My colleague, Benn Kobb, sent me a fascinating article from 1991 where the National Association of Broadcasters is engaging is a massive misinformation and lobbying campaign against (I kid you not), data communications via cellular telephone networks. That's right, NAB fought to prevent technologies like Blackberries and iPhones from ever being allowed.

Today, the NAB is at it again -- this time targeting white space devices. But the notion is exactly the same -- any new wireless technology, no matter how useful to consumers or innocuous, will be fought against if NAB sees it as somehow against their own self-interests. In fact, as their own record illustrates (and being anti-smart phone is only the tip of the iceberg, NAB has systematically fought against innovations in the field of communications for decades.

But read on, this will certainly resonate with anyone who's ever sent a text message:

From: www.findarticles.com.

Mobile Phone News
Dec. 19, 1991
Copyright 1991 Access Intelligence LLC

NAB protests cellular operators offering information services

On the heels of PacTel's announcement to offer Star Info, a new service that provides up-to-date information ranging from traffic reports to financial news, the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) has petitioned the FCC to prohibit the cellular phone industry from offering pay-to-use radio services such as news, sports and weather. The NAB said that information services over cellular would duplicate the same news provided free to radio listeners by broadcasters.

"There is already a glut of sources for this information in the broadcast marketplace," said NAB in comments to the FCC. Offering such services over cellular frequencies would jeopardize cellular companies' system capacity and inhibit the operator's ability to handle conventional telephone calls, it added.

There is a growing business for private companies to offer niche programming services to cellular operators. NAB has no objections to cellular operators who want to buy programming and to provide information services, said Doug Wills of the NAB. "We do object, however, to the cellular operators out bidding the broadcasters for sports rights and then becoming barbarian gate keepers to programming," Wills added.

The NAB said that the cellular operators are misusing their spectrum. "Cellular spectrum should be reserved for the two-way communication for which it is designed," said the NAB. "One-way transmission of news, sports, weather and traffic would be a misuse of this spectrum and a needless duplication of broadcast services."

... PacTel's Star Info Is a Breakthrough for Cellular Customers

In November, PacTel Cellular initiated the Star Info which allows subscribers one-number dialing to access information. At no additional charge, subscribers will have access to 280 local businesses and services. Somewhat like a cellular yellow pages service, Star Info includes direct lines to restaurants, stock updates, sports scores, ticket offices for Plays, movies and special events.

The information program is provided by Applied Response Systems (ARS), a private company that specializes in information services. "The Star Info service provides excellent advertising and marketing opportunities for local businesses," said Ron Lee, owner of ARS. "They can effectively reach a very specific target audience to sell their product," he added.

Here in DC we're gearing up for One Web Day and it's looking to be the most extravagant OWD party I've helped organize yet! Want to learn more -- check out:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT
Nathaniel James
DC OWD Ambassador
Campaign Coordinator, Media and Democracy Coalition
njames@media-democracy.net
p: 202 736 5757
c: 206 954 3040

Morgan Weiland
DC OWD Ambassador
morganweiland@gmail.com
c: 202 256 7480

DC ONE WEB DAY: BLOGGER PREVIEW
Teleconference with One Web Day founder, ICANN Board Member and cyberlaw scholar Susan Crawford, and DC ambassadors

Wednesday, August 20, 3:30pm and 8pm.

Washington, DC—OneWebDay (OWD) is a global event held September 22 celebrating the Web and highlighting key issues about the future of the Internet, with a focus in its third year on online political participation. To celebrate and document the recent flourishing of online political participation in what has become a new "town square," the DC OWD Planning Committee is creating an E-Democracy Time Capsule that will go live online on August 22, one month before OWD. We are building a site where anyone, from all corners of the United States and the world, can mark history by contributing text, images, sound, and video to a tricked-out WordPress blog describing their favorite E-Democracy tools, letters to the future about their hopes for Web-powered politics, and profiles of E-Democracy Heroes.

We stand at a crossroads in the history of online political participation, and the future is uncertain. Policy decisions concerning digital inclusion, net neutrality, and online privacy and security will be made in the coming months and years. We all have a stake in ensuring that when the virtual Time Capsule is reopened on OWD in 2020, the new town square delivers on its promise to become a thriving marketplace of ideas where anyone can participate unhindered by illegitimate gatekeepers and a lack of access to the tools and skills they need to add their voice the dialog.

Join us August 20 for a teleconference with One Web Day founder, ICANN Board Member, and cyberlaw scholar Susan Crawford, and DC ambassadors Nathaniel James and Morgan Weiland to learn about how the E-Democracy Time Capsule can promote the work you do and what role you can play in helping to make this year's event a success. We welcome all bloggers interested in the promise of online political participation. To ensure maximum participation, we will host two calls, one at 3:30 PM ET and a second at 8:00 PM ET.

Teleconference details:

Who
----------------

Susan Crawford
One Web Day founder
ICANN Board Member
and cyberlaw scholar at Michigan University

Nathanial James
DC OWD Ambassador and Campaign Coordinator
Media and Democracy Coalition

When
----------------

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Times
----------------

3:30 PM ET / 12:30 PM PT
8:00 PM ET/ 5:00 PM PT

Dial-In
----------------

(218) 339 4300, password: 425 755

Please dial in 5-10 minutes before call so we can start on time.

More information about OWD is available at www.onewebday.org.

Here's a good analysis on the state of municipal broadband -- from www.progressive.org/mag/aaron0808.html:

"The Promise of Municipal Broadband"

By Craig Aaron, August 2008

When Mayor John Street announced plans to make Philadelphia the nation’s first major “wireless city” back in the fall of 2004, the press couldn’t get enough. “Forget cheese steaks, cream cheese, and brotherly love,” declared The New York Times. “Philadelphia wants to be known as the city of laptops.”

Philadelphia’s goal to cover 135 square miles with a cloud of Internet connectivity was ambitious. But the need was undeniable. High-speed Internet access was fast becoming an economic, educational, and social necessity. Yet most of Philly’s residents were stranded on the wrong side of the digital divide, unable to access or afford a broadband connection.

When Earthlink—a dial-up Internet company looking for a foothold in the broadband world—came forward promising to build a state-of-the-art wireless system without the city paying a dime, Philadelphia signed up. And soon, you couldn’t go a week without another major metropolis—San Francisco, Chicago, Houston, Portland, Oregon—jumping on the Wi-Fi bandwagon.
So what happened?

Three years later, many of the projects seem to be sputtering. The tens of thousands of new subscribers didn’t materialize. Getting the equipment up on streetlights and buildings proved more expensive and technically challenging than expected. Chicago and St. Louis scrapped their plans last summer. In Tempe, Arizona, a company called Gobility shuttered the system there and unplugged its customer-service line. Earthlink abandoned projects in San Francisco and Houston, before announcing it was getting out of the municipal wireless business altogether.

With its flagship Philadelphia project still unfinished, new Earthlink CEO Rolla P. Huff announced last fall that “making significant further investments in this business could be inconsistent with our objective of maximizing shareholder value.”

Then the press pounced, with stories appearing in the Associated Press, USA Today, BusinessWeek, and the Times, declaring municipal projects to be floundering, fading failures. One tech writer dismissed municipal wireless as “the monorail of the decade.”

But all the obituaries are premature. A closer look at what’s happening at projects across the country—public and private, wired and wireless, big and small—suggests that it’s far too early to start the funeral arrangements. Much of the media are confusing the collapse of one company—or one model of broadband deployment—with the failure of the entire idea of municipalities providing high-speed Internet services.

“It’s like someone striking out in a boat in 1490, it sinking, and people saying, ‘You know what? This whole ocean travel thing isn’t going to work out,’ ” says Christopher Mitchell of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, a Minneapolis-based research group that tracks municipal projects.

Even in Philadelphia, all is not lost. In June, a group of local investors announced they had arranged to take over Philadelphia’s network and offer free Wi-Fi outdoor—but details are sketchy.

Many projects—especially in small towns and mid-sized cities—are thriving. From Hermiston, Oregon, to Scottsburg, Indiana, to St. Cloud, Florida, city-owned wireless systems are up and running, serving local residents and businesses or local police and emergency workers. Places like Sallisaw, Oklahoma, and Kutztown, Pennsylvania, are building their own fiber-optic networks that offer high-speed Internet and cable TV.

In total, more than 400 cities and towns already have launched, or are developing, municipal broadband systems. Spending on municipal networks increased last year and is expected to keep rising. MuniWireless.com projects that annual spending on equipment and services will exceed $900 million by 2010.

Municipal broadband is caught up in a classic “hype cycle”—a term coined by the Gartner Research Group to chart technology trends. It works like this: First, new technology triggers a wave of excitement that builds to a “peak of inflated expectations.” For municipal broadband this was 2005’s heady days of “free Internet for everyone everywhere.”

After the peak, there’s a rapid slide toward what Gartner calls “the trough of disillusionment”—a.k.a. rock bottom or, in this case, the headline in the March 22 edition of The New York Times: “Hopes for Wireless Cities Are Fading.”

Vermont’s Tim Nulty isn’t mourning the troubles some cities are having with municipal wireless. To him, it was never the right technology for the job at hand. “Think about 747s and helicopters,” he says. “Helicopters are marvelous when they’re used for what they’re good at. But you don’t use them to fly thousands of people between Boston and Chicago. For that you need 747s.”

Wireless systems may offer mobility, but a fiber-optic network connected directly to homes boasts nearly unlimited capacity. Fiber is the jumbo jet of municipal broadband. Though conventional wisdom says fiber is too expensive or complicated for cities to handle, Nulty—who spent more than ten years in the ’70s and ’80s on Capitol Hill as the chief economist for the key Senate and House committees that make telecom policy—was recruited out of retirement to help the city of Burlington get a municipal fiber network off the ground.

That project became Burlington Telecom—a city department that now provides high-speed Internet, phone, and cable TV service to some 3,000 residential customers. While revenue from subscribers goes into the public coffers, at Nulty’s insistence the network itself was financed by private investors without any taxpayer money. Not only is the system up and running, but it already has a positive cash flow.

Nulty recently left Burlington Telecom to spearhead a project to bring fiber to smaller towns across Vermont. Twenty-five towns voted—many of them unanimously—to join a venture called the East Central Vermont Community Fiber Network. As in Burlington, the networks will be built without taxpayer funds.

“I’m convinced this is the only way we in Vermont are going to get access to this high-speed stuff,” Jerry Drugonis of Pittsfield, Vermont, told the Rutland Herald after the vote. “We’ve been at the tail end of the dog for a long time.”

It doesn’t necessarily take a city department to bring high-speed Internet access to local residents. Some of the most innovative projects are small-scale, community-based efforts.

“We’re finally coming back around to ideas that were around before the corporate franchise was shown to be a failure,” says Sascha Meinrath, research director of the New America Foundation’s Wireless Future Program, who launched one of the nation’s first community wireless projects while he was a graduate student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “So much money was being spent to push the corporate model that it was all cities heard about. There was no PR or marketing for community wireless groups. But unlike the corporations, their focus has always been maximizing the public good.”

In Asheville, North Carolina, the Mountain Area Information Network (MAIN) has been operating as a nonprofit Internet service provider since 1996, first with dial-up and now with wireless broadband. It uses “mesh network” technology created by a company called Meraki to serve hundreds of citizens in nine Asheville neighborhoods.

The network—the same type that Meraki is using to offer free wireless in San Francisco—allows many people in the same area to share one Internet connection. This type of neighbor-to-neighbor sharing is discouraged by the big phone and cable companies, but MAIN has its own connection to the Internet backbone.

MAIN is far from a traditional Internet Service Provider: It’s committed to closing the digital divide and recycles computers for use by local residents who otherwise couldn’t afford them; its website is a community media hub; and the group also runs a local low power FM radio station. Wally Bowen, MAIN’s executive director, sees the future of community media.

“I firmly believe that every public access TV operation, every community radio station, every nonprofit community technology center can be doing this,” he says. “It’s not rocket science. All of those technology-based nonprofits are strapped for revenue. We’ve got to figure out a way to capture some of those digital dollars that are falling out of our communities, and this is it.”

Small-town success stories are encouraging but they don’t answer whether municipal broadband can work in the big city. The recent completion of a citywide wireless network in Minneapolis suggests that cities may be learning from Philadelphia’s mistakes.

Minneapolis has already signed up 8,000 users, and its Wi-Fi network was used by emergency responders after the I-35W bridge collapse. Unlike Philadelphia, Minneapolis agreed to be the network’s “anchor tenant,” committing $1.25 million per year for the next decade.

“Having the city itself as the anchor tenant gives the provider an incentive to set up a good network,” says Esme Vos of MuniWireless.com. “From the get-go, there’s a set amount of money. Philadelphia never had that deal. San Francisco never had that deal.”

However, some in the Twin Cities are disappointed that Minneapolis opted to support a private network rather than constructing its own public one. “If a private company decides they just aren’t going to do it anymore, the community is stuck because it’s privately owned,” Mitchell of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance explains. “If it’s publicly owned and the network is not going exactly as planned, they can decide if it’s still worth it for their police officers to have access; if it’s still worth it to have inspectors and social workers be able to enter their data remotely; if it’s still worth it for citizens to be able to connect anywhere. They can ask those questions and decide whether it’s good for the community or not.”

However, unlike Philadelphia, Minneapolis did choose a local company, U.S. Internet, to build the network. “That’s key,” Vos says. “U.S. Internet is not investing in a mobile handset project and trying to still provide DSL service and outsourcing their customer service to India. This is their main project.”

Local control—and with it, jobs and revenues staying in the community—appears to be one of the elements of success for municipal broadband projects large and small. The money stays in the community, jobs are being created, and everyone from firefighters to meter readers benefits.

“If you’re not sending money out to shareholders across the country and expecting a huge return on investment,” Mitchell says, “you can already have an advantage in terms of pricing it more reasonably to make sure your businesses and your people can afford to have fast connectivity that’s going to keep the city competitive regionally and globally.”

While municipal broadband projects can’t succeed without buy-in from local stakeholders, ubiquitous high-speed Internet access won’t be achieved via local governments or groups alone. We need a national broadband policy.

Back in March 2004, President Bush called for “universal affordable access for broadband technology by the year 2007.” Yet in 2008, we’re nowhere close. And the United States is falling further behind the rest of the world. Much of Asia and Europe enjoys broadband speeds that are twenty to fifty times faster than what we get here—and they pay less for it.

“We have a failure on the national level that’s too important to ignore,” says James Baller, an attorney who represents local governments and public utilities and closely follows municipal broadband issues. “Not to view broadband as a strategic asset is a significant shortcoming. The other leading countries of the world do view broadband in that light, and they are thinking about how to get more of it at much faster speeds and lower rates because it’s a platform for so many other things that are important.”

Policymakers could create incentives for local communities to build telecom networks, spurring new competition and growing the new market for entrepreneurs and innovators, especially in areas bypassed or underserved by the big phone and cable companies. Better yet, says Asheville’s Bowen, these incentives could mandate that systems be locally controlled and nonprofit, ensuring that the investment stays in the community.

Yet, fourteen states currently have laws on the books—drafted by phone and cable company lobbyists—restricting municipalities from erecting their own broadband systems. The Community Broadband Act, bipartisan legislation that already passed the Senate Commerce Committee, would tear down the roadblocks. “The first thing we have to do,” Mitchell says, “is make sure that communities that want to solve their own problems, that want to build the network they need, can do that.”

Congress and the Federal Communications Commission also could improve municipal wireless by setting aside a greater portion of the airwaves for public use. Wi-Fi systems operate on narrow “junk bands” already cluttered with cordless phones, baby monitors, and the like, requiring more transmitters and higher costs to set up a network.

Meanwhile, vast portions of the broadcast TV spectrum—as much as 70 percent in some markets—are sitting unused because of outdated regulations and a misinformation campaign waged by the broadcasters’ lobby. These “white spaces” would allow signals to go farther and travel through obstacles. “If we open up the unused spaces between the television channels, it suddenly becomes possible to deploy the network that we need at a quarter of the cost,” says Harold Feld of the Media Access Project, a public interest communications law firm in Washington.

There is growing bipartisan support for many of these policies. And the nation’s broadband policy—or lack thereof—is even becoming a presidential campaign issue. To his credit, John McCain is a lead sponsor of the Community Broadband Act, though he hasn’t always backed public interest policies during his years on the influential Senate Commerce Committee and voted against restoring crucial “Net Neutrality” protections.

For his part, Barack Obama hasn’t yet signed on to McCain’s community broadband bill. But he supports Net Neutrality and has pledged to make Internet issues a top priority of his administration. In a June speech in Flint, Michigan, Obama declared: “As President, I will set a simple goal: Every American should have the highest speed broadband access—no matter where you live, or how much money you have. We’ll connect schools, libraries, and hospitals. And we’ll take on special interests to unleash the power of wireless spectrum for our safety and connectivity.”

In the end, the biggest obstacles to universal, affordable Internet access aren’t economic or technical. They’re political. Broadband is too important to the economy, education, and, well, democracy to be at the mercy of Comcast, Verizon, or AT&T. It’s time to rethink the approach to these problems and move the discussion past short-term technical fixes and next quarter’s profits.

“We need to start looking at this as an infrastructure issue rather than as a business,” Feld says. “We don’t ask cities and towns to cost-justify bringing in fresh water and having a sewer system when we could outsource it to private companies. Nobody says, why should my town compete with the private water market? I can get Perrier, why should I have water? We treat water as a utility. We do the same thing with electricity. We have to take the same attitude here toward broadband.”

Craig Aaron is the communications director of Free Press, the national, nonpartisan media reform group. A senior editor of In These Times, he blogs regularly about media, journalism, and the future of the Internet at SavetheInternet.com, StopBigMedia.com, and The Huffington Post.

I couldn't make this up if I tried. The full McCain quote in its full context is available here.

During his Saddleback Church presentation, McCain was asked how he would balance privacy rights with security issues. Here's part of the transcript:

11 THE POINT IS WE
12 HAVE NOW HAD TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCES OVER THE LAST 20 OR 30
13 YEARS IN COMMUNICATIONS THAT ARE REMARKABLE. IT'S A
14 REMARKABLE ABILITY THAT OUR ENEMIES HAVE TO COMMUNICATE SO
15 WE HAVE TO KEEP UP WITH THAT CAPABILITY. I MEAN, THERE IS
16 TOO MANY WAYS AND -- THROUGH CYBERSPACE AND THROUGH OTHER
17 WAYS -- THAT PEOPLE ARE ABLE TO COMMUNICATE WITH ONE
18 ANOTHER. SO WE ARE GOING TO HAVE TO STEP UP OUR
19 CAPABILITIES TO MONITOR THOSE.

Some will certainly say that McCain's statements are just about our enemies having too many ways to communicate. Ponder that spin for a moment -- how do you limit the abilities of your enemies to communicate without detrimentally impacting your non-enemies? Put into a different context, McCain's quote is exactly what repressive regimes around the globe have stated throughout history. It's a statement with woeful historical and contemporary precedent.

An interesting thing has been happening -- people are actually reading McCain's technology plan. The reviews are coming in (and they're not pretty).

Here's a synopsis (click on the author's names to read the full analysis):

"[McCain's Tech Plan] reads like some crotchety technophobe knocked over the bumper sticker wrack at an Ayn Rand Reading Revival and tried to rearrange them so it made a policy." -- Harold Feld

"Seriously, this is approaching Chuck Norris-level aggrandizement. How delusional does this guy have to be to imagine himself the hero of every situation he's in, to the point that he has to frame himself as a white knight on regulating packet shaping over the internet? I'm actually kind of impressed. Here are the rest of the sub-headings. They are of course not about technology, they are about John McCain." -- Matt Stoller

"The McCain worldview scares the hell out of me. Technology is complicated -- and the solutions we need are fairly complex -- they require an in depth understanding of the problem if you're going to formulate a solution. And McCain clearly doesn't understand some of the core problems... I'm still waiting for McCain to release a real technology plan -- one that helps consumers and addresses the problems we're facing instead of protecting corporations and ignoring technology market failings." -- Sascha Meinrath

"McCain has delivered his tech policy. And it’s clear: This election will determine whether America willfully becomes a third-world participant in the online economy and culture." -- David Weinberger

"In summary, the McCain plan says, "What's good for AT&T and Comcast and Cisco and the RIAA is good for America." It's about their Internet, nor ours." -- David Isenberg

"We have already had 16 months of no policy in the technology realm and an admitted lack of knowledge by the candidate himself. Now the campaign can’t even get the basics straight on something they absolutely should know — the candidate’s own record." -- Peter Swire

"McCain declines to put net neutrality into law. Indeed, he declines to guarantee all Americans the right to obtain the information they want, communicate to everyone they want, send non-obscene and lawful information to anyone they want, over the Internet. Why? What's the hold-up? Why not assure this paradigm?" -- Reed Hundt

"We see that millions of Americans are using the Internet to help each other out, and to improve the way government works. The Obama technology plan encourages civic engagement and openness. Unfortunately, the McCain plan adopts the Bush/Cheney approach, which promotes privileges for big companies at the expense of democracy." -- Craig Newmark

"Where Obama has specifics and new ideas, McCain has old ideas and positions that would be taken for granted in any Administration other than the one now ending. The reason is that McCain has a problem: he’s out of step with the real world." -- Kevin Werbach

"McCain fails to understand that net neutrality only regulates the internet in the same way the First Amendment to the US Constitution regulates speech!! There are many different kinds of regulation, and this is one that protects the rights of individuals and an entire public good from being victimized by giant corporations." -- Jon Bartholomew

"The policy statement starts by addressing McCain's economic policies, which emphasize perpetuation of Bush's low tax on capital gains and reduction of the corporate tax rate...The fact that tax cuts landed at the top of the list reflects the prominent role that the Republican take on fiscal conservatism will play in McCain's policy decisions." -- Ryan Paul/Ars Technica

"The computing-challenged McCain, who said that he needs his wife to cut on the computer and check email for him ("I am an illiterate that has to rely on my wife for all the assistance that I can get."), has released his technology "policy". It sounds like another handout to corporations and a screw you to the rest of us." -- Pam Spaulding

"McCain’s tech policy is one big giveaway to big corporations, an incoherent, muddled mess that does nothing to address the challenges America faces in vaulting our technological development into the 21st Century. Not only is he against net neutrality, he barely addresses things like wireless spectrum, broadband development, copyright law reform–and when he does, it’s invariably in favor of the big business interests to which his campaign is utterly beholden." -- Martin Bosworth

"It’s been widely reported that Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) is a self-admitted 'illiterate' when it comes to computers. But some have suggested that he could still put forward sound technology policy because he surrounds himself with tech-savvy advisers, such as former Hewlett-Packard chairman and CEO Carly Fiorina and former eBay president and CEO Meg Whitman. But it’s unclear how much he is listening to them. Yesterday, McCain finally released his technology platform. (Until this time, 'technology' was not even listed in the Issues section of his campaign website.) His plan supposedly focuses on innovation, but in reality, it often repeats McCain’s previous non-innovative positions, such as his opposition to net neutrality. -- Amanda/Think Progress

"In outlining his policy, McCain reiterated his opposition to net neutrality, a hot-button issue for many bloggers and technology advocates...

John McCain does not believe in prescriptive regulation like "net-neutrality," but rather he believes that an open marketplace with a variety of consumer choices is the best deterrent against unfair practices.

He also believes that if you put the internet in neutral, it'll stall." -- Mary Phillips-Sandy/Comedy Central

I've finished reading through McCain's Technology Plan -- it's a quick read, about 50% as large as Obama's Technology Plan but with even less actual content. One telecommunications expert told me, "The fact that it's so thin and fluffy speaks for itself."

That said, there were some good points in McCain's plan (e.g., supporting research and development, increasing H1-B Visas, tax breaks for R&D, supporting national broadband buildout, increasing government transparency, reforming the patent system) -- of course they were all points that were already in Obama's plan, released last fall. In fact, the parallels are fairly substantial (to a point).

But it's in the discrepancies where the two candidates are thrown into stark relief...

Network Neutrality

Obama's says: "A key reason the Internet has been such a success is because it is the most open network in history. It needs to stay that way. Barack Obama strongly supports the principle of network neutrality to preserve the benefits of open competition on the Internet."

McCain's says: "John McCain does not believe in prescriptive regulation like 'net-neutrality,' but rather he believes that an open marketplace with a variety of consumer choices is the best deterrent against unfair practices."

Diversity of Media Ownership

Obama's says: "Barack Obama believes that providing opportunities for minority-owned businesses to own radio and television stations is fundamental to creating the diverse media environment that federal law requires and the country deserves and demands. As president, he will encourage diversity in the ownership of broadcast media, promote the development of new media outlets for expression of diverse viewpoints, and clarify the public interest obligations of broadcasters who occupy the nation’s spectrum."

McCain's says: [Nothing -- there's nothing about diversity or media ownership in his technology plan.]

Lowering the Corporate Tax Rate

Obama's says: [Specific tax breaks for R&D and broadband buildouts, but no cross the board tax cut for major corporations.]

McCain's says: "John McCain will lower the corporate tax rate to 25 percent."

General Worldview Towards Technology

Obama's says: "Obama is also opening up the campaign and giving average Americans a chance to offer opinions and information on important policy issues and Americans have responded: over 15,000 policy ideas have been submitted through the web site."

McCain's says: "Offering simple common sense solutions to real problems is at the core of the McCain’s innovation agenda."

A lot of McCain's plan looks good (a lot of it also looks identical to Obama's plan), but it's this last one -- this McCain worldview that scares the hell out of me. Technology is complicated -- and the solutions we need are fairly complex -- they require an in depth understanding of the problem if you're going to formulate a solution. And McCain clearly doesn't understand some of the core problems.

Take competition, for example. McCain's tech plan states, "Competition has been a great strength for America — offering opportunity, low prices, and increased choice for our citizens. Markets work best when there is robust competition. Competition means that any new devices invented cost less because there are more choices. This ensures more Americans can afford to be part of the digital economy." Yet, when it comes to things like broadband services, the US is paying more for services and has fewer service options than a growing host of other countries. If you can't identify the problem of lack of competition in the first place, how can you possibly solve the problem. Platitudes about competition aren't going to cut it.

A technology plan has to address the massive market conglomerization that's been happening in technology -- from Microsoft to Google, Apple to AT&T. McCain's plan completely sidesteps this issue -- Obama's plan addresses it head-on:

"An Obama administration will look carefully at key industries to ensure that the benefits of competition are fully realized by consumers. Obama will strengthen the antitrust authorities’ competition advocacy programs to ensure that special interests do not use regulation to insulate themselves from the competitive process. Obama will also strengthen competition advocacy in the international community as well as domestically. He will take steps to ensure that antitrust law is not used as a tool to interfere with robust competition or undermine efficiency to the detriment of U.S. consumers and businesses. He will do so by improving the administration of those laws in the U.S. and by working with foreign governments to change unsound competition laws and to avoid needless duplication and conflict in multinational enforcement of those laws. In short, an Obama administration will take seriously its responsibility to enforce the antitrust laws so that all Americans benefit from a growing and healthy competitive free-market economy."

However you come down on these issues, I'd love to hear more about your take on the McCain and Obama plans (either on blog or off). Personally, I'm still waiting for McCain to release a real technology plan -- one that helps consumers and addresses the problems we're facing instead of protecting corporations and ignoring technology market failings.

When McCain states, "

Hopefully, it will be out soon. I look forward to reading it over and seeing what he plans to do to support 21st century technology development. In particular, I'm hoping he's put together a concrete strategy for spreading broadband connectivity in the United States. Thus far, George Bush has completely punted on this issue, which has caused the US to fall behind a growing list of other countries... stay tuned!

Since posting several concerns with the future of Meraki's pricing structure I've heard that Meraki is planning discontinue their Meraki Mini $49 mesh router on August 12, 2008. If true (I've now heard it from a few different sources), this means that Meraki users have only a few more days to buy hardware before the minimal price goes up by 300%.

[UPDATE01]From Meraki on the evening of the 12th:

Standard Edition Transition

We are also announcing the end of life of our Standard Edition (ad-supported) products, which will no longer be available to new customers after January 31, 2009. Over the past year we've seen rapidly increasing demand for the features and functionality of the Pro Edition line of products and have decided to simplify our offerings and focus our development efforts.

As an existing Standard Edition customer, your networks will continue to operate normally and Meraki will continue providing hosted services for the lifetime of the product. In addition, as part of our streamlined product offering, your networks will have certain features enabled in Dashboard which were previously only available in Pro Edition, including custom images on splash pages and unlimited device whitelisting. You may optionally upgrade to the complete Pro Edition for $100 per node by contacting sales@meraki.com.

Network operators planning to expand Standard Edition networks can continue purchasing the Meraki Mini for $49 and Meraki Outdoor for $99 through January 31, 2009 through the "Standard Edition Store" link under the "Support" tab in your Meraki Dashboard. The Meraki Indoor is available in the Pro Edition, but can be added to existing Standard networks.

Back in March 2007, I wrote that "the worst state franchise bill I've ever read has just been introduced in Illinois". At the time, there was a united front among community activists and community media producers to kill this bill (HB1500). As I wrote, "In taking away home rule power for local communities [HB1500] creates situations whereby local disruptions (e.g., digging up streets, sidewalks, front yards, etc.) are taken completely out of local hands."

And then a remarkable thing happened -- on May 30, 2007, AT&T holed up with legislators to create a "compromise" bill. The plot seemed straight from a Hollywood movie:

I've just learned that AT&T lobbyists are holed up in state legislators offices and are rewriting state laws that they will attempt to get passed in the dead of night. One might think that this is some sort of nefarious plot to some Gotham City corruption scandal, but it's happening right now in the State of Illinois. With massive public opposition to HB1500, it appears likely that AT&T and it's legislators will attempt to attach amendments to SB 678.

Here's the kicker, however, AT&T and its political cronies wouldn't have been able to pass this bill without the avid support of community media producers. While folks like myself were writing:

The amendment that AT&T's lobbyists are working on would lower buildout requirements while granting this telecom giant unprecedented power to ignore local concerns. Meanwhile, consumer protections are gutted, and network neutrality has been entirely eliminated. Back when I wrote about the worst telecom bill I'd ever seen i hadn't realized that AT&T, still wanting more, would attempt a late-night assassination of consumer- and municipal-rights and that government officials in Illinois would be so corrupt as to go along with this farce.

Community media producers were busy working to help pass this franchise (220 ILCS 5/21-601). This break in the ranks was difficult to understand -- prior allies explained it as the best of a bad situation -- but it still meant that the public interest coalition was splintered and PEG producers did provide the political cover necessary to ensure a smooth passage of this bill.

One summer later, I've started receiving dire e-mails from the very PEG channel folks who helped pass the AT&T state franchise bill who are now angry that AT&T is not living up to its promises and expectations. I have to wonder, are these people daft? What did they expect would happen? When telecommunications experts are issuing dire (public) warnings about the gutting of consumer rights, local authority and control (language like, "a late-night assassination of consumer- and municipal-rights" is a fairly clear warning), what did people think was going to happen?

It pains me to see incredibly smart and talented people either hoodwinked or naively trusting that they, somehow, weren't going to end up on the wrong side of a Faustian bargain with AT&T. Meanwhile, here's the latest assessment of just how bad things have gotten with AT&T's Illinois State franchise:

Recently, Keep Us Connected circulated Loyola University professor, Dr. Diane Schiller’s Chicago Tribune letter to the editor on the sub-par treatment of PEG programming on AT&T’s U-Verse system. Over the past two decades, Dr. Schiller and her colleagues have demonstrated the public benefit of community access through Countdown, a live, call-in math instruction program for elementary school students across the city. Loyola professors introduce student viewers to a different math concept each week on Countdown.

Dr. Schiller fears those years of work will be undermined with the deployment of AT&T’s inferior U-Verse system. In her letter to the Tribune, Dr. Schiller says:

AT&T's planned system for PEG programs like Countdown fails the test by removing those programs from its television line-up. PEG programs will be hard to find, channel surfing between commercial channels and PEG channels won't work, and channel listings for programs like Countdown will disappear. It doesn't take an educator to know that "out of sight" can easily become "out of mind."

In response, AT&T Illinois President Paul La Schiazza claims, "All PEG content is easily found on U-verse’s Channel 99, which is absolutely acceptable under state law…"

While AT& T Illinois President Paul La Schiazza publicly dismisses criticisms of U-Verse, other company representatives have repeatedly acknowledged deficiencies in the system, both in local and national demonstrations of the PEG product.

Contrary to La Schiazza's assertion, it is clear the U-Verse system fails to comply with Illinois law.

The law says:
Companies operating under Illinois’ Cable and Video Franchise law of 2007 "shall provide to subscribers public, educational and government access channel capacity at equivalent visual and audio quality and equivalent functionality, from the viewing perspective of the subscriber, to that of commercial channels carried on the [provider]’s basic cable or video service offerings…"

PEG channels on AT&T's U-Verse system:

• are cumbersome to find and slower to load than commercial channels
• have inferior picture and audio quality compared to commercial channels
• cannot support closed captioning
• cannot support second audio programming
• shut down after 2-3 hours of viewing
• are incompatible with programmed recording devices like Tivo
• are excluded from program guides and listings

The law says:
Public, education and government channels shall all be carried on the holder’s basic cable or video service offerings or tiers. Basic cable or video service is defined as "any cable of video service offering or tier which includes the retransmission of local television broadcast signals."

AT&T's U-Verse system:
Segregates PEG channels from all other channels by moving PEG channels to a web-like application under the generic heading "Channel 99." PEG channels will not be transmitted in the same way as local television broadcast signals.

The law says:
"The holder shall provide a listing of public, education and government channels on channel cards and menus provided to subscribers in a manner equivalent to other channels…"

AT&T's U-Verse system:
Strips away PEG channel identity, only listing a generic Channel 99 on channel cards. Local residents looking for PEG channels are forced to scroll through a menu of dozens of PEG channels from the entire region in order to find what they are looking for.

The law says:
"…the [provider] shall provide a listing of public, educational, and government programming on its electronic program guide if such a guide is utilized by the holder."

AT&T's U-Verse system:
Does not list PEG programming on its electronic program guide.

From here on out, I expect that things will get even worse.