Thread by @doctorow

I've been working on digital human rights for nearly 20 years now, and I remember how the idea was once widely mocked as a distraction.

Back in 2009, Finland was derided for declaring broadband a human right.

cnn.com/2009/TECH/10/1…

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And even by Malcolm Gladwell standards, this 2010 take on the uselessness of online activism has not aged well.

newyorker.com/magazine/2010/…

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The GOP and @AjitPaiFCC's attacks on the #Lifeline fund to bring broadband to rural and disadvantaged Americans are modern versions of the infection that says that the digital divide is a frivolity.

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But pandemics have a well-known left-wing bias, and as the world struggles to replace f2f with digital-only, the foolishness of allowing rapacious, lazy, financialized, incompetent telcos to maintain the nervous system of the 21st Century is increasingly obvious.

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Hence calls like this one, to treat broadband as a public utility:

qz.com/1826043/the-co…

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As I've mentioned, my city, #Burbank, has a 100GB publicly owned fiber network that runs right under my foundation slab, but residents can't access it, thanks to a franchise deal with @GetSpectrum, a genuinely terrible company.

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As it happens, I was discussing something else with one of my city councillors yesterday and this subject came up and he asked me to send him a briefing on the subject that he could circulate to other city officials. Here's what I wrote him:

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It would be a dream come true for Burbank to make its fiber network
available to residential customers. Our taxpayer-purchased 100GB loop is
300X+ faster than the fastest speeds offered by our broadband
monopolist, Charter.

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Municipal fiber networks are beloved wherever they are found.

The only Americans who love their ISPs are customers of
city-owned/operated fiber:

consumerreports.org/telecom-servic…

Municipal fiber is the fastest, cheapest broadband in America:

vice.com/en_us/article/…

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(It's 50% cheaper!
cyber.harvard.edu/publications/2…)

More than 750 cities in the US operate municipal broadband networks:

muninetworks.org/communitymap

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Despite Trump admin warnings, it's totally untrue that municipal
networks are liable to commit censorship (indeed, muni networks are
constrained by the First Amendment in ways that private networks are not):

motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/…

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The poorest predominately white community in the US - in rural
Appalachia - installed a fiber network (they used a mule named "Ole Bub"
to reach their most isolated homesteads!) and underwent an economic miracle:

newyorker.com/tech/annals-of…

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The best book on this is Susan Crawford's "Fiber: The Coming Tech
Revolution―and Why America Might Miss It":

yalebooks.yale.edu/book/978030022…

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Instead of muni fiber, Burbankers are using Charter service, which is
rated some of the worst in the USA. They're the company that is forcing
back-office employees to come into work even if they can work from home:

techcrunch.com/2020/03/16/cha…

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In lieu of hazard pay, PPE, or hand sanitizer, Charter is
providing its field techs with $25 gift certificates...to restaurants that are not open and may not survive the crisis (these are also a taxable benefit for those workers):

buzzfeednews.com/article/amberj…

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(Charter got billions in the tax bill and blew it all on buybacks while
dropping maintenance and capex to historic, industry-trailing lows).

eof/