Publication Date: Wednesday, April 14, 2004
Guest Opinion: Comcast's descent into FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) tactics
Guest Opinion: Comcast's descent into FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) tactics
(April 14, 2004) by Peter M. Allen
I was one of 800 participants in a deceitful "City of Palo Alto FTTH" phone survey during the week of March 24, funded by Comcast.
Comcast is preparing a campaign to defeat our Palo Alto initiative to create an information utility based on a fiber-optic connection to all homes.
All Palo Alto residents should be leery of this opening salvo of FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) tactics from our incumbent service providers, Comcast and SBC. Your spider sense should tingle. They run this playbook for every municipal attempt to enter telecommunications, and it stinks like a feedlot in Tracy.
The city Utilities Advisory Commission this March recommended that the City Council authorize an advisory vote in November to create an information utility based on fiber to the home (FTTH). This is an important opportunity -- similar to that of creating our electric utility 100 years ago. The business plan is well researched, well written, and now has a positive UAC recommendation. This event appears to have mobilized the Comcast FUD army. One can expect SBC to enlist soon.
This was not an honest survey. Many of Comcast's survey questions were cloaked as informative statements. We were asked to reply to what extreme it would affect our inclination (or not) to support PA-FTTH.
Example: "Would you be more or less likely to support FTTH if you heard the following: In the past 'almost every effort has ended up in failure' when a municipality has tried to provide telecommunications services?"
Shame on you, Pinocchio!
Fact: There has not been one such failure. Yet there are multiple successes from diverse states, such as Kentucky, Massachusetts, Virginia, Georgia, Utah, Washington, Oregon and Iowa. Note that Comcast's questions were skillfully phrased ("If you heard the following ...") so as to skirt needs for compliance in factual truth. But the otherwise uninformed or innocent resident gets the subliminal FUD message.
Other survey questions painted a dim picture of our town: Cable CoOp failures, storm-drain ballot failures, and others: "Palo Alto already failed and sold its cable company to a private operator"; "Shouldn't Palo Alto be focusing on other priorities like police and fire support?"
Hmm. Shouldn't Comcast be focusing on better service and rates instead of harassing us with lies and salting unrelated old scars?
Comcast's sudden dire civic interest should signal us positively that this is just the sort of business in which our Utilities Department and city should invest. Such a CityWorks project would benefit our residents, schools, city services and property values.
It would also create a network over which anyone could deliver services to us, including the incumbents. But Comcast and SBC prefer to "own the roads" rather than share them.
Comcast (and SBC) will do their best to discourage Palo Alto's efforts to create an information utility. They will spend millions here to protect their turf, just as they have done in the Tri-City area of Batavia, Geneva and St. Charles in Illinois (see www.tricitybroadband.com). They will carpet bomb us in the upcoming year with a well-run, sophisticated FUD campaign. The volume will increase in October, just when the City of Palo Alto must be mute regarding support of its own ballot measure on the subject!
Speaking from personal experience, I am a highly satisfied participant in our city Utilities Department's successful FTTH Trial in the Community Center neighborhood -- where one in four homes has fiber (and even more desire it). The rest of our town deserves this great service. Our trusted and competent utility staff is eager to proceed, with the approval of the City Council
The council should go beyond the UAC's recommendation for an advisory vote in November, and instead vote to create our seventh utility -- based on its business merits and a likely $40 million revenue bond. This would save the unnecessary time and $250,000 it will cost to bring this matter to the ballot, and commence an investment in Palo Alto's future.
But if council members lack the conviction or resolve to proceed on our behalf, please proceed with the UAC recommendation for an advisory vote. Then put on your waders in preparation for the upcoming flood of FUD. For more information, residents can visit www.ipaloalto.org or www.pa-fiber.net.
Peter M. Allen, a former Bell Labs Research optical network scientist and a veteran of many Silicon Valley startups(including Napster, Visioneer, S3, GO, and Yipes Communications) resides in the Palo Alto fiber-to-the-home trial area. He can be e-mailed at pmallen@alumni.princeton.edu.
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