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AT&T and Comcast Helped Elected Official Write Plan To Stall Google Fiber (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: As the Nashville Metro Council prepares for a final vote to give Google Fiber faster access to utility poles, one council member is sponsoring an alternative plan that comes from ATT and Comcast. The council has tentatively approved a One Touch Make Ready (OTMR) ordinance that would let a single company -- Google Fiber in this case -- make all of the necessary wire adjustments on utility poles itself. Ordinarily, Google Fiber must wait for incumbent providers like ATT and Comcast to send construction crews to move their own wires, requiring multiple visits and delaying Google Fiber's broadband deployment. The pro-Google Fiber ordinance was approved in a 32-7 preliminary vote, but one of the dissenters asked ATT and Comcast to put forth a competing proposal before a final vote is taken. The new proposal from council member Sheri Weiner "call[s] for Google, ATT, Comcast and Nashville Electric Service to create a system that improves the current process for making utility poles ready for new cables," The Tennessean reported last week. "Weiner said ATT and Comcast helped draft the resolution she proposes." Weiner told Ars that she asked ATT and Comcast to propose a resolution. "I told them that I would file a resolution if they had something that made sense and wasn't as drastic as OTMR," Weiner told Ars in an e-mail today, when we asked her what role ATT and Comcast played in drafting the resolution. Weiner said she is insisting on some changes to the resolution, but the proposal (full text) was submitted without those changes. When asked why she didn't put her suggested changes in the version of the resolution published on the council website, Weiner said, "I had them [ATT and Comcast] submit it for me as I was out of town all last week on business (my day job)." Weiner said an edited resolution will be considered by the council during its next meeting. Weiner's plan could stall the OTMR ordinance and -- though it might improve Google Fiber's current situation -- would not provide the quick access to poles sought by Google Fiber and most council members. However, Weiner said she is willing to support OTMR later on if her proposal doesn't result in significant improvements.
Unfortunately clearly anti-competitive and manipulative activities like these will never be prosecuted properly. Drafting legislation that negatively affects your competition could be prosecuted under countless existing laws, even so far as insider trading if you made any financial adjustments in advance of the laws you wrote taking effect.
Should have to include a statement that the legislator wrote the legislation completely on their own without the assistance of any parties concerned in the legislation.
There should be a stipulation that if they are found to be lying on the in the statement they have to spend 1 year in jail.
The council has tentatively approved a One Touch Make Ready (OTMR) ordinance that would let a single company -- Google Fiber in this case -- make all of the necessary wire adjustments on utility poles itself
Lobbyists help write legislation all the time. I'd be surprised if Google wasn't in on the original ordinance.
Color me anything but surprised.
By no means am I a sympathizer with AT&T or Comcast but is it really a bad idea to get their input? In my opinion, she was doing her job by looking for options before coming to a final conclusion.
It's easy to bash the incumbents but let's not just hand the keys to the city over to Google just yet.
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
News Flash: Monopolies buy politicians to protect their monopoly! Masses shocked! Film at 11.
Seriously though, this is no surprise. These monopolies have been making money hand over fist for decades on delivering Cable TV or phone service to a captive audience. They now see their internet business slowly cannibalizing their cable TV business (analog cable is already dead here, there is no reason all content cannot be streamed online) or completely eliminating their phone service ($120 for Ooma and never pay another $25/mo phone bill? Done deal.)
These companies have an outmoded 15 plus year old built out infrastructure for net access that they paid for with government grants and they have been raking in the profits all those years with minimal overhead. Now they see Google fiber and they know that they will actually have to compete or they will be completely out of business. However, monopolistic interference is often easier and cheaper than competition. Sheri Weiner needs to have some FBI agents come by for a visit and open a corruption investigation into her. Letting a monopoly write your legislation should be illegal.
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
If Google causes an outage of other services, they're on the hook for the outage. It's the other company's right to take responsibility for moving their services on the right of way. This issue doesn't pass the sniff test at all. Non issue.
Have your power company hire Adelphia to do it.
Then you can get 10 gig service in your house.
Anybody want to rent a room? Barn? Chickenhut?
Plan G: Help us get ready to use the poles we need in 2 weeks or we'll do it ourselves.
Plan T: We'll fix up to 125 per week. If we don't do it within 30 days we'll pay you $500 per pole per month.
Google says they need access to 44k poles in Nashville. 44k/125 is about 7 years.
Either Goog is inflating their needs or T is dragging their feet in plain sight.
Nobody wrote a plan to stop you in Portland, OR. You did that all yourself, Google. You also took the money and ran, collecting untold sums in tax and fee breaks before you split.
Comcast would claim they can't move *their* wire until ATnT move theirs under this bill, because ATnT run the same poles.
ATnT would claim Comcast needs to move their wire first under this bill, as ATnT cannot move Comcasts wire out of the way as they move ATnTs.
So they'd be at (fake) standoff, wherever more than one provider has wires running.
They could delay rollout of competitors for years or even decades with tricks like this.
Eminent domain all the polls in Nashville.
Create the Nashville Telecommunication Services a city government ran agency/non-profit corporation to handle all maintenance and wiring on the poles.
All companies who wish to use them simply pays 1/#ofproviders of the total maintenance cost for the poles.
So 1 Company pays 100%
2 Companies pays 50%
3 Companies pays 33% etc
The more companies using the poles the cheaper the poles are for each company doing so.
"GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 51230 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; Setec Astronomy)"
OTMR is done ALL the time, all over the US and probably in other countries. It's not drastic. It's NORMAL.
You know, a word that means the opposite of drastic. Normal. A word that means, well, normal.
AT&T and Comcast NORMALLY have little to no problem with OTMR except well, in this case, a competitor they don't want is the one who needs to do a lot of OTMR. And then suddenly the thing everybody has done for years is drastic.
Riiiight. Nothing fishy going in here. They just, you know, faxed it over, while the rep was out of town. Perfectly drastic. I mean, normal.
Sig for hire.
Because more likely it's "AT&T and Comcast bribed politician to push legislation they want".
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The US Government along with help from the RIAA/MPAA offered to help NZ write their changes to copyright law a few years back
So, an elected official is either approached by an AT&T/Comcast lobby group or approaches them, and she then allows that lobby group to submit legislative proposals to the council in her name because (paraphrasing somewhat) "she was too busy doing other stuff to make time to do it herself".
You know, I recall a few British and European politicians doing that over the last 15-20 years. One example, the "Cash for Questions" scandal in the 1990's... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
It was labelled Corruption, and resulted in the end of a few political careers.
There is too much concentration of power in the cable/Internet/telephone companies, to the point where writing laws to keep out competition is too easy. There should not be any duopolies for Internet access. Instead you should have a dozen options, so you can get the best price and service. Time to take the Last Mile away from Corporate America.
So does this mean Marsha Blackburn has to take turns with Sheri Weiner servicing AT&T and Comcast? Which one gets to swallow?
When will the firing squad be organized? Fines don't work. Jail time doesn't happen... not much else left, is there?