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Verizon Seeks To Nix Fee-Based Municipal Wireless Grids
millermp writes "It looks like Verizon has succeeded in banning municipal WiFi networks in Pennsylvania. Since Verizon is looking to broadband service to fuel its growth, it calls municipal WiFi 'unfair competition.' This bill is following similar legislation earlier this year in Utah, Louisiana, and Florida." The bill has yet to be signed by Pennsylvania's governor, and as the story says, does not ban municipal wireless per se, but would place great restrictions on how it could be funded.
Just about any service offered by a government is going to put some private enterprise in a pinch by undercutting the private company's prices. Doesn't this show that the government can, in some rare cases, beat the market in pricing? How much more is Verizon planning on gouging customers than the market can bear?
It sounds more like Verizon can't beat the competition with market prices, so they seek to put the competition out of business. Of course, the competition is actually the government, so Verizon is going to have a hell of a time trying to beat them.
At the Federal level, the government should be responsible for very little. Protection of citizens, regulation of interstate/international commerce/etc. But on the local level, it is nice to have the community band together to solve local problems. Go Pennsylvania!
I love the idea of a town saying we want to provide this service, and we can do it for a fraction of the cost. It reminds me of my college housing, where the collective purchase power of all the apartments was leveraged by the owner of the property to get us satelite tv for a few bucks a month, something like 80% off the normal price.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
45mbit connection to my house that the state of PA gave major tax breaks to Verizon(then Bell Atlantic) for?
Verizon screws PA and yet the legislative branch is still willing to bend over backwards for them.
The privates shouldn't have any say in what people want to do locally especially when economic growth hinges on being able to provide some sort of broadband access these days.
It's like saying to the locals "no you can't have cars because Mobile doesn't want to put in a gas station in their town."
Maybe Verizon should channel the energy and money from this crybaby hissy fit into research and development to provide a product that enough people will be suckered into.
See publications by Capitalist Adam Smith.
Over the years, as Internet use has become ubiquidous, I have the erie sense of deja vu as I recall learing about how, in 1800's, the city of London was supplied by several different private water utilities. In 1849, Dr. John Snow published a landmark theory that implicated contaminated water supplies as the source of frequent cholera outbreaks. In hindsight, we can say the reason London (as well as other metro areas of the world at the time) was ravaged by epidemics like this has as much do to with the lack of public oversight over a public consumable as with medical/sanitation ignorance. To return to the subject at hand, how many problems would we solve by turning internet access into a public utility? I suppose some would chaf at such a thing out of concerns for privacy or freedom. But wouldn't it be great if *all* spammers and other net abusers are hit with penalties and fines as they would be if municipal laws are violated?
Stay sentient. Don't drink bad milk.
The problem I have with city, county, or state provided wireless is that not everyone needs the service.
Combine this with the fact that with a government group running it you will run afoul of all sorts of special groups demanding free access let alone those imposing their views on what is and what is not acceptable.
Don't think so, its not hard to shop for courts that favor one view or another.
Think about it, the first whine will be "Its for the children", then comes "they are a disenfranchised group", followed by "well of course group X should get a free ride". Until you finally have yet another government program sucking dollars out of your pocket to buy votes.
Corporations may not have your intrest in mind but at least they are an equal opportunity screw. I don't need another "airport" - as in - lets stick all of our cronies into that service to draw fat checks and provide no work other than being a crony.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I realise that this is probably going to get me beaten up, but why the hell is the city government planning on offering this service anyway? Surely the provision of broadband internet services for a fee is a job for a private company, not a job for the government.
What the Pennsylvania state legislature should do is look for ways to provide incentives for private citizens to create private sector competition. With this plan you aren't getting "crappy monopoly versus cheap municipal wifi" perse. What you are getting is "crappy corporate monopoly versus probably very crappy, restricted state monopoly." You are basically getting two large entities which really don't have your interests at heart to fight it out, in the end it'll probably be the government that wins and you'll just end up with AmTrak-level QoS for your WiFi.
Personally I like the fact that in my small town in Virginia, I am able to go into many of the new stores and get either free wireless or very, very low cost wireless. As efficient as our state government is, I wouldn't trust the government for my internet access.
A better solution would be to encourage businesses to provide free wireless connectivity to their customers in exchange for lower or non-existant taxes. Not only do you get cheaper WiFi, but you also get a healthier local economy.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
I'm just looking forward to the day when connecting to the internet means putting an advanced wifi antenna (if they can ever beat the routing problems) on your roof and using an ad-lib connection which uses other peoples antenas to span the distances, and forgo the monthly cost all together. A one time purchase of hardware to create a network that is self expanding and self upgrading.
And I would think the criteria should be: "can private industry provide this service in a more economical way for those that desire to use it, without increasing taxes on those that don't wish to use it, nor giving free access to those that don't pay for it?"
Then again, that kind of talk doesn't let politicians buy votes.
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
And telephone as well, hundreds of Rural Telephone Co-ops are in the US because Ma Bell and/or GTE didn't want to provide service to small rural markets, like mine. Government subsidized loans to start, co-operative ownership, and now, the very best in services. We have a DSL, video, and Dial tone service that covers most of our service area (and we are expanding, dropping DSL heads every 12000' takes time), 80/month for 768/384, digital cable and landline phone is pretty good, plus you get a dividend check on any profits made by the phone company, I love it.
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Such a rural area will not have the tax income, nor the density to set up something like this.
If it's not cost effective for Verizon, how is it cost effective for the local government?
Maybe it's not cost effective from a profit standpoint, but profit is not the reason the government wants to do this. Some things are not profitable but need to be done, like highway maintenance and preventing pollution.
Though, it might be more cost effective to distribute the cost to everyone?
Ha ha. You said 'economic growth' in describing Philadelphia?
They didn't get cable until almost 1990 and they prevented RCN from laying wire so as to protect comcast, ultimately bankrupting RCN.
The democrats that run Philly are looking for kickbacks and concessions. That's all this is about. It has nothing to do with 'poor residents', despite the rhetoric.
If they could pick up trash, I would be a little more accomodating, but they suck.
Verizon just doesn't want to compete against the people who a.) write the laws and b.) underwrite their growth. There was an article about a neighborhood (Ruby Ranch) that 'rolled their own' ISP and it showed how the telecoms fought them tooth and nail.
There is no altruism here.
So this is where the chess club wound up.
We're familiar with that type of game here in the Fox Valley area west of Chicago. We had three communities try to pull together to get municipal broadband through and it was fought tooth and nail by SBC. It is pretty pathetic that we are still waiting for complete broadband services out here given that Fermilab is in Batavia (one of the three cities). SBC resorted to scary, misleading ads and other dirty tricks and managed to keep the plan suppressed.
You guys need to grab your balls and kick all of your state legislature's collective asses.
Are you not the state that levied a tax and paid Verizon 58 Billion dollars for a all fiber optic network and there is not one mile of fiber to anyone's homes in the state.
Now the come with your money and bitch that it would be unfair becuase cities that know they were ripped off were now forced to make their own provisions to provide network access to the general public.
That's okay your 58 billion went to installing the Fiber in my neighborhood in Texas and other neighborhoods in Florida, Ny, California. We were never taxed at all for it.
Next thing we'll see up there are toll roads that pay for road construction in other states.
Sheesh
Why is it that in America, the private sector is placed on such a high pedastal?
There are really two factors that help explain this phenomenon. One is the 'Horatio Alger Myth' which posits that in America anyone can strike it rich if they combine a strong work ethic with a frugal lifestyle. This demonstrably false belief permeates our society, and gives rise to a school of thought where wealth is equal to morality (If you're rich you must have worked hard and spent your money wisely)
The second factor is that lobbyists are fantastically powerful here, pulling more weight with politicians than voters tend to.
So you have a society that by-and-large venerates wealth and the ability to generate it, coupled with a system that allows wealthy individuals to directly influence local and national politics.
Literalism isn't a form of humor, it's you being irritating.
The only problem I see with that analysis is in the phrase "most homes." A substantial portion of homes, even in suburban ares and urban areas CANNOT get broadband from their telco and ISDN is cost-prohibitive because they refuse to upgrade their networks. They don't want competition and they don't want to change their business model. For example, in my case, my telco (Verizon) uses DLC devices between my area and the CO... result: not only no broadband but all dialup is capped at 26.4kbps. No cable tv down our area... o well... power Internet? HAHAHAHAHAHA... no time this decade. Currently, my ONLY choice is satellite - which has 1200ms ping. Hard to even type under ssh. The only poor wireless in our area keeps getting swamped by the airport noise and has dark spots everywhere in their nominal coverage zone. We live less than 3 miles from an Intel campus. Some of my engineer friends live a few blocks from Intel and can't get any decent broadband for similar reasons. Thank you and fuck you, Verizon. I even want to strangle Mr. Jones when I see their stupid commercials.
You're right, it's normally (with Qwest and Verizon) an ATM...
Broadband... woo--fuckin--hoo, technology sharing spectrum.
I'll stick with my 1.5Mb Up 7Mb Down that I can pull 24x7 (and have pulled for over 24x3!)...
> Why should that company that invested all the time and resources into laying those lines just roll over and let somebody else piggy back off of their investment? It is not a matter of monopoly but a matter of a high cost and high risk investment sane business people are not willing to make. Unless you are willing to pay for extra lines and enjoy the sight of them you might want to check your facts and shat up till then.
Verizon invested a lot in cables, and have been overtaken by technology. Too fucking bad for them, that is the risk of doing business, they should have kep thteir eyes open and offer what their customers wanted.
When the government jumps in to bar competition to a company while that company simply failed to adapt, that government helps in the creation of a monopoly and a bad one for that.