliance points out that AT&T is pushing legislation legalizing redlining and undermining local control and access even as it presents itself as a bidder on Chicago’s wireless network, which parallels the city’s cable franchises - and requires a digital inclusion plan. “It’s a horrible bill and a discredit to the state,” he said.

I call upon all who view themselves as technology and social justice advocates to seize the moment afforded by the recent attention to Digital Inclusion: let’s raise both the public discourse and the practices of our field to a new level.

We’ve been doing heavy lifting trying to meaningfully connect our communities for a long time without sufficient resources or recognition. We know better than anyone else that the Divide persists and we’re glad it’s being noticed (again). We hear Digital Inclusion trumpeted as the virtue of every network proposal, but we can’t allow ourselves to be used in the selling of these networks, and we can’t let our communities be sold short. We want the connectivity, yes, but unless we as a people assert what we require of our networks we’ll be looking back upon another missed opportunity.

What we really want is a fundamental change in communications and technology policy at every level of social organization. We the people are a lot more sophisticated than we give ourselves credit for… and than we are credited with by others who hold themselves above the people.

It’s time for us to state clearly who we are, what our values are and what we know is needed at this moment in history. Let your actions speak louder than your words, certainly, but get your story out there. This holds for all who seek social justice and have dedicated themselves to working locally. Your direct work with your community is important, but so is the shaping of our collective life through shared words, images and ideas. We must make time for both.

I warmly thank Sascha Meinrath for helping to further this conversation.

We’re all ready to move Beyond Digital Inclusion.

I’ve been writing on defining digital divides for ourselves in our own communities as opposed to thinking about them in terms of the series of solutions that have come to many communities in a top-down manner, even if partly the result of demands from the bottom or near-bottom (or those at least cognizant of a divide) for something.

I generally recite the typical aspects of the divide: equipment, training, and connectivity and deconstruct/explode them further along lines anyone can understand: technology changes more and more rapidly. So: is a given piece of equipment up to it’s task, is it equitable? is a given training regimen adequate? are there other tools and strategies we should be trying? is the connectivity on par with what others have, and at similar price point?

That’s all well for an effort to break free from other’s definitions of the divide, especially from those who would have us believe it has been bridged.

Back to the beginning: what I take to be one of the hallmarks of the divide is isolation.

I began by writing that the digital divide is not over…. I feel a compulsion to reiterate that point… and to bluntly state that perhaps those who would have us believe it is over have simply not heard, or not heard from those who are most isolated… those who are effectively voiceless because their stories don’t get told in a meaningful way and they are often without the tools to tell their own stories in the media of the connected.

In my own city there are plenty of people who do not realize the isolation of individuals and communities so proximate to them geographically.

We must advance community use of media tools, and community and individual participation with media tools to tell their own stories… to be the media (as the saying goes).

Recently, the Chicago Digital Access Alliance (CDAA) issued a platform espousing 10 Principles for Digital Excellence. I’m proud to be a co-author of that statement.

Here are the headlines of the 10 Principles, I’ll offer discussion of each of them as the CDAA Campaign for a Community Benefits Agreement progresses.

1. DIGITAL EXCELLENCE IS AN INSTITUTIONALLY FUNDED PRIORITY FOR CHICAGO.

2. SOUND PLANNING, EVALUATION AND POLICY MEASURES ARE CRITICAL TO DIGITAL DIVIDE EVALUATION AND DIGITAL EXCELLENCE IMPACT.

3. UNIVERSAL ACCESS TO HIGH-SPEED CONNECTIVITY IS A PUBLIC RIGHT AND NECESSITY.

4. DIGITAL LITERACY AND FLUENCY ARE FORMS OF HUMAN CAPITAL AND REQUIRE PUBLIC INVESTMENT.

5. LOCAL INFRASTRUCTURE IS NECESSARY FOR COMMUNITY-DRIVEN CONTENT DEVELOPMENT.

6. HARDWARE TOOLS MUST BE AVAILABLE TO ALL.

7. ENVIRONMENTALLY SUSTAINABLE BEST PRACTICES AND INNOVATIONS IMPROVE THE HEALTH AND WELL-BEING OF ALL NEIGHBORHOODS.

8. OUR FREEDOM TO CONNECT DEMANDS NETWORK NEUTRALITY AND ACTIVE MONITORING FOR EQUITABLE SERVICE.

9. THE GLOBAL ECONOMY WORKS FOR EVERYONE: ASSURE WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT AND FIRST SOURCE HIRING.

10. IN STRONG NEIGHBORHOOD ECONOMIES, ENTREPRENEURS AND SMALL BUSINESSES THRIVE.

We drafted these principles under a frame of “Digital Excellence”, and have been working hard at moving the discourse from Inclusion to Excellence even as the term Digital Inclusion buzzes from PR-mouthpieces of the purveyors of Networks and the Politicians now showing their concern for bridging the digital divide after these many years. We want to set a higher bar. If Inclusion can be a way station en route to Excellence, we will be better off, but we need to be clear on where we want to go.

I have felt that community and technology advocates were ready to take up the phrase Digital Inclusion largely because we’ve been neglected in the trenches for so long, that we just were ecstatic at being listened to at all.

If we are being listened to, finally, let’s talk about the society we want, and about technology only in so far as it can be in service to us achieving that society. So, an inclusive society is certainly one I want to be a part of, but, let’s strive for excellence all around.

With Digital Inclusion there is danger of leaving our aim too low, and shooting ourselves in the feet. If they are listening now to community experts with experience in Digital Literacy, Access and Equity, let’s tell them where we really need to go.

We can’t settle for digital inclusion as a charity model. We’re investing alongside others in our community, in our common future. We won’t settle for a handout of a little hardware, a little connectivity, and maybe a little money to run some programs and put some sites up. We’re not going to smile, say thanks, and go away quietly. We have work to do.

Community Media Workshop: Newstips - Community Wi-Fi Pushed

It’s my birthday, and the cause is going strong!

Here’s the full text from Newstips:

A coalition of community groups is meeting with companies bidding on contracts for the city’s planned wireless network, encouraging them to include in their proposals a community benefits agreement providing neighborhood networks.

The Coalition for Community Wireless Networks met recently with representatives of Earthlink and is scheduled to meet with AT&T this week.

“We want to plant a seed in bidders’ minds” that community benefits agreements would make their proposals more attractive, said Ben Helphand of the Center for Neighborhood Technology.

CCWN has joined a call by the Chicago Digital Access Alliance for the city to broaden internet access provisions in its request for proposals - which now requires equipment, training, and discounted service for low-income individuals - to address community-wide access issues. CCWN includes a number of community development corporations, while CDAA represents community technology centers.

The groups envision the city’s wireless system as a “network of community networks,” with community institutions and businesses served by each neighborhood’s network.

“It’s an opportunity to bring economic development into our community” by helping merchants reach a local audience, encouraging internet-based businesses, and linking residents to local jobs, said Ernest Sanders of the Greater Auburn-Gresham Development Corp. A community network would also better serve local schools, civic groups, and churches, he said.

A community benefits agreement would bring resources and support to efforts like Technology Bridges in Englewood. There FaithTech Network is conducting a digital assets inventory and developing 25 church-based community technology centers - with similar efforts underway in Bronzeville, Woodlawn, and North Lawndale, said Pierre Clark, a CDAA founder.

The groups point to community benefits in Minneapolis’s wireless program, including a digital inclusion fund backed by a percentage of service providers’ revenue, and a free “walled garden” of content featuring neighborhood groups, city websites and public safety information, available to anyone who can access the signal.

Bids on the city’s request for proposals are due at the beginning of next year.

CDAA has held six neighborhood meetings on the proposal for a community benefits agreement and plans more, Clark said; the next one takes place this Friday, December 15, at 5 p.m. at the office of Networking for Democracy, 3411 W. Diversey.

Originally written as a response to Ron May’s account of our panel at ilCTC Conference:

As one of the co-moderators of the “First Mile/Last Mile” panel at the recent Illinois Community Technology Conference in Hyde Park, I feel it incumbent upon me to clarify some of the discussion you described for your readers.

Our panel (co-moderated by Phil Maclin and myself) addressed the issue of providing connectivity to communities (residents and businesses) through a variety of strategies. The general mode of speaking about these issues is as the “last mile”…

Following our penchant for turning things around we (without originality in this) wanted to emphasize that from a community perspective this is the first mile, not the last mile.

The panelists assembled represented some of the leading doers and thinkers in Illinois on these matters. (Sascha Meinrath, principal organizer of Community Wireless Networking Summit and head of the CUWiN project, Nicole Friedman of the Center for Neighborhood Technologies, Peter and Annie Collins,leading advocates in the Municpal Fiber movement, and the prolific James Carlini.

The panelists addressed strategies for communities to take their connective destiny into their own hands. I think we can all agree that internet connectivity is a community asset that is valuable for our economic development, whether we speak of a neighborhood, a municipality or our region (dare we say the entire State?).

As Carlini points out, quite rightly, this is not just a matter for the civic minded. It makes great business sense. Take his example of housing developers. If a business or even a savvy potential resident does a search for property and selects for certain criteria including broadband availability we can see a seacrh narrow from 140 to a handful. If you are marketing your property, do you want to be in the handful, or do you want to be in the less desirable majority?

This issue scales to communities and municipalities.

Many writers and activists can point to other countries that are enacting policies that demonstrate they get this. We’re talking about fiber capacity to the home, not copper.

But back to our conference and the battle hardened panelists we assembled.

The communities we are concerned with don’t even have adequate copper capability or choice for high speed access, and its more than evident that the incumbent carriers are more interested in investing in fiber where they can obtain maximum profit before they will extend any copper (or better service) to the under-served commuities.

If anyone needs data on this, I refer you to the report issued by the Metropolitan Planning Council earlier this year. The report merely codified what we already know. But the point was to make the case in terms of regional economic development as opposed to helping the disadvantaged cross the digital divide.

I’ll get to my point of correction. Ron cited me as source on something, but the info presented was inaccurate. The point of controversy during the discussion was prompted by the question of “war driving” and the general issue of security and wireless networks. The originator of the controversy was not Stel V. of OnShore.

The dispute centered upon the disposition or motives of people that identify wireless networks or clouds, and whether or not they are secure.

While Security should be an issue for anyone in the networking world, there are different degrees of security needed in different contexts, and in some cases there may be reasons (or intention) to provide open access.

The controversy over motives came up as Andy Carra was about to describe the pro bono work of wiggle.net.

The gentlemen of Wiggle.Net have documented and mapped data regarding networks detected in the wilds of Chicago, and reported in to their site.

If you go to their website you will be able to search for any locality in the Chicago area and see what wireless networks have been detected.

Many people purchase a wireless device to establish a wireless home network, but dont even bother to set basic security protocols. Perhaps if you go to the wiggle.net site you’ll find your own network listed, and whether its open or not. Maybe you want it to be open and you like the idea of sharing your connection with your neighbors. Thats part of the idea of the wireless community networking movement. In Homans Square we witnessed the launch of the Wireless Community Networks project (WCN) of the Center for Neighborhood Technology not quite 2 months ago. This is a federally funded project (under the Dept of Commerce) and is intended as a pilot project. It’s a great example of doing our innovation in the communities that are less likely to be served by the latest and greatest technologies by the for-profit corporations.

The CNT project is piloting the WCN in four areas: Homans Square, Pilsen, Elgin and W. Frankfort.

Illinois is the center for plenty of innovation. The CUWiN project is developing wireless mesh technology that will facilitate deployment of community wireless networks along a mesh topology. They’re already in operation, and the technical innovations are being watched closely, not least by those in Chicago.

I believe that the CNT project and the community volunteer project “chifi.net” are seeking to develop strategies to expand the footprint and impact of the TOP project leveraging developments in the CUWiN software.

This is all to the point of there being a role for (or willingness to) sharing access to wireless networks.

This is not to say that the incumbent providers are ok with this. The cable companies aren’t even very happy about residents using the internet connection with more than one PC in their own homes, let alone sharing outside with others, intentionally or not. Likewise for the major telecom providers. Some ISP’s are happy for their customers to share their bandwidth. Why?

Because they believe that ultimately the customer will want to buy more bandwidth. Makes sense to me.

As to whether some war driving is malicious.. I tend to doubt that very much of it is done in such spirit.

Thats not to say that security isn’t an issue. If you have something to protect, its incumbent upon you to take measures to protect it. But there are definitely ways to share access that is relatively secure… you can protect part of your network with proper routing/firewall settings… and there are definitely reasons to want to share access.

I hope this alleviates some of the question of controversy for our panel, and perhaps some of the participants or readers would like to weigh in on this topic.

I just wanted to set the record straight and say that war driving as documented by the guys of wiggle.net can be a public service for people seeking access to intentionally open networks and for people checking to see if their network was detected as open (and perhaps they didnt realize it).

Security is everyone’s concern, but I note the majority of attacks are coming through my wired lines, and through trojan horses and other malicious code.

But the emphasis of the panel was mainly on the bulk of what Iwrote at the beginning of this message, and what I hope we can take away from this is the question of when our region will begin to think in terms of strategic investment, associating broadband deployment with economic development, and with regard to keeping the talent and technologies we are developing in Illinois productive in this state.

I’d like to advocate for something else that came out of the conference: we need every community in Illinois connected with relatively high speed access, and we need to require a base line of service delivery and quality for all communities that is in accord with regional and nationally competitive priorities.

Chicago needs a plan of action to surpass memory that never happened in Civic Net, and Illinois needs an investment and community economic development strategy that encourages high tech start-ups and small businesses.

Ron, sorry about the last bit of diatribe. I know I am somewhat echoing your basic thesis that the surrounding states have gotten something together and we havent.

As a closing point, I’d like to appreciate Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn and Rep. Connie Howard, two figures that get community technology’s importance for Illinois. I’m still awaiting word on who or when we will have a Technology person in the Governor’s office making some waves that will carry us forward.

Regards,

Michael Maranda

CTCNet Chicago, Board President

AFCN, President-Elect