The Fighting 29th

All about New York's 29th Congressional District

Reader Groundhum points to a D&C editorial about Time-Warner's proposed bandwidth cap. Time-Warner ducked an interview with the D&C editorial board when they learned that the meeting would be taped and streamed over the Internet. Perhaps they were afraid that their subscribers would eat up too much precious bandwidth watching it.

The Democrat and Chronicle covers the reaction to Time-Warner's proposed cap. Eric Massa gets a mention, as does the Stop the Cap website. Another site run by a Rochester local, Stop TWC, gets a mention.

The Tea Party Movement, which is a response to "taxation without representation", will have its day in Hornell at 11:30 a.m. on April 15, according to the Hornell Evening Tribune. One of the scheduled participants is radio host Bill Nojay, who ran in the Republican primary in 2004, and is often mentioned as a potential opponent for Eric Massa in 2010.

StoptheCap, a site run by a Rochester man dedicated to stopping Internet usage caps, reports that Eric Massa may sponsor anti-cap legislation.

In addition to his statement about Internet monopolies in this morning's press conference, Eric Massa has issued a press release saying that he "will be taking a leadership role in stopping this outrageous, job killing initiative."

One of Massa's first corporate donations was $1,000 from Time-Warner Cable. Apparently, TWC's donation had little impact on Massa's decision to fight their broadband cap, and that's worth noting.

Eric Massa was joined by Chairman Collin Peterson [MN-7] of the House Agriculture Committee at news conference that address agriculture, the Binghamton shootings and broadband.

Massa began the conference by noting that the budget that passed the House removed did not have the $500K gross revenue limit on agriculture subsidies. After some other remarks, Rep Peterson joined the call. He spoke about Massa's role in changing the proposed revenue limit on recipients of farm subsidies, characterizing Massa as someone who "stepped up to the plate" to address problems with the bill.

Peterson noted that the issue was simple. As drafted, the budget limited subsidies to farmers with $500K or less gross income. Because farming is a high-expense, low-profit business, the budget should have limited adjusted gross income (AGI). The final bill reflects that change.

At the start of the conference, Massa also mentioned the recent mass murder in Binghamton, and cautioned against a "sprint" to find new laws to address the issues raised there. When pressed by a Buffalo News reporter, Massa noted that the Binghamton shooter had licensed weapons and that he doesn't favor any expansion of current gun control laws when they aren't being enforced.

I asked Massa two questions about broadband. First, in the rural areas of the 29th, how is the infrastructure going to be built to get those areas updated? In the urban area, what can be done to combat monopolistic pricing practices of providers like Time-Warner?

Massa said that the rural issue was being addressed in the 29th by funding in the recent Stimulus bill. Projects in Canandaigua and Cattaraugus, Chemung and Schuyler counties have being funded to bring broadband to those rural areas.

In Rochester, Massa said that the monopolistic practices of providers are "very much on our radar". He doesn't have a specific plan yet, but he plans to work across party lines to engage the issue, and that we should "stand by" for more information.

Is broadband a luxury like cable TV, or is it a necessity like water and sewer? In the US, we act as if it is a luxury, and efforts to treat it like a necessity have been thwarted by cable and telephone companies.

Australia is about to do the opposite. The country has announced plans to build a nationwide fiber network over the next few years. The national government will build and own the network, and Internet providers will compete to provide service on it.

The plan sounds like a good way to deal with the issue of "the last mile". When broadband providers own the cable to the house, they are likely to flex their monopoly muscle. But when government owns that cable, they can create a market where tens or hundreds of providers compete. It's a smart way to create a vibrant market for a service that's critical for economic development.

The Times-Union has the story of Brian Kolb's elevation to Assembly Minority Leader. Kolb confirms that he's not running for NY-29 in 2010, and talks a little smack:

Eric Massa, wherever he is right now, is breathing a sigh of relief. I will not be running for Congress.

Howard Owens at The Batavian writes about a new Gallup well-being survey that ranks Congressional districts. Here's a summary of the four districts in the Rochester area, sorted by their overall self-reported well-being. The first number is a score, the second is the district's ranking out of all of the districts in the U.S.

As you can see, only the sad-sack 28th ranks below us in well-being. Here's another chart, this time with Census demographics. Shockingly enough, it looks like income tracks the well-being index pretty closely.

I was called for this survey last week, though I don't know what period this data is from. There's more information on what each of the well-being indexes means at Gallup's site.

The New York Times has a story on how incredibly cheap it is for cable companies to upgrade their Internet infrastructure. For $20/home, a Japanese cable company was able to upgrade its network to provide access that's 16 times faster than Time-Warner's. That service costs $60/month in Japan, and it isn't capped. In Rochester, Time-Warner wants to charge almost that much ($55/month) for usage-capped, slower service.

The Times also mentions a rival Verizon service, FiOS. This is a fiber-optic service that runs 5 times faster than Time-Warner's. Unfortunately, in Rochester and probably most of the 29th district, we won't see this service. That's because Frontier, not Verizon, is our Rochester's local phone company. Frontier's capital budget has been gutted by multiple acquisitions, and they have no plans to upgrade their copper infrastructure to fiber.

Time-Warner is only rolling out usage caps in markets where FiOS doesn't compete. Because the 29th is one of those markets, we're going to be at a distinct technological disadvantage compared to other areas that have real Internet competition. The economic development of Rochester and the entire region could be stunted by the Time-Warner/Frontier duopoly.