The Story
Last Monday NPR reported President Bush’s intention to provide all Americans with broadband (or high-speed) Internet service. Bush, who made his announcement in Albuquerque on Friday March 26th, hopes to achieve universal broadband suffrage by 2007.

Bush envisions an Internet world where “Consumers have got plenty of choices when it comes to purchasing the broadband carrier…you see the more choices there are, the more the price will go down, and the more the price goes down, the more users there will be, and the more users there will be, the more likely that America will stay on the competitive edge of world trade.”

NPR’s story suggested that Bush provide subsidies in order to kick-start his plan. Broadband access, they agreed, would provide consumers with a much more pleasurable Internet experience.

But Bush’s primitive economics lesson is deceiving and the lack of intelligent news coverage is, typically, appalling. Bush made a similar statement in June 2002 while addressing a White House audience of technology leaders (among them AT&T CEO Michael Armstrong and AOL Time Warner Chairman Steve Case) saying, “the country must be aggressive with the expansion of broadband.” High-tech executives salivated at the thought of all that profit.

Not surprisingly, Senator John Kerry also made a similar proposal on March 26th.

The News
Not surprisingly, the real story is one of avarice and control—wherein big business invades the public domain to gain greater profit. While, theoretically, we the people own the airwaves, we’ve actually lost access to most of them, save for the Internet. The broadband push stands to change that.

Far from offering Americans “more choice” and “cheaper prices,” telecommunications companies instead seek to monopolize the market. Consider the recent Supreme Court ruling (ironically the ruling came on March 25th, the day before Bush’s announcement), which barred local communities from providing high-speed Internet service. According to USA Today “about 150 local governments have built telecom networks, most sparked by the 1996 Telecommunications Act, which was intended to bring consumers more choices.”

The heart of the issue was the question of regulation. According to the telecommunications act, states may not prohibit any entity from offering phone service. But the Supreme Court ruled that no state should be prevented from regulating itself. The case began when Missouri communities petitioned the Federal Communications Commission. The FCC struck down the petition, but then an appeals court reversed the FCC ruling.

Complaining that the local competition just isn’t fair, the big boys took their appeal to the Supreme Court. Sprint VP Denton Roberts complained that because local municipalities don’t have to pay income tax and have no problems gaining right-of-way, “it’s not a level playing field.”

That brings up the niggling question of the FCC’s unholy alliance with telecommunications giants. Michael Powell, son of Colin and chairman of the FCC, long ago stated that, with regards to the FCC, “the oppressor here is regulation.” True enough, if Powell is speaking for big business. According to Mother Jones, “the advent of the information economy has turned the FCC from a minor D.C. player into one of the government’s most powerful agencies.” At stake is high-speed Internet service, the mother lode of the 21st century. Major corporations wait fitfully for the advent of broadband in order to sell digital movies, online news and music over the Internet.

Sound good?

Step back and consider how unsatisfying and how costly local cable packages are. In Manhattan, Time Warner cable is the only game in town. Far from expanding consumer choices and decreasing costs, multi-conglomerates have acquired market shares in direct violation of federal anti-trust regulations. Instead of providing competition and offering, in Bush’s words, “more choices,” the exact opposite has taken place.

If unchecked, corporate giants such as AT&T and AOL Time Warner, (not unlike Microsoft’s control over which browser you use) will be in a position to decide which news, movies and music Internet users will access. AT&T, for example, could limit their customers to accessing only the content they provide.

What’s at stake is the question of who will own and access the Internet.

According to Mother Jones, “much of the wireless spectrum—a priceless public commodity and the key to the mobile communications boom—could fall into fewer than half a dozen corporate hands.” Consider Powell’s move last year to consolidate media ownership and permit cross-ownership—a move quelled by one of the few grassroots protests in recent years. Meanwhile AT&T and AOL continue to lobby the FCC hard. Mother Jones reported that between the months of October 2000 and March 2001, for example, “130 FCC staffers received nearly $300,000 worth of trips financed by the communications industry.” Early 3N readers may remember that story as one of our first.

Telecommunications companies contribute large chunks of money to political campaigns—and they wield a lot of weight in Congress. The FCC, which was originally designed as an apolitical regulatory board, now wields, with the advent of the technology revolution, incredible power.

The question to ask is who stands to profit and who stands to lose in the quest to unite America under broadband? --A.M. McNary