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CenturyLink: Comcast Is Trying To Prevent Competition In Its Territories
mpicpp sends word that CenturyLink has accused Comcast of restricting competition in the development of internet infrastructure. CenturyLink asked the FCC to block the acquisition of Time Warner Cable to prevent Comcast from further abusing its size and power. For example, Comcast is urging local authorities to deny CenturyLink permission to build out new infrastructure if they can't reach all of a city's residents during the initial buildout. Of course, a full buildout into a brand new market is much more expensive than installing connections a bit at a time. Comcast argues that CenturyLink shouldn't be able to cherry-pick the wealthy neighborhoods and avoid the poor ones. CenturyLink points out that no other ISP complains about this, and says allowing the merger would let Comcast extend these tactics to regions currently operated by Time Warner Cable.
Why shouldn't companies be able to cherry pick wealthy neighborhoods and offer their services there?
CenturyLink is simply attempting to roll out their IPTV platform in markets where they already maintain their ILEC status. They are a KSO for DirecTV, meaning they already have the ability to provide their customers with a video product. Offering DirecTV doesn't require a franchise agreement because it does not involve the public right-of-way.
Seems odd they are crying foul over not being able to roll out IPTV to a select few neighborhoods because it requires a franchise agreement (which most franchise agreements specifically require a provider to offer this to 'x' amount of homes within a mile radius).
If this is in fact for CenturyLink's ILEC territory, they already cover every home. Problem is, their coverage is not consistent, they still have 1.5mbps DSL in a lot of areas, thus they could never claim their IPTV product can reach everyone.
So instead of focusing CAPEX on improving their territory, they choose to fight a battle with Comcast over rolling out IPTV to select areas.
Just another foolish fight between two companies that will distract consumers from the real issue.
I thought that's what the Universal Service Scam was supposed to pay for.
Should be forced to build out to poor areas. Reason is they will do exactly as Comcast says, they will not upgrade the rest of their piss poor infrastructure leaving it like it is now, where many houses even in nice neighborhoods can only get 1.5Mbps shit. Lucky for us Comcast is around because cable is the only viable Internet solution currently available because companies like CenturyLink fell back on promises of delivering proper broadband and deploying fiber ages ago.
Did you know in the 1990s these phone companies said the definition of broadband was 40Mbps and they would deploy it if given what they wanted? We never saw it and they got what they wanted.
What we gotta realize is that these companies aren't around to be purely profit driven and they have a mandated duty as a utility company to properly deploy fiber to each and every home which is consistent with keeping their systems modern and capable, which the public has an interest in. If we don't add important requirements for them to follow they shit on people and never do their job, which their job is to do what the communities around them want.
I am also for making it so whom ever deploys fiber first can do it, even the city, state, federal government, or private company, even if existing franchise agreements disallow it. BECAUSE WE SHOULD HAVE HAD FIBER DEPLOYED 14+ FUCKING YEARS AGO BUT IT DIDN'T HAPPEN BECAUSE OF THIS NON SENSE AND PRICKS IN POWER THAT LET THE COMPANIES MILK THE SYSTEM.
im pretty sure they don't build their network out into "low-density" areas unless they have too, and from my personal (anecdotal) experience, they certainly weren't in any rush to bring cable service into the poor areas of my town when they first came in.
It is preventing competition, flat-out, non-stop.
What do you think their legislation is about? They're not paying those lobbyists all that money to NOT get results.
My experience in this stems from this research:
There's talk that the city of Munich, Germany-a bastion of open-souce idealism-will give up hope and move from its LiMux-brand of Linux to Microsoft Windows. Everyone is trying to understand this with a lot of online complaining.
I like Linux and would love to just go all-in with it as the mavens tell me I can do. But I cannot. I use these computers to make a living by writing and podcasting. I also produce photographic art as a hobby. I can't accomplish any of this with Linux.
Yes, I can kind of "get by" but that's about it. There are a lot of products that I need that will run on WINE, a chunk of code that allows Windows software to run on Linux. It's not perfect. It takes tweaking, there are all sorts of issues, and, more importantly, what's the point? If I have to run Windows applications, I want Windows, don't I?
It's like vegetarians who crave meat and eat meat-"flavored" tofu burgers instead. Again, what's the point?
I want native applications on Linux. While there are thousands of functional applications that run great they do not cut it in the end.
For example, I tried with the help of Linux experts to get a podcasting rig to run a simple digital-to-analog converter and pre-amp over Skype. Forget it. Nothing worked right. Linux did not like the gear and Skype on Linux stinks.
I also noticed a curious phenomenon within the Linux expert community of making suggestions that don't work. When called out for the fail, the expert would always say, "Well, I never tried it, I just heard that it worked." This commonality is deadly and seems universal.
Then we have Photoshop, Illustrator, and the entire Adobe universe. None of it runs on Linux natively and people "have heard" that it runs okay on WINE. This is no good. Then GIMP enters the conversation. Yes, as a Photoshop clone it's actually pretty good. But the name says it all: hobbled.
Now we move on to the Office Suite from Microsoft. There are many good competitors in this space, many free. They all seem perfect for the small office or even a city government, like in Munich. The word processors, in particular, are very much like the reliable versions of MS-Word-you know, before the appearance of the "ribbon" interface.
People in the Windows world can find these suites on Windows, too, namely Libre Office and Apache OpenOffice. Both are fully functional office suites.
Microsoft does not like these things and performed format changes, such as adding the .docx format. That was a setback for the clones because .docx became the default "save as" format for Word and too many users could not figure out how to save any other way; docx became a fly in the ointment for clone suite users. I always told people it was rude to use .docx, because it is. Not every computer user in the world can read this format.
Ironically, Microsoft didn't need to change anything. Word is just better. Excel is better. PowerPoint is better. It's that simple.
When I tried to get my own family to use the alternative Office Suites, they rejected every option. My wife, for example, likes the Windows way of tracking and saving all changes in a document, and the ability to reclaim old text. Why anyone wants to keep what I consider junk is beyond me.
Nobody was going for it. And I admit that while I do not care about tracking changes, I do like the grammar checker on Word. It needs improvement, but it does a good superficial sweep and catches little errors. This is particularly handy for professional writers, many of whom are sloppy and expect the waning army of editors to fix things. I also think the Microsoft spell checker is better than the alternatives.
Unter gleeben glauben globen. If I want a word processor to create e-books, for example, or to organize large texts I use Scrivener. Does Scrivener run on Linux? Maybe someday. I still do the original writing in Word, then run it to Scrivener for organizing and
The only other options are satellite and DSL... they successfully prevented competition when they threw their "we no share our cables" fit awhile back.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Dog bites man.
Oh, so ComCast doesn't want CenturyLink doing exactly what it does with its own infrastructure?
I switch from century link to comcast, but when my 6-month trial price expired and I tried to switch back, century link said they couldn't offer me broadband service because their lines in my neighborhood were at capacity (i'm supposedly on a waiting list). Meanwhile comcast more than doubled their introductory price on me.
Xcel just replaced all the gas pipelines throughout the entire neighborhood last summer and the city just repaved most of the streets, so I was SURE there would be some opportunity for century link to put in new infrastructure relatively cheaply at the same time. But no, they STILL can't offer me service.
Up until now, I figured century link was just too cheap to build infrastructure in my neighborhood. Now I wonder if it isn't really their fault. I love to hate century link, but I'm even more eager to hate comcast.
And for the record, I'm white and middle class (as is most of my neighborhood, though I am notoriously cheap and unwilling to pay for stupid bundle I don't need). Not that racism or poorism doesn't contribute to their decisions, but don't blame on malice and -isms what greed or stupidity can explain.
I would expect nothing less out of the mouths of Comcast.
If comcast wants to have monopoly power, if they want to act like a monopoly.. We should turn them into a monopoly. A government owned, government run, public service monopoly.
Or threaten to carve them up like Ma Bell.
Dollars to doughnuts they'd start playing nice as far as competition goes, post haste. Either way, we as consumers win.
Under the same logic, Ferrari should start making affordable cars for people that earn less than 40k a year.
I switched to CenturyLink 10mbit DSL because I suffered a dramatically reduced income, after having been on the 50/10 Comcast tier. I even had to spend some time in a pretty poor town. I had my full 10mbit there. Most of my neighbors there we're on centurylink, many using their IPTV-based PRISM service because it was cheaper than comcast and more reliable than satelite. I even worked with CL Engineers in diagnosing a broken fiber run into town. The way I see it, CL is still mostly an ATM based DSL provider and they ultimately have a lot more work cut out for them and with not nearly the resources Comcast has, in upgrading their entire networks.
Two years ago, my street was torn up between the main highway into town and the CenturyLink switch, so that large-diameter orange cable could be extended to it. Yes, fiber! Fiber that could solve our area's ISP duopoly problem, where our choice is between CenturyLink's poky 10M service and that nice fast SuddenLink 50M service that is near-useless because of a low usage cap.
I checked, and CenturyLink has no intention of using that fiber to offer faster service anytime this century.
Allow them to cherry pick and mandate them to expand to the poor.
Comcast won't have a leg to stand on, and the cherry picker will be forced to expand and compete.
Alternatively, comcast should be forced to make high speed internet inexpensive when the consumer decides to not take them up on television or phone service.
If Comcast shuts up about someone competing with them, then maybe both of them can avoid getting legislated.
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
Centurylink (which in this territory acquired Qwest, which was the local baby bell USWest after the AT&T breakup) does their own slimy anti-competitive tricks with their monopoly.
While DSL providers were required to allow third-party ISPs as a choice to customers (where the copper is Centurylink but the ISP is your choice), they limited the third party ISPs to 7mbps connections while rolling out their own ISP service at 30mbps. Whereas the ISPs provide professional and business class service, Centurylink's service is of course crummy PPPoE dialup with constant dropping and changing IP address, making it pretty much useless for anything except looking at web pages and impossible to use with most off the shelf network hardware.
They are hardly the ones to be speaking about preventing competition.
About ten years ago they replaced the copper phone lines along my street with fiber. It made the land line phone connection a lot more reliable (cell service here still sucks), but they said we were too far from town to get DSL. Then about 5 years ago they called and asked if I wanted DSL. Cable is still a few miles away but they'll never bother running it out here because everyone who wants it has a dish and DSL already. Not the fastest broadband, but plenty fast for us up here in Appalachia.
Its time that Internet Service wasa made a non-profit public utility with prices capped at $29.95 a month for 50mb upload/download speeds. Electricity, gas, water, and sewer services should also be made non-profit, with rates being limited to actual cost of those services.
Also, others here seem to be missing a point. Once built (if done properly) there is only low maintainence cost for Internet delivery infrastructure. So it only needs to be built once, then maintained (at a much lower cost that the initial build-out). I do agree that allowing any ISP to "cherry pick" where to offer service is wrong. Any ISP that wants to offer service in an area must service that entire area.
Should be from the NO SHIT Department.
Also, pot calling the kettle black as I'm sure CenturyLink is being as anticompetitive as they can, too.
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
by pissing on them ?