Andy,
Do you think it would have beeen helpful for LULAC or the Miami
Herald to have acknowledged that in 2004, LULAC received a $1
million dollar grant from SBC, and that LULAC's "Corporate
Alliance Members" include: AT&T, BellSouth, Verizon and Sprint:
http://www.sbc.com/gen/press-room?pid=4800&cdvn=news&newsarticleid=21220
http://www.lulac.org/links.html#anchor551841:
Should we celebrate the active engagement in telecommunications
policy of nonprofits being intensively funded by a set of phone
companies that have tended to mix philanthropy and politics, at
times to the apparent detriment of consumers? Might it not be
better for such nonprofits to stay on the sidelines, while
members of the nonprofit sector free of such conflicts of
interest lead efforts to promote telecommunications policy in the
public interest?
Principal LULAC arguments in the op/ed you cite include:
1) "We need to streamline or otherwise eliminate unnecessary
red-tape imposed by state and local governments in deciding
whether an otherwise qualified company should be permitted to get
into the phone or cable business. 'Mother, may I' is truly bad
policy in this technologically dynamic era."
What is LULAC getting at here? The phone companies urgently want
to provide one-way transmission of video services to the public
without needing to first agree to franchise terms with
municipalities like the cable companies have had to do.
And if I interpret correctly, LULAC would like both phone and
cable companies to be exempt from negotiating franchises with
cities. My sense is that in many cities, such as Cleveland,
Seattle and San Francisco, those franchise agreements have given
a major boost to efforts to provide equitable access to
technology.
At the same time there's a lot to be said for the efficiencies of
a single statewide procedure, if the benefits of those
efficiencies flow not just to corporations but also to
disadvantaged citizens. It seems odd strategically that LULAC
would at this stage of the game lead an attempt to cede the phone
companies their desired goal, without making the case that cities
and their citizens must get, as a result of any more efficient,
streamlined process, a much better deal on average than they get
through the current franchising system. It would be naive to
assume that benefits accruing to phone and cable companies will
naturally flow to consumers without explicit, enforceable
provisions to ensure that.
2) According to LULAC, "any company that wants to compete in the
voice-telephone business should be required to contribute to the
Universal Service Fund (to ensure affordable phone service in
remote and low-income areas), to offer emergency 9-1-1 services
and to offer services for the hearing impaired such as Telephone
Relay Service. There is reason for concern, as many companies
that offer Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services are
trying to evade these obligations."
The phone companies are having their profits eroded by VOIP
providers and would love to slow them down with burdensome
regulations. But presumably LULAC should want them to survive and
thrive. I would guess that LULAC's constituents are in small but
increasing numbers taking advantage of services such as Skype,
Gizmo, Google Talk, and Free World Dialup that enable them to
make VOIP calls within the U.S. and overseas without being
charged for the service.
In the quoted paragraph above, we see a LULAC position very much
in sync with that of the phone companies. But just as LULAC
thinks it efficient to skip municipal franchising, shouldn't it
recognize that there are huge efficiencies to offering services
at no cost, with no need to track and bill very minor payments.
Does it really help achieve the goals of universal service to
require services like Gizmo and Skype to bill each and every one
of their users in order to send money to the universal service
fund?
And as far as the situations where those or other VOIP providers
do charge some customers, shouldn't any call by LULAC for such
companies to contribute to the universal service program be
accompanied by a call for reforms to the universal service
program itself, reforms that may be unappealing to the phone
companies? According to David Hughes, the program has
historically piled monies into the coffers of the wireline telcos
while operating to the severe disadvantage of wireless broadband
providers.
http://www.comtechreview.org/summer-fall-1999/looking_at_erate.htm
And Robert Atkinson argues, I think persuasively, that "any
universal service payments made by VoIP services should go to
supporting the build-out of broadband telecommunications, not to
the PSTN" [The phone companies' public switched telephone
network]. Atkinson writes that, "Using these revenues to support
the 20th century circuit-switched network will only delay that
transition to a robust, packet-switched broadband network for the
21st century. As former FCC Commissioner Reed Hundt stated, this
would be as if government responded to Henry Ford's new invention
of the automobile by discouraging the construction of roads and,
instead, tax[ed] cars in order to subsidize canals and railroads.
http://www.comtechreview.org/spring-summer-2005/000316.html
I wonder whether LULAC agrees with Atkinson's position and would
promote it vigorously?
3) Finally, LULAC calls for, "nondiscriminatory deployment of
video services to every neighborhood to ensure that the process
is competitive and fair. In short, any reform must ensure that
Hispanic neighborhoods get access to these new services as
quickly as non-Hispanic neighborhoods."
Cheers to LULAC for staking out that position, which may clash
with that of its major phone company sponsors.
http://makeashorterlink.com/?D2E412C6C
- Stephen Ronan
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
On Thu, 5 Jan 2006, Andy Carvin wrote:
Hi everyone,
Yesterday's Miami Herald featured an op/ed by Hector Flores of
the League of United Latin America Citizens (LULAC) offering a
Latino policy perspective on the digital divide. "In 2006,
Congress will set out to rewrite the nation's
telecommunications laws," Flores notes. "And if federal
lawmakers get it right, Hispanic Americans, and consumers
generally, could have much to celebrate. But if lawmakers
misfire, the digital divide could explode into a digital
abyss." Among his recommendations is to have more telecom
companies contributing to the Universal Service Fund, source of
the E-Rate funding used to subsidize school and library
Internet access around the US.
I've written about the op/ed on my blog:
http://www.andycarvin.com
The full text of Flores' op/ed can be found here:
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/opinion/13553457.htm
--
-----------------------------------
Andy Carvin
Program Director
EDC Center for Media & Community
acarvin @ edc . org
http://www.digitaldivide.net
http://katrina05.blogspot.com
Blog: http://www.andycarvin.com
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