Last week a coalition, led by Google, wrote a letter to the chairman of the Georgia House Committee on Energy, Utilities, and Telecommunications urging him to not pass HB 282, the Municipal Broadband Investment Act. The bill, if passed, would require that municipal broadband networks serve only areas that are not being served by a private broadband provider. It also requires that the Georgia Public Service Commission (GPSC) make a determination as to whether an area is unserved and to draft rules that specify violations of the Act.

Seeing Google and the National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors (NATOA) is scary enough. These two have nothing on common other than they represent content providers who would rather not directly pay to have their content distributed over the Internet. Both have been pro net neutrality, NATOA more so, because they don’t want to see their content throttled.

Scarier yet is the lack of support for the assertions made in their letter to the committee chairman. Most glaring is their arguments about how the bill would hinder economic growth in Georgia. What’s hindering economic growth in Georgia isn’t the lack of broadband, although the job creation resulting from construction and deployment of broadband infrastructure wouldn’t hurt. What is really hurting growth in Georgia is the lack of a more diversified economic base compounded by a loss of manufacturing jobs. Also, Georgia is trying to get from under a foreclosure crisis exacerbated by high unemployment.

Even if broadband deployment were the panacea for our economic ills, HB 282 would direct deployment where its most needed; in the areas that are unserved and could probably get a boost from the type of industry where a broadband connection is key.

Google and NATOA should spend less time playing carpetbagger and get to know the state before making unwarranted assertions about economic growth. That phrase has been bandied about to the point where it’s staring to lose value.

If Google and NATOA are so concerned about expanding broadband, they should support legislation that calls for an universal service assessment on cost causers like Amazon, Facebook, and Google, requiring that they pay a percentage of income made from advertisements and/or online retail. That would go long way toward getting the unserved online, whether they reside in an area serviced by multiple broadband providers or none.

The Federal Communications Commission pushes its universal service program the way a drug dealer pushes cocaine. To keep carriers in check, it has devised a system that some carriers believe they have to depend on, while the FCC sells them on the need to keep doing lines because it will give the carrier the confidence it needs to go out and serve unserved areas of the country. It’s time for carriers to break the dependency and free themselves from this regulatory crossfire. The carriers are not the bad guys when it comes to broadband adoption and I would go further and argue that they should not be responsible for financing its expansion. That responsibility should lie with online content producers, including companies that publish news, movies, and blogs.

Content providers, not broadband providers, are the primary beneficiaries of broadband adoption by the remaining 100 million households the FCC targeted in its national broadband plan. If a land developer wants to ensure people come to its development, buy houses, and live in the development, the land developer is going to build roads, lay conduits for communications and water, and maybe throw in a school building. Google, Amazon, and Netflix are not doing that with broadband, even though it’s broadband that brings them the eyeballs for their content.

Content providers are not doing that with broadband networks. With the help of the FCC, they have dumped the negative externality of adoption costs unto broadband providers. Net neutrality is famously their prime mechanism for doing so; by requiring that traffic from all content providers be given first class treatment on a broadband provider’s network. The other instrument, universal service via the moniker Connect America Fund, while reimbursing broadband providers for the cost of deploying facilities where their business models dare not tread, really takes final payment of this subsidy out of the wallets of the end using consumer.

The Connect America Fund had about $185 million left on the table for broadband providers to apply for and use to help with the cost of getting broadband to Farmer Smith and Dr. Jones so that they can deliver services to an increasingly demanding broadband consumer. These funds are also meant to help people access the Internet at high-speed so that they can take advantage of news,information, goods, and services provided by larger e-commerce entities including Amazon, Ebay, Walmart, and Google.

If these companies, who need the Internet like humans need air, want to reach their potential customers that bad, why don’t they invest the cash sitting on their books to subsidize broadband adoption? For example, Google, with four dollars of current assets with one dollar of current liabilities, has enough cash on hand to kick in and incentivize broadband adoption. And let’s not forget Facebook, with 1.1 billion subscribers, some of whom are connecting via wired and wireline broadband, has ten dollars in current assets for every dollar of current liability has enough liquidity and cash to kick in some direct funding for broadband adoption.

Carriers are just middlemen, unless they are endowed with content properties like Comcast. Being in the middle makes you a target for regulation, including the onerous requirements of a universal broadband service fund, but equity calls for the incidence of broadband adoption initiatives to fall on the entities with the most to gain, and those entities are the content providers and e-commerce companies selling goods and services.

I’m experiencing one of those a ha moments that may not make it into the annals of history, but I claim all the same. The team on Bloomberg Surveillance chatted a bit about the big three social networks: Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. One of the hosts, Tom Keene, described LinkedIn as a winner while giving Facebook mixed reviews. His analysis was based primarily on LinkedIn’s overall stock performance since it went public two years ago. I think LinkedIn is the better play also simply based on the value of its content. Specifically, the value that is derived from the quality connections people expect to make on LinkedIn versus Facebook.

People use LinkedIn to connect with individuals that may lead them to job or other business opportunities. The site also markets itself to job recruiters looking for ideal candidates. LinkedIn plays a role in maximizing income and wealth for the subscriber. Facebook simply doesn’t do that. It is still the bulletin board that is hung up in a dorm room where Kim can tell Sally about the sorority party next week.

What Facebook needs to do, if it wants to stick with its advertising model, is to create events. Facebook is like a night club. People show up for the entertainment. Real swank clubs have corporate sponsors for an evening underwriting events while hawking their wares. Facebook has one billion potential MCs and DJs on its site and plenty of sponsors that are willing to hawk their wares around them. This is how Facebook will be able to generate more income.

As long as Zuckerberg is in charge, Facebook will never be a LinkedIn, and as the years progress, professionals will never look at Facebook as a rival to LinkedIn, but since Facebook doesn’t even want to take on more of a media company look, the club option may be its best bet.

A John C. Abell piece for Reuters.com caught my eye this morning. Mr. Abell notes that Facebook’s consideration of a plan to subscribe 13 year olds reeks of desperation and lays out a good argument for that conclusion. You can see his article here.

I agree with him. Investors have to ask themselves, would a business model built on desperation curry favor on the Street? I don’t think so. This action, if implemented, may lead to a further devaluation of the stock. Thirteen year olds online would be subjected to cyber bullying, stalking, and other crimes and Facebook may face additional lawsuits and potential liability in the process.

The Street doesn’t like uncertainty.

The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that Facebook is contemplating technology that would allow children under the age of thirteen to use the social networking site. As if this company doesn’t have enough on its political plate.

Regulators are concerned that investment banks may have shared information about Facebook’s ability to adapt to a mobile app world or make money from advertisements. Now the social networking giant with 900 million users is literally giving Congress an invitation to drag Mark Zuckerberg on to Capitol Hill to have a sit down.

Somehow I don’t see members of Congress wanting to wear hoodies should such an invite be issued.

Facebook for kids under 13 is troubling. As a father I would prefer Facebook only grant access to people over the age of 35, but that’s a stretch. The privacy infringements and cyber bullying activities should have been the first thing that popped up on Zuckerberg and Cos. Radar.

They must think the additional ad revenue from targeting kids will be well worth it. Let’s face it; the only way that company is going to make money is to get more subscribers hooked and the kid market appears ripe for the taking.

Oh well. I already know what my ten-year old is going to ask, so here is the answer: Hell no.