The elephant in the net neutrality debate that nobody talks about: community broadband
For much of my adult life, internet access was provided by private enterprise. Over the years, I've used Time-Warner, Comcast, ATT, and CenturyLink. Up until the time I moved from Los Angeles to Salt Lake City, I had never considered the possibility that a public entity would provide internet access to any place that I lived. I didn't even know such a thing exists.
When I started to think seriously about moving to Utah and researching my internet access options for when I landed here, that was when I first learned about UTOPIA Fiber (hereinafter "Utopia"). That's an acronym for the Utah Open Infrastructure Agency. Utopia is community broadband for 11 cities in Utah.
As I continued my research as a resident living in Utah, I learned about community broadband, community networks, cooperatives and other forms of network governance for internet access. By far, the biggest and best clearinghouse for such information was the Community Broadband Networks website, now known as Community Networks.
From there I started to learn about the politics of broadband. I started to look for articles there and in other places on the subject and I started to write them. At first, I started to write articles on the monopoly ISPs out of frustration with just getting decent service. It seemed to me that ISPs provided service only when they wanted to, not to satisfy demand.
I spent almost 10 years in activism for community broadband because I could see a clearly defined difference in behavior between the public networks and the private networks. Where private networks played with their customers like they were cats chasing a laser pointer, public networks responded to demand and delivered service where there was demand.
One of my favorite examples is the story of a man who had to sell the house he just bought because Comcast lied to him. He needed a good connection so that he could work from home. He called Comcast to check for service before he bought the house. Then after he moved in, he learned that there wouldn't be any service until he paid a small fortune for them to run a new line to his house. So he moved again.
And that is just one of many examples over the years that I've read about. My own story is that I once lived on a street where one side had Comcast and Qwest (now CenturyLink), and my side only had Qwest. Every so often, I'd call Comcast to see if they offered service to my house, and the answer was always "no". It was only by accident that I met an ambitious saleswoman at a home show, someone determined to get my house hooked up, that I got service from Comcast.
When I see stories in the news about broadband, net neutrality or the big media companies, there is one thing that is always missing. Competition. The big incumbent internet service providers don't really compete against each other. The old phone companies with their copper networks have not been investing in their networks like the cable companies have. And the cable companies have been eating the market with higher download speeds than consistently best the phone company offerings.
When I see editorials on net neutrality, especially in mainstream media, I never see any mention of community broadband, public networks or even cooperatives that respond to demand that isn't being met by the incumbent ISPs. It's like there is a conscious effort to ignore public broadband networks.
After almost 10 years of waiting, calling, writing, lobbying, and activism, I finally have a connection to a public network. I can tell you that I'm never going back to Comcast or CenturyLink as long as Utopia is running.
I enjoy the high symmetrical speeds, the simple invoicing, the peace of mind in knowing that the money I send to my ISP is going to stay in the community. I have peace of mind knowing that I'm just paying for internet access, that my fees are not being used to subsidize lower fees and higher speeds in a big city in another state.
One thing that just occurred to me this morning is that I'm now a true cord cutter. With Comcast, I always knew that if I didn't subscribe to their cable TV service, they'd find a way to use my money to support cable subscribers and keep their fees low. But on Utopia, a public network, I am no longer a part of that subsidy fund for Comcast or CenturyLink. No longer am I subsidizing ESPN, either.
ESPN is the single biggest reason I cut the cord. I am not a sports fan and I hated the idea that I had to pay for ESPN on the lowest tier. I hated the idea that I was giving peace to people so obsessed with sports, that they didn't have time to keep an eye on the government. More than once, I have imagined how government would behave if all that energy poured into sports was poured into government scrutiny. I imagined how government would behave if every single sports fan made just one Freedom of Information Act request.
The public option here in my neighborhood is what I will use to keep the other guys honest. What I'm paying for here is more than just high speed, reliable internet access. I'm paying for true net neutrality. I'm paying for a 2TB cap, something I'll never touch in a month with typical use - I browse the web, watch videos on Netflix, Amazon Prime and YouTube, and sometimes I run updates on my computers, hardware, etc. I might download an Ubuntu installation CD from time to time. But I can't imagine doing anything to touch a 2 TB cap.
Now I never have to worry about accessing content that is in competition with Utopia, because they don't compete. There is no conflict of interest.
If you feed Comcast, you feed a Congressman. If you feed Centurylink, you feed a Congresswoman. Any time money is sent to the duopoly or monopoly, they use that money to buy more protection from the free market. When I buy internet access from Utopia, I'm fighting fire with fire.
With Utopia, we have a mutual interest: just good internet access service. Their success is my success. My success is their success. When first closed the deal to get Utopia, my wife was skeptical and wasn't sure why we needed so much speed with this connection. But a couple days ago, she needed to upload a large file to one of her clients. What used to take 20 minutes only took one minute and that was a pleasant surprise for her.
We were used to asymmetrical service. CenturyLink was providing 20 Mbs down and less than 1 Mbs up. With Utopia, we're getting 250 up and down. That level of service makes a huge difference. That kind of service makes online backup a viable option for our computers at home, and that is the kind of insurance I want to have for our data.
The difference in philosophy between public and private networks is summed up as follows: Where the private networks seek maximum short term profits, the public networks seek steady and gradual long term growth to market saturation with consistent improvements over time. Utopia exists because the private ISPs thought they could always count on protection from the legislatures in Congress and the states. The private ISPs buy that protection at my expense. I see that protection as a subsidy.
So, if you live in an area with only one ISP, and there is no competition for that ISP on the horizon, you know why public broadband options exist in more than 500 cities and towns across America. Then you can look at the national news and discourse on net neutrality and you'll know why you never see any mention of public networks in the debate. Public ISPs like Utopia moot the debate over net neutrality.
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