[1st-mile-nm] California's Moore Act, Re: Brookings on COVID & broadband (Doug Orr)

[Robert Jacobson]

I applaud Doug for his militancy and standing his ground via the struggle to expand and make accessible broadband connectivity, preferably governed at the grassroots level, on a universal basis.

While I was consulting on telecom policy for the California Legislature, around the time of the Divestiture — which would have destroyed our state’s telecom-dependent economy and society, except for some jujitsu legislation — I conceived of, and my boss Assemblywoman Gwen Moore, Chairwoman of our Utilities & Commerce Committee, wrote, proposed, lobbied, and managed to enactment the Moore Universal Telecommunications Service Act, in an astounding five months.  We empowered the California PUC to intervene and arrange for taxation of interstate corporations who would realize the benefits of dissembled AT&T — especially, not paying for intrastate infrastructure.  The money was then apportioned to our own Baby Bell, Pacific Telesis, and General Telephone of California, exclusively for the purpose of maintaining economical intrastate telecom usage most commonly used by Californians. 

During the Act’s authoring and legislative progress, we learned how literally we were at war with a corrupt federal bureaucracy and large corporate users enthralled to AT&T.  They would do anything to smear the bill and and its authors.  To protect the Moore Act as it neared passage, to insulate it beyond challenge, we made its annual review public, open, and statewide. Each year since the CPUC has convened regular meetings of the public, individuals and organizations, throughout California to review, revise, and renew the Moore Act.  

And so it remains today.  Almost 40 years later, the Moore Act is still the nation’s most coherent communication and information policy, extended to wireless, online, and new experiential modes of communications — and just as potent.

You can read about this in my doctoral thesis, published in 1989 by Praeger as An “Open” Approach to Information Policymaking, https://www.amazon.com/s?k=9780893912673&i=stripbooks&linkCode=qs <https://www.amazon.com/s?k=9780893912673&i=stripbooks&linkCode=qs>, with a tribute to Aussie Tony Newstead, who pioneered open planning for telecom in Australia with Telecom 2000, https://www.amazon.com/Telecom-2000-exploration-development-telecommunications/dp/0642934401#customerReviews <https://www.amazon.com/Telecom-2000-exploration-development-telecommunications/dp/0642934401#customerReviews>.  Look in the libraries for each. Copies of Telecom 2000, apocryphally, was burned in a parking lot bonfire as commanded by the CEO of the then-newly (and disastrously) privatized Australia Telecom, thereafter Telstra; and now once again, AT.  For my part, Pacific Telesis said thanks and no thanks, ending my fantasies of a post-Legislature career in telecom.  That’s when I got deeply into VR….

The Moore Act is still the law in California, despite the profound efforts of the interstate carriers and corporations to once more offload their share of the burden for maintaining the network on regular Californians.  For sure it was war waged by non-military means.  However our country fragments under the stresses and strains of great wealth and stupid or bought leaders, here’s hoping each fragment keeps its prerogatives intact.  And that goes for cable and satellite and  as well as telephony. 

It’s a war.  Always remember that, even when the blandishments seem genuine.  The enabled versus the encumbered.  Work to make the public the former.

Stay well,

    Bob 

Robert Jacobson, Ph.D.
Chairman & Strategist
Atelier Tomorrow Inc.

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> On Apr 16, 2020, at 8:28 PM, 1st-mile-nm-request at mailman.dcn.org wrote:
> 
>   1. Re: Brookings on COVID & broadband (Doug Orr)

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