| ...otherwise known as the Telecom Reform Act of 2007?
A refresher: the Act, introduced by Assemblyman Richard Brodsky - D-AS-92, currently running for Attorney General - held out several core goals:
- expand broadband access to 85% of the state
- lower consumer prices for cable and phone services
- protect net neutrality.
Best of all, the measure was calculated to be revenue-neutral for the state's coffers, with funding coming from the sale of a state-wide, new cable channel to whomever agreed to provide the infrastructure. In short, Progressive policy at its best.
Needless to say, that never actually happened. |
As Phillip wrote back then:
Quite a coalition of support has coalesced around the bill since its introduction including NYS Rural Advocates, NYPIRG, Common Cause, Jobs With Justice, Citizen Action, Rural Opportunities Inc, New York State Alliance for Retired Americans, Consumers Union and ACORN among others. Much of the credit for assembling this coalition goes tp Pete Sikora at the Communications Workers of America who has done a fantastic job of building support for the bill against its only known opponents, namely the cable companies and Verizon (and by extension, Joe Bruno and the Republican state Senators who represent those upstate New Yorkers who stand to benefit most from passage of the bill.)
I've written about the bill here several times and want to explain again why I and so many others believe it to be the "gold standard" in state telecom legislation (or as Pete Sikora put it, "the best thing since sliced bread") but first I want to ask you to do something to get this bill back on the governor's radar. Please call Mr. Spitzer's office and ask him to support this bill. You can reach his office at 518-474-8390.
...snip...
The big winners will be rural communities upstate, communities that have been in economic decline for decades. It seems that for the better part of half a century, Albany's strategy for reviving the upstate economy has been to throw money at corporate interests in the hopes that they might create jobs up there. The failed and thoroughly corrupt Empire Zones come to mind. This bill will accomplish more in 5 years than the Empire Zones ever have in breathing new life into the upstate economy. Study after study has shown a direct correlation between broadband penetration and economic prosperity. To put it simply, the more wired a community is, generally the more prosperous it is. The towns and villages that have lost huge portions of their populations over the last half century or so desperately need this bill. The folks who send their kids off to college knowing that their kids will never return to their hometowns to live because they can't make a living and raise a family there are going to benefit most from this bill.
Again: if there is a downside to this legislation, I don't see it. So why did it just quietly go away, vanishing in the swamp that is the state government?
With the FCC now proposing its 100 Squared initiative (100 bits/s to 100 million households by 2020), it's hard mot to think that New York lost an opportunity when the legislature failed to act back in 2007. The FCC's newest broadband test finds this state at the upper range of the national median. I'd suggest, though, that the statewide data are inconsequential, due to the regional digital divide; owing to the location of the internet backbone in downtown Manhattan, City users have better access than those in, say, Rochester.
Upstate New Yorkers rightly feel that their interests are less than well-represented by a leadership based primarily in the five boroughs. Witness, for example, the passionate support Senator Gillibrand finds for her election campaign.
Allow me to suggest that it's time for a closer look at building this state's infrastructure, before Buffalo turns into Liverpool. |
