Slashdot Mirror
Judge Tosses Telco Suit Over City-Owned Network
tsa sends along news of the city of Monticello, Minnesota, which was sued by their local telco, Bridgewater Telephone Company, because the city chose to build a fiber optics network of their own. The judge dismissed their complaint of competition by a governmental organization. Quoting: "The judge's ruling is noteworthy for two things: (1) the judge's complete dismissal of Bridgewater Telephone Company's complaint and (2) his obvious anger at the underfunding of Minnesota's state courts. Indeed, the longest footnote in the opinion is an extended jeremiad about how much work judges are under and why it took so long to decide this case."
IANAL, but the second part is a warning to TDS against trying to waste more court time. The judge is saying that he's busy enough and therefore if TDS tries to revisit this, it would be another costly loss.
TDS lost a lot of money going after the city. They also lost a lot of revenue because they are now going to try and compete with the city (lol). And they lost the support of their community, who knows they sued the city for unwarranted tax dollars, and taxpayers love bailouts.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
A jeremiad is by definition an "extended critique".
May the Grammar Nazis have mercy on you.
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
I imagine that the telco must have had to get permits to lay their own fiber. The government could have blocked those requests until the result of the case was decided, thus cancelling-out the telco's attempt to delay the government and get a head start. I wonder why this didn't happen?
Let's all send the judge $5.00.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
I'm surprised no one has mentioned this yet...
This gives other community precedence in other lawsuits across the nation.
Once one telco falls, hopefully the other lawsuits will fall also, just like a row of dominos.
So noteworthy that Ars didn't even bother to quote it, I see. Can someone post the footnote for our reading pleasure, or link to the ruling and give us a hint where we may find this particular footnote?
Because, let's face it, what every telco wants is to provide all communities of 12,000 people with fiber to the house. What a load of crap. TDS was doing their dog-in-the-manger act, and now is only putting in fiber as an act of revenge.
Why, without your clothes, you're naked, Miss Dudley!
Jeremiad was a JudgeFrog, ...
Was a good friend of mine,
Slapped down the Telco
Usually a smart telco doesn't sue, they simply bribe the legislature into restricting their municipal competition (bottom of page).
(Basically, Comcast and Qwest bribed the Utah legislature into stopping their multi-muni competitor, UTOPIA, in Utah. The Utah ACLU's letter against such action is here: http://www.acluutah.org/utopia.htm)
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
....since they've accomplished their goal of getting fibre access for their constituents.
And they dont even have to pay for it. If they drop their fibre plans now, BTC will still be completing their own fibre upgrades.
Maybe was the city's plan all along, to scare the telco into committing to an upgrade that they were clearly not wanting to do of their own volition.
I didn't understand a single word he said. But they should have paid a fine.
Um, my vocabulary includes FORTRAN, COBOL and BASIC. Couldn't you have said "bitch" instead of "jeremiad"?
My wife doesn't listen to me either...
...and we wish it was a mighty fine fine.
"jeremiad", now that's what Mark Twain would have called a 10-dollar word. I love it, and now I can dump my 10-cent word "rant".
"Cock Up Your Beaver" does not mean what you think. This sig is intended to clog filters and annoy do-gooders
That the judge is making 280,000 a year. we all can call him and say.
WAH big baby.
Maybe the judge will have to start working 5 day weeks or holding court past 3 PM.
Here's an idea to help: just start summarily dismissing criminal charges where there's no victim.
I used to work for TDS. It doesnt surprise me that they would try a sneaky underhanded approach like suing the city while they start their own fiber network. TDS quite possibly has some of the worst quality of service Ive seen from an ISP. Their standard line is "Send them a new modem" even if its their equipment at the head end that is junk. They oversell their bandwidth all the time resulting in customers calling and saying they have a 3 meg connection, but can barely pull 1 meg tops. Their sales staff only compounds the issue by trying to boost everyone connection up as high as possible and then breaking their connection because their line cant handle a 4 meg connection because TDS never updates any of their hardware.
TDS is just another bad ISP/Telco that wants to maintain their monopoly on whatever they have. I personally hope that every citizen in that town gets their service from the town, dropping TDS like a bad habit.
Make sense, stick to principles, and you're labeled a troll. Resort to what's convenient, throw principles out the window, espouse pragmatism, and you're +5 Insightful.
If I was the mayor of a small town, I might use this sort of thing to my advantage.
1- Announce plan to roll out municipal/residential fiber network.
2- Sell enough bonds for stage 1 of the project. Naturally, that would pay for linking any city buildings and schools.
3- Goad local telco into suing the city, delaying the municipal project while they roll out their own project.
4- Make press releases as to schedule of when residential roll-out will be done.
5- Once local telco has a significant subscriber base, drop the residential project as too costly.
6- PROFIT!!! for the telco. I make press releases cheering how I avoided needlessly growing local government and publicly praising the local telco for their visionary (and affordable) residential fiber Internet service.
Been reading the headlines for the past few weeks. Idiocracy is the here and now, forget the future.
The article attached to this piece has a very interesting one liner, "We sue because we care." If only people believed that hogwash. The only reason Bridgewater sued Monticello was because if Monticello had deployed that network, Bridgewater would be out of business. It has nothing to do with care or concern for the citizenry but concern about profit and loss. The only reason Bridgewater was placed in this situation to begin with was because they were not going to spend money to improve the poor quality and paucity of broadband for Monticello. Instead, Bridgwater took to the media and its own advertising campaign to tout its "advanced" network. Meanwhile, the truth of the matter suggested otherwise. What a shame that it took a lawsuit for them to wake up and stop smelling the crap they were shovelling. Hooray for the people of Monticello for taking public action when the private sector would not.
Even if there were three companies, you would complain about the lack of a fourth. But three is better than two, and two options are better than one. So this is clearly a step in the right direction. Take away the telecom monopoly and give people a choice.
Sticking to principles, supporting individual rights - that's flamebait now??
It sounds like we have a candidate for a solution to our overly litigious society - underfunding of the courts.
Here in the mediochre (sp?) Northwest, the city of Tacoma has it's own network called "Click!" wherein they provide Television Cable, Internet, and some limited VoIP. The others in the area are Comcast, Qwest, Verizon, and the ilk. Unfortunately, all of the services are not available in all areas due to limited infrastructure rollout by all parties, but there is still a coexistance of comercial and private offerings to consumers. Tacoma has touted itself as "...the most wired city in America". I have Qwest DSL and haven't had too many problems as yet; Comcast can drop off the face of the earth for their support and cost, and Click! isn't in my area yet. I feel that they are the best as far as service and stability of service from them all, having asked others about them. All in all, competition in this area of service providers means good for us....Joe Consumer.
Good on the Judge for doing what he did, it makes me proud to be from Minnesota again (in this instance, anyway).
Indeed, the longest footnote in the opinion is an extended jeremiad about how much work judges are under and why it took so long to decide this case.
Clearly, this demonstrates the inefficiencies of public services compared to private. If the court systems were run by big business, such problems would be eliminated.
Hearing this from 'big business' would not surprise me in the least.
Have gnu, will travel.
I demand that all posters cease and desist on Slashdot so my comments are ranked first and are the only comments to read. I don't want to compete with all these other comments.
There is no way that can be lost or not tracked.
Even in Mexico that can be done ....
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Critical infrastructure and media infrastructure needs to be owned by the government (I would say "State" but that implies state rights). /Water lines
-Wireless Bands
-Runways
-Sewer
-Dams
-Roads, Bridges, Highways
-Power, cable, phone and other digital transmission lines
The system is corrupt to the core. Ever facet is corrupted. One way to start removing this corruption is to socialize the infrastructure, for example, even if one power company can operate cheaper (power companies have no reason to become more efficient because corrupt/bribed/uneducated/non-caring politicians in towns that only have one person on the ballot and in a aging society that quite frankly doesn't care or understand, because a) they'll be dead soon and don't care about the future and b) they don't understand the consequences it may have, perhaps because they've stopped paying attention to the news or stopped learning, especially in one where you can win the majority of the population through lies, deceit, flattery, and smearing your opponent) so they can just state their expenses to the govenrment to regulate what they can charge, it doesn't matter because while the power system is on a non-interchangable grid ((cable companies aren't so lucky, phone companies even worse off as that requires building cellphone towers (which we *COULD* share, but aren't required to, at least without roaming charges--passed on to the consumer (some phones will refuse to roam and so they don't have to mention it on your plan) -- and also can be censored or throttled at their discretion), provoking the aging population against change)) the power companies that own the line are given 50% of the proceeds on any proceeds stemming from power transmissions on that line. Worse yet the US spends more money on Health insurance with no socialized medicine than most countries with socialized medicine (per capita I believe) because they hirer a single corrupt organization to do the work for them, which charges a unfair price (well beyond normal profit bounds that allow for stockholders, CEOs to get their fill and improvement to the company) to do it for them. In fact, according to some conspiracy theories, we let 911 happen because bush was paid to ignore CIA/intel warnings so haliburton and the oil companies to profit off the war.
But without proper infrastructure--which could simply be transferred to the state--perhaps the political regulation on allowing only one cable company to provide cable and competition factors where licensing isn't an issue, the corrupt organizations would either adapt to fair competition or die (and then proceed to burn in the fiery core of hell for not admitting their sins/not asking for redemption).
When there is no competition, there is no service.. You get what they `choose` to give you or you get nothing at all. --- how is that "service" ? Nice options eh? What they "choose" includes service features they want, service quality ( or the lack of ) they deem good enough for you, and service prices they need to fatten their pocket.. They can legally set the charges at whatever they want and you either pay what they tell you to pay , or you can do without.. Yes nice indeed... asshats. Competition? bring on, even if the government has to kick start it to get it going.
I keep hearing all this trash about how the government is competing with private companies. That's completely untrue, RTFA. The government is laying fiber, then leasing the lines to third party ISP's who can provide service over it. They aren't trying to be the ISP.
We should probably just privatize roadways too. We'll pay private companies like walmart to make roads. Then whichever stretch walmart lays, only allow walmart trucks to drive on. That's great for the country, right?!
at least with democratic big government, the people have the opportunity to call a wayward leadership to account.
But that didn't help the people, congress still approved the bailout of large banks.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
There are few things that I have experienced the government doing better than a competitive private sector.
I think this case is a pretty good example of competition. Originally the city asked Bridgewater Telephone to install fiber but the business told them to get lost. So the voters decided to install their own fiber. Once they did the company decided to both sue the city and to install their own fiber. So whereas before no choice for fiber existed but now two infrastructures of fiber are being installed. And tow choices are more than zero.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
consider all of these big banks asking for a trillion-dollar handout
Those banks shouldn't get a dime from taxpayers. In a somewhat free market they would go bankrupt while the banks who loaned money responsibly would have survived.
Having said that, not supporting bailouts, if congress really wanted to help people instead of giving banks billions of taxpayer dollars if instead those dollars were to go to people who's houses are being foreclosed on more people would be helped. Not only would the banks be helped, those in default would be able to pay their mortgage so the banks would be paid, but those losing their homes would be helped as well.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Hardly the first time American interests have abused NAFTA to the detriment of Canadians.
And what of Canadian interests in abusing NAFTA to the detriment of Americans? Canadian business Methanex, maker of MTBE a gasoline additive which is a known carcinogen, sued California when the state wanting to protect people banned the use of MTBE in the state.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Look at the history of the light bulb and the early development of the electric grid, and you'll see people making profit while providing a service to everyone.
It wasn't for-profit businesses that developed the electrical grid. Businesses like Edison Electric only operated in cities. Electric coops and Franklin D Roosevelt are responsible for the electrification of rural America. And back then much of the electricity was generated by wind turbines.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
How could I sue a large company in the US if they can just keep filing more and more briefs that have to be responded to, adding to my costs? If they do this in Canada, they'll end up having to pay for my costs as well as their own.
In the US I did sue a big company. But if I, well my family as I was in a coma, had to pay them if we lost we would not have been able to seek justice.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
First, the government should not be providing such a service. If the people actually want it, then companies should be springing forth to provide the service.
The government did ask the company to provide the service and the company told them to get lost. After that the people voted to install the fiber, and only then did the company want to do anything.
However, companies are not permitted to lay more lines due to government restriction.
Though asked the company DID NOT want to lay lines. That's certainly within their rights, but they don't have the right to harass people when they decide to do for themselves what the company refused to do.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Can you provide some sources for this?
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
As for McShame, I wouldn't vote for that idiot or Obama, or the Libertarian Party, or any of the other dolts running for President. They're all for various flavors of rights violations.
What rights would the Libertarian Party violate?
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
My overall point, and I know you disagree, is that the government will absolutely have to intervene before rural areas will get decent broadband
Again I suggest you look at the spread of the light bulb and the electric grid.
The spread of light bulbs and the electric grid is because government subsidized them. President Franklin D. Roosevelt established the Rural Utilities Service which subsidized rural electrification as I've stated elsewhere. And in many places electricity was generated by wind turbines, also as stated before. Jacobs Wind Generators were among the most popular. Even today people still search for Jacobs as they were reliable and are still usable. "Homepower magazine" has several articles about them including people using them today.
Indeed. If only more politicians would say no to every idiotic proposal thrown at them. The most active, most popular Presidents in history have in fact been the most damaging to individual rights.
And one of the most active presidents was FDR, who electrified rural America. Though he caused a lot of harm, that's was one of the things he got right. For instance the economy was already recovering from the Great Depression when he signed many of those socialist Second New Deal programs.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
How's it working out for you having your government take a "hands off" approach to your banks? (assuming you are an American).
It was a hands on not a hands off approach that caused to problem banks are in today. The Community Reinvestment Act forced lenders to reduce discriminatory credit practices such as not giving mortgages to those that could not afford the loans and giving low or no down payment mortgages. "The Trillion-Dollar Bank Shakedown That Bodes Ill for Cities" published in 2000 foresees the problem. [I thank a poster who provided the link earlier.]
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Yes, because it's better to have the government run the service than to have a choice between two, five, ten companies competing to give you the best service possible.
Competition is good, lack of competition is bad. There was no provider of broadband in the city. The city asked the Bridgewater Telephone Company to lay fiber and offer broadband. The company told the city to get lost. Voters then voted and approved a plan for the city to provide the service. All of a sudden the company complained the city was going to do what the city asked the company to do but refused. Now, instead of no providers or only one there will be two providers. So there will be competition.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
I don't know why legalizing prostitution would reduce it
Legalizing prostitution would not reduce it, it probably would increase it. However it would reduce crime and the prison population. The same with drugs. With less prisons taxpayers would be able to keep more of their money, then drug users and prostitutes could be paying taxes as well.
we've had some positive effects since it was legalized here in Germany
I didn't know prostitution was illegal in Germany, other than during the 1930s when the NAZIs were in power. Prostitution was legal when I was there in 1983, there were even magazine like publications that listed prostitutes with photos listing what acts they would accept money for and how to contact them to set up an appointment.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
One way to start removing this corruption is to socialize the infrastructure
That's also a good way to censor what you don't like and prevent the infrastructure from being improved.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Yeah, "illegal" is the wrong term. "Against public policy" fits better
Okay.
I've been wondering about your sig on Natalie Portman for a while now. Before I ever heard about her being in "Star Wars" I saw two of her movies, "Leon, the Professional" and "Where the Heart Is" and loved both. Have you seen either one?
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Rather than request a specific company lay fiber, they should remove all restrictions hindering companies from laying fiber, and persuade other cities in the region to do the same.
I'd prefer more competition myself but it's highly unlikely the easement or right of way would be capable of having 10 runs each of cable, fiber, phone, and powerlines. Fiber could replace cable and phone but there'd still be 10 runs. This is one reason I was hoping the FCC would open up the airwaves, the frequencies now used by analogue tv stations would be good for wireless broadband. But the incumbents are fighting to keep these frequencies closed, they don't like competition.
they should remove all restrictions hindering companies from laying fiber, and persuade other cities in the region to do the same.
None of the articles said the city was blocking anyone from laying fiber. If you have a reference the city was blocking others from laying fiber please share it.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?