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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....
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.
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).
No, but one of its purposes is to regulate harmful monopolies.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
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.
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.
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?
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
> 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.