PhillyDeals: Comcast, Google to sponsor conference at Wharton

Comcast Corp. and Google Inc. are rivals in one of the big Washington lobby fights of our day: Google favors a flat per-customer fee for Internet access; Comcast wants to sell Internet access at whatever price the market will bear.

This disagreement breaks down to heavy Internet users vs. the outfits that sell Internet access.

But Comcast and Google have many other interests in common. And they are joining as sponsors of Supernova Forum 2010, the ninth annual business-college-government telecom and tech conference run by Federal Communications Commission staffer turned Wharton legal studies professor Kevin Werbach. The event will be held at Wharton on July 29-30.

Google's Rick Whitt (senior policy director) and Comcast's David L. Cohen (executive vice president) are among the planned speakers, along with New York University professor and BuzzMachine blogger Jeff Jarvis; FCC regulator turned Wall Street telecom analyst Rebecca Arbogast; Beth Noveck, the open-government initiative chief for President Obama; First Round Capital partner Josh Kopelman; Microsoft and Harvard researcher Danah Boyd; and other prominenti.

"I'd like to think that Comcast, Google, and our other sponsors appreciate the value of bringing together different perspectives," Werbach told me. "It's not an advocacy forum; it's an event to promote insights and better understanding of important topics."

This is the first time in the event's nine-year history that it will not be held in the San Francisco Bay area.

Werbach is hoping for heavier attendance from Northeast and Mid-Atlantic start-up companies, as well as FCC officials and congressional aides. He was responsible for Internet policy at the FCC in the mid-1990s and later served on Obama's transition team, picking appointees. "So I have relationships with many people in this administration," Werbach said.

In a recent speech at Columbia University, Werbach's old boss, ex-FCC chairman Reed Hundt, said he "stole" the Internet from Verizon, AT&T, and other phone companies by pushing policies that promote lower-cost Internet service at the expense of broadcast television.

"Reed is a colorful character, but he was also a tremendous FCC chairman," Werbach told me. "We accomplished a lot in those years, including laying the groundwork to allow the growth of the Internet."

Customers 1st Bank of Phoenixville agreed Friday to take over money-losing USA Bank of Port Chester, N.Y.

How much? "There's no [up-front] cost. We acquired all the deposits and all the assets, [and will] share in the losses" with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., said Richard Ehst, Customers 1st's president. The FDIC expects to lose more than $60 million on the deal, which solvent banks will make up through insurance premiums.

Customers 1st (formerly New Century Bank) says it has raised $70 million in capital, and more than doubled assets to $800 million, since chairman Jay S. Sidhu, Ehst's old boss at the former Sovereign Bancorp, bought control from Steve Forbes' brother-in-law, Kenneth Mumma, and other investors last year.

Bank USA serves Westchester County, N.Y., and Fairfield County, Conn., two of the richest suburbs in the nation. But the two offices, "just literally a par-4 apart" in that country-club area, won't finance hedge-fund managers, Ehst told me.

I noted that comfortable demographics didn't save USA Bank from losses. "They got in trouble because they ended up financing construction projects on large homes and land development," Ehst said. "Small business and residential is our sweet spot."

No construction loans?

"No. No way. No commercial real estate," he said.

In a bipartisan moment, Sens. John Kerry (D., Mass.), Mike Crapo (R., Idaho), Ron Wyden (D., Ore.), and Susan Collins (R., Maine) are backing tax breaks for small beer makers. The bill "will help create jobs," Kerry's office says.

We've been this way before. Philadelphia's Red Bell Brewing Co. and Independence Brewing were among the Small Business Administration-backed breweries that went belly-up after the beer boom of the 1990s. Others, such as Victory and Dogfish Head, have grown, though it's unclear they have replaced the jobs lost as Budweiser and other industrial brands have lost market share.