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Kentucky Telephone Companies Pushing For Option To End Basic Service
An anonymous reader writes "There is a bill pending in the Kentucky State Senate that would eliminate almost all Public Service Commission oversight over local phone companies. Written by AT&T lobbyists, SB135 is being pushed by the phone companies as a 'modernization' of rules. It would keep the PSC from investigating phone service on its own and eliminate rules concerning price discrimination, price increases, required published rates, and performance objectives. It also will prevent any state agency from imposing net neutrality, and will enable phone companies to use the fact that there are cell phones to refuse to run a land line. The text of the bill is available online."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2BfqDUPL1I
Money talks. 'nuff said.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
I can see allowing them to do all that, as soon as they are no longer the only choice in town, oh and all the subsidies that the government paid for installing the lines need to be paid back as well.
This sounds like a fine idea. But since they're truly free of regulatory shackles, they should have no problem paying whatever market rate the city wishes to charge them to rent the space under the streets that their lines run through.
Fine with me. Let them shoot their mostly rural population in the foot -- as long as the telcos give up the Universal Service Fund.
You want to live back in the hills, sure, just get used to driving into town to make a phone call.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Anyone see anything wrong with this picture?
If you need any evidence why privatizing government services is a bad idea this is it.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Right now it's illegal for anyone to run phone cable in ATT or verizon's territory. they have government backed monopolies of these areas. Sure, they are forced to share bandwidth with other providers but those providers have no control over the cable or the prices charged for using it.
Open it up so that other companies are allowed to run cable. They might now run cable... no one will be forcing them to do it. But they'll have the option and maybe if ATT acts badly that will give a rival company an incentive to step in and offer a superior service at a lower price.
All these old grandfathered monopolies need to die. Throw holy water in their eyes, jam a fist full of garlic in their mouths, and drive a wooden stake through their hearts.
If they competed without these rules they'd never even consider this sort of nonsense. Their competitors would eat them alive... probably with fave beans
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
This is the fate of the US phone system. Once there are fewer than a basic minimum number of subscribers it will become extremely unprofitable to even maintain the wires that have connected the country for 80+ years. You can assume that the wires will not be maintained out of charity.
Best be getting a cell phone is what that means. Oh, your rural area is underserved by cell towers? Too bad, that. Better move to the city where service is better.
Did you not think flight from landline service would have consequences? It sure does, and it is really going to suck for some people. Aren't you glad you dropped your land line ages ago?
There is no way the government can somehow force the telephone companies to maintain service at a huge loss. They aren't going to do it. And that means the end of the universal nature of the US phone system. This is a direct outgrowth of people dropping land line (regulated) service for an unregulated cell phone service.
No doubt there will be a "fair & balanced" amendment added to this Kentucky legislation that would force the local telephone companies to surrender all rights to their no-longer-serviced basic phone service "right-of-way" granted by the state. No? WTF! That's shocking news ...
Requiring them to carry the expense of installing copper twisted pairs and the equipment to operate it is outdated thinking. It's low bandwidth, short distance, and generally a waste of time and money for everyone involved.
Rather, they should be required to install fiber to the home, technology that should have a 30-50 year lifespan, can bring high speed data to rural america, and operates for much longer distances reducing their equipment cost.
Your phone company wants to service you, but you aren't going to like it!
Fuck you too, AT&T!
I have long suspected that phone service would be almost free if the government didn't force me to subsidize low-income subscribers.
Given that Kentucky sends to the Senate TWO of the WORST IDIOTS, it would appear likely that Kentucky will probably just end up screwing itself ... if the same kind of people are also in their legislature.
Business, especially big business, simply cannot be trusted and needs government supervision. Fox. Hen house.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
I work for a telco, and we have territory in TN. I even used to work for ATT (yes they suck to work for) I used to work PSC complaints. They're a joke. 90% of them are filed by the mentaly ill who claim their phones are being tapped. We really do send someone out to show them the NID and ped to show there is no electronic device installed while they chat on theie cordless phone. The complaints that remain are almost entirely related to buisness's that decided to go cheap on their building site and are angry the phone company wont run a t1 over a mountain, across a river and under several freeways to get.to their building site they got fpr $200/acre. Yes the psc doles out fines... but those are based on # of customers affected * minuites out of service > (some number) then small fine. and guess who decides how many people were affected and for how long... the psc is useless
I live in a rural part of Alberta and I've been told the phone company really wants to get us all on VoIP over the existing WiMax network that runs here. That way they don't have to run wire out to new farm homes. In fact there are several miles of phone wire laying in the ditches around here that the company refuses to bury. I think they hope that if it gets cut by mowers and farm machines enough times that we'll beg for VoIP over wireless. The wireless WiMax system is pretty reliable, but not totally. It goes down in storms, for example. So if we were ever forced to this system, I think I'll be extremely grateful to have my HAM license and HAM station here for emergencies.
Sounds like rural Kentuckians really need to line up and get licenses and at least basic VHF radios. They're going to need them.
A debate on this would be fun to watch. The set of Rand Paul supporters should be in favor of the proposed bill on libertarian grounds, while the set of people who live in rural areas (and can foresee the inevitable price spike and service cuts that would follow adoption of the bill) would make for lively opposite sides. The fun part will be watching those in the intersection of these sets wrestle with the idea. Unfortunately, the bill's sponsor has forseen the service cuts. From TFA: "The bill's sponsor, Sen. Paul Hornback, R-Shelbyville, said he doesn't want households to lose any existing phone service. Hornback said he will change the language in his bill to make that clear". Of course, Senator Hornback's wants don't count - only what's in the bill counts. If the bill passes, the fun part will be watching the phone companies weasel their way out of providing service while sticking to the letter of the law.
Hold the phone, Alexander Graham, what the fuck are "AT&T lobbyists" doing writing laws? Am I the only one whose gore rises whenever our legislators vote on laws that are written by the companies the government is supposed to regulate?
The US gov't is tasked with regulating business just as surely and as constitutionally as it is tasked with protecting national security. So where are the congressional hearings about why industry lobbyists are writing laws?
Right here on Slashdot, we've got a user, and early adopter, who is a New Hampshire legislator. A member of the lower house of the N.H. congress, and he's a big fan of ALEC, which is an acronym that stands for "19 billionaires who lobby for their own rich asses" or something like that. It probably actually stands for "American Legislation Exchange Committee for Family Prosperity and Progress into the Victorious Future", but if I go to their website to get the actual meaning of the acronym I'm liable to throw another 24" LED monitor ($179 at Tiger Direct) against the fucking wall and my wife swore she wasn't going to help me clean it up if I did that again.
Anyway, this ALEC, this lobbying group for these 19 rich guys (yes, it really is 19) is responsible for writing almost all the major legislation passed by every Republican-controlled state congress in the US. That's right, these guys send out boilerplate to GOP run state legislatures who plug in the name of their state where it says "Your State Name Here" on the PDF file that ALEC so helpfully sends them attached to an email with the subject line, "FWD:Pass this bill, you slimy little fuck or we'll put $5million into a primary challenge against you next election and you'll never see another envelope from us".
Anyway, this New Hampshire legislator, Seth Cohn, who thinks ALEC is just the tits tells me ALEC is just a friendly organization who advises legislators and gives them "good, clean code" to work with, as if ALEC was the teabagger equivalent of O'Reilly Publishing or the Open Source Initiative or something. Of course, these ALEC-written laws include laws to make sure blacks and poor people and students can't vote, and prisons get privatized and certain energy conglomerates get fat tax subsidies and schools change their science curriculum to teach the "controversy" that is global warming, but to this Slashdot user/New Hampshire congressperson, it's just "good code".
Lobbyists writing our laws. What could possibly go wrong?
Wait, wait, I've got something here...OK, this is something that dirty hippie, Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1816, and I'll leave you with this:
That's almost 200 years ago, from one of the dudes that invented this country. He already knew where it was going and he warned us. So when I read about "AT&T lobbyists" writing SB135, it makes me want to go out and occupy something like maybe some lobbyist's fat ass with my shoe.
You are welcome on my lawn.
We today live in an age of rampant deregulation in many large industries, and many people and politicians believe that corporations will act responsibly without regulation. But let me bring you back to a prior age, the Gilded age and the Progressive era. In post industrial revolution america there was a serious lack of workplace and corporate regulations, the most famous of these was the meatpacking industry. In "The Jungle" by Upton Sinclaire, the meat packing industry was uncovered as to its disgusting an unethical business practices, the gory details of which you can read in the well written novel.
In a round about way, many people believe that deregulation is good, and this bill is an excellent example of deregulation, and may in fact be beneficial, but history has taught us that businesses will not act responsibly, a prime example being Northern Securities, a railroad trust operating in the northern Midwest, which was busted apart by Roosevelt in 1904. The railroads in the midwest had been engaging in price discrimination for years, which had been seriously hurting midwestern farmers, and were detrimental to the nations economy, benefiting only the elite few.
I fear only that deregulation in the celular industry will benefit only the corporations and will hurt end consumers. I also fear that many influential individuals have not adequately learned many of the valuable lessons that history has taught us, especially from this deregulated time in American history.
I will admit that some of my fears amy be unfounded, there are still many protective regulations, and many of the monopolies that allowed for price discrimination that was seen cannot exist any more.
I've already started something on Twitter to stop this bill.
Geek Hillbilly
No, it's not fine with you, even if you don't live in Kentucky. Once something like this passes in one state, it is much, much easier to get it passed in others.
Good luck with your telco tubes :)
I just hope your local gov was smart enough to insert a "open for any telco business" in.
Get some friendly, smart people in from Canadian, South Africa, German, Russian, Australian ect. to run some cheap optical with a smile for any county, city or zone that asks for some competition and options.
If you want to be the only telco you get special legal protections. Demand to be free of gov oversight, your state is now free to shop around too.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Don't end the requirement, update it.
Fiber for everyone. Google thinks they can do it don't they?
And how poor is Kentucky? I live in an older neighborhood with large lots, but everyone is either old or poor right now. 40mb uncapped DSL all around me, but I've still got only the worst 1.5mb available on my block. My cable company has a better network, and unfortunately they have a bandwidth cap and 50c/GB charge for overages.
I have to give it to my cable company though, they provide (mostly) reliable telephone, 50mb cable internet, and cheap cable tv for a low price.
But really what I want to know is this: if twisted pair isn't good anymore, why not change the requirement to something that's more economically viable?
They used the same argumnent about the phase out of analog TV. It is going to leave the elderly and poor behind...i dont think that happend. They found a way to get a big government subsidy to give out free converter boxes.
What ATT will do is get the government to finance a massive vDSL deployment in these areas and plop an ATA out there on a little battery (they get to keep their phone number and their phone) oh...and we will also give you a video and internet feed. Technology for everyone...ATT bankrolls an upgrade and then reduces their operating cost and increases their revenues. The PSC is supposed to keep that in check but there are a bunch of former ATT/BellSouth exec's sitting on the commission so it is what it is...
Once in a while you can get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right. -Hunter/Garcia
because it's so damn unprofitable for them.. they should just sell..
or better yet, break up the rural areas into smaller companies servicing a few counties each and give them away (that's right, GIVE, as in no-charge, gratis.. seeing how sbc-turned-at&t and its various acquisitions over the years have benefited greatly from generations of being a monopoly) -- turning them into customer-owned cooperatives instead.
in our rural areas, we have telephone co-ops and they do rather well.. in fact, they have built out dsl service just about *everywhere* stretching from town to town even when it's 20-30 miles between them... sure, prices are a little higher than adjacent at&t-controlled markets, but the co-ops do just fine... and even return some of their profits back to their members in the form of annual dividends (the rest goes back into the co-op, not some executive's pocket). how do they do it? they answer to the members (who are the customers) NOT just shareholders of public stock (who care only about profits not how they're made)... they are driven more by service standards and service availability than by profits. what a concept.
____
additionally, i think that since wireless has surpassed wireline in number of lines served, wireless should be regulated (including regulatory approval and oversight of rate increases, contract terms, fees, service standards, etc) JUST LIKE wireline service has been.
i also don't think wireline service is obsolete. i think there is a market for a physical connection to every residential unit and business in the country and will be for at least another generation or two. it is still the easiest, most efficient, and most secure way to deliver communication services (voice, high-bandwidth data, video, etc) to fixed locations.
The incumbent phone companies like Verizon are putting in fiber as fast as they can. They have to share the copper, but they do not have to share their fiber.
I really shouldn't have used someone else's email address for this account.
That's how it works in the countries where Internet access is fast and cheap.
Kentucky has phones?
(Before I get started, I would like to acknowledge that this bill is indeed a steaming pile of horse$hit. Now, back to my regularly scheduled criticism of knee-jerk Slashdot populism.)
It is not at all uncommon for bills to be written by those with an interest in the matter. What's the alternative?
Let's say Congressman X gets a bug up his butt about righting some wrong... we'll use warrantless wiretapping as an example. He needs to write a bill, and one that will not be as full of holes as Swiss cheese. The best person to write such a bill is a lawyer. Now, Mr. X isn't a lawyer and has not used his staff budget to hire an expensive civil liberties lawyer on retainer. Where does he go?
Well, a logical solution is the EFF or ACLU, but those are a bunch of lobbyists too. Who, exactly, is supposed to write this legislation in a way that it can be fairly certain it'll actually work?
Just because a bill is written by a lobbyist does not mean it's defective by design. Just because a bill is written by a company with a financial interest in the bill does not mean it's inherently defective. The congressman is more than welcome to reject or modify the bill, or pay a (smaller) amount of money to a lawyer to review it. Yes, many congressman are unduly influenced by things like campaign contributions, but that is a separate question from where bills come from.
I mean, its not uncommon for dictators to abuse their power and privilege. It's not uncommon for people to break the law. But we don't say it's OK.
Except you, when it comes to corporate rights...
We should seize infrastructure via Eminent Domain and turn it into co-ops.
Companies should be able to own web sites but not the wire, fiber or frequencies everyone needs to use.
The government siezes people's houses, land and property 'for the common good' on a regular basis.
We should do the same to all natural monopolies and obstructionist patent and copyright hoarders.
So who exactly is supposed to write the bills?
And where in my post did I say anything about "corporate rights"?
We vote in representatives to vote on bills. They are supposed to use their judgement as informed citizens to decide if a bill meets the interests of his/her constituents. They are supposed to be making their best guess, just like we rely on citizen juries to evaluate evidence to make an informed judgement during trials.
The bills need to come from somewhere, and unless we have a congress packed with lawyers, those bills have to come from somewhere other than individual legislators.
Yep, the whole system is rife with holes, bias, and potential for corruption, but I have not yet seen an alternative system that's any better.
I thought there was a national security interest in providing communication service, even just 9-1-1 emergency service, to the people who grow the food that you eat.
The bills need to come from somewhere
Then why do the bills so much more often come from entities that seek monopoly rent than from entities promoting the public interest?
Running cable multiple times is just ridiculous. You want every company to repeat what the previous company did, really?
We already have a Shell gas station. Why add a Marathon across the street? (Answer: To add more capacity and avoid a single point of failure.)
We already own one hard disk. Why add more in a RAID? (Same answer.)
The idea is that it is wasteful for multiple companies to run multiple cables which do the same thing
And this idea has been debunked. It's no more wasteful than putting more disks in a RAID is wasteful. The waste comes from local governments' inability to efficiently price access to tear up the roads (PDF).
I thought the organizational structure of growing food in the developed world had changed so much since the days of the idyllic family farm that farmers could get long runs of fiber to the premises subsidized by their agribusiness bosses.
As a Kentuckian I'm extremely disappointed that the sponsor would even think something of this nature is a good idea. As a Republican (technically) I'm noticing that I'm less and less "in line" with the party as time goes on. It's especially noticeable to me the last election here... I need a party that's young and flexible enough to be smart about technology, strong on individual rights and liberties (but balanced with individual responsibility!), and that has the teeth to take on bonehead moves like this. Anonymous doesn't count.
Patience is a virtue, but haste is my life.
Why can't the telco install redundant fiber so that the network can treat damage as damage and route around it?
But with a market monopoly, you can have another provider (though you are not entitled to it, as many assume). With a coercive monopoly, you cannot even have that.
There really isn't much of a difference considering how a successful market monopolist will engage in rent-seeking lobbying in order to have the government grant it a coercive monopoly.
I live just outside of Louisville, Kentucky @23 miles from downtown. I still don't have access to any sort of broadband besides satellite Internet @$65 a month. Cellular service is horrible in my area, Dsl won't run out here and neither will cable. With no plans in the future to do so. If the goverment has pushed in the past for LAST MILE coverage I've sure not seen it. I live on a major thoroughfare have DSL @3 miles away in one direction and Cable within 2 miles the other. But yet neither plans on running any lines at all my direction INBETWEEN..WTF
And this proposal does not change that, it only allows changes in the event there are so few people in an area it is not practical to run wire and there are alternative methods available to people.
Okay, that's fine. Give up your rights to those landlines and abandon all infrastructure for the people to take over and maintain. You get wireless in exchange for all your wired infrastructure.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Ideally, increasing prices charged to utilities for access to rights of way would result in a more efficient business model, where companies tear up the roads once to pull conduit and then sublet the conduit to utilities.
If they're putting in the fiber on the same right-of-way, they should have to share it similarly.
AC
The time of the Phone is over.
And the Monopoly on the Internet must end.
The FCC must free up Radio bandwidth for open communications. Think open roof top router grid, with many Ma and Pa ISP's to pick from.