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Telecoms Suing Municipalities That Plan Broadband Access
Law.com has up a review of ongoing and historical cases of telecoms suing municipalities that plan broadband networks. In many cases those same telecoms have spent years ignoring as potential customers the cities and towns now undertaking Net infrastructure projects, only to turn around and sue them. One lawyer who has defended many municipalities in this position says, "This is similar to electrification a century ago when small towns and rural areas were left behind, so they formed their own authorities." Bob Frankston has been writing for years about the financial model of artificial scarcity that underlies the telecoms businss plans. This post gives some of the background to the telecoms' fear of abundance.
Municipalities want to pay for fiber to connect them to the metropolis? Fine. But that fiber has to be open for everyone. They don't get to play favorites with the telcos.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Good, let the communities fill the void the telecomms left behind. let the telecomms fear the power of the little guy. then watch as the telecomms simply refuse service and squash it all. damn, capitolism at its best and worst
If a Telco wins their lawsuit, the Judge has to mandate a build-out plan for the Telco, with high penalties for failing to reach milestones.
So if the Telcos really want to build it, they'll sue.
More likely, I imagine they'd stay far far away from those areas.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
News at 11
The government? Providing necessary infrastructure companies can't or won't? How dare they!
Help stamp out iliturcy.
yeah or maybe it just costs too much to run cabling and equipment out to rural areas...like more than they'd make selling internet connections so they don't do it. Consipiracy theorists tend to really leave logic behind. The whole suing thing is just because telecom companies know the cost per person will be so low, it's crazy. I mean a 100 megabit connections could cover a decent sized small town and that's relatively cheap when you divide it out per person. So then everyone's gonna want it and drop the traditional ISPs in favor of probably free municipal internet and their business will collapse.
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
And is there any way we can post the plans for the wiring of their top execs offices and homes online so all the world can assist them in not having broadband?
After all, it's for the public good - the USA is near the bottom for high speed Net access among first world nations ...
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
The people didn't worry when the same thing happened with electricity, they didn't worry when it happened with telephone service. They didn't even worry when a "radio set" came to mean just a receiver. The wild and wooly "early days of the internet" will be over in just a few years, and few will really care. Relish these times we live in, pity those who come later...
Caveat Utilitor
Letting a local government run your Internet is a stupid-bad idea.
You will see caps, filters, and all kinds of other crap. States like Arizona and Alabama have laws against sodomy. Alabama makes it illegal to own a sex toy. Let Alabama run the Internet and you'll find yourself in jail for watching MrHands.avi or WeLiveTogether.
I understand that in some places, commercial access would remain available. Just like we have toll roads and bridges today. But a good portion of the people would be forced to use a tightly regulated, government ISP.
I'd rather you do it wrong, than for me to have to do it at all.
I was on a course in Oulu, a smallish city slightly up north here in Finland, and was delighted that across the whole city there is unrestricted free WLAN access to their PanOulu network. It was a grand week - I was cycling around a lot (excellent city for cyclists, BTW) and once a bit tired, sit down and whip out my Eee PC and check my e-mails. When I returned to Helsinki, I felt like I was in a stupid backwater, and can't wait for the day Helsinki, too, introduces such a wonderful, free service. As for the telcos, well, they "don't have a God-given right" to profits. If I were one of the telcos, I'd try to actually be the one supporting such an initiative, and try to get what I can from the municipality, in terms of revenue.
By the way, before the Helsinkiläinen lynch me: I love the city, but dudes, Oulu beats Helsinki in this particular instance, sorry.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Hmmm... Lets see... I can go to any city and immediately find around 10 wireless networks, about 3 of them will be unencrypted. Does this too pose a threat to the telecoms? When I can get 100% free Wi-Fi wherever I go that isn't a problem but this is?
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Always seems like when someone is treading on big business, or at least what big business thinks is theirs they get sued.
Yeah, she had to finish rubbing one off.
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who are they to say who gets to deliver broadband, i say sue the telecoms for abusing a monopoly power, was it not tax payer funds that helped the telecoms get the infrastructure and power they have now? this is what the telecoms get for neglecting those that want/need broadband because it was not profitable enough for their fat wallets...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
These areas have no current broadband business serving them and they aren't going to because the margins are higher providing 5mbps to city folk than dragging fiber out to farmer John. That's why rural areas to get broadband at all have to do it themselves.
The thing is in places like sleepy Ephrata, WA they can sell 100mbps broadband for $50/mo through the power district and still make a profit - just not as big of a margin as the telcos are getting.
There is no business there to destroy and there never will be. Comcast and Ma Bell have no intention of serving these folks ever. They just sue to keep other people from doing it to prop up the myth that bandwidth is evpensive. Yeah sure it's expensive if the guy dragging the fiber has to take every corner, valley and river by force from a defending battalion of lawyers.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Many government services are provided by Internet. The internet is for many people the only access to modern markets. Internet is essential infrastructure.
These companies have no desire to compete for these markets. Their objective is the prevention of information services to these people. The people are right to be angry. They're also more used to fixing these things themselves.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Just like the RIAA and MPAA, the Telcos would rather sue, then to actually WORK for their money.
The power districts I know of that are doing this don't sell retail. They'll open their network to any shmuck with a decent router. I could be an ISP. If comcast and AOL want to play on a level field, they're welcome to. They don't. The thought terrifies them. Hence the lawyers.
In Tacoma WA they have muni broadband, and they're more particular. OTOH their quality of service is stunning. You call, and get actual local people who know the area and the network and get someone out to you right away if you need it. Click Network is great stuff, even if it's only 10mbps over cable instead of 100mbps over fiber.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
you've obviously never heard of sewer networks.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Here is the problem I see with ISPs in general.
You tend to get internet, phone, and TV services from a single provider. Unfortunately, phone services will go away as a revenue stream as people move to VOIP. I know plenty of people who have also canceled their tv service because they only watch a few shows and they prefer to get them online at their convenience. This means that providers loose the revenue attached to phone and tv services right off the bat. Then you have to consider how many big ISPs are also media industry giants and have a vested interest in ensuring you continue to consume media through premium channels and channels laden with advertising. They don't necessarily want you watching things over the net at your convenience. So we have ISPs fighting against P2P claiming "conjestion", while refusing to upgrade their backbone, killing their newsgroup services, and imposing bandwidth caps with costly per gigabyte charges for subscribers who exceed them.
Of course, the ISPs can't afford to lose even these "undesirable" users to a municipality, because as soon as they do they can no longer impose p2p throttling and bandwidth caps as a measure to slow people moving away from their established channels and services, and their content is harder to monetize. So IMHO they're going to fight to keep people locked into a service that they're also working feverishly to lock down to their benefit and the detriment of consumers.
But that's just my $0.02 ..
judge says it's not a natural monopoly, and tells the telco's they have to negotiate right-of-way wherever they have lines (new or existing). Additionally, there is no public benefit to restricting municipalities from competing with the consent of their citizens, so the telcos can go suck on a rock.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Others can't compete with telcos, which have subsidized rights-of-way. At least the citizens involved ostensibly have a say in how much of their tax dollar goes to subsidizing the services they receive.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
It's good that this issue is getting at least some sort of media attention. The anti-competitive environment for broadband Internet access is worse than the Microsoft monopoly ever was.
The telcos are running scared. They may no longer be able to bribe (oops, sorry, I meant lobby and give campaign contributions) to Congress and the White House, so it's time to grab all available opportunity to extend and destroy-- I mean deploy.
The thought of public utility as a concept is just about over in many areas, and communications is a de facto utlity concept. So, if you can't woo them, like Verizon did to Ft Wayne Indiana, then simply sue and use the legal funds to drive municipalities broke.
This so begs for a reexamination of competition in the communications markets, but it's unlikely to happen after the last two legislative fiascos (this after Judge Greene).
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
"This is similar to electrification a century ago when small towns and rural areas were left behind, so they formed their own authorities."
And yet (as is painfully aware to me every month when I pay my power bill), the big power companies still survived and thrived. So will the telecoms.
It amazes me how they say it isn't profitable to for them to serve a certain market, municipality, or region, then suddenly covet those same populations when someone else tries to serve them. If you want them, serve them. If you don't want to serve them, don't go crying to court when someone else does.
"Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket." -- Eric Hoffer
I hate seeing articles like this...
Municipal corporations versus privately held corporations. It doesn't matter who wins, the taxpayer/consumer loses.
I'm curious when the internet as we know it will essentially vanish. Usenet is already on the endangered species list, P2P is still a logistics nightmare if it goes prime time. Special interest groups want to censor every website. Barratry is rampant over intellectual property claims. Spam, spyware, trojans, worms, viruses, and other malwares are constantly trying to take over or kill the net. Governments want to tap into everybody's business while they're on the net. Telecoms want to repackage it with their own brand name all over it. The list of this degenerating garbage is endless, and yet people are still so desperate to get it!
Why doesn't this stupid thing just implode already?! Once it does, Tim Berners-Lee (with nothing better to do) can come out and design a whole new concept of network computing that no single entity can possibly own or control.
Meanwhile, Priva-corp vs Muni-corp can serve as yet another distraction from creating more practical advances in technology.
Blessed with all the brains that God gave a duck's ass, and twice the charisma.
I'm curious to see why they think they can even sue? Since when cant a municipality create its own 'utility service' ?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
how is this troll, are mod that retarted these days!!! do they only get car analogies?
This reminds me of my experiences with cars in highschool. When I'd go to a garage house to pick her up for the dance, invariably the mechanic would make me wait 10~15min to finish whatever the hell they do that takes so long before we continued on. Should I complain or threaten to go to someone else a wrench would come my way.
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
When the power goes out, so does VIOP. Eventually a mobile also has to be charged, and murphy's law states the power will go out on the evening it's due to be charged.
The redundancy offered by self-powered land lines is something which cannot be so readily ignored, at least to me.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
should public services be commercialized?
The subject says it all.
America is all about suing, maybe they will sue iran instead of going to war
Why Is Every Word In Capitals?
The word you were looking for is "retarded".
As in "Writing retarted instead of retarded is retarded".
HTH. HAND.
Actually, the Arris Touchstone 502G (among other VoIP MTAs) has a built-in battery backup.
If your cableco is also running a UPS at their headend, VoIP service should survive a power outage.
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
http://www.albertasupernet.ca/ Government Built/Sponsored fiber to many small municipalities (some with 100 people). Available for ISPs to provide service to end users wherever they want. I know people who have faster internet on their farm (30 miles from city), than I do in town! I'd say this is a good example of municipal internet done *fairly* well. Who knows, a similar program might even create some jobs and stimulate the economy here in the US.
Free 911 from a payphone.
Though they seem to be killing those off.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
Does anyone know how much of the Internet has been paid for by the us government, in turn meaning us tax payers? Are the telecoms etc. simply selling us access to our own thing and acting as if they invented it or something?
In Sweden there are city run fiber nets. You as a customer pay a separate fee to the city corp for maintaining the fiber but then you have to have an ISP to get out on the Internet. As I understand it any ISP can provide services in the fiber net. I think it's called "Black fiber". Any corp can rent capacity in the net. It seem to work fine here so why shouldn't it do so in the states?
In Tacoma, Washington cable TV and internet are already public utilities.
He actually said a modern city needs it. He used the Amish to show that human communities don't need them *even today*.
London didn't have electricity, water or gas infrastructure 120 years ago. It was a city.
Amish today don't need them.
But we demand in our cities we have them.
Same with internet.
And if the private companies can see no profit there, they have lost NO PROFIT if a subsidised municipal system is put there. They weren't playing.
The first question I would ask is how many of these projects are going to be successful now matter how they are funded. The for-profit telco avoids the backroads because the market is small and too damned expensive to service.
And despite us being a bit "backward" with our broadband speeds here in the UK, I could never see the same situation happening here.
At the moment, over here we have two types of broadband infrastructure - either the fibre "half-network" put in by NTL (now Virgin Media) which is okay provided that you live in the half of the country (by population, not geography) that has it, otherwise you have broadband over your existing copper telephone cable which ultimately BT (British Telecom) gets the initial line rental for, no matter who your ISP is.
It's only when that copper cable is connected to another ISP's equipment inside the BT telephone exchange that you then pay that ISP for the service - ultimately, any ISP is paying BT for the service, it's just that as ISPs they buy broadband services wholesale from BT so can then offer different tariffs.
So over here, if you wanted to "do it yourself", then you would just buy the bandwidth from BT, stick a box or two in their exchange, and either put in your own (very expensive) cabled network or (cheaper) wireless network to people's homes.
Yes, we do have problems with legacy copper cabling over here which means that high speed Internet access will be a long time coming but ultimately the privatisation of the Post Office into BT some years ago has been a success story all round - because telecoms over here is one of those industries where there is true competition, the consumer has ultimately benefited from better prices.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
The article refers to a "motion for dismal". It's worth a "Score:5, Funny" to whoever finds the right way to exploit it.
See, here's the thing: telcos do not have a "right" to compete for these services. Rights belong to the people, not to private businesses.
The people, through their various branches of government, decide what are the rules and laws under which business can operate. The people, through taxes, fees, and bonds, provides the funding. The people, through our elected representatives, entirely owns the "public" sphere and everything that operates within it.
We are our own sovereign entity. No private enterprise can legitimately claim to "compete" with us; there is no government other than what we have established.
The whole foundation of the telco's argument is built on sand. Something to think about ...
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
Funny, how the lawyer for the municipalities brings up rural areas, when I live in a suburb of a large city (1M+ pop) and another suburb not more than 3m away has had their own electric, gas, and water supplies for 70+ years, as well as their own city hospital, although the hospital was sold off to what I like to call a chain hospital system system a few years ago. Also sold off the utilities about 10-20y ago...
They used to have their own telephone company as well, but that is very long gone.
A second suburb a similar distance away to the north also had their own water, gas, and electric companies but those have also been long sold off as the utilities originally servicing the larger city expanded their reach -> economies of scale for both cities drove the selloffs as the regional utilities could provide the same service at lower overall costs, although the large city's political leadership now seem to think that their water company is acctually a machine that prints money for them and their cronies to embezzle and otherwise waste.
Municipal telecoms would be nice to see as a way of forcing the telecom monopolies to reduce their prices int he face of competition, especially ISPs and cable companies who hold virtual monopolies in many areas, including a large portion of the suburb in whic I live ATM.
The abundance concern of the telcos is a manifestation of Googin's Law, enunciated by Roxanne Googin, editor of a telecom-related newsletter. She stated that broadband (from an investor perspective) will either be a valuable monopoly or a worthless commodity.
The marginal cost of additional bandwidth is near zero. According to basic economics, the price should equal the marginal cost. That is the "worthless commodity" part. However, if there is a single monopoly owner who can play games and charge whatever they want for whatever they decide to provide, that is the "valuable monopoly."
Right now, we are in the valuable monopoly situation. Speeds are dumbed down (real broadband starts around 500 Mbps bidirectional, chips now in systems can support 1 Gbps). Cable TV providers use the rationale of limited bandwidth to choose the channels they provide and play games with tiers.
This situation is causing the US to fall behind in worldwide competitiveness.
We need to make bandwidth a worthless commodity. That may mean end-user ownership or municipal involvement. Our innovative birthright should not belong to the telcos.
My regional telecom monopoly is actually owned by my municipality:
tbaytel
And let me tell you, it doesn't help. We have the same crappy service as cities covered by the big corporate telcos.
There is no silver bullet.
I understand that they are two separate issues, but strikes me as wrong that the same telcos who want immunity from lawsuits are turning around and firing off their own.
I would love to see a few of 'em get blown sky-high (with ample warning time to get people out of the building, of course). Complete and utter bullshit.
That's the simple solution to this crap. You sue and you lose your service monopoly.
With cable companies and cell phone companies vying to replace your land line you now have more options than ever to tell the telcos to behave or fsk off. They should be playing nice rather than playing hardball, and are probably quaking in fear that someone is finally going to realize that. Rather like the Impostor Syndrome of the beautiful actress who is convinced her whole career that she is neither talented, nor beautiful, and lives in fear that the world is about to tell her that at any moment.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
You know... the Universal Service Fund - both Federal and State taxes paid for this...
Take a look at your bill people! What's deplorable is that they are being PAID to create these connections and yet.... some still can't get more than a 14.4k internet connection. So F-in sad...
http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/consumerfacts/understanding.html
So the cities can't create uneven playing fields by selling franchises to .. um.. you?
Sheesh, these fuckers want it both ways.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
But when I suggest my rural town should get in the game to help me out, all I get is "I don't want to pay for you! You should move out of your house and hometown to get decent service!"
How come you don't want to pay for me getting something other than 26.4 kbps (that's 2.5 kB/s) but you want me to pay for you to get your 3MB/s connection good enough for you to get free telephone as well?
Bottom line: Bite me.
Actually, as Edison & The Electric Chair documents quite nicely, Edison originally intended to run all of his utilities through purpose-built subsurface channels. It actually made economic sense with late eighteen-hundreds technology. Almost. Unfortunately, waterproofing technology wasn't ready yet, so he eventually gave in and used raised power lines. Why we *still* do this over a hundred years later isn't so easy to justify. And the fraud that this kind of approach makes very easy helps protect the telecoms at times like this. I suspect that one of the many reasons that they fear the prospect of municipal service-providers is that once a few have been built, it will start becoming obvious how much the telcos lie about their costs and procedures.
As many of you have seen me say before, I think that we should build more public service tunnels along our rights of way of the sorts that private business have used for generations. You may know them better as the "steam tunnels" so key to many cheesy seventies slasher flicks.
It's all about the information. And what we do with it.
Wireless Philadelphia (and no, I don't want to discuss how unsuccessful it has been to date) was formed because almost half of the city had no broadband coverage - nothing, not even DSL which barely qualifies as broadband, in many places.
http://blogs.zdnet.com/ip-telephony/?p=709
And let's not forget that the citizens of Pennsylvania gave some huge tax breaks to Bell Atlantic to deploy broadband which never materialized, if you believe one side of the story.
http://www.tispa.org/node/14
Now, how about those wonderful laws that discourage municipalities that wish to build a network?
http://www.baller.com/comm_broadband.html
I know, I know, the telecoms are a for profit companies and are just protecting their interests.
But the reality is that in many places in this country there are too many miles of wire and too few customers to pay for the service.
Perhaps you are one in one of them.