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Marco Rubio and Other Senators Move To Block Municipal Broadband (theintercept.com)
New submitter h33t l4x0r writes: Presidential candidate Marco Rubio recently "fired off a letter (PDF) to the Federal Communications Commission asking the agency to allow states to block municipal broadband services." The municipal services offer cheaper, faster broadband alternatives to the large telecoms. Rubio's campaign has taken large donations from AT&T, and the article notes that other providers, "fearing competition, have used their influence in state government to make an end-run around local municipalities. Through surrogates like the American Legislative Exchange Council, the industry gets states to pass laws that ban municipal broadband networks, despite the obvious benefits to both the municipalities and their residents."
For someone who represents the people, how can they possibly justify being against municipal broadband? What is it going to take to get a by the people, for the people government? Torches & pitchforks?
SLOWER TRAFFIC KEEP RIGHT
How dare they try to provide a service that people want!
Next they'll have some kind of crazy thing called a "postal service" where people can send letters and packages to other people fairly inexpensively, and the government will operate it! After that they'll force everyone to use something called "public libraries" and "fire departments". Where will it end??
The end game will be complete when they institute the final piece of Satan's plan called "public schools", where every child will be able to be get an education. O The Horror!
Soon the Evil State will force people at gunpoint to use these municipal broadband services, and if you don't, it's off to the FEMA re-education camps with you, citizen! I swear it's true, Glenn Beck told me so!
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
We need to be stopping the relentless growth of big government, not find more things for them to get their paws into.
Rand Paul, is that you?
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
I live in a town with a gym that was paid for with tax dollars and a gym that was paid for privately. They compete. There are no problems. If you don't like one, go to the other. Same goes for education.
I don't see the problem, but then again, I don't have a problem competing with the government. Only a protectionist claiming to be a capitalist would.
Place something witty here
"“The FCC is promoting government-owned networks at the possible expense of private sector broadband providers..."
Boy, it's just been a week of "almosts" and "maybes", hasn't it. Started with the drone registration that was justified because of potentially unsafe incidents and now this bullshit.
What's next, mobilizing our military because of a rumor?
Oh and Rubio, this makes you look like a corporate shill whore that will gain you nothing. Enjoy your reputation. You've earned it.
If we allow the government to socialize internet access, we'll wind up with a system that is constantly in need of repair, upgrades, and endless red tape to get even the slightest thing done, along with constant pressure to charge rich people more and give access away for free to poor people in the name of 'fairness...' We need to be stopping the relentless growth of big government, not find more things for them to get their paws into.
Oh, you mean unlike Comcast or any of the other quasi-monopolies we currently enjoy?
And yet, when the people want to band together and do something, you want to remove that freedom?
Socialize? I guess we should get rid of roads, police, military then... because by your definition, anything that the public requests of their government, and then pays for... is "socialist".
We need to be stopping the relentless growth of big corporations and monopolies, not giving them more power & money to control politics.
This. I'm very much a free market supporter, but in the cable internet areana it's anything but a free market in the US right now. Competition is great. We don't have that now, though.
The real joke* in this is that many of these municipalities aren't being served at all by the big monopolies. They asked for service repeatedly only to be denied. But if they start a municipal broadband effort, they are suddenly criticized for "squashing competition." In other words, the big ISPs won't serve them but they don't want anyone else to serve them either so they won't have competition just in case they decide to serve them in the future.
* Unfortunately, the joke is on the public who just wants Internet access and is being told it's illegal for them to get it unless the big ISP monopolies deign to grant them access.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Then came the railroads. The canal companies lobbied heavily to keep railroads out of the canal towns. Even today you can see quaint little towns along the Erie canal that successfully kept the railroads out. They, and their canals, went bust and economic growth by passed them. But municipalities courted the railroads like gangbusters. All levels of the government local, state and federal shoveled money to private companies to build railroads, large land grants. So much of land was given to railroads they actually acted as a catalyst to immigration and populating the Great Plains. They gave away 40 acres of land to immigrants from Europe if they would buy train tickets from New York to Nebraska! Well, history repeated. Railway towns like Altoona, PA actively fought to keep the Interstate high ways away from them!
So in the great American tradition, the municipalities should tax their local population, collect all the money and lay it at the feet of Internet barons in New York and beg them to build a fiber optic network for their poor little towns. These companies would spend a dime per dollar to build the network for the towns and skim off the rest. That is the American tradition.
Municipality building its own network! bah! What would happen next? Municipalities to have their own fleet of trucks to remove snow? Or do their own garbage collection fleets? Or run school districts? We need to put an end to all these un American activities. The only real role for municipalities, or any government, is to tax the population and give the money to private companies, with no bid contracts, and to beg them to provide basic services, after taking their cut of 40 to 60% for profits.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
If we allow the government to socialize internet access, we'll wind up with a system that is constantly in need of repair, upgrades, and endless red tape to get even the slightest thing done, along with constant pressure to charge rich people more and give access away for free to poor people in the name of 'fairness...' We need to be stopping the relentless growth of big government, not find more things for them to get their paws into.
As a ranking independent libertarian I'd have to say this is some false indignation. The big monopoly providers we have now exist because of big government. And little government. Municipalities all over the country are already deep into this with their power to regulate and license the rights of way across their cities and towns. Often municipalities will create exclusive contracts with just one provider in order "to get the best deal". But the false libertarians are silent on the practice? How about the FCC ban exclusive agreements between municipalities and telecom providers to start?
It seems to me that if a town or city wants to provide assistance to set up a municipal telecom provider as a non-profit corporation, then they should be free to do so. They don't have to become telecoms themselves, just create a new entity like many municipal light and electric companies. State governments shouldn't stand in the way of small business even if, especially if, that business is set up as a non-profit for the public benefit.
Can be, I would PREFER to have a PRIVATE company, in charge of providing internet, than the federal, state, or local government. Name one government agency that ever comes in on time, under budget and with superior service? Not that the private companies are saints, but, when you let the government give it to you "for free" (yeah right), it will come with a TON of restrictions. Sites that are negative to the government will be blocked/throttled. Now, that would be ok for some, but, you must remember, the political winds shift from time to time, and the "other party" might come to power and put the hex on sites you might not want shut down. With freedom of speech, comes a great responsibility. Once encroached, you can never put the stopper back in the bottle.
This. I'm very much a free market supporter, but in the cable internet areana it's anything but a free market in the US right now. Competition is great. We don't have that now, though.
I support the free market but recognize the need for some regulation in places where the free market fails, like here when it comes to natural monopolies.
Municipalities acting in their own interests, the part of government that is closest to the people, is now big government? Big government is the fed telling local communities what they can and cannot do.
CThe last thing I'd want is to get Internet access through the government. If you think service via private companies is bad, just wait until you try getting service via the government!
Power: Check.
Water: Check.
Gas: Check.
I fail to see how broadband would be any different. (And how it could possibly be worse than Comcast.. Three rate hikes this year alone, plus that "data threshold" bullshit which is really another $30/mo rate hike by another name)
By far the shittiest broadband ISPs I've encounteredwere the private ones set up by a HO or apartment complex. Talk about no incentive to improve.
Look, the problem here isn't that the local governments want to set up broadband. It's that ihey are prevented by law from doing so, even when no private organizations are willing.
-- I ain't broke, but I'm badly bent.
I would not. What evidence do you have that they would put restrictions on "free speech"? Internet access should be part of taxpayer paid services just like roads. If the politicians try to regulate free speech, throw them out.
If we allow the government to socialize internet access, we'll wind up with a system that is constantly in need of repair, upgrades, and endless red tape to get even the slightest thing done,
[citation needed]
I come from a part of the country where the electrical utilities are publicly owned and operated, meaning that the entity is beholden to the voters/ratepayers. I now live in a part of the country where the electrical utilities are operated by for-profit companies, which are beholden first and foremost to their shareholders. The difference is like night and day. While I won't argue that there is not inefficiency in "the government", making a blanket statement that it is always so is patently absurd.
Scratch one more candidate off my 2016 list.
This Republican sees nothing wrong with local government getting into the broadband business so long as it does not set up a monopoly. After all there is pressure from voters to "have the city do it" only when there is no, or one ready bad, private alternative. Broadband is a utility, and city involvement in it is developing along the same lines as city involvement in water and power systems.
Local voters are part of the market too.
I think you are over looking the potential for municipal broadband to choke change and growth.
It is also able to drive change and growth. The notion that all government's do is stifle progress is demonstrably nonsense.
Say what you will about Comcast and friends but we have things like 100Mbps down 75Mpbs up links at affordable prices.
In some places you do. In others not so much. And you might consider picking an example of a company that is somewhat more beloved than Comcast. They are among the least liked companies in America for well deserved reasons. Monopolies don't do shit to improve service unless there is some form of competition. I guarantee that if AT&T or Verizon isn't there to compete that Comcast wouldn't improve their service very fast.
Consider the article about Flit Michigan's water system the other day. The issue was really not the water source but the infrastructure. How many places have over crowed schools, etc?
Do you have any concept of how hard it is to get taxpayers to fund upgrades to a water system even in a city without financial problems? Taxpayers routinely vote down school levies. This isn't government failing, it is the citizens saying they don't want to pay for any of this.
I am sure public broadband systems could deliver today's technology to consumers more cheaply and better serve under served areas, but the cost would likely be that the level of service rarely improves.
As long as the municipal system doesn't prohibit via laws private enterprise from competing, what is the problem? If the municipal system doesn't improve then private enterprise can fill in the gap. But if the citizens of a town collectively want to run their own broadband that should be their right to do so. If they end up paying more in the long run then that is their problem isn't it? Towns that consider municipal broadband probably aren't being well served now by the private companies so why should they expect that to change in the future?
If you allow municipal broad band it will choke out terrestrial ISPs. The broad band market is broken because there is to little competition, plan to effectively make it so the government is the only game in town isn't a solution to that.
Your argument makes no sense. Trading a public monopoly for a private one doesn't improve anything and it means the citizens have even less say in what they want. There is no reason to prohibit municipal broadband provided private companies are still legally allowed to build their own networks too.
Talk to the citizens of New Jersey that recent got screwed by Verizon who took Billions of tax payer dollars to wire the state and reneged on the deal. So again FUCK YOU RUBIO.
Socialize? I guess we should get rid of roads, police, military then... because by your definition, anything that the public requests of their government, and then pays for... is "socialist".
We need to be stopping the relentless growth of big corporations and monopolies, not giving them more power & money to control politics.
That's the whole point. Publicly funded "roads, police, military" are socialist and, even so, are perceived by many upstanding Americans to be good things.
In other words, using "socialism" and "socialist" as labels to demonize something or someone is mere rhetoric. A socialist approach to a problem should be evaluated on its merits against and in combination with other approaches.
The use of the word "socialism" as a label often stops thoughtful deliberation, and those who use such labels usually have something to lose if their listeners really think about the issues at hand. Better to stop further thinking by riling their emotions.
blog
IMHO, the ideal model of this is the government bonding the municipal network construction (fiber, data center, etc) but giving contracting out management of the L1/2 infrastructure to someone who knows how to run a network like this.
Actual services delivered over this infrastructure would be provided by other third parties who buy access to the network, such as ISPs, video providers, telecom, and then resell their services to subscribers. I'd probably mandate that a service provider on the network would be barred from being eligible for managing the network, too, to avoid any conflict of interest.
This to me seems like biggest win/win for everyone. The actual management is handled by someone who has the skills/people to do it, as an "open network" consumers would have a choice of providers and services (ie, geek ISPs with barebones support for people who know what they're doing, grandma ISPs with extras like webmail and support for those who don't).
The school district could be its own ISP, using the municipal network like a private WAN. Businesses with enough points of presence could also use it the same way if the costs made sense to buy in at the central office. I even knew a company that set themselves up as an ISP option with Qwest DSL -- employees who wanted remote access could get DSL and choose their company as the ISP -- instant VPN.
The government wouldn't be in the IP dialtone business at all. If it *wanted* to, it could be just another ISP choice and it wouldn't surprise me if some places decided they wanted to provide a subsidized ISP offering for public housing or something, but at least it has the narrowest and most transparent cost, since the cost of that service wouldn't be buried with the rest of the system.
This is pretty much how the model for municipal roadways works -- the government pays for them, often hiring contractors to maintain or expand them, but service delivery on the roads is handled by various companies depending on the services delivered -- taxis, Uber, pizza delivery, UPS packages, etc.
Really what you'd end up doing is tasking the government for its biggest benefits -- low cost financing through bonding and access to rights of way. The rest would be essentially private, albeit operated at a profit level sufficient to keep up the network but not rent-seek.
I lived in a town with municipal internet. It was wonderful. My up/down speeds were synchronous, I didn't have to buy my own modem (or lease one for 10 bucks a month), and here comes the kicker: If I had a problem and had to call them, I talked to an actual person. No machine, no waiting on hold, just a person picked up on the other end of the line. A person who was even competent enough to perform basic tasks, like renewing my IP address.
The Internet King? I wonder if he could provide faster nudity.
Thanks be to the local governments.
Allowing the townhalls to run Internet-service will not improve things — it will kill off, what little competition there is.
Ah, and your online behavior will be subject to the town's laws — written by the same folks, who set up speed-limits and school lunches.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
In August, I drove from Chicago to New Haven, CT. The roads are beautiful. I'd like to see how Bain Capital would build an interstate highway system. Oh, and then there's this little government project: http://www.zastavki.com/pictur...
Call me when a private corporation can get a human into orbit without killing him.
You are an idiot.
You are welcome on my lawn.
If we allow the government to socialize internet access, we'll wind up with a system that is constantly in need of repair, upgrades, and endless red tape to get even the slightest thing done, along with constant pressure to charge rich people more and give access away for free to poor people in the name of 'fairness...' We need to be stopping the relentless growth of big government, not find more things for them to get their paws into.
New generation of Slashdot poster doesn't know what the internet actually is or what it represents. Never thought I'd see it here.
sine puella vita suget
"Whatever government does, is done poorly."
That is your fundamental assumption and worldview, but not actual fact. The government does many things better than the free markets. Pretty much in every area where the objective isnt to abuse and wring money out of people.
There is a reason why Telcos have a 30% net profit... it is because the free market doesnt work when there are extreme startup costs.
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
And most of these large telcos were started with government support... The infrastructure they now make huge profits off was paid for by the tax payers originally.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Is this how you regard everyone you disagree with? They should be voted out of office, not drawn and quartered or shot on sight. What the fuck is wrong with you.
Political idealism aside, I actually can't think of any "obvious benefits". I mean, there aren't even any obvious benefits to government healthcare: it takes a good bit of analysis to figure out if state healthcare is more or less expensive, and then you have to figure out if it's *affordable* or if it inflicts crippling poverty on more individuals than it protects; that's not even considering the various *forms* of state healthcare (single-payer; state hospitals; hybrid systems like Canada; laws mandating how employers, insurers, and providers will operate...).
People *need* healthcare. They get sick. They don't *need* Internet access; they may need transportation--there aren't enough McDonalds peppering your neighborhood for everyone in the ghetto to walk to their shitty, underpaid job. Even then, you're dealing with class status: most jobs above the minimum provide this stuff, or provide enough money to just buy it outright; it's mainly the unemployed who need public service.
Even my Citizen's Dividend doesn't have *obvious* benefits. It took a lot of market analysis just to show it would end homelessness and hunger--retail prices compared to profitability, risk considerations, and even some architecture to plan out miniature apartments that are livable even if way smaller than the luxury 1 bedroom I lived in--and all kinds of secondary effects require advanced economic theory to explain. Remember, people think if we raise minimum wage we'll somehow increase employment by giving consumers more money to spend; they haven't worked out that an increase in the cost of labor raises the minimum cost of products, thus counteracting *every* economic pressure that draws prices down. They haven't even worked out that higher labor costs concentrate wealth into fewer hands.
We actually passed a law giving businesses and rich people tax breaks to stimulate growth and create employment.
The problem, of course, is that the products are being sold to consumers. Consumers have a certain amount of money, and they're spending what they're willing to spend. You can't sell more by making more; if you could, you'd hire more consumers. Profitability scales, and unprofitable expansion doesn't happen just because you have money to spend. You need to make products cheaper so you can sell more of them, which means making labor cheaper... for example, by reducing taxes on the working class so as to allow employers to pay them less while leaving them with the same amount of money flowing into their bank account, thus reducing the cost of products, allowing prices to fall, giving consumers additional buying power which then allows us to hire new laborers to make new products to sell to these consumers, creating more jobs.
These aren't obvious things. Handing out healthcare isn't obviously helpful. There are no obvious benefits to public broadband; all you can say about it is everyone pays a tax, and some broadband system exists for everyone. Whether it's cheaper or better-maintained depends on the economic system; and its impact on the economy itself is highly questionable. If you're going to pitch something like that, you have to answer those questions instead of just declaring that they've been answered.
Don't even start with the backwards ideals people have about workforce development--notably calling it "education" instead of "workforce development", and then demanding to be sold into serfdom. Again: impact not obvious.
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The solution is competition, not municipal broadband. Sure, municipal happens to be the only competition in some cases (and that's why is seems good). But it wouldn't be necessary if there was competition to begin with.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
Bullshit. There are a whole raft of studies which show that state-provided healthcare offers similar outcomes at a greatly reduced price. Strangely enough, when you remove money-sucking middlemen from the equation, healthcare becomes a lot cheaper. The single buyer gets a much better deal on medication and supplies, etc. which lowers the price for everyone. Hospitals aren't looking at their bottom lines to gouge patients, etc. If you really think there is any doubt in this, you really need to read more. The US spends a greater proportion of its GDP on its non-public healthcare than other countries with public healthcare. You'd save money, simplify everything, and whenever you went to the hospital, there would be no paperwork or money changing hands. Witchcraft!
Except that the 'free market' was never allowed to exist in this sector. It could be argued that establishing a muni broadband service would be the 'free market' expressing itself - an actual competitor to the entrenched government-granted telco monopolies of the 1970s.
But those monopolies are more than willing to spend money preventing it from happening through legal measures and campaign contributions, rather than spending to eliminate the need by improving their networks, lowering costs, or both.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
In the US, the telephone networks were forced open to be like what you describe under the FCC's "common carrier" rules. A particular company owns the wire, but other companies can lease circuits on them, allowing subscribers to get services from whomever they please.
Cable Television networks are not included in that. They are still very much privately owned by the descendant companies of whoever put that copper in the ground, and fight vigorously to defend that.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Oh my god, what are you, some kind of corporate astro-turfer?
Megacorps are the problem, government is the last defense of the people against the megacorps turning everything into virtual slaves.
What else would you expect from the Corporate Party?
While it's very true that the Republican party in its current incarnation is absolutely a corporate party it implies that other parties are not. The last 8 years could be dubbed the Goldman Sachs presidency as described here: http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITI... or http://www.nationalreview.com/...
Not convinced yet? How about Obama pushing TPP as hard as he can? That's as corporate as it gets. Hillary is bought and paid for which is why the media is working its level best to feed us only smiling pics of her. Only Bernie, an independent who seeks the Democratic party nomination, could be described as anti corporate.
The internet used to be a non-essential service. That time has long gone. Now the network is the new interstate, and we are behind the rest of the world because we insist that the free market will do a better job of providing universal internet infrastructure. This is demonstrably not true, the free market will provide excessive capacity where there is profit to be made, but no capacity where there is no profit to be made. This uneven coverage actually hurts the country. Just as uneven electrification, interstate system, or health coverage hurt the country.
I disagree. It's not essential. There are still communities in the US without telephone service. Why didn't the government intervene there? Because telephone service isn't essential either. I think you're not understanding the definition of the word essential. It means absolutely necessary.
We should create a government run high performance back bone that runs to every city in the US and town. Corporations could still compete on top of this system paying a rent for the maintenance and upgrades to the system similar to the rents they pay for air spectrum. Corporations would then not have to double build infrastructure so the overall cost would be lower. The reason that companies don't want this is that one of the ways that they keep their monopoly is that it is expensive to build network capability, so they can exclude competition from smaller companies that cannot afford to build infrastructure.
The government does not need to provide more nonessential services. Like I said in the OP, our governments can't even provide essential services properly. We don't need them overextending their incompetence to nonessential services too.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
You act as if the cable and broadband providers are chomping at the bit to do their own private buildout with no assurances of a captive market. They are not and they never have been.
In fact, even where it is permitted, Comcast and TWC made "gentleman's agreements" not to compete.
People don't want to pay because they see the expensive, shit-quality job done by the govt' agencies and generally don't want that.
You mean like being able to send a letter anywhere in the US and have it arrive within a few days for $0.49? [/sarcasm] What a stupid generalization. Governments routinely provide all kinds of services with excellent efficiency and quality. Not everything but they are hardly these palaces of incompetence you claim. While the private sector is definitely better for some things the notion that government cannot do anything well is simply ridiculous nonsense.
You ever see 10 Cal-Trans (or local equivalent) workers all standing around one guy with a shovel? The populace doesn't hade infrastructure upgrades, but they do get frustrated after seeing that and then the projects go massively over budget. "Good enough for govt' work" is a saying for a reason.
I see plenty of private company construction workers standing around one guy with a shovel all the time. Has nothing to do with whether or not they are public employees. That's just the nature of construction work. Apparently you've never done road work. I have. Trust me, most of the time they are working plenty hard. Harder that people who post to slashdot anonymously during work hours.
As for projects that go massively over budget, you think that never happens in the private sector? If you actually think that you are incredibly naive.
Municipal broadband *IS* competition. The reason some people unrelated to cable companies hate this is because they see any and all government as evil because of a perverted ideology. So they ask the bigger state governments to trod on the smaller municipal governments all in the name of restricting government.
If municipal government is too big, and the voters in a municipality are unable to control that big government at the ballot box, then they're effectively claiming that the democratic experiment has failed utterly. But that's not true, democracy is still alive, the voters are able to direct their local governments, and it's just anti government hysteria that promotes this idea. They're so indoctrinated with this perverted logic that they would rather the worst internet in the world than to admit that they could be wrong, and they even violate their own ideals by appealing to big government in their battle against small government.
Oh my god, tax payer funds might be used, the horror, the horror! We must protect the voters from themselves by nullifying their votes!
Here's an end run for such regulations:
- The municipalities install bundles of conduit, along with pull-boxes, manholed repeater vaults, and the like. Also install, or allow the user to install, per-house or per-apartment-complex conduit to the nearest valult. (Include this in the utility hookup zoning and permitting requirements on any new developments, too.)
- Then lease a conduit right-of-way and vault rack space to all comers on equal terms: AT&T and your local mom-and-POP can both string their cables, fibres, or what-not on equal terms, and NONE of them have to get their investors to pony up, up front, to dig up the whole city - separately. (With N conduits in each vault-to-vault hop the first N comers initially have a conduit to themselves, though they may have to share it eventually.)
- String fibre bundles through the first conduit, use some of the fibres for the municipal net, and (if the federal rules don't block it), lease a limited-number-per-customer to all comers, ditto (reserving a few for backups for failed fibres and for future expansion.)
As with "dark fibre", almost all the cost is digging up the countryside to install the conduits and fibre runs. Putting in more conduit, or using fibre cables with more fibres, vastly multiplies the capacity with a small percentage increment on the cost of the installation. This "future-proofs" it. With dense wavelength division a single pair of fibres can carry a major telecom's entire local traffic. Run a dozen four-inch pipes between each vault and you can expect it to serve all the city's communication requirements for far longer than the expected life of the other aspects of the city's infrastructure.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I disagree. It's not essential. There are still communities in the US without telephone service. Why didn't the government intervene there? Because telephone service isn't essential either. I think you're not understanding the definition of the word essential. It means absolutely necessary.
Under the definition you're using, power, water, and sewer aren't "essential" either. Plenty of people in the U.S. live without them, after all. You can always dig a well or put in a septic system, right?
Like I said in the OP, our governments can't even provide essential services properly.
My experience doesn't bear that statement out. When I lived in Orlando, I got power/water from the Orlando Utilities Commission, a wholly-owned municipal utility. I had a frigging hurricane come directly over me and didn't lose power at all. The total number of power problems I experienced over 8 years could have been counted on one hand. Where I live now, my electric utility is Florida Power & Light, a subsidiary of a public corporation that trades on the NYSE. I had multiple power blips and voltage sags every week for three years, and a few months back when FP&L finally decided to come out and replace the corroded 35-year old underground cabling between the transformer and my house, they tacked it together, sealed my meter with clear plastic and tape, and left bare cabling (i.e. no conduit) running 60 feet across my back yard for *three weeks* until they could get a contractor to come out and dig the trench. They flagged the cable run, but if the lawn guy had run over it accidentally it would have been a bad scene.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas