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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.
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.
Sure, POTS runs off batteries at the CO, but nothing says you can't run your cable/DSL modem and VoIP box from a battery. That's what I do. I've coasted through a number of power failures with no loss of service (I have Comcast as my ISP and AT&T's Callvantage for my VoIP service.) Plus which, the AT&T service allows you to assign a backup cellphone number, to which all incoming calls are routed in case they can't get through to your VoIP unit.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
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.