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.

Comments

Criminal behavior

[ArtemaOne]

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.

Re:Criminal behavior

[GrumpySteen]

Wrong.

The actual text of the bill says:
Upon approval of an Attachment Application by an Owner, Pre-Existing Third Party Users shall allow an Attacher, using Preapproved Contractors and at the Attacherâ(TM)s expense, to perform Make Ready by transferring, relocating, rearranging, or altering the Attachments of any Pre-Existing Third Party User to the extent necessary or appropriate to accommodate the Attacherâ(TM)s Attachment.

The law is pro-competition, not just pro-Google. Any company that wants to enter the market gets the exact same benefit. Google is mentioned in the summary only because they're the company trying to enter the market right now.

Re:Criminal behavior

[guruevi]

The backstory reads as such:
Google wants to roll out fiber, AT&T and Comcast have received several orders in order to move "their" cables, however most have been outstanding for more than 100 days, AT&T and Comcast are causing nuisances by moving each cable individually and requiring (unnecessary) permits/inspections from the city and/or the electrical service for each move. So basically for every pole you have 5-6 trucks passing by (Comcast, NES, AT&T, NES, Google).

Google proposed that 1 contractor can do all that in one visit. However, Comcast/AT&T purchased two city council members who brought up legislation that would just maintain the status quo and charge Google for their 'pre-approved contractors' to do the work, the reasons being claimed that AT&T contractors have full rights to any work on a pole due to 'union contracts' and Comcast thinks it would be fair that they stay in charge of 'maintenance' (charge money for losing customers).

Re:Criminal behavior

[uncqual]

What is wrong with that? Surely you don't expect every politician to, without help, personally draft every word of legislation that they propose? No politician can be an expert on the details of computer security, warfare, welfare, medicine, nuclear power, geology, oil drilling, education, global finance, genetics, food safety, space exploration, micro economics, the penal system, economics of healthcare, religion, etc... Of course they seek the assistance of others in crafting the details.

However, at the end of the day, they have to vote for/against legislation and they are accountable to the voters there -- what's the problem?

Re:Criminal behavior

[silentcoder]

Ah yes, the republican's favorite false equivalence.
Sorry but private citizens are not and never will be equivalent to private corporations or vice versa and literally NOTHING you conclude from assuming that can ever be anything but completely wrong.
When citizens try to influence politicians - that's democracy at work and universally a good thing.
When corporations, any corporations, try to do the same thing - that's plutocracy and universally an evil thing.

Did Google help write OTMR

[tomhath]

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.

Newsflash! Our elected officials are for sale

[Snotnose]

Color me anything but surprised.

Don't rush to conclusion

[Ogive17]

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.

Re:Don't rush to conclusion

[Gravis Zero]

Here's the problem: AT&T and Comcast want make the process of adding new cables to be a painful as possible for outside by using existing regulation. This is known as regulatory capture. It is not in AT&T's or Comcast's best interest to be helpful.

Seriously, this is like asking the owner of a car dealership their opinion on Tesla selling directly to people.

Imagine how it would work

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Imagine how it would work

[cboslin]

and they do, do this....

Worked in the Telco industry, we had $15,000.00 Network General Sniffers at each end of a T1 to prove beyond doubt, that the line was cut and it was the Telco's fault.

They denied it 100% of the time, until you produced logs from both Network General Sniffers and the problem was them and not you...every single time...without fail.

You are 100% correct that they will do this to prevent, thwart or at least slow down competition.

The smart move is for Sheri Weiner to lose her seat at the table, she is obviously completely controlled by the industry attempting to prevent the citizens of Nashville from getting FTTH.

Pretty typical of every city that attempts to put in Fiber To The Home, the industry sues and loses at least twice if not three times, but if the citizens push through it, they get Fiber and lower Cable rates to boot.

It is the only way Cable companies ever lower their prices, because its the only way they get true competition.

An even more simple solution

[bl968]

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.

Re:Perhaps all new legislation

[Pascoea]

I don't mean to be an ass, but that doesn't make any sense. Do you REALLY want someone who knows nothing about the industry under consideration to be writing laws about that industry? No single person is able to know enough about a subject to be able to effectively legislate it, it has to be a group effort. And chances are, the people that are smart enough about a subject probably works in that industry. If you want to know about telephone poles, and the best way to hang cables from them, are you going to talk to a politician or a company that hangs cables on telephone poles for a living? It is 100% necessary to get input from the industry you are trying to regulate.

Not saying there aren't problems to solve, because there are many, but you can't exclude the industry from their own regulation. But I would tend to agree, a politician submitting a document that they (or their staff) didn't author or even bother to review should be barred from office.