Make Way for Fiber

habit1 writes: "It seems that the big telecoms have gone and run cable across property without paying the rightful owners. These owners, mostly private landowners, are now part of a class action lawsuit which might not only result in a cash settlement, but a jointly owned corporation that owns some of the fiber itself. If you live next to the rails, you may get that fiber optic line quicker than you thought ..."

Comments

Who did what

[Have Blue]

Why was the lawsuit filed against the telcos? From the article, it seems that the railways were more to blame, for lacking legal authority to grant permission for the telcos to dig in the first place.

Ownership

[macdaddy]

so let's see here... these people are willing to have a large, noise, huge moving metal mass move through their property at any time of night, but they think they should be compensated just to run a cable that does not move, does not look any worse than the tracks, does not make noise, does not stop traffic, and does not pollute? I can't believe how selfish these people are. What's the problem with laying a cable?

It's a simple matter of ownership. When a railroad company wants to run tracks across your property, they must purchase or rent it from you. When a cell or radio provider wants to put a fenced in tower and small shack on your property, they must purchase or rent it from you. When you lay an oil, water, or gas pipeline across my property, you must pay rent to me each month. This is the case just south of my home town. In the late '20s a gas line was laid across south-central/south-eastern Kansas. It crossed the family land of a friend of mine. The gas company gave the owners of the land two options. One was $100 in cash. The other was that the price of gas for whomever owns that piece of land will never go up higher than the cost of natural gas the year the line was laid. That's right. They still pay gas prices from the late '20s. Nice. :) Do you think that just because you want to lay a few strands of fiber in the ground that you are exempt from paying me some sort of restitution? I don't think so. What happens if I'm a farmer and you laid the fiber in the ground across one of my fields. I go out one weekend and rebuild a few terraces in that field and end up digging up that piece of fiber. Was it my fault? Unless I gave permission to put that line there (and believe you me I wouldn't do it unless I could have some compensation for baby-sitting it), it is trespassing on my property. You trespassed when you put it there. You dug a trench in my field. That's destruction of private property. Like I said at the beginning, it's a simple matter of ownership.

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Re:My Cable Company Does This Too

[hubrisboy]

Great!

We have a few thousand drums of PCB-contaminated coolant from old electrical transformers. Can we bury them in your back yard?

Since we won't have to pay expensive incineration fees, it'll help keep your energy costs down! We promise to topsoil and reseed over the pit when we're finished.

Love,
The Electric Company

p.s.-
We gave your address to our friends at the Infectious Medical Waste Disposal Company. They'll probably be in touch with you too. Hope you don't mind!


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