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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.
At one point in our history, electricity wasn't necessary infrastructure either.
Hence the TVA.
I argue that high-speed telecommunications infrastructure is necessary for a 21st-century economy. I'd like to hear your thoughts as to why you believe differently.
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.
People have receive only radios because they have little desire to transmit. Oddly enough, most people who want a transmitter can just go buy one (they may have to fiddle about a little to legally use it).
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Thanks, you have illustrated my point well. The day may well come when someone with no understanding of today's internet potential will say, "People have download only accounts (or accounts with tiny upload caps) because they have little desire to upload. Oddly enough, most people who want an uploading account can just go buy one (they may have to fiddle about a little to legally use it)."
Caveat Utilitor
The Municipalities are cutting deals with Telcos. They are playing favorites.
Okay, maybe I'm confused... Are you talking about the status quo, which is Munis playing favorites with the Telcos?
Or are you saying that the Munis are cutting deals with Telcos w/regards to Municipal broadband? Because if that's what you're saying, you should do a little more explaining, rather than decry the lack of information in TFA.
Yes, and the bits will get from their fiber to the Internet via MAGIC.
Building out a Municipal broadband network and purchasing bandwidth directly from a Tier 1/2 ISP is not the same thing as giving [Telco] a monopoly to build out their own network.
Or am I missing something?
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
The service is irrelevant. VOIP is quite viable. The owner of the company I work for called me using Skype from London and Paris during his trip and it worked just fine. He called my cell phone no less. The people I know that use Vonage have had zero problems with it as well so I don't know where you get that it is the most unreliable. Perhaps you mean those with unreliable Internet have unreliable VOIP? That would seem to argue that Internet is indeed a necessity and should be improved.
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
Actually if it wasn't for competitive water and sewer districts in London we probably wouldn't have come about with germ theory nearly as early as we did. You see on of the best pieces of evidence for germ theory came from a actuary working for a London insurance company, he mapped the outbreaks of various fatal diseases and eventually realized that while the deaths often seemed random that given enough outbreaks patterns emerged. When he investigated further the reason that one side of the street had an outbreak and the other not was what water district they were serviced by. This in turn led him to discover that water districts that obtained their water further downstream (and hence downstream from other districts sewer discharge) were more likely to have outbreaks.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Yes, and the bits will get from their fiber to the Internet via MAGIC.
No, no, they don't. Those bits would travel to the internet via Peering Agreements with Tier 1 ISP's. Bandwidth that is effectively paid for by the bit. Tier 1 ISP's don't pay eachother to swap data, because each considers traffic from the other to be just as important as its own.
/8's from Ford or whoever) to contain enough traffic to meet the absurd "settlement free" peering agreement requirements put forth by the cartel we know as Tier 1 ISP's... now that would be interesting.
Interestingly enough, if municipalities were to bond together to form a network large and important enough (maybe they could buy a couple
Boot Windows, Linux, and ESX over the network for free.
It's going to be a while before mobile 911 is good enough to satisfy me.
I want to be able to pick up the phone, dial 911, and yell "FIRE!" and then run out the door. I hope to never use that feature, but I buy insurance too.
In that case, I think it would make more sense to wire your community with a redundant power grid (2 separate power sources for every domicile) rather than maintain an obsolete comm. protocol just because it was designed with a +45v wire.
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
Municipalities want to build out broadband networks and make them the 5th utility, alongside natural gas, heating oil, water, and electricity.
No doubt there are still places where such utilities are owned by local government...
The Telcos are suing to prevent Municipalities from doing this.
Maybe they should counter sue arround a century's worth of "back rent" on the public land these telcos use to run their cables.
Sanitation is not "necessary infrastructure". Electricity is not "necessary infrastructure". Telephone lines are not "necessary infrastructure". The Amish show all this quite well.
OH YOU SHUT UP. Please. And moderators? Insightful? C'mon.
Seriously. The Amish argument isn't even an argument. The Amish have been living that way for a relatively long time. It's not like they experienced modern infrastructure and then one day cut bait and went back to simpler infrastructure. The Amish are a very, very small fraction of the total population. The rest of the population has moved past simpler infrastructure and can't just switch back. Things are the way they are now; if you immediately take away sanitation and electricity and telephones, you'll see how necessary they are, regardless of whether it be a modern city or a piece of land in the middle of nowhere.
Furthermore, most of the Amish do use modern infrastructure, including electricity. They're just really careful about how they use it. I've seen Amish families on Amtrak numerous times. (Union Station Chicago FYI).[Sidebar: My dad was at one of those Amish villages where you can buy jam and furniture and stuff. The blacksmith was working the bellows and really putting on a show for all the people in his shop. When the people moved on, my dad stayed to talk to the guy and he pulled out an old hair dryer to stoke the fire. My dad said, "What about not using modern stuff?" The guy said, "This is just so much easier."]
A better example than your silly Amish one, is a natural disaster -- because these usually take an area from modern to not-modern in a very short period of time.
So basically, I recognize my opinion's not worth much, but I think your definition of "necessary" is ridiculous. Or you're just trying to argue for the sake of arguing.
Please don't use "umm" or "err" or "erm".
I don't understand the base that they use for suing.
Is it illegal for municipalities to offer services that can compete with corporations in the US?
Or are they suing because they feel that they're choosing the wrong ISP?
If it's the later, the municipalities should build the infrastructure and offer all ISP's to compete inside this at equal terms...
I sit on such a network and have about 8 competing ISP's to choose from inside the same physical network.
Competition has a great impact on quality and pricing. ^_^
/.Mattsson - My native language is not English, so please don't whine over linguistic errors. (That's lame anyway...)