Telecommunications
In the Spring of 1998, telecommunications companies in many parts of the country suddenly saw themselves potentially locked out of a lucrative new market – cable access to the Internet. While they were required by law and regulation to make their telephone lines open and available to all interested competitors, their cable counterparts were not.
That basic unfairness, coupled with a very real concern that cable companies could beat them at the high-speed internet access race, caused incumbent telephone companies, both big and small, to seek assistance. A broad-based coalition was put together and in a matter of months, a full-scale open access campaign was deployed nationally. Components included:
- Recruitment of allies and creation of the Open Access Alliance.
- Creation of a message document based on quantitative and qualitative research.
- Creation of collateral materials for use with city and county officials and state legislators.
- Creation of local speaker's bureaus and recruitment and message training of witnesses for local and state legislative hearings.
- Creation of a group of websites which were used for education, recruitment and outreach to encourage legislative contact.
- Coordination of an aggressive media campaign with releases, From Our Desk, and media briefings.
- Production and placement of a paid advertising campaign, both newspaper and television advertising.
With a concentrated grassroots approach these broad-based coalitions were put into action both at the local and state level in California, the City of St. Louis, Miami-Dade County and the State of Texas' legislative process. These coalition efforts resulted in a number of outright wins but most importantly succeeded in making this such a high profile issue that the Federal Communications Commission was compelled to act.