Whether by design or not, The New York Times editorial section in the last week has practically lent their pages out to folks who support the current status-quo of private, for-profit companies being the principal providers of internet, phone, television and other services. (I have argued the opposite, as you can see here.) Today on June 21, 2013, Lowell C. McAdam, chairman of Verizon, described how everything is fine with the regulation, or lack of it, in telecommunications. Less than a week earlier, Richard Bennett, who criticized my column in Governing, used some of the same arguments in the Times to defend the conduct and performance of the major telecommunications companies. I spoke about that in an earlier blog a few days ago.

Both McAdam and Bennett are right in some of the particular facts they cite about Europe, but they are putting them together  in ways I know or suspect or misleading.  Both call out Susan Crawford, who I quote supportively, as being in the wrong. Neither mention municipal fiber optic networks. Why give something energy that you oppose and which would be helped by any exposure?

One question I keep having is just who funds the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), where Bennett is a fellow. To me, Bennett appears to be carrying water for the major telecommunication companies, and knowing who funds the ITIF would help complete this picture, although I know fellows don’t always walk in lockstep with their institutes. Its communication director, William Dube, would only say it received money from “a number of government agencies, foundations and corporations.” But board membership is usually a good indication of funding. ITIF’s 24-member board has representatives from Cisco, IBM, HP, Qualcomm, Microsoft, Oracle, Intuit, Intel and Apple. Many of these representatives represent “government affairs” division of their companies, which I assume means they are lobbyists. What I did not see were representatives from TimeWarner, Comcast and other big companies that make money providing Internet, telephone and cable access. Does this mean that ITIF funders have no material interest in  promoting the pro-cable and telephone company views Bennett is espousing? I don’t know.

The ITIF is led by Richard Atkinson, whose credentials include project director in the 1990s at the former Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, which produced the report The Technological Reshaping of Metropolitan America. I still have a copy of that report. Coincidentally, I wrote admiringly of this report in 1995 as a staff writer for The Virginian-Pilot, close to two decades ago now. I was a meticulous reporter back then, and I actually interviewed Atkinson from his home. He was there  after the Republicans had closed down the office he led. Through the magic of the Internet you can see that article of mine here. What I wrote seemed to be one of the only journalistic treatments of the report, and it was picked up by various newspapers around the country. Perhaps Atkinson and I should have a sit down.