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Frontier Teams With AT&T To Block Google Fiber Access To Utility Poles (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader writes from a report via Ars Technica: Frontier submitted a court filing last week supporting ATT's efforts to sue local governments in Louisville and Jefferson County, Kentucky to stop a new ordinance designed to give Google Fiber and similar companies access to utility poles. They're concerned the ordinances will spread to other states. Frontier's filing said, "the issues raised by the case may have important implications for Frontier's business and may impact the development of law in jurisdictions throughout the country where Frontier operates." The ordinance in Louisville lets companies like Google Fiber install wires even if ATT doesn't respond to requests or rejects requests to attach lines. Companies don't have to notify ATT when they want to move ATT's wires to make room for their own wires, assuming the work won't cause customer outages. ATT claims that the ordinance lets competitors "seize ATT's property." Frontier is urging the court to consider the nationwide implications of upholding Louisville's ordinance, saying Louisville's rule "is unprecedented" because "it drastically expands the rights of third parties to use privately owned utility poles, giving non-owners unfettered access to [a] utility's property without the [...] utility in some cases even having knowledge that such third-party intrusion on its facilities is occurring." Frontier said companies should be required to negotiation access with the owners if they didn't pay to install the utility poles. They urged the court to deny Louisville Metro's motion to dismiss ATT's complaint.
Happened over 10 years ago in Lafayette, LA. But it was a City vs AT&T and Cable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
http://arstechnica.com/tech-po...
I was forced to use Frontier service for a couple of years. I used their DSL service.
I got 2 or three "cease and desist" letters during this time for exceeding 100GB in a month.
This was in the 2009-2010 range. Even then 100GB was not hard at all to hit.
I also gave up trying to ever get any service from them, their tech support was terrible / non-existent. I was having some trouble getting the router that THEY provided me into a bridging mode so that I could use my own firewall. They kept telling me that it was impossible, that "their side" didn't support it.
After a bit of tinkering on my own, I did get their pos router into a bridging mode.
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
Imminent means "about to happen." (to make matters worse there's also an "immanent," or "existing or operating within; inherent")
You want Eminent Domain.
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That's basically how it is in many parts of Europe, too. Which led to them finding a way to cooperate surprisingly quickly, there's usually very little resistance if a competitor wants to mount something on "your" pole or tower, simply because they know better than to wake the sleeping dog that our variant of the regulation entity is.
Every time they wake up, the telcos got whacked REALLY badly. Sadly, they don't wake up too often.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The closest pole to me is on my property, and I'm not even an AT&T customer any more.
In most locations, the right of way to the municipality actually includes a number of feet beyond the edge of the road, and they are the ones that provided the utility with the access. Just because your lawn goes to the curb has never meant you actually had full rights to it.