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Landlords, ISPs Team Up To Rip Off Tenants On Broadband (backchannel.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the low-in-fiber dept.

"Network operators like Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and ATT, in cahoots with [real estate] developers and landlords, routinely use a breathtaking array of kickbacks, lawyerly games of Twister, blunt threats, and downright illegal activities to lock up buildings in exclusive arrangements," reports Harvard Law Professor Susan Crawford. itwbennett writes: Eight years ago, the FCC issued an order banning exclusive agreements between landlords and ISPs, but a loophole is being exploited, leaving many tenants in apartment buildings with only one choice of broadband service provider. The loophole works like this: Instead of having an exclusive agreement with one provider, the landlords refuse to let any other companies than their chosen providers access their properties...
"This astounding, enormous, decentralized payola scheme affects millions of American lives," Crawford writes, revealing Comcast's revenue-sharing proposals for property owners and urging cities (and national lawmakers) to require broadband neutrality in residential buildings. Other loopholes are also being exploited, Crawford writes, and "it's why commercial tenants in NYC pay through the nose for awful Internet access service in the fanciest of commercial buildings... We've got to take landlords out of the equation -- all they're doing is looking for payments and deals...and the giant telecom providers in our country are more than happy to pay up."

36 of 173 comments (clear)

  1. Tenants of the world unite! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    Vote for Trump!

    1. Re:Tenants of the world unite! by MightyMartian · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Don't you understand. To Trump's loyal followers, what Trump does is irrelevant. It doesn't matter. His actions, his behavior, his history, they have no bearing on his fitness and suitability. All that counts is that he hates Mexicans and Muslims, and will do some vague things that will somehow make everything better.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    2. Re:Tenants of the world unite! by Lumpy · · Score: 5, Funny

      Just like Justin Bieber fans...

      Oh jesus christ... Trump followers are EXACTLY like Bieber fans....

      I bet they like Nickelback as well.....

      --
      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    3. Re:Tenants of the world unite! by hackwrench · · Score: 3, Interesting

      My mom and I aren't Trump's loyal followers, and I won't even be voting due to circumstances than I don't want to go into, but my mom is more conservative than I am. We believe that Trump does a better job at understanding and acting on his best interests than most of the political creatures. He lies more blatantly than they do. It's hard to be certain which of what he says is a lie, but he would make a racist statement he doesn't actually believe in order to advance his interests. We believe it is likely he will find his way to make things work better than most of the other people, though if Bernie became an option and I were to vote, I would probably vote for Bernie over Trump. But Trump is better than Hillary in my book, because of his better understanding of how to get where he wants to go. With Hillary there's too much things like the "What difference does it make" and the home email server going on. If she had told a somewhat plausible lie instead of "What difference does it make" that would actually improve her suitability in my book. If her duplicity were revealed and she came back with something about how national security would be compromised if the facts were made known to the public and that was a public hearing, I could live with that. But she didn't do any of those things, Those are the sorts of things me and my mom look at when determining the suitability of any candidate to almost any office and when making determinations of people in general. I am generally more liberal than my mom.

    4. Re:Tenants of the world unite! by MightyMartian · · Score: 3, Insightful

      But he really doesn't. His claims as to his acumen are largely nonsense, it's becoming clear that his claims of wealth have been heavily exagerated, in part to build up an undeserved reputation as a wheeler dealer. I guess that means he gets what he wants, much like any snake oil dealer will con the gullible into parting with their cash in return for empty promises.

      Hillary's a shitty candidate, but she'll make a better president. It really is that simple. A vote for Trump is a vote for a con man who, as even you admit, basically says anything to get a vote. Worse, a vote for Trump is simply rewarding the man who is guaranteeing the GOP's agonies go forward. They need to excise themselves of the kinds of people who vote for Trump, because that's a fading demographic. The GOP has known that for years, which is why they put some much effort on the ground to build support among Latino voters, which Trump has literally destroyed to gain louder cheers.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    5. Re:Tenants of the world unite! by Rick+Zeman · · Score: 2

      Vote for Trump!

      Need "ironic" mod points.

    6. Re:Tenants of the world unite! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      Don't you understand. To Hilary's loyal followers, what Hilary does is irrelevant. It doesn't matter. Her actions, her behaviors, her history, they have no bearing on her fgitness and sutability. All that counts is that she has a (D) next to her name, and will do some vague things that will somehow make everything better.

    7. Re:Tenants of the world unite! by hackwrench · · Score: 3, Interesting

      There's no one in politics that isn't a con man. I don't want the GOP to heal itself, I want it to go away. No matter what happens, Trump is just the figure that can result in that happening. The people who don't critique things the way I do and hate Trump will lump him in with the GOP and not vote for them and by my estimate be more likely to stay not voting for the GOP, while if Hillary gets elected, she'll keep making embarrassments like her Benghazi testimony and the server problem. I'm not sure of the situation around the actual Benghazi incident, but what I and other people do remember is the testimony. That is not someone I want as President. She is liable to turn off people lukewarm to the Democratic party, and while the Democrats aren't much better than the Republicans... Hmm, I really don't like the chances for the dissatisfied turning to other political parties, which is the state I want, no matter who gets elected. Hopefully they move to prosecute Hillary and Bernie becomes the political candidate. Not that great for turnover either, but at least important topics will come to the forefront. A Bernie presidency could show that ideas championed by other political parties might work. I want the Democrat party to go away, too, but not as much as I want the Republican party to go away. They are both a scourge to people being comfortable inside their own skin no matter their circumstances. The Republicans because they want to hurt people with differences they disapprove of, and the Democrats because their solutions for such people make them dependent on others to accommodate them in order to have a sense of well-being. In an ideal world there wouldn't be separate male and female bathrooms, but you don't need an Ideal world to be satisfied that you are you. If somebody came to me and said from now on I have to go to a bathroom that doesn't match who I see myself as, but everyone else continues as usual, that doesn't affect me much as a person and until everyone has that strength of self-identity, it is what I believe we should be striving for.

    8. Re:Tenants of the world unite! by mrchaotica · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Seriously, Hilary and Bernie both have a voting record stretching back decades, the two records are virtually indistinguishable.

      That's a damn lie!

      First of all, Hillary was in Congress for eight years total, which for those of us who can do math, adds up to less than one decade. Bernie has been in Congress since 1991.

      Second, their records on things like gun control and foreign policy are almost diametrically opposed (and on every issue where they differ, Bernie gets it right while Hillary gets it wrong!).

      Third, Bernie has integrity, and has had the same platform for his entire career. Hillary is fucking corrupt and her platform blows with the political winds. She cannot be trusted.

      They are nothing alike, at all, whatsoever.

      --

      "[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz

    9. Re:Tenants of the world unite! by hackwrench · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I was going to go on about how their voting records differ, but voting records are a red herring like a lot of other things I can't recall right now on other issues, and I'll tell you why: If you can't use your vote as a bargaining chip for addressing other issues, you won't be very effective. There are a lot of things I remain silent about that I think are wrong so that I will be listened to when it comes to the root problems that need to be talked about for any lasting change. "Personality" isn't the key indicator, either. What topics you bring to the stage, is. My family has a somewhat conservative background. Historically, since Democrats used to be the party of labor, my ancestors used to vote for them. Now my relatives vote Republican. I don't interact with my father much, but I'd wager he's a DINO. The abortion issue is big with both sides. So much so, that it alone is enough to make my dad a DINO even though he probably is more liberal on personal traits than my mom. He is less forgiving when it comes to performance though.


      I watched Glenn Beck. Without him, I would have never heard of Cloward and Piven. From what I learned from him about them is actually pretty useful stuff, even though he doesn't agree with such tactics and tried to demonize them. I would haven't have heard of Che Guevara, not that great of a guy, I gather, but some of the things that Glenn Beck might have liked about the guy is bad. I listen to Tim Minchin and wish he could write a song that opened conservatives eyes, but he targets mainly liberals that also have bad ideas. I watch The Bible Reloaded and they make valid criticisms of the Bible, but my mom won't look past their conduct. The Armoured Skeptic I can at least get her down to watch because he doesn't cuss as much and otherwise conducts himself better. I hope you can see what kind of people I see in America and the kind of hurdles faced with getting good information to people who will listen at least a little bit. Certain kinds of conduct don't matter, personality doesn't matter to the people I see as the most information needy. Gamers are vocal about Samus in Other M about how she doesn't have the personality they want her to have, but she has the conduct of someone who the Americans I want to reach will accept and is on message, so I will promote her to them and defend her in face of critics because people who conduct themselves like her are people the demographic I want to reach will listen to. I find little to criticize in Samus's conduct when it comes to presenting her to that demo. The conduct of her critics, on the other hand, can be used as a reason why Samus is the good person here... for the demographic that has the flaws I can address. Trump and Bernie both conduct themselves better than Hillary in those areas, but some of the very things that Samus has that turns off gamers can appeal to the people I need to reach. Samus has military training. The gamers don't get military decorum. They see deference as weakness in Samus. I've run out of ideas and its getting kind of late where I'm at, so I feel like I'm not wrapping up properly and I feel sorry about that. But it is Slashdot. But you've conducted yourself decent. And now I've gone all Gollum.

    10. Re:Tenants of the world unite! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Maybe Trump himself doesn't hate Mexicans and Muslims, there's no real way to know. Trump continuously contradicts himself, he has never been in office and thus has no political record, maybe he just rants about Mexicans and Muslims because he wants to win votes from the demographic who fear the "other" out there. What I do know is that his supporters hate Mexicans and Muslims and are in fact involved in an incestuous relationship with White Nationalist groups. Look at pro-Trump forums that purport to oppose racism, antisemitism and xenophobia. They all use codified language borrowed directly from white supremacists who inherited that language. You'll frequently see them talking about "degeneracy" in the American people. This is a concept adopted from the Nazis. "Degenerates" is code for all non-white races and all non-heterosexuals. Take a look at how "cuckold" and "cuck" moved between Stormfront and Vanguard and the wider pro-Trump Internet. You can delude yourself all you want about Trump's actual views but the truth is that his campaign is built upon a base of white nationalism and xenophobia.

    11. Re:Tenants of the world unite! by CronoCloud · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Your viewpoint on what is or isn't "collectivism" is so skewed you think EVERYTHING that makes modern societies work is collectivism.

      No man is an island, not even you. YOU benefit from the government you hate so much, in fact as a business owner, you probably benefit MORE than others.

  2. nice ISP you got there by turkeydance · · Score: 4, Funny

    it would be a shame if something happened to it.

  3. Not an easy thing to do. by SeattleLawGuy · · Score: 3, Interesting

    While a good idea in theory, ultimately Telecom has a massive and very effective lobby. This also fails to address the very real problem you sometimes have in the Northeast where competing installers will cut or pull another guy's cable during an install, either to make room for theirs or out of a more childish nonprofessionalism in some parts of installer culture. However, there are plenty of ways to deal with that which do not stifle competition.

    --
    Real lawyers write in C++
    1. Re:Not an easy thing to do. by sumdumass · · Score: 2

      I don't know why you are blaming Bush.. He had absolutely nothing to do with it. The FCC until recently took the position that the internet was always an information service until a court rejected the premise and made it a telecommunications service (subject to common carrier regulation) in which another court overturned that ruling taking it back to the original information service designation. Neither Bush nor congress or the FCC at the time had invested any regulatory or law making abilities in making that happen.

      There are a lot of things to criticize Bush over. We do not need to make things up because of your ignorance of the matter.

  4. Apartment in Cali... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Has Cox cable, don't want it. Called Dish Network, they said no problem for apartments as they have small dish units that hang out window or something. Install guy gets here and is told by maintenance guy that they can't install it, and to remove all others currently being used because cableco is already available to tenants (but not free). Slime bag landlords.

    1. Re:Apartment in Cali... by MrLogic17 · · Score: 4, Informative

      Have mod points, would rather educate.
      You have a lawsuit against your landlord. Federal law grants you the right to mount a dish.
      I have personally fought a home owners association, and won.
      https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/...

    2. Re:Apartment in Cali... by irving47 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Tell your installer and Dish to ignore the maintenance guy. Read the website that MrLogic posted... It informs you of what your rights are. If they start removing multiple dishes from account holders, Dish may just handle it for you...

      --
      I had a sucky sig.
    3. Re:Apartment in Cali... by TroII · · Score: 3, Funny

      I'd suggest getting a 5 gallon bucket, filling it with concrete, and setting a pole in the center. Once the concrete cures, schedule the dish guy to come out and attach the dish to the pole. It's unsightly as fuck, which is a nice way of giving the finger back to the landlord. Once potential renters start telling him they're put off by all the ghetto looking satellite buckets, maybe he'll reconsider.

      --
      "If there was a gay Afro-Puertorican Linux distribution, I'd give it a try" ~lucm
    4. Re:Apartment in Cali... by adolf · · Score: 2

      The law in question has nothing to do with whether the dish is visible or not.

      It just has to be on property that you're renting, that would reasonably considered to be for your own use. A private patio or deck is a good example. It can't go on common property -- eg, on the porch of a shared entryway.

      This can be problematic on shared apartment buildings, as not every apartment has a suitably private spot. It's a no-brainer for things like rental houses and just about any duplex, however.

      And it's not just satellite dishes. It goes for any sort of antenna intended to receive broadcast signals, including OTA aerials.

      --
      Kid-proof tablet..
  5. Same in China by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    In mainland China we had the same issue. We were paying about 10,000rmb a year ($2000 US) for awful slow broadband (5mbps fibre). After 5 years we noticed we could see our house from the office, so we bought two antennas and wireless APs and beamed our fast 100mbps home internet which cost 1600rmb per year ($320) and ran the entire office off of that. Commercial building lockdown should be illegal

  6. Limiting providers fine - kickbacks no by mattmarlowe · · Score: 2, Insightful

    There may be situations where a landlord has a good reason to limit who is accessing and modifying the cable/wire infrastructure of a property - so, a blanket ban on such is probably not a good idea.

    On the other hand, I don't have any problem with banning the kickbacks/payments that encourage the practice at the cost of renter choice.

    1. Re:Limiting providers fine - kickbacks no by gumbi+west · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I disagree. The land lord provides access to your front door, water, sewer, electric. While providing all of these things might be inconvenient for them and there may be good reason for the land lord to not provide them... they still have to just provide them. Similarly, providing IT infrastructure is a must. These other services were added to old buildings, some ethernet cable can be too. For new buildings, you're insane if you don't keep some extra conduits for the next thing you're going to want to run and failure to plan isn't really an excuse--it's just a stupid tax that you now have to pay.

    2. Re:Limiting providers fine - kickbacks no by Cinnamon+Beige · · Score: 3, Informative

      Where I lived, there was a long period during which you didn't want a TWC installer coming in and working unsupervised. They are (were?) generally subcontractors and at that time the quality varied very wildly--and unless you had already weird cable, you really had little chance of knowing the quality of who was going to get dispatched to you...and the bad ones did more than just leave you with no working cable.

      This is a legitimate reason for a landlord to ban them: "This company's installers have a tendency to do unnecessary property damage, and while some may be competent or better there's no way to ensure we get any of those."

      The better solution of course is for the companies to do what the local TWC did: start actually being careful about ensuring your installers are actually competent...

      Long-term, it ought to be possible by now to get it so a cable or satellite installer doesn't need to do much alteration to the building's structure--have it built into the walls like electrical wiring, so an installer's simply dealing with plugging things in, with all new lines being outside the building...which would solve the problems bad installers cause, eventually.

    3. Re:Limiting providers fine - kickbacks no by Solandri · · Score: 2

      Water, sewer, and electric are easy because they're utilities. As a landlord, I only need to connect those up to one system and everyone is good to go. That's not the case for ISPs. Some are DSL, some are cable, some are fiber, some are WLAN. (The DSL is not a problem because it runs straight to the tenant's phone, and switching DSL ISPs is transparent for the landlord.)

      It's the same reason local governments granted cable monopolies - from a physical hardware perspective, it's not very practical to lay down a dozen different redundant cable networks throughout the town just so everyone can pick from a dozen cable ISPs. Likewise, it's burdensome for an apartment to provide a dozen different network connects for different ISPs on the off chance some of their tenants might use them. Especially if it's an older apartment whose "server closet" is just a metal box with a couple 110 blocks and a small DSLAM in it. Most older apartments (and hotels) use internal DSL from their phone box to the individual units precisely because it didn't involve having to install new cable (Internet runs over existing phone lines). And cable Internet works with a single provider because the entire building is rigged up branching off of a single coax cable. But in-building coax won't work with two cable ISPs unless you lay down two parallel coax networks.

      I just finished installing ethernet to the individual units of the building I co-own (commercial property with a dozen tenants). It was a PITA installing new conduit, and for how much it cost I won't see a return on investment for over a decade. And I got it done fairly cheaply because I did it myself. If I'd hired someone to do it I'd probably be looking at a multi-decade ROI, plus we'd have to hire someone to occasionally manage/fix the switching hardware if I didn't know how to do it myself. (I would've loved to have gone the DSLAM route, but our phone junction box was outdoors with no room to add a DSLAM, much less multiple drops from multiple ISPs. So we partitioned a janitor's closet to make a "server closet" and pulled all the ethernet to there. We got lucky in that there was a crawlspace along the top front of the building where the electrical lines for the businesses signs run. I installed the conduit there, but it was not fun going through 1/8 mile of crawlspace on my hands and knees multiple times.)

      For new buildings, I completely agree with you. Install conduit and ethernet from the get-go.

    4. Re:Limiting providers fine - kickbacks no by gumbi+west · · Score: 2

      this post is about not letting the ISP do all that work. If they want to pull a bunch of cable, why stop them?

  7. Not just network service; cable tv too. by Narcocide · · Score: 2

    Time Warner has got an almost complete stranglehold on the residential market in LA due to these shady anti-competitive actions. All they have to do is convince the landlord to agree to claim that new network service installs would leave unnecessary extra holes in the walls (even when its not true, though usually this is technically true.)

  8. Sooo.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    It's much better to take millions directly from foreign governments, while actively serving in office, amirite?

  9. How is this not an exclusive agreement? by whoever57 · · Score: 2

    I don't see how this is not an exclusive agreement.

    Yes, it's not an agreement in writing, but the landlord and the ISP clearly agree that no other ISP will be able to sell to tenants. How is that not exclusive?

    --
    The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
  10. SPAM submission? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    https://slashdot.org/submissio...

    https://slashdot.org/submissio...

    https://slashdot.org/submissio...

    Slashdot survives on readers' submission and over the years I have done my share of submissions

    Whenever I submit an article, I submit articles that I think is interesting, something which is related to 'tech', something for the geeks to enjoy, as the geeks make up a large part of the Slashdot reader base

    Something must have happened in Slashdot recently, however --- All 3 of my most recent submissions have been tagged as "SPAM"

    I am putting up the links to the 3 "spam submissions". You guys decide if they are spam, or not

    FYI, I never expect all my submission to be adopted

    I recognize that the editors have the final say on which submission to use, which to reject

    Anyway, anyone else experience the same treatment?

    I am posting as AC because they have locked up my account and not letting me to use it to post comment any more

    Info of my account is at https://slashdot.org/~Taco+Cow...

    Just in case you need to know if any of my submissions were ever accepted, here are a few examples

    https://hardware.slashdot.org/...

    https://slashdot.org/story/16/...

    https://news.slashdot.org/stor...

    And yes, in my account, my karma is still rated as *EXCELLENT*

    1. Re:SPAM submission? by Hylandr · · Score: 2

      I agree with this. You have the article in the summary. tl;dr

      --
      ~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
  11. A better idea by GuB-42 · · Score: 2

    In France, when an operator installs broadband in a building, after 6 month, he must allow competitors to rent the lines for a regulated price. This was done to avoid the situation where some buildings had fiber from multiple operators where others had nothing.
    It can be useful as a way to prevent the landlord-isp-tenant conflict since once the building is cabled, there is no need for other operators to access it.

    BTW, this rule didn't prevent operators from investing and I would't be surprised if it was a EU-wide decision.

  12. Re:It's just part of the rent. Renters shuld be aw by TroII · · Score: 2

    So what if the building allows only one ISP?

    It's anticompetitive and expressly illegal, that's what.

    --
    "If there was a gay Afro-Puertorican Linux distribution, I'd give it a try" ~lucm
  13. Re:What's in it for the landlord? by swb · · Score: 2

    My guess is that it would be the standard excuse -- I don't want more mess from installers boring holes.

    I'm sort of sympathetic to it, as people doing installs for utilities are often low-rent subcontractors paid in a way where they have every incentive to bang the fucking job out as quickly as possible with as little consideration for the property as possible.

    Plus, I would imagine a lot of landlords who aren't big commercial companies with full sized maintenance staff want to maximize rental income. Paying someone to even supervise to make sure the installers can get in, don't wreck the place, etc. lowers their income.

    On the other hand, rents do have a cyclical nature and keeping a building desirable for tenants when the rental market sucks would seem to benefit forward thinking landlords who realize that easy upgrades to new utility technologies will allow them to keep rents higher and get better tenants. So they should be figuring out how to make it possible to add new services without shredding the building.

    I'm surprised nobody has made money wiring rental buildings for ethernet and then managing multiple telecom services for landlords. The tenant can pick whoever and the utility only has to terminate in the building wire center. The landlord keeps his building intact and tenants can have their pick of technology.

  14. Re:The irony is that half of you idiots complainin by ThatsMyNick · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Hillary will be just like Obama, that is exactly why I vote for here. Obama accepts wall street donations. Obama accepts pharma donations. Obama accepts big oil donations. Obama accepts cable co donation. But Obama has not been bad president for any of these reasons. I dont mind 4 more years (or 8 more years) of Obama alike.

    Now I have no idea if Trump would do anything to stop it, but there is at least a CHANCE

    That is exactly the problem. Trump could make it better. Trump could make it worse. Trump could make it far better. Trump could make it far worse. There is no way of knowing anything. It like voting an 8 ball as the president. An 8 ball is not hillary, it has that going for it, right?

  15. Re:Switch to mobile by Bert64 · · Score: 2

    The problem is congestion, there is only a fixed amount of wireless spectrum that must be shared by everyone in the area, while any number of physical lines can be installed. If everyone starts using wireless then the performance will get worse across the board.
    Wired should be used whenever possible, leaving more wireless spectrum free for those cases when wired isn't possible.

    --
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