Yes Virgina.. the Telecoms are screwing you

This guy has written a book on just how badly we've been served by the telecom industry in the US.

For a SHORT TIME a download of the book is free (Till June 26th) at this link:

http://www.teletruth.org/docs/BROADBANDSCANDAL.pdf

It's big. 400 plus pages. But it makes the very clear case that our telecommunications companies can't be trusted to serve the public in any way other than maximizing profit.

Now, I have NOTHING against profit (or maximizing it). But if you're lying and stealing to do it.. well, not so much. If you take, you should also give. It's a balance (karma?) thing.

The Net Neutrality debate falls squarely into this area as well. Not only have these companies been scewing your for decades, they want still more.

Here's short overview of the book:

Bruce Kushnick, bruce@teletruth.org 718-238-7191

To Read this as a PDF file

Summary:

$200 Billion Broadband Scandal

This book documents the largest fraud case in American history

The case is simple: Do you have a 45 Mbps, bi-directional service to your home, paying around $40? Do you have 500+ channels and can choose any competitive service? You paid an estimated $2000 for this product even though you did not receive it and it may never be available. Do you want your money back and the companies held accountable?

Background: Starting in the early 1990's, the Clinton-Gore Administration had aggressive plans to create the "National Infrastructure Initiative" to rewire ALL of America with fiber optic wiring, replacing the 100 year old copper wire. The Bell companies — SBC, Verizon, BellSouth and Qwest, claimed that they would step up to the plate and rewire homes, schools, libraries, government agencies, businesses and hospitals, etc. if they received financial incentives.

The Commitment:

• By 2006, 86 million households should have already been wired with a fiber (and coax), wire, capable of at least 45 Mbps in both directions, and could handle 500+ channels.
• Universal Broadband: This wiring was to be done in rich and poor neighborhoods, in rural, urban and suburban areas equally.
• Open to ALL Competition: These networks were to be open to ALL competitors, not a closed-in network or deployed only where the phone company desired.
• Each State: By 2006, 75% of the state of New Jersey was to be wired, Pennsylvania was to have 50% of households by 2004, California to have 5 million households by 2000, Texas claimed all schools, libraries, hospitals.…Virtually every state had commitments.
• Massive Financial Incentives: In exchange for building these networks, the Bell companies ALL received changes in state laws that gave these them excessive profits, tax savings, and other perks to be used in building these networks.
• This was not DSL, which travels over the old copper wiring and did not require new regulations.
• This is not Verizon's FIOS or SBC’s Lightspeed fiber optics, which are slower, can't handle 500 channels, are not open to competition, and are not being deployed equitably.
• This was NOT fiber somewhere in the network ether, but directly to homes.

The Harms and Outcome

• Costs to Customers — We estimate that $206 billion dollars in excess profits and tax deductions were collected — over $2000 per household. (This is the low estimate.)
• Cost to the Country — About $5 trillion dollars to the economy. America lost a decade of technological innovation and economic growth, about $500 billion annually.
• Cost to the Country — America is now 16th in the world in broadband. While Korea and Japan have 40-100 Mbps at cheap prices, America is still at kilobyte speeds.
• The New Digital Divide — The phone companies current plans are to pick and choose where and when they want to deploy fiber services, if at all.
• Competitor Close Out — SBC, BellSouth and Verizon now claim that they can control who uses the networks and at what price, impacting everything from VOIP and municipality roll outs to new services from Ebay and Google.

The Truth: This is a Fraud Case

• Fraud: There is a dark secret — the networks couldn't be built at the time the commitments were made and are still not available. If someone pays thousands of dollars for a service and doesn't get it, isn't that fraud?
• Collusion and Cover-up: TELE-TV and Americast, the Bell companies' fiber optic front groups, spent about $1 billion and were designed to make America believe these deployments were real in order to pass the Telecom Act of 1996 and enter long distance. How did every major phone company in America not know that these fiber-based services couldn't be built and were able to defraud over 40 states?
• The mergers killed fiber optic deployments in over 26 states and harmed competition. With every merger, the phone companies simply dropped all state commitments and harmed every state they merged with. Case in point: Verizon cut deployments to 13 states during the NYNEX-Bell Atlantic merger, not to mention GTE's 28 state deployments. SBC did the same in all 13 of its states, from California to Illinois. Worse, the mergers were based on the companies competing with each other and there is NO evidence they ever did any serious wireline residential competition.
• The Regulators Killed Competition and Broadband. Over the last 4 years, instead of continuing competition as ordered by the Telecom Act of 1996, the FCC has rewritten the laws close down Internet Service Providers (ISPs) that brought America to the Internet, as well as virtually all local competition. AT&T and MCI couldn't compete because they were regulated out of business and thus were sold off.
• Distortion of the Truth by the FCC. Virtually every piece of documentation presented in this work is missing from the FCC's Advanced Network Reports. The FCC defines broadband as 200 kilobytes per second in one direction — 225 times slower than what was promised in 1992.
• Cross-Subsidization — Instead of spending the money on these networks, the Bell companies used the money to enter long distance, rollout wireless and the inferior DSL services. The Bells also lost over $20 billion overseas and paid executives over a billion in stock options during the mergers.
• Bait and Switch — Customers paid for a fiber optic wire and got DSL over the old copper wiring — it's like ordering a Ferrari and getting a bicycle.

20 Year Analysis of Revenues, Profits, Expenditures: This book is based on a 20 year analysis of Bell-supplied data, Census Data and Business Week. Since 1984::

• Revenues are up 128%.
• Employees are down 65%, Construction is down 60%.
• $92.5 billion is missing in network upgrades.
• Profits based on failed fiber plans up 188% as compared to other utilities.

Teletruth has filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission, (FTC) to investigate the claims presented; the book is the data for our complaint.

Do you care about Net Neutrality? You should.

What's the big hoopla about Net Neutrality? Why should you care?

Well, you should. It means less choice and less competition, especially in our world (internet startups).

It's very likely that ClickCaster, a podcasting company based in Boulder, CO. would not exist if we had to pay 'extra' fee's beyond the costs we currently pay to provide our service. Frankly, if low cost high speed bandwidth hadn't been available when we started ClickCaster... well, we simply wouldn't have started it.

The low (relative) cost of bandwidth, and the fact that we're on a level playing field with Apple’s iTunes, Google, Yahoo and Comcast (as far as the internet is concerned) is what enabled us to start the company.

Take that away, add additional costs to getting the company started, and it's possible and even likely we just wouldn't have done it at all.

Here's a quick overview of something in USA Today that sums it up nicely:

• Internet Fast Lane Marginalizes Smaller Web Firms
• USA Today
• USA Today spoke with several small businesses about the possible effects of an Internet fast lane on their business. Many of these companies are helping lead the push for "net neutrality" laws, which received a major blow a few weeks ago as one of many bills defending net neutrality was struck down by the House of Representatives. Internet service is currently "neutral" in most instances, meaning that content providers don't have to pay extra if their video service sucks up more bandwidth than, say, a blog. This is because network owners deliver information over their pipes to users' computers at the same speeds. If lawmakers fail to pass legislation guaranteeing network neutrality, that could all change--soon. "That would be a disaster for little companies like ours," a CEO of an online video startup told USA Today. The Web, the so-called "Great Equalizer," would no longer be equal for companies that can't afford to pay for faster delivery of their content. This would skew heavily in favor of larger companies like Google, because they could--however reluctantly--afford to pay these surcharges. But it might discourage them from spending on R&D in bandwidth-heavy areas like broadband video. The future of entertainment on the Web depends on faster speeds, and content providers agree that a "fast lane" would simply stymie competition--to the detriment of both consumers and the Web industry. - Read the whole story...

Make no mistake, this is a big deal for everyone. Not just us little web based startup companies. ALL the big guys on the internet today started as little web based startups like us. All now employ thousands of people and produce billions in revenue and shareholder value.

Cut out the little guys ability to get started and you radically cut the number of potential big guys down the road. The end result: A few monopoly like players that control the market AND a lack of innovation. Most of the 'cool' stuff the big guys do comes from little guys they either copy or buy up. A few of us little guys actually grow up to BE big guys. And that keeps things moving forward. ClickCaster wouldn't exist today if the net weren't neutral. If we were required to pay 'extra' just to compete at the same level as the big guys (fast bandwidth, nicely shaped packets that get to our customers at the same time and same speed as Yahoo Video's, or iTunes) we simply wouldn't have started the company. We'd be working at Comcast or Apple or Yahoo. We'd be doing interesting things, no doubt, but true innovation? Not so much.

Email your congressman or senators. Tell them you actually care about Net Neutrality being real because, in the long run, you really do. It may not be obvious to the average person today, but it effects you, your children and your work, in a big way.

Denver #6 per capita for Starbucks

Let Starbucks Find You a Place to Live

It seems that every week some organization or another comes out with a list of American’s best cities. These lists go by different names (Most Livable Cities, Best Places, whatever), but some how they all end up with similar content. They have Seattle, San Francisco, Boston, Portland, and the like near the top of the list, and Detroit and New Orleans near the bottom (here’s a good recent example, the Sustainable Cities list).

These lists are good and useful, but it turns out that if you just list cities by the number of Starbucks locations per capita, you get a pretty similar result. Here are the largest US cities from most to fewest Starbucks per person:

1. Las Vegas
2. Seattle
3. Portland
4. Sacramento
5. Washington
6. Denver
7. Atlanta
8. San Francisco
9. San Diego
10. Cincinnati

For the entire list (and the rest of this blog post).. go to: http://www.citytowninfo.com/wordpress/2006/06/05/let-starbucks-find-you-a-place-to-live/

technorati tags:coffe, lifestyle

Blogged with Flock

Denver/Boulder- One of the best places to do a startup company

Paul Graham recently did an essay on what it takes to create an environment like Silicon Valley (Boulder and Portland were ID'd as top candidates).

Some additional data is coming out, in particular, Tim O'Reilly's blog (click on the title of this entry to go directly to his post).

What's interesting is the above chart.

Apparently, we're number 5 for startup oriented hires in the US. Not bad for a region that's smaller (by millions) than the 4 above it.

So, if you're interested in starting a company, and you don't want to deal with Silicon Valley, it doesn't get much better than Boulder.

Bloggers, it seems ARE journalists afterall

Apple, last year, sued a Silicon Valley blogger for releasing information about an unreleased product citing it was not news. They tried to force the bloggers ISP to give up the email addresses (in an attempt to find someone within Apple who was 'leaking' information). Click on the title of this entry to read the full story on Wired News (excerpt below):

• The Sixth District Court of Appeals on Friday roundly rejected (.pdf) Apple's argument that the bloggers weren't acting as journalists when they posted internal document about future Apple products. "We decline the implicit invitation to embroil ourselves in questions of what constitutes 'legitimate journalis(m).' The shield law is intended to protect the gathering and dissemination of news, and that is what petitioners did here," the court wrote.

Now, this is a minor thing from a business or technology perspective. In the greater scheme, who really cares if Apple's releasing some new hardware of software (other than Apple fans).

What IS big, is that this court decision sets a precedents.

It means that bloggers, or podcasters (such as those on our service at ClickCaster) have the same protections as a journalist in protecting sources.

Of course, the argument can be made that those protections are being slowly ground down by current government actions at the federal level (The "Judy's in Jail"... NYT's reporter spending a month or two in jail for not giving up sources), but, at least, bloggers and podcasters now have the same right to say no.

And ISP's won't have to give up emails to specific accounts at the drop of a hat.

Does it create an impenetrable shield? No. Does it make it harder for those who want to quash the flow of information out into the world? Yes. And that's a good thing.

The Cool Kid factor- Why Google's Stock Price Stays High

Don Dodge, a blogging Microsoftie... (http://dondodge.typepad.com/the_next_big_thing/)

Wrote an interesting blog on how Google doesn't actually tell you how it works. (click on this entries title to read it).

He notes that even though no one knows how it works, the stock price continues to be bid up.

How dare these upstarts at Google ignore the financial worlds demands for more information on how things work! Damn them I say... Damn them..

But buy some more of their stock.

It's the cool kid thing. None of us know it in school (even though it's obvious as we grow older and wiser) but the cool kids are the ones who just don't give a frak about being cool. Zen at work. The less you care about being cool, the cooler you are. Sociology 101 stuff, but it applies here as well.

The reason the analysts are so enamored with Google, keep buying their stock and bidding up the price is that Google just flat out doesn't care what the analysts think, they're going to do what they consider to be the right thing and the hell with what anyone, including Wall Street, says.

That's why they don't tell anyone how it works. They don't care if you don't buy their stock and that is why you so want to buy their stock. Cool Kid Syndrome at it's best.

The Macintosh: To Develop or Not To Develop.. that is the question.

A blogger named Jon Watson (http://www.jonwatson.ca/) recently heard an interview I did with the 411podcast some time ago. He said:

Clickaster: Stats and Why Apple Sucks.

By Jon at Fri, 2006-05-05 09:22

During my first real day as a pro-blogger today, I was listening to podcasts in the background as I created my posts for Biz Podcasting.

While listenening to Scott Converse - CEO of Clickcaster - from the Podcast 411, a couple of interesting stats came out. Apparently the vast majority of podcasters are males between 30-40 years old (guilty!), and that blogging has reached about 43% women.

He ALSO said that his development priority is Windows, Linux and then Mac because...well...he hates Apple's way of closing things off.

Robb and Scott actually go a little head to head on Apple and tensions get a little high at one point. Cool show.

And, so, I felt compelled to add my 2 cents worth:

Just as an interesting

By Scott Converse (not verified) on Thu, 2006-05-11 16:09

Just as an interesting aside, I agree that things did get a bit heated in my discussion with Robb. And, yes, I do have some pretty strong Apple preconceptions, primiarly due to having worked for Apple in Cupertino for the better part of a decade. I ran the R&D for all of Apple's online services development and had a pretty up close and personal view of how things work there. Apple has a way of doing things that's all about control. It's really a philosophical thing, some would say religious. And I, at one time, had the religion more than most.

What I see Apple doing now with the iPod and iTunes is very similar to what they did with the Mac in the 80's and 90's. A closed, completely controlled system that benefits Apple (and it's users.. no doubt). The reason is a good one: The user experience. That is THE driving force in all that Apple does. And it does it at the expense of everything else, including an open user driven community. Jobs is in control, period. Much has been written about this over the years so I won't go into it here.

I'll also share some stats from ClickCaster (which defines how we develop). Here are todays usage figures from ClickCaster:

Windows: 81.7 %
Linux: 12.2 %
Macintosh: 5.2 %
Other: <1%

And this has been pretty consistent since we started in September of last year.

I would agree with Robb that alot of todays early podcast creators are Mac users (mostly due to Garageband, the easy to use recording software that ships with every Mac). He got his numbers by talking to about 100 people (via interviews on podcasting) and about 1/2 of them used Macs. That was the extent of his research. Our numbers (above) are based on hundreds of thousands of users per month that visit ClickCaster. I’m not saying he’s wrong, I’m just saying we have a much richer and more extensive sample to draw conclusions from.

In our opinion, Robbs 50% figure is an early market anomaly that's going to change over time. Services like ours make it very easy to create a podcast on a PC (click to start, talk, click to stop, click to publish.. you're done- and you never leave the webpage).

The Mac is a great product. We have a dual core iMac in our development lab to test with and it’s, by far, the best PC (and the one everyone wants to play with) that we’ve got. Running both OSX and XP, it’s also one of the most useful.

But the fact remains: Windows rules the world. And Linux has a better shot at doing the same then Apple ever will. As great as Apple’s products are, it’s approach to doing business will always limit it to being a small niche player in the computer world.

I'm sure the Macolades out there will skewer me for saying this but it's my opinion: Apple may own the music space, for now, but over time, that too will fade as competitors target all things Apple. History will repeat. It’s a war of attrition that, eventually, even Apple will succumb to.

Scott Converse
Founder & CEO
ClickCaster
www.clickcaster.com
scott@clickcaster.com