Is Anti-Municipal Broadband Report Astroturf? 529
Glenn Fleishman writes "A report issued today by the New Millennium Research Council (NMRC) and The Heartland Institute says that municipalities shouldn't build wireless networks because it's anti-competitive and will waste taxypayer dollars. The report has some interesting points (mostly about building fiber networks), but eWeek (second page) uncovered that NMRC is a subsidiary of Issue Dynamics, which is a lobbying firm that represents most US telcos and cable operators. It's astroturf. The Heartland Institute won't reveal its funders. I wrote a long account trying to track down the connections between the sock puppets involved in publicizing the report."
Re:Astroturf? (Score:5, Informative)
Why not Public Network, Private Competition? (Score:3, Informative)
And why do we do half-a** measures like mandating private competition over... private networks? That's how things seem to be done here in Utah. I've been trying to help my parents get broadband for 7 years. They live in a town of nearly 100,000 people. They live two blocks from a technology campus/business park. They can't get DSL. It's always "oh, about 6 months from now," from Qwest and has been since 1998. Near as I can tell, at least half of the city must be in the same boat, because that's the portion of Orem that was built around or before my parents home was. Of course, you call up any of Qwest's "competition," and it turns out they're simply reselling Qwest's services, and since Qwest apparently can't get it together to update half of my hometown... no DSL for them.
Of course, Qwest cried and screamed and protested and astroturfed when the UTOPIA project [utopianet.org] came around, promising not only competing service, but a truly updated public infrastructure. Qwest won't or can't provide the service, but darned if they're going to let somebody else show them up and take away their free lunch. The entrepreneur who started one of the first ISPs in Utah, of course, saw right through them. [utahpolitics.org].