Telecom Industry Covertly Funds Sleazy Attacks On Community Broadband Efforts In Massachusetts

from the my-argument-is-so-good-I-have-to-pay-others-to-make-it dept

Like most of the U.S., Western Massachusetts towns and cities have spent decades dealing with expensive, spotty, and slow broadband from private telecom monopolies like Comcast and Verizon. As a result, a lot of these towns and cities have explored building their own community owned fiber networks.

Community broadband has been increasingly popular since COVID, with many networks offering locals symmetrical gigabit for as low as $60 a month. Data shows these networks offer faster, cheaper, better service overall. These efforts can take many forms, from public/private partnerships, to city-owned utilities, to joint municipal collaborations like Communications Union Districts (CUDs).

Community broadband isn’t some magic panacea. The quality of a city’s plan and local leaders matters. Being able to financially handle the project is important. But equally important is it’s an organic, popular, grass roots response to decades of telecom market failure. Created by regulatory capture, corruption, unchecked consolidation, and monopoly power.

Recently, Longmeadow, Massachusetts residents voted down an effort by city leaders to build a community-owned broadband fiber network providing affordable fiber access to every last city resident. More specifically, the city was exploring whether to take out an $8.6 million loan for the initial phase of the $27 million fiber project, paid for by a property tax increase of $97 per year, and run by a city utility.

While Longmeadow locals clearly didn’t like idea of higher taxes, it was revealed that local telecoms (most likely Comcast) had also been covertly funding a dark money group named “Mass Priorities” that had been misleading locals about the proposed project via texts, calls, mailers, and door to door visits:

“But while building a municipal fiber network in the region’s more rural towns has faced little opposition, as private internet service providers have little intention of building infrastructure for small customer bases, a shadowy, difficult-to-trace group calling itself Mass Priorities has run apparently well-funded campaigns against municipal broadband in communities like West Springfield and Southwick.”

Such groups generally like to lie and insist that all community broadband networks are always doomed to failure. Or that there’s no real problem that needs fixing. Often they’ll take on the guise of local citizen activists, simply concerned about the taxpayer (but only when applicable to community broadband; monopolies getting slathered with subsidies for half completed networks is never criticized).

Mass Priorities is actually part of the Domestic Policy Caucus, a 501(c)(4) nonprofit that refuses to disclose its funding sources. Something Gigi Sohn (who you’ll recall had her FCC nomination scuttled by a sleazy telecom industry backed smear campaign before moving on to advocate for community broadband) didn’t mince words about:

“In a feeble attempt to appear Massachusetts-based, the Domestic Policy Caucus calls itself ‘Mass Priorities,’ but the Caucus is based in Minnesota. The organization, which for years has targeted multiple communities across the country that have built, or have considered building, their own broadband networks, has consistently refused to disclose its donors. That lack of transparency matters.”

It’s impossible to state clearly that Mass Priorities swung the vote. Getting a two-thirds majority vote for a project like this is tough to accomplish. And again, many simply have a violent allergy to higher taxes.

But it matters that the group refuses to clearly disclose who is funding its operations. Such groups have no limitations on how much they can spend to influence voters, whereas the Longmeadow, Massachusetts utility can’t legally lobby the public with its own messaging. That puts these dodgy groups, which the telecom lobby has a long history of funding, on superior footing.

Charter, for example, was caught using a fake consumer group to spread distrust about community broadband in Maine. AT&T has, for years, either funded fake consumer groups or “co-opted” existing groups with malleable ethics to do the same thing. Both companies also broadly fund “free market think tanks” that will attack community broadband, but completely ignore private sector dysfunction and fraud.

If the U.S. telecom market was functioning properly, you wouldn’t see countless towns and cities pursuing the option. It’s generally far cheaper for a monopoly to throw a $10-20k at one of these “astroturfing” groups than it is for them to lower prices or improve availability. So, as is often the case in America, we get market failure, captured regulators, and expensive second-tier service instead.

All propped up by a bunch of proxy organizations that refuse to disclose their funding. Speaking on behalf of broadly disliked companies like Comcast and Verizon, that know they can’t honestly engage on this (or any other) subject in public settings without being laughed out of the room.

Filed Under: broadband, community broadband, competition, fiber, longmeadow, massachusetts, municipal, subsidies, telecom