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Argentine Government Orders Major ISP To Close
Doctor Jonas writes "Argentine ISP Fibertel has been barred from continuing operations because of the dissolution of their status as a company after they were absorbed by Cablevisión of Argentina, now part of media conglomerate Grupo Clarín. The Minister of Planning, Julio de Vido, announced the measure, and said it was Grupo Clarín's own doing by having shut down the Fibertel company and turning it into a commercial brand, and that ISP licenses are not transferable after acquisitions from one company to the other. The Argentine opposition said the move was another attack on Grupo Clarín's standing and another part of the feud between them and President Cristina Fernández and her husband, former president Nestor Kirchner. Cablevisión has promised to go to the courts to overturn the decision, and the opposition seeks to protect Fibertel's continuing operations through a bill in Congress. More than a million households and businesses would need to change ISPs in merely 90 days, possibly strengthening the internet provisioning dominance of both Telefónica (subsidiary of the Spanish Telefonica) and Telecom."
Can anybody or the editors explain the relevance to "my rights online" of this story,
Politics can have effects on all of us, even if we don't care about politics.
"Trust me - I know what I'm doing."
- Sledge Hammer
There are slashdot readers in most of the world. And yes, the world IS not the usa. And by the way, just so you know, telefónica IS part of the third largest financial group in the world. Welcome to earth, usaian
NO SIG
I'm one of the affected million and I will have to change ISPs. Fibertel used to throttle youtube all the time, but apart from that the service was good, if a little expensive. They are part of a huge news-controlling monopoly, broke the law, and they got what they deserve. There are many choices of broadband internet over here, so I basically don't give a sh*t.
The URL is not Fibertel.com. Is fibertel.com.ar
"More than a million households and businesses would need to change ISPs in merely 90 days"
Technically, yes. In reality, not quite. Since Grupo Clarin will sue for its rights, the shut down of the company won't happen until all the trials are finished. Since justice takes a long time in Argentina, it will be some months before the users have to switch ISPs, and there is the chance that the trials carry on way past october 2011, when the next president is elected, so the decision may be overturned before it actually takes effect.
Still, there is a lot of misinformation on this story around here, so some people still believe the company is already shutting down, which is draining their customer base. Also, until the justice rules on the case, Fibertel won't be able to sell its service to new customers, to the advantage of other ISPs.
I myself have been using Fibertel for the past 5 years and had no complaint so far. Still, they do belong to Grupo Clarin, which is a huge monopoly around here, so the decision is not all that ilogical.
Brazil is a country.
Argentina is a different country.
For some of us, this apparently is an exciting development.
in north america, cablevision are the victimizers
but in south america, cablevisión are the victimized
it has to do with everything in reverse in the antipodes: summer is winter, night is day, good is bad, and i believe gravity works in reverse down there
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I totally agree. In this case the government just applied the law. It is questioned because the measure happened to be against a big group (they own a lot of media; TV, newspapers, radios...) which is opposed to the actual government. But that ISP was providing its services without a license totally aware of it. So in this case justice was served.
Well, I'm not from Argentina and the news are interesting to me.
If you're not interested, just jump to the next news. No need to be an ass.
In Soviet Russia, Major ISP closes YOU!
This is part of the intention by the government to stop the merger of the two biggest cable providers. The merger has already been done, despite it being rejected ( http://www.buenosairesherald.com/BreakingNews/View/10918 ). The new merged company dissolved one of the parts, without getting the license to operate under the new company. So, now they are operating under a license belonging to a company which no longer exists.
The issue here is government vs media giants. Antimonopoly measures, which are common in developed countries, have a lot more opposition in non-developed countries, where economic interests go over the people's interest (yes, more than in the US =) ).
Well - it doesn't say "Your rights online IN AMERICA", does it? It looks to me that some country is diddling around with their citizens rights to get online with the company of their choice. Rights. Online. OK, maybe it has little to do with YOUR rights, but then, who the hell are YOU?
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Grupo Clarín owns the national major newspaper, and seems to control the 2nd major one. It owns TV channels in every town and city, and in many cities is the only cable operator. It controls the only newspaper paper plant in Argentina and uses prices to undermine other newspapers.
As I explained in another comment, this is really about the government trying to stop a new merger, because Clarin had acquired the 2nd largest cable company in Argentina. The govt rejected the merger, but Clarín went ahead and dissolved the company, creating for itself an illegal situation (because the ISP license belonged to the old comany, which is now dissolved).
We are here in very interesting times regarding the role of journalism, and the fight agains media giants...
You're probably not old enough to remember, but Lurleen Wallace was elected to replace her husband as Governor of Alabama in 1967 (Only one term per person there.) with the campaign slogan of "Let George do it."
Good, inexpensive web hosting
Weird how this same government approved the merger they are trying to stop now. Yes, it was former president Nestor Kirchner the one who approved the merger. Now, somehow Cristina Kirchner, the ex president wife suddenly realizes is a bad merge. Strange, isn't it?
Just because it doesn't have any effect on you doesn't mean it doesn't affect anyone, say, in Argentina. Although most /. readers may be anti-corporate, the idea that a government can just hand-wave and shutdown a major ISP is somewhat unsettling. Even though this doesn't affect me personally, I would still consider this a "rights" issue - as in the right to choose one's ISP, without the government interfering and saying who can and who can't be an ISP.
AccountKiller
So, allow me to provide a little bit more information on this subject.
Our current government has that schizophrenic touch that Bush had. Their policy is the same that Bush had: Helping their corporate friends, pushing an agenda.
Clarin is the largest spanish newspaper in the world. That includes all of Latin America + Spain. The Clarin Group, the holding behind the newspaper, also owns several other newspapers, several TV channels, publishing companies, and a lot of other companies in media and communications. It's one of the largest companies in South America, and it has huge worldwide influences.
They have been in a fight for market penetration and control of the media with Telefonica for 2 decades. Our former President Nestor Kirchner, Secretary General of the Union of South American Nations and husband of our current president, had overwhelming support from Clarin, they actually helped him to achieve the presidency. Later, their relationships got a lot more tense when Nestor Kirchner did a few deals with Telefonica. Eventually, Clarin had withdrawn thoverhwellmingeir support, and had became his number one public enemy.
Now, Nestor's wife (Cristina) is our president. Just like him, she's a fucking cunt, with a lot of personal interests that she has no moral issues pushing all the time, and a lot of friends to help out. Just like bush, they had interests in Oil companies, and in several big industries, and also in real estate. Pushing their own business is their only interest.
So, this is just a move to pressure the Clarin group. This is a way to silence the bad publicity they've been getting from Clarin lately. It's a douchebag move.
The worst thing about this is, Fibertel was owned by Cablevision. Later, with the approval of Nestor Kirchner, Clarin, through one of their subsidiaries (Multicanal: The Argentinian Comcast) bought Cablevision and therefore Fibertel. Now the government claims that data transmission licenses are nontransferable, and that therefore Fibertel is operating illegally. Also, Clarin owns almost 300 different licenses from several companies they have acquired throughout the years. That is highly irregular, and the government is using that as an excuse too.
The worst thing here is that there are not many alternatives in here where it comes to Internet access.
In Buenos Aires (Argentina's Capital City) and nearby cities (Metropolitan Area) there are several providers, such as iplan, fibertel, telefonica, telecom, telmex, telecentro, and others. In the rest of the country, the options are much more limited. There is surely one DSL provider (Either Telefonica's Speedy or Telecom's Arnet, and in most places there is also a cablemodem provider (Fibertel), a Wimax provider (Telmex), and some small local services, usually cooperatives or small wireless companies. And that's all. Telefonica sucks big time, both technically and commercially, and Fibertel is the only decent alternative, both technically and economically.
You can get a decent 3MB cablemodem from Fibertel for ~40 dollars (160 pesos).
Of course, Fibertel is not going to die. They are either going to appeal and win (or at least delay this for years to come), or sell the whole infrastructure to someone. Anyway, this is just the government reminding us that it can fuck with us whenever it wants.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
I'm argentinian too, (and I'm affected) and let me fill up fellow slashdotters a little more on this. Grupo Clarin is a _huge_ media monopoly and the second largest company in the country. They own pretty much everything, every of the most relevant newspaper, cable TV company, Air TV signal, radio, broadband, media producers, etc. Until recently they have also all the monopoly on broadcasting all soccer games (soccer is big here). They slowly acquired monopoly status thanks to laws passed during dictatorship times (which they favored).
Grupo Clarin's reach is so large that they control most of the public thinking, and many times helped coups or to overthrow presidents that didn't get along well with them. They used to be in a good relationship with the current government until a few years ago, when something mysterious happened and they became enemies (it's not certain what happened, but most likely that the government blocked them access to entering them into telephony, by favoring other companies, so they couldn't expand their monopoly). As a result, every single day the largest newspapers, TV channels, etc attack the government in any way they can, fabricating negative scenarios, taking government claims out of context, etc, reducing significantly the positive image of the president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner.
The government, in exchange, started passing several anti-monopoly laws to break Grupo Clarin, revoking their licenses, taking their grants for soccer broadcasting away, as well as prosecuting them for the crimes they committed during dictatorship.
As a personal view, I feel my fellow argentinians are too blinded by the two-way hate, and too worried about taking sides, that don't realize this mutual destruction between the media monopoly and the current government (one of the most corrupt governments in our history) is probably very beneficial for the country, as it's like killing two birds with one stone..
You may want to take a look at wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cristina_Fern%C3%A1ndez_de_Kirchner "She won with 45.3% of the vote, a 22% lead over her nearest rival. This was the widest margin obtained by a candidate since civil rule was reinstalled in 1983, and avoided the need for a runoff election." "In 1995, Fernández was elected to represent Santa Cruz in the Senate. She was elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1997, and in 2001, returned to the Senate." And I must say in Argentina there is a two-term limit, but it was his husband's first term when she got elected. Last year the congress passed a bill changing the law ruling communications. The old law was there since the last dictatorship and among other things prohibited NGO to own a media, even a small radio station. Now the big media conglomerates are criticising every action the government takes because their well-protected monopolies are going to disappear (they'll have to un-invest in all the companies they absorved just to avoid different editorial lines). Grupo Clarin (Clarin Group) is the biggest of these conglomerates and states this is an attack to them, but the reality is that they were operating an ISP illegaly without a license and the measure taken by the government was executed according to law.
T!
He's just playing a character: the ignorant American. I'm from a country south of the border and I'm not the least bit offended by him. I actually thought it was funny. Lighten up!
They have bought media companies all around the country. They bought tv stations in every major city and shut down local programming. They produce everything in Buenos Aires and it's seen in the whole country. It won't boe a problem if there were local alternatives, but since Clarin bought them... The same goes with newspapers and radio station. Now, they owned a cable company named Multicanal. The only competence was Cablevision, but they have divided coverage areas so they don't overlap, so there was no real competence. They provided cablemodem service over Multicanal, but it was really shitty and nobody used it. What they did is buy stakes from foreign holders of Cablevision so they could control both cable companies, and now they have done a customer reacomodation, meaning that you had multicanal and now you have cablevision and multicanal has no customers. Fibertel (The ISP) was a company owned by the same owners of Cablevision. Fibertel was licensed to provide cablemodem, but Cablevision was denied, so the trick was Fibertel owning the cable wires and providing internet access, and Cablevision "renting" fibertel's network and providing cable signal. If you had the two services, you had to pay two bills separately. On Jan 15 Grupo Clarin made Cablevision absorb Fibertel, dissolving Fibertel's legal personality, but intended to use the license granted to Fibertel. In Argentine law, in a regulated communications market, these licences are not transferibles, so that was not approved by the government and were told to stop subscribing new customers. They didn't stop, and tryed to keep operating illegaly.
T!
It's about "rights" because one of the corporations involved, Grupo Clarín, is a media company that has an editorial policy that opposes the current government of Argentina.
It's not a business decision, it's a political decision, and a frightening one.
Actually, South America is the original America.
When Amerigo Vespucci explored the coast of Brazil in the early 1500s the data he brought back to Europe was used by a cartographer to draw a map where the land was named America in his honor. The naming of North America came later.
In conclusion, and at the risk of being moderated "flamebait", I must say that to me a citizen of North America calling himself an American is more or less like a citizen of West Virginia calling himself a Virginian. Not quite correct historically, but OK, so what.
Yes, we call them 1st Lady. There are term limits: 4 years and 2 consecutive administrations. But this goverment (wife and husband) is not known for its transparency. They are agressive, rely on patronage and are constantly lying and distorting the reality of the country (statistics are compromised, there is a huge insecurity problem which is labeled as a "sensation"). I always find it hard to explain to people from other countries what the reality of this country is since it is so corrupted at every single level, that they can't often believe it.