By Rachel Chalmers
As ComputerWire went to press on Monday, July 26, San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors were debating whether to force AT&T to sell bandwidth on its local cable network to its competitors at wholesale prices. AT&T has spent $140bn buying cable companies, including Tele-Communications Inc and MediaOne Group, hoping to leverage their cable television monopolies into a monopoly on broadband internet access into a quarter of US homes. But the city’s ordinary dial-up ISPs – America Online Inc not least among them – have everything to lose if consumers begin demanding broadband services which they cannot provide.
With so much at stake, it’s little wonder that both sides have unleashed the noisiest lobbyists, PR firms and ad agencies at their disposal. To AOL and its supporters, the issue is open access; to AT&T, it’s forced access. The cable giant has funded a front group, Hands Off the Internet, to battle the Bay Area Open Access Coalition, which is funded by AOL, GTR Corp and local phone companies. San Francisco supervisor, Tom Ammiano who supports open access, says he has been the victim of an orchestrated email campaign by its opponents. They’re very similar in verbiage, telling me why AT&T is God’s gift to the millennium, he told Associated Press.
Craigslist founder and San Francisco activist Craig Newmark points out that the cable TV monopoly was granted to TCI for a reason. He argues that with the advent of broadband internet, that reason no longer applies. A city grants a cable company monopoly privileges in return for adequate or better cable television services, Newmark writes. The cable company should have no expectation relating to monopoly privileges in any other area than cable television. They’ve had more than ample opportunity to satisfy return on investment needs… Open access and competition is the only alternative that could be fair to all parties and result in a quality service.
AT&T says that it has spent millions acquiring and developing its cable capacity, and that it shouldn’t be forced to share. It points out that its rivals can use DSL, satellite or wireless to reach subscribers’ homes. But local government has the final say. Already Portland, Oregon and Broward County, Florida – prompted in part by concerted campaigns of local internet service providers – have voted to force the cable networks open. The cable companies have appealed both decisions, and the Federal Communications Commission has backed them up.
So San Francisco is just the latest battle in an ongoing, nationwide war. The next bout will probably be held in Denver, where a group calling itself OpenNET has collected 4000 signatures to force a popular vote later this year. The group’s sponsors – RMI.Net and AOL, again – boast that they have filed twice as many signatures as they needed to get their initiative on to the November 2 ballot.
Customers will benefit from full and open access, argues RMI.Net chairman and chief executive Douglas Hanson. We think that more choice at less cost is what customers want and deserve. Under the agreement between AT&T and the City and County of Denver, consumer choice would be limited and costs would be higher… What we are asking for is simple. We want fair and open access so that consumers have real choices and that the companies of the future – many of which are based here in Colorado – can compete on a level playing field with AT&T, now the biggest player on the block.
Meanwhile, back in San Francisco, AT&T implies that the future of the network itself depends on the supervisors playing ball. The aging infrastructure requires an estimated $50m worth of maintenance. We want to have a cooperative relationship with the franchise authority that is conducive to making a large investment, Scott Morris, AT&T’s VP of local government relations, none-too-subtly told the Wall Street Journal. In other words: no cooperation, no maintenance. Whether the Board of Supervisors was cowed by this threat remains
to be seen.
