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Time Warner Cable Won't Compete, Seeks Legislation
narramissic writes "The good people of Wilson, NC pay $99/month for 10/10 Mbps internet service, 81 TV channels and telephone service. How'd they manage that, you ask? Well, the city-owned and operated cable service called Greenlight came into being when the City of Wilson approached TWC and local DSL provider Embarq and requested faster service for the area. 'TWC refused the request. And so Greenlight was born,' says blogger Peter Smith. 'Now Time Warner Cable and Embarq are upset that they've got competition, and rather than try to go head to head with Greenlight on price and service, they've instead been lobbying the state government of NC to pass laws to put Greenlight out of business. Apparently they're having some success, as the NC State Senate has proposed bills that would do TWC's bidding.'"
Would it just be easier to convert Greenlight to a citizen run corporation or make it a utility?
I am not a legal eagle on NC law, but I would think it wouldn't be that difficult to convert to a citizen run profit/nonprofit corporation and then TWC is effectively screwed.
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
This is why TWC needs to be investigated for their practices. It seems to me that the NC government just wants to roll over to TWC wishes. I for one applaude that community that actually went out and did something to improve their service. Also I believe 10/10Mbps for $99 is a fair price as long as the quality is there.
This has happened before, for a municipal-sponsored project.
From the project manager's blog, some of what they are doing is actually fair: not allowing cities to price below costs. This makes a lot of sense and is actually good for competition. Not allowing subscription fees to pay for other city projects - this on the other hand is not necessarily fair. Ideally TWC should be pricing their service competitively to Greenlight such that no extra profit is left over to fund other city projects. But they don't want to do that. They just want to minimize the threat from Greenlight given that they can't get rid of them. In my opinion, though, a public service using public resources should not overcharge to begin with - it should charge all subscribers a fair rate so that it's a self-contained project which provides exactly the service it was created to do.
It does seems like it from the few working experiences that we have around the world [1,2]. I hope this is realized that we do need to guarentee a public network, maybe along the private one but nonetheless a good public network!
We need ISP agnostic fiber to the homes, now!
For those in Canada (note the "eh" in the title :P), give your voice below, the CRTC is asking for advise (for what it's worth...):
http://isppractices.econsultation.ca/ (english)
http://pratiquesfsi.econsultation.ca/ (franÃais)
[1]. http://cis471.blogspot.com/2009/04/why-is-connectivty-in-stockholm-so-much.html
[2]. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/04/shocker-aussies-to-build-own-open-access-fiber-backbone.ars
Why not? What's so special about the idea of non-governmental corporations that makes them preferable?
This is another example of how a socialist system run by the peoples representatives can do better than some private dictatorship run for the benefit of wealthy elite interests. This is because the city government is controlled by the people and is operated with consent of the people to provide services in the common interest and in the common good, at the highest quality and lowest cost. The purpose of corporations instead is to provide the worst service at the highest cost to enrich wealthy plutocrats that run them. Thats why the corporations adn wealthy elites through their Republican conservative ayn rand and rush limbaugh elitist pro-corporate totalitarian plantation slave labour admirer puppets will fight tooth and nail against anything that will benefit and improve the conditoons of the common people and give them control over their lives and make systems that benefit everyone, rather than exploit us for the mansions and yachts of a wealthy elite. This totalitarainists are clearly in control of North Carolina, being the neofascist Republican totalitarian state it is, and want to assure that the people are rupe to be raped by massive corporations and to destroy anything that gets in the way of exploitation of the people for benefit of elite yachts.
Their goal is to impoverish common people, starve people to death with slave wages and deny health care to the people so they can continue to expand their own wealth. since the 1980s this is whats been happening, with waes of common people falling, unemployment growing, and quality life falling, the only people who have gotten wealthier are the elite fat cats who control our economic system. When are we going to stop putting up with slave wages, high prices and lousy service so some arrogant CEO can sit on a yacht all day, and who considers that his birth right. A major cause of our present economic recession and as well the fact americans are dying because of lack of healthcare when every other country has universal health care coverage for less per capita cost, is that we have greed and an economic system rigged up by the wealthy and greedy elite to make themselves richer at the expense of everyone else. They own so much opf the economy that they control everything, people are under their control at their wal mart job, how much money adn what life they have is controlled, their health care is controlled, how much things cost is controlled. There is a hidden tax in everything we buy that goes not to help the poor but to pay for some greedy corporate elites yacht, this is the corporate overhead adn profit margins corporations put ine verything we buy which is made for cents in china and sold for hun dreds here, both impoverishing chinese and destroying american jobs, the only winners are corporate elitist fascists. ALL of this is done WITH NO CONTROL over it by the people. Unlike our government, the people have no voice in this corporations which have more power over peoples lives than government, and who actually buy the government through campaign contributions, dismantle all pro-consumer and pro-working class government regulations so corporations become defacto governments above the law. THus law becomes something ratheer than to protect peoples freedom, something to protect masive corporations like we see with RIAA and MPAA, at the same time government ignores the basic needs of people to food shelter, medical care and housing. The corporate system is one who only see people has having a value to expand and enrich corporations, they see people as things to be exploited, used and thrown away again and left to die when no longer useful to them. It needs to be replaced with an economic system for and by the common people, a democratic socialist system where we elect who runs the corporations who control the economy.
Probably not. I'm guessing with a $28 million initial cost, the city wanted to run fiber. TWC and Embarq refused saying it would cost them too much. By the way, federal taxes since 1995 have paid something on the order of $202 billion to these companies to put in fiber but they have taken the money and have never installed it. So the city took it upon themselves to run fiber. So TWC and Embarq cannot compete since they are most likely using copper. What TWC and Embarq would like to do is put Greenlight out of business then take over their lines. Then they could offer higher speeds. Of course they will charge their customers double the price Greenlight was charging even though they paid nothing for the infrastructure.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
I think people have forgotten the difference between government at the township level and government at the state/federal level. The local government is mostly residents who are ignored by lobbyists and do their best to make the town thrive. Yes, I am saying that if it is the people wish that the government should make their lives better, they should be able to use government to make their lives better. (Provided, of course, that they are educated and not being hoodwinked into giving up rights). Also, however, the township should not enforce the monopoly and if a small ISP wants to use the lines to compete with the township, they should have access to the lines. (Perhaps they want to offer 2mbit for $20 a month?)
This situation is similar to the people forming a co-op to provide themselves with network connectivity, only corporations are crying foul because instead of forming a co-op to get things done, the citizens (not subjects in this case) went through existing channels (local government).
This is precisely the kind of grassroots involvement that I LIKE to see because if people believe they can change the local government, they might believe that they don't have to lie down when corporations make their state and federal government steamroll them.
A government should, ideally, stand back and let private citizens do their own thing, but thats not happening, not at the state level, not at the federal level. TWC has lobbyists, the township citizens did not. Until the township has the same pull as TWC, the local government needs to step up and fight fire with fire.
We are well beyond a free market economy, and while its nice to think about what government would look like without the past 233 years of corporate influence, that's not the world we live in. The only way to get a free market economy would be to abolish corporations, abolish the current government, demolish the infrastructure, and start from scratch. Why? Because for every email, vote, and action taken by a citizen, a corporation will pay X dollars to a lobbyist to drip honey in senator's ears. To get a free market economy, you'd have to get rid of lobbying, all of the laws influenced by lobbying, the lobbyists, and all of the senators who were put in place by campaign contributions from corporations.
Besides, as long as there is a system to game, people will game it, why shouldn't the local government game it for the direct benefit of its citizens?
Is it sad that I am more likely to recognize you and your posts by your sig than your name or UID?
I'm not defending TWC in any way, but municipal Internet systems are generally a bad idea. They don't keep pace with technology improvements and the cross-subsidy from the grants and what not tends to drive all the commercial systems out of the community.
Altoona PA was a good example. They created a municipal dialup system in the mid-90's because they thought that $20 was too much to pay for dialup. They were still stuck with it in the middle of this decade because they'd driven out the ISPs who would have brought in DSL and Cable modems.
Municipal physical infrastructure (like Utopia out in Utah) is a somewhat better idea. There you reframe the competitive process without ending it.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.