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Supreme Court Rules Against Community Telcos
acherrington writes "Today the Supreme Court ruled against a group of Missouri communities offering telecom services where it is prohibited by Missouri law. At least eight other states -- Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, Nevada, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia -- have similar laws. Today's ruling will most likely result in more lobbying by the Baby Bells at the state level to stop community-sponsored telecoms who are fed up with poor service and monopolies."
This will be a good thing for emerging private telecom businesses, as it will remove competition coming from groups funded by state or city government. The government has no place competing with private citicens in the telecom industry, and today's decision by the Supreme Court, was the right one.
I don't know about that. You think a small private company is going to be able to compete with the big boys? Sorry, but I'd rather have a gov't. backed telco at low rates and comparable service than deal with Comcast.
I don't want it controlled by the gov't (even on a community level), but our local ISPs are pretty weak in service, support and pricing. They just can't compete.
I don't see why the gov't can't invest in (and get a return from) a local ISP. Let the ISP run the system, let the gov't. help to fund it and when the profits appear, some of those go back to the gov't.
It avoids privacy issues while still allowing the consumers (and the government) to benefit by providing reasonable competition against the giants.
Whats happening to the little guy, or the right of communities to represent themselves ? The local community has traditionally been the proving ground for an enterprising individual. Communities no longer seem to have any power, or rights in the locations they represent.
I remember a case in Roswell (or was it Alpharetta), GA where a car (Lexus?) dealership huffed and puffed and blew down the wishes of the people who wanted to keep the area as a nature preserve. That community lost the battle to the car dealership. Not related to telco, but none the less, an erosion of community rights, not to mention common sense.
Sigh....
If you read the article, this actually is a free market decision. The court ruled that government entities were not allowed into the telecom space.
You goofy kids with your "cry Bush". If your house burns down, are you going to blame him too?
Industries underregulated by Govt:
E-Voting
Operating Systems
Broadband
Current status:
E-Voting - Sucks and keeps showing problems yet they keep using it
Operating Systems - One monopoly in charge
Broadband - Sporadic and oligopoly in charge
If only there were a pattern so we could learn something from this.
Was this case badly reported, or did the Supreme Court just ignore the plain english used in the law?
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Pharmaceuticals are corrupt and overpriced because of the pharma companies.
Telecom sucks oh so bad because of the telecom companies.
Just look at the pricing, support and service agreements for the major players. Those are their rules - not the government's. When it comes to the government passing legislation that benefits those companies, look at what's behind them - usually a lobby group or one of the companies themselves putting heavy pressure in the right places.
Which leads many people to question why these corporations have so much influence....
The government's purpose is not to provide you with cheap utilities.
Oops, I forgot to include the point I was trying to make: Take the matter up with your state legislators, the ball is still in their court.
More music, fewer hits
Industries formerly regulated by the government, but released to "let the market decide":
Cable TV - rates increased, quality decreased
Airlines - rates increased, quality and choice decreased, most of the "big 6" now rely on government bailouts
I know there are more examples of this, but I can't think of any right now (in my post-lunchtime food coma).
Maybe the Congress of the 90s is more concerned with the fact that it isn't local governments job to provide telco services (which it isn't).
Maybe he was referring to the excessive FDA regulations. One of the reasons drugs cost so much is because of all the hoops you have to jump through to get a new drug approved. Average time from start to finish to get a new drug from molecule to FDA approval is 15 years.
No, but one of its purposes is to regulate harmful monopolies.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
You people sound like commies. The Corporation must have NO threats to it's power. Corporations are the ONLY organization allowed to compete in a free market.
You people have the Newspeak down to a t - good job, you useful idiot.
I bet you're not even rich!
Actually, I'd posit the notion that a majority of Americans don't really give a damn. And since it's the status quo, it won't change.
I'm not for it (or against it, really; I see both pros and cons to a local community running their own telco), I'm just making a point.
While this is another controversial topic, I fail to see how "harmful" monopolies come into play here? Do you think that the your local government would provide you with better phone service than your local telco? And wouldn't your local government qualify as monopoly then?
And what the hell is wrong with people, coming together as a community (perhaps in the form of the local government) and providing cheap telephone service? I'm sure you'd be happy as a clam if I hadn't included the parenthetical remark, but isn't the government of the people and for the people?
The US is a democracy.
The government's purpose is whatever its citizens decide it should be.
If its citizens want to replace a quasi government entity like a phone company with a genuine government provided service, it's OK. We had a terrible power crisis for example in California. Who avoided being raped by Enron, et al? LA County, since they generated their own power.
There are reasons to privatize things, and their are reasons not to. Don't make it out like it's so obvious.
with businesses. Governments tax any business in their areas. It's not fair to be able to tax a business and then use the funds to provide a competing service.
Privately owned co-ops are OK, but the costs may be prohibitive.
The government's purpose is not to provide you with cheap utilities.
Actually, in some cases it is. (Roads, Buses, etc)
Consider the postal system for example. It's a government-run monopoly that seems to work just fine, doesn't it?
The gov't DOES have a place providing services like this when whoever provides the service is going to have a local, regional, or country-wide monopoly. Without heavy government regulation, or a gov't run service, customers are going to be forced to pay the "monopoly price" instead of the "fair market price" this is a bad thing for everyone except the monopolist.
The gov'ts purpose is to provide for the welfare of its citizens. Keeping them from getting raped for telephone service falls under this goal.
IMO, the power and phone lines should be gov't owned, just like the roads. They are a public utility.
Life is too short to proofread.
Oh, don't sound so condescending. Capitalism and its unchecked greed can cause just as many problems as a socialistic society. They're just different problems.
Hit that man with a cluestick!
I've often lived in places with local power utilities. And water. And sewage, and waste disposal. And cable TV. The reason telco is often such an exception is that telco service was historically highly regulated, to serve the same goals as other local utilities.
The government's purpose is to support a healthy community, and oddly enough it turns out that everyone wins when utilities are affordable ... and when they aren't just
unaccountable
operations to vacuum dollars out of the local economy into
out-of-state friends of the current empire in DC.
Actually there's a strong tradition of municipal utilities in most parts of the country. It turns out that they generally provide better service than private companies ... far more
responsive (they're not run from some other town, possibly
in another state or country), and less expensive.
Consider even fairly major operations like Cleveland (look at the fraud perpetrated on Dennis Kucinich when he was mayor there -- I was a few towns over) and Long Island. Long Island power is a particularly interesting example ... they moved to local power, and
it was a key part of turning around the local economy.
Isn't that up to the people of that local government? I don't see any constitutional authority here for the feds to regulate this area.
The Republican FCC can out strong against the little guy in this case as you can see in the first two paragraphs of the Court's decision.
The little guy in this case was a group of rural counties.
The court ruled that the word "any" in the federal law prohibiting states from regulating any telecom does not mean that states cannot regulate counties because they are political subdivisions of the states and therefore states should have a right to regulate themselves.
So much for the Rublican idea of local control!
See for yourself:
Findlaw.com
If phone lines were government-owned you would have no DSL, VOIP or Fax lines. Consider one of the examples you gave: the Postal System. If you were to pick an Express Mail service would choose FedEx, UPS, Airborne or USPS? Chances are, it's something other than USPS. Now, the government does not allow anyone other than USPS to run postage mail. Do you honestly think that FedEx couldn't compete with USPS, if it was the other way around? I'll agree with you that some (but very few) things should be paid for with our taxes - for instance the roads. But why phone service? Is there anything inherently specific about it that private companies can't provide it better than the government?
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Oh, get a clue.
Rail traffic ... have you ever considered the subsidies
the government offers to the auto, road, and aviation industries?
In terms of subsidy per passenger mile, those industries
are far more heavily subsidized than rail traffic.
Or to put it differently, the problems rail traffic has
are basically that its competition is so extensively subsidized
that it's all but impossible to compete.
"Our" government is quite heavily in the business of distorting the economy. Primarily to benefit military industries (the auto industry only really took off after WW2, as a way to turn tank-production capacity into a dual-use technology) at the expense of more naturally efficient mechanisms. Although the individual characters in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? were clearly not real, except maybe Jessica Rabbit!, the plot to abolish the public transport system is very well documented as being true. But the major war contractors were allowed to get away with it.
Profit is not God. Although far too many of the people now running "our" government worship it, even when it conflicts with their basic responsibilities to support healthy (local) communities and to support civil rights.
You say this like it's a bad thing. It's because of the FDA's rigorous testing process that America didn't have several thousand Thalidomide babies along with the rest of the world. On the other side of the coin, we've had a steady stream of scares, scandals and deaths from the largely unregulated herbal/dietary suppliment industry in recent years.
Do you really want to be taking a drug that causes permanent hearing loss in 7% of patients, results in a six-fold increase in your chance of having a heart attack, or causes degenerative nerve damage after eighteen months' worth of use? Because if the FDA didn't test drugs thoroughly enough, that's the kind of risk you could be exposed to every time you took a new drug.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
Like basic municipal services, roads, sidewalks, water, sewers, and trash that facilitate good health and transportation and indirectly
Na, I think that facilitating communication is one of the jobs municipalities. This is one of the purposes of roads and sidewalks. Lest we forget how mail travels and the greatest communication organization in the history of the world
Of course we should remember that the Postal Service has been supplanted by quicker, more agile competition
Republicans have MANY myths. One of the biggest is that Government doesn't innovate. In fact, public agencies do a pretty good job in some areas (certainly not all, we don't live in a black/white world). In the realm of communications, government agencies have done a DAMN GOOD job.
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
> what the hell is wrong with people, coming together as a community and providing cheap telephone service?
That's fine, and there is nothing wrong with that, since people can choose to create a company to offer whatever the hell they want. GOVERNMENTS DO NOT AND SHOULD NOT HAVE THIS ABILITY. As for your "parenthetical remark:"
> (perhaps in the form of the local government)
As soon as the government gets into things they get an unfair advantage over private companies because they can subsidize things with taxpayer money, thereby ruining the other business's chances. Also, when the government controls things, they have more opportunity to demand other things. They can then demand that EVERYONE pay a certain tax, part of which goes to upgrading their telecom infrastructure.
Well, if I don't use that phone service, I should not have to pay, but that is the way things work in the U.S. You always pay for things you'll never use.
> isn't the government of the people and for the people?
Yes, that statement is true. This one is not: "The government is of the people who want cheap phone service, for the people who want cheap phone service, at the expense of local phone companies."
Would you say it was perfectly fine for local governments to get into some other business, such as web hosting? What if, since they can support it, they decided that they would offer web hosting for their community at $1 per month. You own an ISP/host in that community. Wouldn't you be pissed off that the local government effectively put you out of business? Sure, you can argue about quality of service, but that is not part of this question, since we cannot guess what the quality of service would be for a nonexistant entity.
"If phone lines were government-owned you would have no DSL, VOIP or Fax lines."
Yes, thank god the government stayed out of infomation networks. And thanks to it, Al Gore invented the internet where the government would have been perfectly happy using carrier pigeons for the next 50 years.
Err, wait.
(If you don't feel the irony, you are taking this post too seriously.)
Any sufficiently advanced influence is indistinguishable from control.
Well, since these communities were apparently getting better service for lower prices, yes, the government DOES provide better service.
And monopoly means one. When there's competition, there is not monopoly. There is free market. That is good.
Capitalism without a free market is like getting fucked in the ass without a reacharound.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
It isn't really that the existing telco is a harmfull monopoly. It is that the telco is a regulated monopoly and the comunications act did 2 things that are realy important here. First it confiscated the infrastructure/telphone lines and deemed them public property. Next it allowed more control of the comunications industry and it competition by local governments.
To the first and probally the most important, is the telephone lines and poles. If the government took them as public property to use them for thier own gain then the phone companies would need reimbersment for the expense in putting them up and such. This is more intwined to the constition and laws concerning seizing property.
Next issue would be the ability to directly compete with the governing body in the same product/service area. you can't really have a fair playing field when your competition has the ability to raise levies and even offset the costs by taxing the districts in an attemp to lower cost. if the government telco would loose money they would have to burden the public by law to pay thier debt. this is one of the reasons municiple bonds are so attractive, they are safe and guarentied by law to pay what they cliam they will even if they need to raise taxes to do it.
So you can see that this is more of an ethics issue then it is about free market, competition or harmfull monopolies. The monopolies were allowed and contoled because it would be easier for one company to support the infrastucture with one standard rather then several companies continuously reinventing the wheel. Now that there is a mature market there are better ways to regulate the industry and allowing competition can co-exist. The draw back is that the competition releases the monopoly from some of the controls it once had to accept. This is why pricing went up and service went down.
That in America there were laws _against_ monopolies! I must have been misinformed.
Christopher S. 'coldacid' Charabaruk -- coldacid.net
Can you remember when your telco used to be more concerned with service than profit?
I can remember when my telco used to be run by the government (in New Zealand). The service sucked. It sucked in ways you could not possibly compare to the relatively minor ways in which the privatised telcos in NZ now suck.
When I first ordered a phone line that I wanted to run a BBS on I...
(1) Had to take a day off school just to make the phone call to order it, because it took 2-4 hours just for someone to answer the call, and they only took calls from 9-4pm.
(2) Had to wait for six weeks before the line could be installed.
(3) Had to break the law to run my BBS because only "authorized" equipment could be connected to the phone lines, and said equipment usually cost about five times as much as "unauthorized" equipment.
A couple of years later, after the phone service had been privatised I ordered a second line. The call was taken with about a 5 min wait, the line was installed inside 2 business days, and I didn't have to risk jail time when using a modem of my own choice.
Granted, the old government owned telco in New Zealand is probably a standout case for sheer suckitude, but in general government owned monopolies are just as bad, and often far worse, than privately owned monopolies.