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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.
That sounds like a great model to go to... IF Frontier and AT&T then also have to "negotiate access" with all the property owners of the land their poles are on!
Pick an aphorism: Goose/gander, pot/kettle, glass houses, "be careful what you wish for," and all that...
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
...to move to a public utility model for telecom. Government owns and maintains the right-of-way and the copper/glass. Everybody who wants to gets to buy access to it, be it last mile or peerage
No. Please spare us the tired, "the guvamint will screw it up" argument. It's bullshit. I can show you public utility districts that make their commercial counterparts in the electrical service delivery business look like third-world pretenders. It works as well as it does for one simple reason, the district is beholden to the electorate, not shareholders.
No. Bullshit. What's un-American is one company thinking it can invite the private property of another company. This is a right of access dispute and a property dispute. Nothing more. And if you feel like Google has the right to put its wires on ATT poles without seeking permission and negotiating for that acces, please send me your business address, as my storage costs could always come down, and I'm happy to use your space for free as well.
Towns and cities have the absolute right to let "third parties use your poles" because your poles exist in the public right-of-ways like along roads, sidewalks, and the municipalities grant you easements over people's property, because they see poles as a public good.
This business of using the public for your private profit and then whining about it when you have to abide by rules made by the public, is poor judgement at best. It's whining. The briefs themselves are subterfuge because they ignore the right of the public to regulate pole use.
So stop lying, Frontier and AT&T and get with the fucking program and let competition on "your" (ours, really) poles.
Dipshits.
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BMO
Frontier and AT&T are half right: no one should be allowed to tamper with the existing attachments without notifying the company who owns those wires and giving them reasonable opportunity to act. That way lies chaos and disruption.
They're dead wrong about the "negotiate access" thing though. Those utility poles are in public right of ways. The public has a right to use them under common carriage rules whether their "owners" like it or not. If the utilities don't like it, the localities can and should take them over for public use same as the roads.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
AT&T doesn't own any of the land that the poles are on. These local governments should threaten to use imminent domain to reclaim the poles and then lease them back to AT&T and anyone else who wants to use them. Basically, force AT&T to play nice or make them pay for the privilege of their monopoly.
A similar situation is playing out in the very sparsely populated area where I live: Centurylink has decided that it's not profitable to service my area so, they refuse to do any new DSL installations. Large expensive homes are built only to find that, at best, they are stuck on satellite internet and, at worst, will have no internet connection at all (cell phones don't work here so, that's not an option). Homes that Centurylink has previously serviced are being sold to new owners only to find out that Centurylink won't *re-install* an internet connection for the new owners. Since Centurylink owns all the poles and refuses to service the area anymore, the situation will never improve unless the local government intervenes.
The problem is that the local governments are either clueless or corrupt (frequently both I would imagine). My neighbor is literally the state senator for my area and when I've brought up the issue with him (in person), he considers it to be so low priority that he gives me some meaningless platitude and changes the subject. I don't think he's necessarily in the pocket of Centurylink, I think he just doesn't understand/believe what I'm telling him. He's from the "business can do no wrong" generation so, some nerd half his age must be either over reacting or just plain wrong.
It's amazing to see our infrastructure stagnate and crumble because the previous generation has sold us out to the highest bidder and doesn't see anything wrong with that.
ATT purchased the land on the free market and installed their own poles on it? If that's so, then yeah, I can see this being an unconstitutional seizure of ATT's property if they aren't being paid.
My guess though is that ATT had the government take the property from its previous owners, and is now crying foul when the government is repeating the process.
What's un-American is one company thinking it can invite the private property of another company.
These poles are on public property. The city of Louisville gave AT&T the easement to install the poles, and they can set any condition on that easement that is not specifically prohibited in the contract. There is a public benefit to competitive markets, so this is a appropriate action by the government. We don't expect FedEx, UPS, and other delivery companies to each build their own roads. It makes no more sense for each wired utility to install their own poles.
No problem. As soon as the government gives me free space, I have zero problem sharing it with you.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
What's un-American is one company thinking it can (invade) the private property of another company. This is a right of access dispute and a property dispute.
The custom in the US is that all the various utilities share the same poles. If you go back to the early days of electrification, the different companies all ran separate poles and wires. It was a horrible tangle. The pole outside my house has lines for power, phone, and cable. At least three different companies. I don't have three separate sets of poles. I don't know who pays for what. They may not have wanted to share, but they suck it up and share, and it works fine. Why shouldn't they make room for a fourth company?
The company now known as "AT&T" likely had nothing to do with installing these poles. A lot of hard work went into the creation of the original telephone network, and that should be respected. The abuse of customers by Ma Bell overwhelmed that, and they were broken up and lost any right to that legacy. Just because someone re-assembles the monopoly doesn't give them any moral right to that infrastructure - if anything, the reverse.
The "last mile" need to be a set of public utilities nationwide. Cable, phone lines, all of it. Preventing abuse of monopolistic power is a legitimate government power, and that includes natural monopolies.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Separating the cables from the service is probably the best way to do this.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.