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Tuesday, 17 November 2009 00:56

12.06

  1. The FCBA Chairman's Dinner is Thursday December 10 at the DC Hilton. Last time I went, two people pointed out the spot where Ronald Reagan was shot. Some folks may not be able to come this year because of the change in government. The procedure had been for companies to buy tables ($120-$300/ticket) and provide tickets to government staff. Kim Hart reports that the FCC has forbidden that for senior executives this year. A good change.
  2. 11.16
  • There's a very ugly war in D.C. right now, with $200B of power and influence throwing everything they have against NN although even their own CTO John Donovan and policy SVP point out NN is not a major problem for them. I don't know whether this is an attempt to show just how powerful they are, a misguided move by their D.C. people, or something subtle behind the scenes. But there's no doubt that one of the richest companies in the world can persuade many wall street types to call Larry whenever they ask.
  • Charter CEO Neil Smit met with Julius Genachowski at the FCC just a few days after I wrote Found At Charter: 600,000 Probably Unserved, Cheap to Reach http://bit.ly/3lt3NF. That makes unnecessary the piece I was about to write. “Jonathan, please call Neil,” urging him to offer the loans necessary to bring service to them. Their quarterly indicated they've reached 70,000 more homes in the last quarter; with some RUS loans, they can probably do several hundred thousand more in the next year. That might be more than the entire stimulus achieves. No details on what Neil and team said to Jules; I've sent a note over to their lawyer, Paul Glist, reminding him that Charter's ex parte filing should have more detail.
  • Jules' speechwriters should be careful to delete “The World Bank estimates that a 10-percentage-point increase in broadband penetration corresponds to a 1.2-percentage-point increase in GDP in developed countries, and even higher increases in the developing world.” from his next speech. I believe it's almost certainly far less today, if it ever was even close to that figure. Logically, most folks who with a large gain from broadband were among the 60-70% of the population who have already connected. It's good to bring in everyone, but there's no evidence to suggest that connecting more homes can have such an impact. Data-driven policy is useless if the data is garbage in, like this one. Other obvious lies being tossed around D.C. are that going “Rah Rah” for broadband will persuade many uninterested or poor people to pay $300-400/year to the carriers; that network congestion is getting worse (really stupid – the data is very clear); that TV over the net requires a special managed service (I was watching 480P HD of ABC shows last night over an Time Warner cable modem without trouble); and that companies like AT&T, Verizon, Windstream, Qwest and Embarq will abandon all rural customers if they aren't allowed to raid the “universal service fund.”
  • Speaking of USF, it's going up to 14.9% or so, up 40-50% this year. Some day a Republican will notice this, call it a tax increase (since everyone needs to pay it or not use a phone) and make it a weapon against the Democrats. Blair Levin in Chicago pointed out that USF is not sustainable, but Ed Mueller at Qwest just told investors the FCC will increase his allotment. (Apologies for the typo leaving off the "not.")