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How One Little Cable Company Exposed Telecom's Achilles' Heel (backchannel.com)
Reader mirandakatz writes: Forget net neutrality -- the real fight is over controlling price-gouging monopolies. As Susan Crawford writes at Backchannel, a little-known cable company, Cable One, just exposed the telecommunications industry's Achilles' heel: regulation. Cable One has been raising its data transmission prices quickly, and it's making cable giants very, very nervous. If people begin noticing that there's no competition, that Americans are paying too much for too little, and that the entire country is suffering as a result, that's a big problem for Big Cable. As Crawford writes, 'don't fixate on net neutrality... Even though the state of internet access is an issue that touches the bank accounts and opportunities of hundreds of millions of Americans and gazillions of businesses, very few people understand what's actually going on. Now you are among them. Do something about it.'
In the USA, backbone data is cheap, the cable companies are a monopoly with built out networks that are 10+ years old, and they are raking in the cash with no price regulation and minimal oversight. It is high time that laws were passed to:
1. Determine a fair pricing model and require that where there are less than 4 ISPs available. Net neutrality is really about the quality of the product and what exactly you are buying every month. I am surprised no lawsuits over net neutrality have been filed over bait and switch yet.
2. Use anti trust laws to break up cable companies into cable providers and internet providers sharing the same lines owned by a third company that maintains and owns the lines.
3. Protect internet access in the same way that the federal laws currently protect US mail (both privacy and penalty wise) both the privacy of email and browsing.
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
Their pipe, their rules.
Don't like it? Invest your own millions into building a carrier grade infrastructure and charge YOUR customers whatever rates YOU decide
Sincerely,
Capitalism
Their pipes (in some cases), but a shared internet standard.
Don't like it, don't connect that sub-network to the internet, and don't call it part of the internet created and largely maintained with public funds..
Salutations,
Everything that allows markets and capitalism to exist and thrive.
(Oh, and Ryan Fenton)
Fix the monopoly problem and net neutrality is irrelevant. Leave the monopolies in place and no amount of rules is going to fix the problem "net neutrality" is aimed at. As a matter of fact, "net neutrality" rules will make the problem worse because they will make it even harder to break up the monopolies.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
so dumbfuck - who pays?
Public power is common in America. About 50 million Americans, or about 15%, get their electricity from government owned utilities. They get a monthly bill and pay for their electricity the same way that the other 85% do.
So does "public power" work better? No, not really. But it doesn't seem to be any worse either. It is about the same in terms of both reliability and price. In general, a competitive market is superior to government provision, but since power generation is a natural monopoly anyway, competition isn't really possible, so the government isn't any worse than a regulated utility.
www.publicpower.org
This is the correct solution. The last mile should be a public utility and brought back to interconnection points. Charges for use of these interconnection points would based on the cost of running them. Anybody can run a fiber into these centers, pay for use of router ports, and interconnect without further charge.
I'd like to see towns stop renewing franchises for existing cable systems, nothing says they have to renew them. Give them five year warnings that the franchise won't be renewed and then conduct arbitration for purchasing the last mile infrastructure. It is not like you are throwing them out, they can hook up at the interconnect centers just like everyone else.
A friend of mine went to law school at NYU. Near where she lived, there was a park where the drug dealers did business. Drugs aside, it was the safest place in town. Because the dealers didn't want any shit going down that would attract the police.
Big Cable is pissed at Cable One because they don't want hearings on the industries business practices.
Have gnu, will travel.
FTA: See the problem? If people begin noticing that there’s no competition, that Americans are paying too much for too little, and that the entire country is suffering as a result, that’s a big problem for Big Cable.
Really? People haven't noticed? BS.
Everybody knows.
Everybody already knows that territories have been divided up to avoid competition. Duh.
Anecdote: As president of my HOA (almost 100 units), I pushed through an opportunity we had to get every unit pre-wired with fiber from Verizon FiOS. That meant that every unit had on-order access to telephone, cable (TWC), and fiber (Verizon/Frontier). I turned my complex into a location that had actual competition between internet providers. The result has been lower prices for everyone.
And, politics being what they are, and me having spent my political capital on creating an even playing-field, I was not re-elected to the Board. Such is the nature of politics: If you do good, you will lose your elected office. I think it's a law of nature.
Again: Everybody knows.