Slashdot Mirror
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.
If connecting GMRS and MURS stations to the phone system were legal, this would be an easier problem to solve. People in rural areas could set up wireless services for themselves, essentially creating their own cooperative cell phone networks.
Not that the telcos want to change those regulations.
Palm trees and 8
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'm normally a peaceful guy, but this one calls for a flogging (at the polls).
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
I really don't understand why people aren't taking this into their own hands. Why limit yourself to wireless or nothing at all? Lay fiber. It really is not hard. Rural communities must have people who know how to move dirt. Commercially that's the most expensive part. I'm sure you'll find a bunch of geeks who would love to learn by doing the rest, except the dirt moving bit. Phone service is trivial once you have steady and fast internet access. That's what VoIP is for.
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
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 doubt there are any lack of geeks who wouldn't love to get behind the wheel of a backhoe.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
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
I have long suspected that phone service would be almost free if the government didn't force me to subsidize low-income subscribers.
Unfortunately, you live in a society.
Thank you, Edward Snowden.
"Arguments from authority are worthless." —Carl Sagan
(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.
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).
If government can be bought, the basic problem to solve lies with the government, not with the buyer.