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Opposing Net Neutrality has become a political third rail for candidates who seek elected office, according to a story today in the Washington Post.

Post reporter Charles Babington praised SavetheInternet.com Coalition efforts to mobilize the netroots and other Internet activists around this issue.

The Christian Coalition’s Michele Combs delivers one million petitions to Congress — with MoveOn’s Joan Blades and Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine)

Net Neutrality “was hardly a household term” before the spring of 2006, Babington writes. Yet now every major Democratic presidential candidate has endorsed it as has much of the new leadership in Congress.

Many on the other side of the aisle are coming around to the issue as well. A veteran political campaign consultant told Babington, “if you’re not for net neutrality, then the blogs will kick your [ass].”

That this issue has grown to such prominence is a testament to our efforts, writes Babington:

“Last spring, the debate over net neutrality barely scratched the consciousness of Congress, let alone the general public, after a House subcommittee defeated an effort to add net-neutrality restrictions to a multi-faceted telecommunications bill. The 23 to 8 vote goaded more than 850 interest groups, many, but not all, politically left of center, to form a coalition called SavetheInternet.com.”

Our coalition includes groups from across the political spectrum. Michele Combs of the Christian Coalition of America told the Post that Net Neutrality is a nonpartisan issue but that “the conservative side has not been educated on the issue.”

Still, the Christian Coalition along with the Gun Owners of America have successfully rallied support from their membership calling Net Neutrality an issue for conservatives, libertarians, and other champions of free speech and the free market.

“As long as Congress is making the rules for a handful of major companies in providing the infrastructure, it has to make certain those companies give equal access to all comers,” wrote Gun Owners Internet director Craig Fields. “That’s the way it has been for the very lifetime of the free and open Internet we’re all interested in maintaining.”

MoveOn.org’s Adam Green added that Net Neutrality should transcend political lines. “An issue like Net Neutrality, which directly taps into Internet issues … could have a special energy in the political season,” he said. “Every Republican and Democrat who uses the Internet is threatened by corporations that want to control which Web sites people can access.”

This week’s issue of InformationWeek concludes that forward-looking policy and not wholesale deregulation is the way to save America from becoming a broadband backwater.

The report’s author, Richard Hoffman, writes that nations that are able to craft “genuinely forward-looking telecommunications policies that promote universal access as well as enhancing competition, and which can balance short-term market forces against long-term national priorities, will reap the current and future benefits of increased economic productivity.”

The FCC’s Rose-Tinted Lens

Read InformationWeek’s Report

Hoffman takes the FCC to task for rose-tinted reporting on broadband competition. He calls “questionable” figures presented by FCC Chairman Kevin Martin that define a “high-speed” line as one delivering service of at least 200 kilobits per second in at least one direction, and for defining a ZIP code as “covered” by broadband access when only one broadband line is active in that region.

His critique of FCC data echoes widespread concern (read Isenberg ,Techdirt, Feld, Free Press, CPI, et al) that the FCC’s Martin is skewing already discredited data to paint a picture of a flourishing broadband marketplace. The evidence on the ground — in both urban and rural communities across America — suggests a markedly different reality.

Hoffman writes that the U.S. broadband market is hobbled by “surprisingly little competition.” Despite the growing number of broadband users here, prices are still much higher than in many of the countries that lead the world in broadband use.

He adds:

“Part of the cause for this pricing disparity can be attributed to the fact that competition brings lower prices and greater innovation, and the U.S. broadband market is, in many ways, not highly competitive.”

Back of the Pack

As a result, U.S. broadband accessibility, speed and costs have fallen behind other developed country’s including Japan, Canada, Iceland, France, Korea and England.

“The U.S. isn’t even close to being the leader in widespread broadband availability and usage,” Hoffman writes. “In fact, [we] may be dropping further behind the ‘first tier’ of broadband-rich countries in Northern Europe and Asia.”

He cites South Korea as a “best example” of a country’s rapid development of superior broadband service. The reason, according to Hoffman, is that South Korea “has a tradition of constructive and proactive government policy and involvement in building industry and technological capability to be competitive in the international market.”

The Telcos’ ‘Hands On’ Policy Approach

Phone companies only seek to maximize profits and spend millions of dollars on lobbyists to create laws that stifle competition and limit access to rural areas and the urban poor, with no incentives to increase speed and lower costs. According to Hoffman, “This state of affairs stands in marked contrast to the situation in those nations that are truly broadband leaders.”

He concludes:

“[America’s] intensely ‘hands-off’ market-driven system in recent years seems to have resulted in a chaotic and inefficient marketplace, and one that doesn’t represent the true state of the United States as a technology leader. Laissez-faire isn’t a viable stance if the goal is to compete most effectively against other industrialized nations.”

InformationWeek’s recommendations fall in line with SavetheInternet.com’s agenda for Internet Freedom. They also follow the research and recommendations made by SavetheInternet.com charter members Free Press, Consumers Union and Consumer Federation of America.

Our goal is to create universal and neutral access to a world-class broadband network at affordable prices. To get there, we need a national broadband policy, not a series of laws designed to prop up the business models of incumbent telephone and cable companies. We want to make the information superhighway a public good, to bring the transformative spirit of free speech and free markets to every community.

The “Internet Freedom Declaration” is a step in the right direction. Hopefully, InformationWeek’s readers will join us in this fight for better broadband.

Valentine’s Day is Wednesday, but FCC Chairman Kevin has already received his gift from the public.

Watch the Video

In a sugar-coated bid to woo Martin away from corporate media lobbyists, tens of thousands of people have signed and sent an electronic love letter to the man in charge of regulating the Internet.

>> Click here to watch the video

The Valentine’s day video asks the chairman to get out of bed with Big Media and “send some love to the people you’re really supposed to be serving.”

Last year, Martin was caught in bed with corporate lobbyists (literally, see the photo to the right).

At the end of the year — as the AT&T buyout of Bell South was being approved, the chairman stated his intention not to enforce the Net Neutrality rules that were a condition of the company’s massive merger.

2007 is a pivotal year for the chairman. He will be making several decisions that will have a direct impact on Internet freedoms.

The public Valentine urges the chairman to spurn corporate advances and help prevent big phone companies from destroying Net Neutrality. Help foster “more diverse voices and points of view and a free and open Internet” the video asks. “Get out of bed with them and into bed with us.”

>> Click here to sign the card

Read more about our courtship of Kevin in the Wall Street Journal’s “Washington Wire” and at Reuters.

For the millions of Americans wondering why Congress isn’t protecting the free and open Internet, today’s special telecom issue of The Hill offers some clues. Apparently, the old House leadership was too busy watching re-runs of Newlyweds.

In an article filled with more clichés than the last Nick Lachey album, former House Commerce Committee Chairman Joe Barton (R-ATT) again trots out the lame telco argument that nobody knows what Net Neutrality means.

While he rests his case on the eternal wisdom of Jessica Simpson — parodying the argument of Internet freedom advocates as “Ah totally don’t know what that means, but ah wont it.” — Barton’s got more in common with her sister, Ashlee. His latest performance is little more than lip-synching from a copy of Ed Whitacre’s Greatest Hits.

So once and for all, here it is. Net Neutrality means the phone and cable companies that own the wires can’t discriminate against any Internet content, service or application based on its source, ownership or destination. That’s not something made up by Google, MoveOn.org or Britney Spears. It’s the definition used by the FCC – and agreed to, just a few weeks ago, by AT&T.

But Barton can’t resist this tortured parable about The Taurus and The Ferrari:

From a consumer’s point of view, it would be like the daily choice between driving my old Ford Taurus or a sizzling new Ferrari. I’m not in the hot Ferrari because I can’t afford one, but my Ford gets me to work. Would I replace it with the Ferrari if I had an extra $100,000 burning a hole in my pocket? Maybe. But I don’t have that extra cash, and so I keep that Ford and drive it up to the speed limit. Mostly.

Some believe the government can do it better, however, and they propose to put all of us into an Internet version of something that is neither the quick and pricey Ferrari nor the reliable old Taurus. With the government in charge, average will replace fast as the goal, and we’ll all get the same, average car capable of the same, average speed.

These tired telco arguments have run out of gas.

Consumers (and Internet companies, for that matter) have paid, should pay and will pay for faster speeds if they need them. Some will want Ferraris, and some will choose Fords. The point is that the consumer decides for themselves how fast and where they want to go. Without Net Neutrality, the phone and companies will set the speed limit and decide which roads their customers can take, while collecting exorbitant tolls. While they’re at it, they’ll inspect each vehicle to see who should be sent to the back of the line.

All we want is for the government to keep the roads free and open like they’ve always been – and keep the highway robbers at bay.

The best way to do that is to pass the Dorgan-Snowe Internet Freedom Preservation Act. Senator Dorgan makes the case here.

Just before all five members of the Federal Communications Commission faced off with the Senate Commerce Committee today, the agency released its biannual report on the U.S. broadband market.

On the surface — or at least in the pretty picture sure to be painted by FCC Chairman Kevin Martin — the numbers sound good. High-speed Internet lines increased by 26 percent during the first half of 2006, and broadband is reportedly available in 99 percent of all U.S. ZIP codes.

But look past those rose-colored statistics, and the broadband reality shows that the United States is still trailing the world leaders in making the Internet faster, more affordable and universally available. According to S. Derek Turner, research director of Free Press, here’s why:

• The FCC still uses an absurd standard of “broadband” — 200 kilobits per second — that was barely fast enough to surf in 1999 but is far below what’s needed to enjoy streaming video, VoIP, flash animation or other common Internet applications.
• Speeds are much slower than what’s available in the rest of the world. According to the FCC, half of all U.S. broadband connections are slower than 2.5 megabits per second — yet in countries like Japan and South Korea, they’re rolling out 100 megabit service.
• The FCC still uses a discredited measure of broadband availability. Using ZIP codes alone vastly overstates the availability and competition for broadband services.
• There’s no competition. Ninety-eight percent of high-speed residential lines are provided by incumbent cable or telecom companies.
• The numbers are inflated by cell phones. In fact, 60 percent of the increase in broadband connections over the past six months is due to mobile cellular wireless connections. A cell phone or Blackberry is no substitute or viable competitor for always-on cable, DSL or fiber connections. These connections are very slow, have strict bandwidth caps, and restrict users so they can’t use Internet phone service or other applications.

President Bush once pledged universal, affordable Internet access by 2007. Here we are.

Yet based on the FCC’s own data, nearly 60 percent of U.S. homes don’t subscribe to broadband service.

If, as Commerce Department officials claim, the president actually meant Internet for everyone by “the end of the year,” then there’s a lot of work to do. And it can’t be done by cooking the books or statistical sleight-of-hand.

What we need is a new national broadband policy — with Net Neutrality and an open Internet at its core. Anything less is just more smoke and mirrors.