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Verizon-Pushed WiFi Bill Becomes Law in PA
Cryofan writes "A Wall Street Journal article (via freepress) tells the sad tale of how legislation barring PA municipalities from offering paid telecom services was signed into law. 'Pennsylvania Gov. Edward G. Rendell said late Tuesday night that he had signed into law a large telecommunications bill placing severe restrictions on the ability of cities and towns to offer telecommunications services, an item that was heavily lobbied by Verizon Communications Inc. and other big telephone companies in similar legislation across the country.'" (Also mentioned last week.)
I thought the FCC was the only organization that could regulate the airways. Am I missing something?
Honestly, if I remember back to all those wonderful classes on what this country was founded on it reads (paraphrasing) "For the people, by the people".
Correct me if I'm wrong but what PA was trying to do was "For the people, by the people" and what Verizon is trying to do is "For Verizon's pocket book, by the money of the people".
Recently a lot of these kinds of laws have really irritated me by the fact that the laws as they were ogriginally intended gave consumers, the people, the ability to actually do innovative and creative things with what they bought. Now adays there is in theory very little that I "own". My XBox is technically on lease, my software almost all of it on "lease" (well the software that isn't linux anyway thank goodness), etc. At the end of the day I can look around at my apartment and wonder what I REALLY own.
The laws are terribly tipped in the wrong direction, this is another example of that un-balance.
It's not fair for the gov't to compete with private industry.
That said, I don't think this fits the bill. Telecom services are more like roads--fundamental infrastructure that supports everyone. The government should have a hand in building and maintaining them.
Yes,
Well, before wireless, it was wired. In 1995, the State of Texas passed a bill that prevented the City of Austin from string fiber optic between its high-schools, libraries, fire stations, police stations, and power substations.
Seems that Southwestern Bell though it mighty uncompetitive of the City of Austin to replace old crappy 9600 baud modems with something that would be faster *and* cheaper! Of course, the Texas Leg voted was anti-people back then too.
How does Governor Ed Rendell spin this bill on behalf of his Pennsylvania constutents?
By stating that governments in PA will not interfere with private telecom enterprise, will not be able to use government resources to unfairly compete with private enterprise, and will not spend PA tax dollars in standard inefficient government fashion on projects better served by private enterprise and the free market.
Unless you live in a major metro area, the chances of you having wired phone access would be even lower than your chances of cell access if it hadn't been for the government putting down the cash to install a phone network.
I don't mind the private sector but i do think that broadband providers should have to do an all or nothing approach. Making sure that all their customers have DSL availability.
The government says monopolies are illegal, but at the same time seem to make every decision in the favor of large companies. It doesn't make sense to me.
- Joe
You sure are naive about telecom. The tariff lets all the "competitors" avoid competing on new features, by specifying all the features and their prices. It also prices starting new telcos in the $BILLIONS, keeping out any new competition. When something new comes along, like DSL, they tweak the tariff to kill new competitors, like they did with DSL. The only orgs foolhardy enough to start competing with telcos on something disruptive like WiFi are local governments, and now they're slapped down (at least in Pennsylvania). Even though the limited bandwidth of WiFi in a given area makes it most effective for municipal communications, like emergency services, sanitation and other state communications. If Verizon were able to compete, it would let towns and cities educate the market with WiFi, while rolling out WiMax or even (gasp) 3G, or maybe even finishing the phased-array tech that effectively unlimits bandwidth spectrum constraints (never). A competitive telco would actually see the lengths to which cities and towns are going to get wireless coverage, and *sell it to them*. Instead, they've just outlawed any possible competitive motivation to deliver this hotly desired service to their market. So no one gets it. And they've got legions of people hooting about "the market" when no such dynamic exists in this industry. I'm glad you're satisfied with your wired status quo.
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make install -not war
As a resident of the Commonwealth, I once again take my shoes off to our elected officials willingness to tax us directly and indirectly to subsidize Verizon. Remeber the sweetheart, multi-billion dolar tax breaks they got to roll out high-speed (10's og Mbit/s) broadband, then stuck us with DSL?
http://www.newnetworks.com/Libertybellstolen.htm
Sheesh! Pennsylvania (aka Pennsyltucky) is Philly and Pittsburg with Alabama in between. If you've ever seen our legislature in session, the bib overalls might clue you in as to how technically savvy those guys are.
Even my own rep. LOVES Verizon. I attended a breakfast Q&A he held, and asked about the Broadband deal and why the legislature amended the requirements for Verizon at MY expense. He got pissed and started bitching to the masses about how he gets all sorts of mail critical of Verizon, but he thinks they are just great. He also "explained" that it would have cost Verizon huge amounts of money to roll out fiber to rural and mountainous areas that don't need it.
So, I asked what the taxpayers got for all that money because Verizon just provided DSL over existing copper. Next question, please!
Please!
Although they are often unfair and inefficient, governments can and do provide some vital services when the private sector is unwilling or unable to do so. During the 30's, millions of people got power and paved roads thanks to the Tennessee Valley Authority and the WPA. Perfect programs? Certainly not, but they filled a need that wasn't being met by private companies.
Most communities are willing to wait for private broadband roll-out, but for those who aren't willing to live on the cabletelco timetable, the threat of municiple broadband was a big stick to spur private companies into action. This law removes that incentive to action.
This would be comparable to the big power companies getting laws passed during the middle of the 20th century outlawing the many rural power co-ops that sprung up to provide service to people who lived too far away from cities to get get electricity otherwise.
If you were relocating a tech company to a small town, would you choose a city that only has relatively slow commercial broadband, or would you choose a city that has a fiber optic network that you, as a local corporate citizen, could have some influence over?
The future of wifi is supposed to be an emergent thing called intelligent Mesh Networking, where each new private/public node contributes some of its resources to a networked fabric, rather than interfering with it like 802.11a/b/g. The more nodes (w/ caching) the better (like BitTorrent).
Of course, the major "drawback" of bottom-up mesh networking --besides the routing being somewhat complicated-- is that it lacks a Command&Control point for some entity to set up a tollbooth on and profit from, so it would be even more disruptive than conventional wifi.
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Power to the Peaceful
As a service becomes fundamentally essential to the equality of the people, it must either become so inexpensive that it is affordable by all (e.g. the commoditization of the industry through a huge number of players) or it must become socialized. If one of these two things doesn't happen, it will, over time, result in the gap between the haves and the have-nots becoming progressively larger and the gradual erosion of the middle class.
While "equality at all costs" is not a virtue, equality in at least the basic requirements to function in a modern society is a necessity.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Which gives one pause: how much bandwidth does God have, actually? Probably a fair amount, but yeah, I'd bet Verizon has more...
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
I guess they kinda have a point.
Bullshit. Coca-Cola could make the same argument about the government interfering with their ability to make a profit of Disanti water because, shucks, the public water utilities are hurting their ability to compete.
Communications, in this day and age, are as vital a resource as water and transportation. Leaving it in the hands of a few private organizations to implement when and where they see fit (e.g., when and where they can make a profit) is, to put it blundly, bullshit.
A) your preaching to the choir, since /. and the geek community is a hotbed of libertarianism.
B) Libertarianism isn't a viable opertunity, since it allows corporations to be bigger bastards than they are now, with a complete lack of regulation. And the libertarian embrace of Randian self interest will also lead to a further degradation of morality, and social reponcibility.
Though my co-responder does have a point, the Green Party is a safe alternative to politics as usual, though sadly it is as viable as any of the other choices, being more ideological than practicle.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
It should be noticed, however, that Austin is implementing a free wifi in city parks plan. And, of course, you can't swing a patch cable without passing it through an open wifi network, mostly due to the hard-workin' volunteers at http://www.austinwirelesscity.org/
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
They were discussing on Off the Hook tonight about how Philadelphia and Verizon struck a deal that would allow the city to move forward irregardless of whether or not the bill was passed. Anyone know anything more about this?