The Fighting 29th

All about New York's 29th Congressional District

Rachel Barnhart has the news about Time-Warner's new position on bandwidth caps. According to TWC, it's all a big "misunderstanding" that requires better communication. A better "dialog" with customers is needed, one that will be facilitated by new measurement tools that TWC is rolling out.

Putting aside TWC's transparent bullshit, consider this:

• The old saying "The shortest line between a TV camera and a politician is defined by Chuck Schumer" is proven once again, but the bait that brought Schumer running was the huge amount of national publicity that Eric Massa garnered by pushing this issue.
• This is the first battle in a long war, and Time-Warner is going to be a hell of a lot smarter next time. Their cable revenue is in danger, and they'll fight until the death to protect their core business.
• Frontier could have been a major beneficiary of TWC's greed and stupidity, but instead, they're further marginalized:
  

  Schumer said customers do not consider Frontier, the other major Internet provider in town, to be on par with Time Warner.

  Frontier provides excellent Internet service in Rochester, but their residual phone company idiocy/conservatism leaves them as the perpetual bridesmaid in the Rochester Internet market.

• Anyone thinking about running against Massa in 2010 should call up Time-Warner, every other cable and telecommunications company, and their associated lobbying groups. Each one of these firms will max out, no questions asked.

Reader Stan wrote to say that Eric Massa's Q1 FEC filing is in. Massa raised a respectable $213K this quarter, which puts him on track to have a solid warchest for 2010.

A little over one-third of Massa's funding came from individuals. The rest came from labor and corporate PACs. Notable corporate donations include one from Corning, Inc., as well as some defense contractors. Massa's position on the House Armed Services Committee will no doubt lead to more funding from that source.

Time-Warner donated another $128 to Massa in January - I assume that's the last he's going to see of their money.

Reader groundhum sent a link to a very interesting article in Ars Technica about Time-Warner, net neutrality and billions of dollars in stimulus money. It shows how TWC continues to try to exert its influence on the future of the Internet to protect its other businesses.

The stimulus bill recently passed by Congress includes $7.2 billion for broadband in unserved and underserved areas. To spend this money, which will be distributed as grants, the agency administering the grants has asked the FCC for help defining "broadband", "unserved" and "underserved". The FCC is also supposed to help define "non-discrimination obligations that will be contractual conditions" for the grants.

"Non-discrimination" or "net neutrality" means, in a nutshell, that an ISP can't block or slow down certain Internet traffic. In Time-Warner's case, the danger is that it will throttle video and voice-over-Internet traffic to force users to continue subscribing to a "full package" of cable, telephone and Internet services.

The FCC has asked for comments on how it should define terms for the grants, and here's what Time-Warner said:

Now is not the time, nor is this the appropriate proceeding, to engage in a debate about the need for net neutrality obligations," two TWC lawyers warned the FCC on Monday. The discussion should stay strictly focused on broadband deployment, the company insists.

This has been Time-Warner's strategy all along. "Focus on deployment" means that we should let Time-Warner use public right-of-way for its fiber network, give them a monopoly on delivering service over that network, and then allow them to charge whatever they wish and limit the service as they please. We don't do that for water, sewer or electric, and there's no reason we should do it for Internet.

At today's press conference, I was able to ask Eric Massa a couple of questions about piracy on the high seas. Massa service in the Navy included time on two different ships that were tasked with anti-piracy duties.

First, on the subject of the recent anti-piracy actions off the coast of Somalia, Massa said that he was "very appreciative of President Obama's leadership in the matter". Though he didn't want to be an "armchair admiral", he thought that Obama was right to allow the military to do their job, and that the service members on the scene exhibited professionalism. He said that he has "ultimate faith" in the armed services.

I asked Massa if he thought that the Navy had the resources to target the anti-piracy mission. He said that anti-piracy is a core Navy mission, and had been since Thomas Jefferson dispatched the Navy to deal with the Barbary Pirates.

I also asked if, in his role on the House Armed Services Committee, there was something more that he thought could be done to help the Navy deal with piracy. Massa mentioned that he will soon be taking an indoctrination ride on the USS Freedom, a Littoral Combat Ship (LCS), a small (378 foot), fast (50 MPH) ship designed for shallow water operations. Massa said it was an "amazing piece of technology" that can address the anti-piracy mission, "if we can get the costs under control". LCS procurement has been dogged with cost-overruns and other related issues, as described in this New York Times article.

The National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) is launching robocalls in the 29th which will try to link Eric Massa with Nancy Pelosi. There are also radio and TV ads, but it's not clear if any of those are going to show in the district.

Linking Pelosi with Massa is a long-time Republican strategy that didn't work out too well for Randy Kuhl. Pelosi's approval rating is as good or better than Congress' overall, it pretty much tracks Congressional Democrats' ratings, and it completely overwhelms Congressional Republicans. Republicans are between 18-30% approval, versus 43-50% for Democrats.

While the Republicans flail around trying to find an unpopular Democrat to link to Massa, unless trends change, Massa's job in 2010 will be much simpler. He just needs to point out that his opponent is a Republican.