from: Metroland [1]

High-Speed Debate

Telecommunications bill aims to reshape the industry, and draws fire from community media organizations and major corporations

“It is the consumer-protection pack age that we need in New York,” said state Assemblyman Richard Brodsky (D-Westchester) of Assembly Bill 3980. Brodsky is the bill’s sponsor. “It lowers rates, it enhances public access, it deals with universal and affordable service. It preserves what’s called net neutrality.”

The bill proposes to reform the telecommunications industry in New York by creating a Broadband Development Authority to oversee an increase in the availability and quality of high-speed broadband Internet. It also aims to increase the telecommunication industry’s investment in infrastructure, as well as to promote cable-television competition within the state.

Peter Sikora, research coordinator for Communication Workers of America, which supports the bill, said that telecommunications is an important, changing industry that needs to be addressed and properly regulated. “Society is insisting that you need high-speed Internet, but there’s no government backing for it,” he said, “so we’re leaving it up to the quote-unquote free market.”

One of the more contentious parts of the bill calls for statewide franchise agreements. This “would cut the cities and towns out of the picture,” said Michael Max Knobbe, chair of Alliance for Community Media New York.

Currently, a cable company wishing to provide service to an area must work out an agreement with the municipality directly. Because the company is using the public right-of-way for power lines, a certain percentage of resources must be allotted to fund public, educational, and governmental programs, or PEGs. Bill 3980 grants the state the power to make such agreements.

The concept of statewide licensing has caused some members of community media organizations, like Knobbe, as well as others such as state Assemblyman Peter Rivera (D-Bronx), to speculate that telecommunications companies want to enter only lucrative markets. This will, they argue, result in the redlining of poor districts and an increase in the digital divide between rural and urban communities. They also fear that, without localized agreements, the ability for individual communities to negotiate terms that best serve them is taken away and given to the state.

A spokeswoman for Verizon said that her company also opposes the bill and feels that the proposed regulations will slow product development. She mentioned net neutrality as a specific point of contention. (A neutral network, the center of the complex and contentious issue of net neutrality, would be one in which service providers couldn’t place undue restrictions on access for customers.)

“We’ve listened very carefully to those concerns, and we’ve addressed them,” Brodsky said. “We have the best anti-redlining language in the country.” The bill would require that a company with a statewide agreement serve 50 percent of the state after three years, and 85 percent after six.

Sikora argued that it is the current system that allows companies to pick and choose which markets they enter, whereas Bill 3980 would ensure that the services serve most of the state, resulting in increased competition and a widespread availability of affordable service.

Knobbe voiced another concern. He said that when legislation similar to Bill 3980 took effect in other states, “PEG access facilities were forced to close because of uncertainties and inconsistencies with the bill and some of the technical language not being considered enough,” he said. “We don’t want to repeat mistakes made in other places.”

But Sikora said that this is not the case with this bill. “When you have a franchise agreement, the town and municipalities negotiate for a percentage [for PEG access funding]. Some towns get 5 percent and some do not,” Sikora said. “3980 requires 5 percent.”

The bill also contains strong “consumer and worker protection,” he added.

In addition to Verizon, the bill is also opposed by Time Warner and CableVision.

“I’ve united them,” Brodsky said jokingly of the companies’ opposition to the bill. “This is the one that’s actually good for real people.”

—David Canfield