The Fighting 29th

All about New York's 29th Congressional District

Eric Massa's district tour got a story in the Star-Gazette.

The D&C also weighed in on the Time-Warner issue, giving Massa some credit for helping the situation. (via Rochesterturning)

Philbrick at Mustard Street is on-point yet again today on the Time-Warner issue. He's been right from the start, asking smart, skeptical questions and having a conservative (not reactionary) take on Massa's proposed legislation.

Time-Warner's behavior was anti-competitive and monopolistic, and when their rhetoric wasn't flat-out bullshit, it was full of Orwellian doubletalk. There's nothing right or left about fighting a utility company's attempt to gouge consumers, and I hope that some elected conservatives will realize that the next time this issue comes around.

Here are the Democrat and Chronicle, 13-WHAM, City News and WENY reports on Time-Warner's decision to shelve consumption-based billing, for now.

DragonFlyEye will be appearing on CW-16 tomorrow morning at 7:30 a.m. to discuss the Time-Warner news.

Update: Here's the video.

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.

Eric Massa's office and Stop the Cap are reporting that Time-Warner has suspended tiered pricing in all markets.

Update: 13-WHAM is reporting this, too.

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.

Eric Massa's presence in Elmira got some attention on Southern Tier television. Both WENY and WETM covered the presentation of a petition signed by 3,000 AARP members who want Massa to help solve the healthcare crisis.

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.

Eric Massa's travels in the district have generated a fair amount of news coverage:

• The Corning Leader has coverage of Massa's town hall meeting at Corning West High School.
• WETM and Syracuse News 10 have news about the first-time home buyer tax credit.
• WENY has a story about Massa's Time-Warner position, and Stop the Cap has some WETM video about the same subject, which includes footage from a town hall meeting.