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SBC Promotes Texas Anti-Wireless Bill
rhythmx writes "Details of this bill have been previously covered on Slashdot. SBC has since put up TV ads and a website saying that our telecom laws need to be changed. From their propaganda, "The Texas legislature has the opportunity to modernize telecom regulation and promote innovation to finally reach our goals for new technologies and enhanced consumer benefits." They hardy even mention the bill itself, basically only that it is "Good for Texas -- Good for Texans." This bill has already passed through the House and is now in the Texas state Senate."
And what surprises you about this. A large corporation is lobbying both politically and publicly in favor of a position that supports its own interest and is contrary to the general public's interest. This is surprising? This is news?
Here's a news flash. Whining about SBC on Slashdot will have zero effect on this issue. ZERO There is, as yet, no law stopping you from putting up your own website and running your own television "propaganda" campaign on the matter.
What's more is that SBC is at least partly correct when they state that it is unfair that some providers, such as themselves, are regulated while others, such as any new comer, are not. It is unfair. I'm sure you aren't going to lose any sleep over SBC's losses, and neither am I but, if it were you that was being prejudiced against, you'd be crying the blues and singing another story completely.
You'd hope that any position that a telecom company takes on telecom regulation would be met with an appropriate degree of skepticism. Hey, you can't fault them for trying to spin the issue, but you can't really expect a balanced view of things.
The problem is using phrases like 'fair' and 'well-balanced' to describe a position that is clearly neither of those things. Fox News, anyone?
perl -e 'foreach(values %SIG){$_="IGNORE";}while(){}'
As a libertarian I'm generally against state governments spending tax dollars on services that people would otherwise pay for themselves, but municipal Wi-Fi is not a bad thing. The goal is to provide information to people who wouldn't normally be able to access to it. It's not anti-competitive because people still need cable or DSL if they want their own IP address, a more reliable connection, a web server, or just more bandwidth... if they don't need these things then DSL/cable wouldn't be worth it to them anyway. Free Wi-Fi is no more wrong than having free public libraries... or more relevantly, free internet at public libraries. What is the difference between providing your citizens with encyclopedias for reference at libraries, and access to Wikipedia via municipal Wi-Fi? I will admit that I have purchased fewer books because I have had access to public libraries, but bookstores still have their place. Sometimes I would really rather own a book than check it out for a week. This service provides very basic internet access, and anybody who wants more than that will pay for it. SBC should not be any more worried than your local bookstore.
...and if you disagree respond insted of just modding me down, I'd way rather hear your point than go to karma hell =)
Save you money?
How does the government installing wireless everywhere save you money? The government is paying for that with tax dollars. You remember taxes? Where the government takes your money and gives it to someone else?
Blessed be he who reads this post, Cursed be he who tells my boss.
Good God, this may be the most depressing thing I've ever read.
This bill is no different then, let's say, forbidding the citizens of a municipality from forming their own fire department...and making only one company the legal provider of "fire protection services".
In short, SBC is asking the state of Texas to provide them with a legally-approved monopoly. And the state is doing it.
When does this stop? When will citizens realize that the very people they're putting in office are signing over every right and interest they have to corporations who has no regard for their health, safety, or welfare? (And I'm hoping that the citizenry is ignorant of what's happening, because if they're not, the notion that people are willing to sign over their democratic rights is too depressing for me to contemplate)
Boycott everything - they're all trying to fuck you one way or another
The reason why ILECs are regulated is because the telephone was the primary method of realtime person-to-person communication which wasn't face to face for damn near 100 years, and government decided that it was vital enough to require that telephone service be provided to as many people as possible in as high of a state of reliability as possible. My wireline phone service has "downtime" far less than just about any other service I get.
However, it's a fair question to ask why they're regulated more than their new breed of competition. This new competition (wireless, VoIP, etc) has been far less reliable to this point in my experience. Vonage, while I love it, has certainly had repeated outages in the year that I've had it. It's been more reliable than Windows, but less reliable than my Verizon POTS.
Ditto with my Optimum Online.
If communications are essential for things like emergency service, and are a cause worthy of "universal service" type of access, then we need to regulate them to an extent to get the same level of reliability. If it's not that important, then there's no reason SBC should have to play by these rules, but not their competition.
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
Broadband is not the answer for high speed Internet access.
It is good in low density areas and for mobile applications but it fails once the density goes up.
Even with 802.11g you only have 54mbits. While that seems like a lot it starts to suck when you get 500 people using it. There is a limited amount of bandwidth you can use for wireless. Think about it You can not have 50 WiFi suppliers to choose from. If you put 50 access points all covering one area you will get nothing! They will be stomping all over each other.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Save you money?
How does the government installing wireless everywhere save you money? The government is paying for that with tax dollars. You remember taxes? Where the government takes your money and gives it to someone else?
Or, the government votes to have a third party install this network for a guaranteed monopoly and rates set by this local government. No tax dollars spent there.
Of course this wouldn't be too dissimilar to the SBC scenario, except that the local government (municipality, I'd guess) would have complete control over who does it, and what they charge.
funny munging
I'm glad that everyone is getting on board with communism / socialism these days. State and local governments should offer more taxpayer funded services to the general public that compete with existing businesses.
Other free services I would propose.
1. Free cell phone service.
2. Free gym memberships.
3. Free taxi service.
4. Free lawn service.
5. Free utilities.
6. Free automobile manufacturing.
7. Free gasoline.
8. Free computers.
9. Free higher education.
10. Free food.
Of course taxes might have to be raised a bit, but it surely any one of these services would be worth it.
Obviously you've never had an internet connection provided by a for-profit company. Time Warner is much like calling the government. They don't care, they know they're the only choice you have. I think after a month or two of no service you might get a refund. Maybe. If you complain enough. I fail to see how a governmental non-profit could do worse. Perhaps just as bad...
And if Time Warner were required to open the public right-of-way portion of their infrastructure there would be a dozen small companies vying for your business. That would actually move towards solving the problem. Government subsidy just makes it worse.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
It is not FREE... it has to be paid by someone. I for one do not want my taxes going to pay for some teenage boy's ability to surf for pr0n. Plus, whenever the gov't gets involved, regulation, restriction, and censorship are not far behind. Finally, name one major profitable telco/provider that does NOT run more efficiently than any entity within the government.
How is it communism if the majority of people choose to have the government provide certain services? That's a democracy if ever there was one. What you're suggesting is that ideologically the free market (i.e. corporations) must rule above the will of the people, and even in contradiction to the will of the people, which if it were strictly the case that would be far more closely aligned to other totalitarian/mercantilist/communist systems. The executive board of a small handful of companies should not be imposing decisions on communities about how any service should be provided. Now you might ask, should people be "allowed" to vote in a socialist policy? Of course they should, if they were not then it would not be a democracy anymore (don't confuse socialism with totalitarianism with communism etc.) ... modern democracies like the USA are full of socialist-like policies (e.g. minimum wage), and most people actually regard them as a good thing for society at large.
Big special interests attack the weakest and most corrupt states first.
The problem with guaranteeing a monopoly is that this third party will have no incentive to improve its services to compete with other vendors. Though the rates may be the same, the service won't.
True, but it's a lot easier to manage on a local level. It also allows smaller players to compete on their scale. So, say, Elk, TX can get their own wireless broadband by ElkCo (this is just a fictional example as far as I know), when SBC really wouldn't care about the two hundred people there, and give them shank service.
Plus, the contract can be renewed at a frequency that better suits the size of the authority (say it's important to them and they want a public review every six months, it's their call). They also have control over specifics of the contract, the ability to negotiate small things that really wouldn't matter to the state (or megacorporation) at all.
funny munging
So... if I go with SBC wifi instead of gov't wifi, I get to pay for both, one through taxes, and the other through subscription fees? How's that a bargain, again?
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
It'll be interesting in a few years to see if there is correlation between Wifi and VOIP over-regulation and the red or blue status of each state. This will tell us which party is more corrupt. I believe the reds are in the lead so far.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
"Government subsidized anything sucks the life out of a market and just about guarantees stagnation. They're right to block it in Texas!"
So the people and city of Altoona shouldn't be free to decide and handle their own affairs without interference from Harrisburg simply because you happen to agree with a particular state law, reguardless of what it does to individual rights within a municipality? The people of Altoona should have to justify themselves to, say, voters in Philadelphia (among other places) in order to take actions that would only directly effect themselves?
"The ILECs and cable companies use your right-of-way that you, the taxpayer, own."
They own it because self-styled libertarians believe that it's better to grant a for-profit private enterprise a monopoly on owning it rather than the government directly. Apparently, state-granted monopolies are magically somehow better-managed than state-owned infrastructure, even though the "free market" arguments apply to neither.
Being for-profit, they have no vested interest in opening their network to their competition. If the state own the actual wires directly (while not providing service on those wires), we wouldn't have this problem. But that's herecy in this age of privatization and deregulation.
Is it fair for the cities to decide that it should be free and drive them out of business?
This is the same criticism that:
City-sponsored wifi isn't going to put anyone out of business. It's simply going to push the commercial providers to the next level of service offerings. That's the same as what happens in all the private vs. public examples I've given above. The government provides the baseline infrastructure that supports all kinds of interest in a given technology or service. Then the private sector extends that infrastructure with value-add features and quality that inspires consumers to pay for the private offerings. In the case of wifi, cities will probably put in 802.11g for now. Providers like Verizon can tout 802.11n for 100Mbps+ Wi-Fi with a monthly service fee.
The corporations are resisting this because they are missing a product lifecycle they can run consumers through (802.11g) that they can improve upon in subsequent years for people to upgrade to. Or, they'd like to offer multiple tiers of products at a range of prices to sell to rich and poor consumers. If the govt. carries the bottom end, corporations are somewhat limited to the upper tier offerings.
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
You're assuming that it costs the same for a municipality to give wireless to everyone as the sum of what SBC would charge all of those people individually.
To put it in other terms, the only reason cities are considering doing this is because it's so damn cheap to the point of being non-excludable. Do you really think a city-wide wifi WLAN would cost $29.99 per person per month?