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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 government? Providing necessary infrastructure companies can't or won't? How dare they!
Help stamp out iliturcy.
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! --
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.
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.
Maybe you're confused.
Municipalities want to build out broadband networks and make them the 5th utility, alongside natural gas, heating oil, water, and electricity. The Telcos are suing to prevent Municipalities from doing this.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
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.
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
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 ..
Letting a local government run your Internet is a stupid-bad idea.
I agree.
What isn't a stupid idea is letting a local government build networking infrastructure and then allowing access to anyone who wishes to provide services over the infrastructure.
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!
I was in the trial program for Google TiSP.
Long story short: the speed was crap.
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
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!!
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.
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
They don't get to play favorites with the telcos.
And from TFA: ... you can't use your powers as a city to create an uneven playing field,"
This is a nonsensical argument. Nearly everywhere, the municipalities, states, and all other levels of government always "play favorites" and create an "uneven playing field". They do this by creating and enforcing local telecom monopolies.
Where I live, the phone line leading to my house is owned by Verizon, and it's illegal for any competitor to install a competing line. This is about as much an uneven playing field as you can imagine. The town has exactly one favorite phone company, and the others aren't allowed to install their wires in this neighborhood.
Cable is similar, though our neighborhood is a bit unusual in that there are two companies that are legally permitted to install their cables. But a "duopoly" isn't all that much better than a monopoly. (And the "competition" between phone and cable companies does little to alleviate these mon/duopolies.)
Also, here in the US, and in most other companies, the phone companies have received all sorts of subsidies from the national government. If I'd tried to start my own phone company, I'd have had no access to those subsidies. And even with regulations allowing my startup to use the phone company's (copper) wires, they can charge me so much that I can't price my services competitively with theirs.
How do people get off arguing that municipalities shouldn't play favorites to create an uneven playing field, when for over a century, all levels of government have been doing exactly that to create and enforce the telecom monopolies that we see everywhere?
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
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.