Telco Sues Municipality For Laying Their Own Fiber

unreceivedpacket writes "Ars Technica reports that a company called TDS Telecom is attempting to sue the town of Monticello, Minnesota for deploying their own fiber network. Shortly after the town voted to lay the fiber, TDS Telecom filed suit and notified the town that they would be deploying their own fiber network. The telco has recently responded to Ars Technica, saying they only sued to save Monticello from itself, apparently feeling that the municipality is unprepared for the onerous costs of maintaining such a network, and would lack the expertise to do so."

Comments

Craziness

[TheSpoom]

Expect to see the telecom draw out this lawsuit as long as they can possibly take it (think SCO here) and deploy their own network in the meantime, then sue the town again if they try to lay their own network thereafter for tortious interference with business practices or other such legal BS (IANAL and don't know what statutes they could use).

Craziness. I hope a judge knocks this down quick, but I'm not optimistic.

It's basically the company telling the town, "Stay the fuck out of our business or it'll cost you dearly. It's our monopoly, dammit."

Re:Craziness

[cayenne8]

Sad...I am pretty much for the smallest, most unobtrusive, non-invasive govt possible, especially for the feds, but, I do feel one of the few things govt. is for, is infrastructure...and to me that would be laying down phone lines, cable and fiber...but, not have them run it. The companies could then have access to them to provide services and have actual competition. Much like the govt. puts down highways...but, private companies run the gas stations along the way....

Re:Craziness

[cayenne8]

Well, I don't see too much wrong with the city laying down the cable/fiber/etc...and contracting out someone to maintain it. Separate maintenance of hardware from service....let the svc. companies compete for the users needs....

I too hate an extra layer for the user to resolve problems...but, in this case...I think it might be justified to give the user the best service for his $$'s, and to also keep the govt. out of the regulation of said service.

Re:Craziness

[megamerican]

town doesn't have money to keep fighting legal battles.

Not True. According to their Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR) they have $37.8 Million in Cash Investments alone. That should get them some decent representation.

Google any your city plus CAFR and see how much money your city/county/school district/state is hiding from you.

Re:Craziness

[jd]

Taxpayers aren't necessarily good at taking a long-term view. Yes, the investment should benefit the taxpayer (investing in infrastructure, decent education - things that build up the society over the long-term) but should probably not go into the taxpayer's pockets. The recent US "tax refund" was no such thing, since everyone knew damn well the money would end up in the hands of merchants almost immediately. Most likely, the populace got nothing of any worth out of the deal - the amounts involved were far too trivial and Americans work on a debt culture not a saving culture. Pure bread and circuses. All illusions to make people feel better, without giving them anything worth feeling better about.

On the other hand, the sum total of cash was quite considerable. Had the same total amount been spent on, oh, debugging the US educational system, or getting Amtrak some more rolling stock, people may not have experienced the same peak level of happiness, but a whole lot more people would have had actual value added to their lives.

I know, I make a lousy American. Blame the British in me. But blame or credit, it is indisputable that Governments have the resources to invest in things that will have a longer-term benefit to many, individuals (barring the super-rich) barely have the resources to invest in things that will have any meaningful (ie: not bread and circuses) impact on even themselves. They certainly can't affect anything beyond the tiniest of microcosms in the macrocosm of an entire nation. That's why, tens of thousands of years ago, they figured out how to organize collectively to do such stuff.

Re:Craziness

[pruffin]

I live in Monticello and know how TDS has been strangling our town with high telephone rates and extremely terrible service. I have no love or loyalty for TDS. For example if you live in Minneapolis you can call Monticello free of charge. To live in Monticello you are forced to pay a toll charge or buy a more expensive phone package to get access to 612, 651 or 952 exchanges. People in Monticello have been forced to pay for service at rates and fees far above what all our surrounding neighbors have to pay. The real interesting thing about this situation is that the choice to put a city owned fiber loop and allow the city to compete with TDS was voted on by the residents of our city. We democratically voted for the city to compete against TDS. The majority of people in Monticello do not like doing business with TDS and when given the opportunity to choose another service provider we did. We do not need to be saved from ourselves as TDS would state but from the high costs and poor service from a company who has really overstayed their welcome in my town and used their monopoly to rape our pocketbooks. It is interesting that TDS did not start trying to upgrade their services or attempt to bring the population of Monticello any REAL modern services until the city started to make their move to bring fair and honest services to our community.

Freaking retarded

[afidel]

My boss lives in a town that has had their own utilities for over a century and they have stellar service and prices are lower than the crappy monopolies provide. It started with their own power station and over the years they added phone, cable, and fiber internet services. If they need service they get local people that actually care about fixing their issues and local students can get internships that teach them marketable skills. All this and they pay much *less* than the government granted/privately run monopolies in most surrounding areas. A good example of the non-financial benefits this has provided include the fact that they were one of the few communities to have power during the great NE blackout of 2003. Basically it comes down to the fact that there is a certain cost of building and maintaining the infrastructure, and if you let a monopoly private business run it you have to pay those costs over time plus the profits that are expected by the owners of that company.

Maintenance Cost of Fiber are Actually Lower

[absent_speaker]

From what I understand, maintaining fiber networks isn't all that hard. In many cases, it's lower maintenance than existing infrastructures.

Switching from copper to fiber is a big deal in heavy manufacturing and especially in electric plants. Most electric plants are heavily wired with copper. Problem is that copper is more prone to interference. When copper fails, it can be quite difficult to isolate the failure. Copper is also several orders of magnitude lighter (weight wise) than copper and a lot less bulky. Vendors usually quote a "50%" cost reduction from copper.

In the building trades, fiber only construction saves a good amount of space and labor. I've read that medium size office buildings can sometimes shave $300,000 off their construction costs.

I can't recall exactly, but I believe most new airplanes are being built with fiber. It's much easier to install and maintain than the copper it replaces. I remember reading years ago that some lab at MIT (I believe) developed a device to allow fiber optic cable to directly replace the copper wiring coming out of the instrument panels. I am afraid I can't remember reading if this was ever implemented.

I'm not an expert, but I think the rational for this lawsuit is rather weak. I don't know what else their town is working on, but I doubt they expect their parks and recreation staff to maintain their fiber network. They'll hire a subcontractor, probably the same people the telcos were going to hire and be done.

Good for them.

Then make the largest raceways possible.

[RustinHWright]

I agree that government should play a role in infrastructure but if they're going to do it at all, then they should spend the additional money to make those channels as large as possible. If they need an eighteen inch channel, then maybe they should do a twenty-four inch one, and so on. If they're planning to spend the money to dig up streets, create utility vaults, and so forth, then let them spend the money to do it right the first time and create a right of way that will then be available for other services. The more space they put in now, the less money they'll have to spend later on and the easier it gets to do maintenance without digging up the streets again.

If it were up to me, municipalities all over the place would be putting in precast, modular component tunnels under major streets that would be big enough to stand inside and to carry telecom lines, electrical lines, gas lines, and so on, all on top of water and sewage lines. This would cut monopoly power waaay down and massively decrease the cost, likelihood, and problems related to breakdowns, not to mention make things like greywater processing much more practical.