How Comcast is Shortchanging Customers In Vermont (wired.com)

New submitter mirandakatz writes: Comcast is suing Vermont's Public Utility Commission, claiming -- among many other things -- that its First Amendment rights have been violated. But as Susan Crawford argues at Backchannel, there are far too many holes in that argument. Crawford writes that 'Comcast, which Wall Street knows is essentially an unregulated public utility for high-speed internet access in the areas it covers, has unlimited resources to fight off this public-spirited regulator...[And] although there are many efforts in Vermont to provide fiber (including ECFiber), they're still small: Comcast isn't feeling any pressure to upgrade its lines to fiber. And, as [Craig] Moffett has reported, Comcast from now on will be growing through price hikes, not through building new lines. It's done with building new lines. The whole thing is dispiriting.'

Comments

Pwn Congress and you to can rip off America

[Seven Spirals]

They pwned congress. Game over. Maybe a new name is in order. I nominate one of these: Comca$t, ComCaste, ComAssed, Comlast. Someone else can do better, I'm sure.

Re:Pwn Congress and you to can rip off America

[Anonymous Coward]

ALL infrastructure: roads, bridges, water, sewer, telephone, electric, Internet, etc. need to be publicly owned.

Re:Pwn Congress and you to can rip off America

[thegreatbob]

Comcass would probably take the least effort.

Re:Pwn Congress and you to can rip off America

[Rick Schumann]

Why stop there?
How about all the above, plus the entire medical industry, including especially the pharmaceautical industry, be mandated as not-for-profit? Take greed out of the equation for everything that is classified as a necessity, and you come closer to the Star Trek vision of a post-scarcity, utopian society.
Of course the main problem is getting the rest of the world to go along with this, and getting rich conservative types, who would much rather we return the world to monarchies and feudalism, to not go around waving their arms screaming "Socialism!!!" and spending their considerable monetary and political resources shutting it down and permanently discrediting anyone who supported it.

Re:Pwn Congress and you to can rip off America

[Train0987]

Without a profit motive none of the technology you're using right now would even exist.

Re:Pwn Congress and you to can rip off America

[Anonymous Coward]

So you're saying that greed is the only thing to live for?

I postulate that avarice is bred into people. It was not bred, trained, conditioned, etc., into me, maybe to a fault considering our current "society" and how much greed you need to achieve success.

The Star Trek society had other motivations. Money and greed were rarely discussed.

I'm motivated by technology (I'm a design engineer) and the awesome things it can do to improve life, society, etc. I think most great designers and inventors were motivated by the thing, and making it happen. Many of them were poor, and never really received much money for their work, but usually some greedy businessman found a way to get rich off of their ideas and work.

How about music and art: musicians and artists are motivated by what they create. I personally know many. They don't think about money- they just have to create the thing they create. A lot of great art never gets recognized, or maybe long after its creation and the artist/musician is dead. Most artists and musicians are very poor, unless they 1) are favored by the wealthy industry, 2) got very lucky, such as a Justin Bieber, and / or 3) make money some other way.

Re:Pwn Congress and you to can rip off America

[Anonymous Coward]

No you're right. In Star Trek the accumulation of direct power is the motivating factor. Easy to see in the few shows in Deep Space Nine which shows Earth and the way Star Fleet has direct power over the lives of it's inhabitants.
But after all money is only a way to count power. No billionaire needs more money, they continue to try accumulate more because of the power it gives them. Same with politicians. They seek office for the chance it gives them to impose their will on others.

Re:Pwn Congress and you to can rip off America

[msauve]

"The Star Trek society had other motivations. Money and greed were rarely discussed."

You're seriously pointing to fiction as a counterexample?

"I'm motivated by technology (I'm a design engineer) and the awesome things it can do to improve life, society, etc."

So, are you a trust fund kid and do that work gratis, or do you get paid by a greedy capitalist?

Re:Pwn Congress and you to can rip off America

[Rick Schumann]

Try, for a minute, to think beyond our current reality, please? The 'way things are and always have been' doesn't need to define us unless we let it.

Re:Pwn Congress and you to can rip off America

[Rick Schumann]

I'll say the same thing to you I just said to someone else in this thread: Try, for a minute, to think beyond our current reality. The 'way things are and always have been' doesn't need to define us unless we let it.

Re:Pwn Congress and you to can rip off America

[Anonymous Coward]

Horseshit. What about the technologies discovered by NASA the last 65 years? You're another typical capitalistic scumbag.

Re:Pwn Congress and you to can rip off America

[dpilot]

There is a range in between, trust-fund baby and, "I only do things to get money." I'd like to think that most of us don't live at the extremes of that distribution.

Re:Pwn Congress and you to can rip off America

[Gilgaron]

You still get a salary working at a not-for-profit. But yes, the money tends to come from the government rather than private investors.

Re:Pwn Congress and you to can rip off America

[currently_awake]

The American power grid and telephone network were both built with public money. The LACK of a profit motive allowed them to succeed. The biggest lie told in America: "You NEED big corporations."

Re:Pwn Congress and you to can rip off America

[Solandri]

plus the entire medical industry, including especially the pharmaceautical industry, be mandated as not-for-profit? Take greed out of the equation for everything that is classified as a necessity, and you come closer to the Star Trek vision of a post-scarcity, utopian society.

As long as there are medical treatments whose cost to implement exceeds the average lifetime productivity of the individual being treated, this can't happen. Unlike economics, productivity is a zero-sum game - everything that's consumed has to be produced. And if your society is consuming more than it produces, it won't last long. Something has to give; usually the currency devalues (prices go up) to try to make the sum total cost of things consumed equal total productivity (since wages tend to change slower than prices).

That's the role greed plays in the economy - discouraging people from giving stuff away for less than it costs to produce. You can still do it (e.g. charity), but when done by individuals the amount you can give away is limited by the resources you have available to you (which is capped at close to how much you yourself produce). Socialism can work, as long as you are mindful to keep it within these bounds. But if you exceed it (give away more stuff than is produced), you end up with Venezuela. That's what makes socialism risky - it disassociates this tight coupling between productivity and consumption at the individual level (can't buy more than you earn), by shifting some of the consumption costs to society overall (via the government). But since the government has the ability to raise taxes indefinitely (doesn't have a hard budget limit), it can promise more consumption than the country is actually producing, going into massive debt (what happened to Greece).

So while unfettered greed is bad for society, so is eliminating it altogether.

Re:Pwn Congress and you to can rip off America

[geekmux]

The Star Trek society had other motivations. Money and greed were rarely discussed.

The only realistic thing that should be taken from Star Trek is the fact that it takes place in the century most likely for any of the rest of that bullshit fantasy to become a reality.

Greed N. Corruption runs the world. That ain't gonna change for a long damn time.

Re:Pwn Congress and you to can rip off America

[Anonymous Coward]

Agree. Just don't drive / walk / run down _my_ road.

CAP === 'agents'

Re:Pwn Congress and you to can rip off America

[cheesybagel]

Right. Nuclear weapons were also developed with a profit motive. Right?

Re:Pwn Congress and you to can rip off America

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right! I'm giving up, too!

Re:Pwn Congress and you to can rip off America

[Anonymous Coward]

The American power grid and telephone network were both built with public money. The LACK of a profit motive allowed them to succeed. The biggest lie told in America: "You NEED big corporations."

Not in the slightest for either power or telephone.

Power companies began in the late 1800s as independents firms providing power for a facility right next door to the generating plant. When long distance transmission technologies were developed, many were consolidated to provide economy of scale on the generation side. Over time, these privately owned and separate distribution networks began to interconnect to provide redundancy and the capability to handle regional surges in demand. It wasn't until the Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935 that the government became seriously involved.

On the phone side, lines began as dedicated point to point connections. You wanna talk to the Chicago stockyards, you pay a firm like Western Union to lay a line between you and the Chicago stockyards (and paid the Bell corporation since they had the patents). Then switching technology was developed and all these lines began to be tied together. In the late 1800s the Bell patents expired and a plethera of competing private companies began. Each one running their own private web of phones connected by their switchboards. Over time, these companies both consolidated and began to interconnect to provide better service.

In neither case were these government lead or built with public money.

Re: Pwn Congress and you to can rip off America

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realize that Comcast took tax dollars to build out the internet, don't you? Fucking troll.

Re:Pwn Congress and you to can rip off America

[JackieBrown]

Not when we can have the government force people into change!

I work for money to provide for what my family needs and sometimes also for what we want. It's great you are in a place where you work for the betterment of others but that is not my goal - I try to help others but it's not why I work.

Re:Pwn Congress and you to can rip off America

[JackieBrown]

Public money comes from corporations either through direct tax or payroll tax or another tax.

And if you don't think profits and money had a hand in the timetable of what went up first and the quality of build and material for certain areas, try living in the poorer areas of town.

Re:Pwn Congress and you to can rip off America

[rahvin112]

You have no idea what you're talking about. The vast majority of power and phone lines installed in this country were installed by local coop's organized and created by local governments. These were later sold to major corporations for management and upgrades after the initial installation was paid for by the local communities.

Please don't spread propaganda.

Re:Pwn Congress and you to can rip off America

[plague911]

Almost none of the fundamental technology we are using right now is based off developments due to the profit motive. This is a myth the rural population tells its children.

Your statement is about as accurate references to the tooth fairy or santa clause

The internet? Defense. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Computing? Defense. https://www.computerhope.com/i...

Electricity? Pure intellectual curiosity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/....

Home electricity distribution? Half profit motive, half ego battle.

https://www.livescience.com/46...

Roughly 1/8ths of the underlying motivations came from profit motive.

Re:Pwn Congress and you to can rip off America

[Anonymous Coward]

Why stop there, no one should be-able to make profits, everything should be government run. Oh yeah, look at how that worked out in other places :-)

You have to draw a line somewhere, pick a place between complete capitalism and complete government control, no place between those two is perfect for everyone.

Re:Pwn Congress and you to can rip off America

[Rick Schumann]

See, you just failed completely at even imagining a world where things are not like that. Imagine a post-scarcity world, where the things that are necessary for life are produced by not-for-profit companies. I'm not talking about any bad-at-basic-math-UBI nonsense, either, I'm talking about a world where money and power are not the prime motivating factors in everybodys lives. Things and services necessary for life to continue are either inexpensive or free. You'd still work if you felt you wanted to or needed to, but you'd have the basics. Luxuries would be another matter, but since you wouldn't have everyone desperately trying to separate you from your paycheck for every little thing you needed just to survive and have a roof over your head, you'd have more to spend on those things.

I'm not going to sit here and say that I've got the whole thing figured out, or that it would even work for 7 billion people. But just continuing to recite a litany of "How things are right now are how they've always been and they'll always be this way" only leads you in a circle. Imaginging how things could be different is what drives change. Enough people get the same ideas and then you have a movement. Get enough people involved in a movement, and you could start chaning hearts and minds -- which is what actually makes things change. It's not something that happens overnight, or in a year, or even in a decade. But apathetically accepting "The Way Things Are" keeps you in the same rut, decade after decade.

Re:Pwn Congress and you to can rip off America

[JackieBrown]

I would love to live in a world where everything was free, all my needs where catered to, and I didn't have to work.

That's easy to sell especially to people who already believe that they are entitled to it. And you are giving people the boogeyman for who to lay the blame at: profit driven corps!

The only problem is in order for your idea to work, we have to first get to the a post-scarcity world. My water and electricity are run adn controled by the local government, but that doesn't make them free. In fact, it cost more than a lot of profit utilies in other cities.

Re:Pwn Congress and you to can rip off America

[uncqual]

Why don't you start a movement to refuse all drugs and medical equipment that have been initially developed via venture capital? That would show the capitalists how sincere you are in your beliefs and perhaps they will come and put flowers on your (likely premature) grave every year (or, maybe, piss on it).

How would you suggest small startup companies that actually develop quite a few of the drugs (often to be acquired by Big Pharma for big bucks after/if their ideas actually pan out) get the money to fund their efforts? Or, would you prefer that we stall medical progress in the name of egalitarianism?

In most cases, expensive drugs with widespread applicability become much cheaper after they fall off patent - in most cases, people with limited resources can just eschew drugs that have been released on the market in the past ten years or so and still have far better results than someone fifteen years ago had the opportunity to have at any price. In 2067, don't you think it would be better that most everyone have access to off-patent drugs aggressively developed prior to 2057 rather than, due to stalling of progress in drug development, no one having access to drugs that the competitive market would have developed after perhaps 2032?

Many of these drugs developed by startup companies are not obviously going to be winners and many such ventures fail and investors lose all their investment so without a strong profit opportunity, only philanthropists would offer funds and there just are not very many of those (and a lot of them seem to be spending their money on very basic problems in the Third World where they feel can help a lot more people with their money and "bend the curve" for future generations in those areas). Do you think we would be better off with the politicians (perhaps Ryan and Trump aided by lobbyists?) picking which drugs to invest in because they are so knowledgeable?

(Yes, as PharmaBro demonstrated, some capitalists manage to manipulate the government's approval mechanism to jack the prices up on drugs long off patent -- do you really want the government and lobbyists that create such a broken approval mechanism also deciding what drugs get developed and which ones done. In my view, it's better for the government to fix what they broke before taking on more to break.)

Re:Pwn Congress and you to can rip off America

[Anonymous Coward]

lol. Most, if not all, was publicly funded at universities. The american taxpayer created the information revolution.

Re:Pwn Congress and you to can rip off America

[wyHunter]

Are you working for $15 per hour? You're not? Then greed is your only motivator, yes?

Re:Pwn Congress and you to can rip off America

[wyHunter]

Thank you. Someone who understand reality!

Re:Pwn Congress and you to can rip off America

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish we could go back to monarchs... Much easier to get rid of one bastard 2000 miles away than it is to get rid of 2000 tyrants in my backyard.

Re:Pwn Congress and you to can rip off America

[Rick Schumann]

Friend, I'm tired of people not reading (and comprehending!) what I write -- and then making comments based on their incomplete or incorrect understanding.

Nowhere did I say 'a world where EVERYTHING IS FREE'. I'm talking about a world where the BASICS -- food, water, shelter, clothing, access to energy sources, communication, healthcare, and medicines -- are inexpensive (**OR** free, if technologies progressed enough to allow for that!) instead of EVERYTHING in those categories having their prices jacked up all the way to the Moon, just because some jackass(es) can get away with it, so they can line their pockets.

Are we there yet? NO, WE ARE NOT -- but thinking about and talking about an idea is what gets peoples imaginations going -- and you get enough people doing THAT, and maybe someone invents ways that it can be made reality! Do you get it now? Plodding along on the same treadmill you've always been on and never thinking about how something could be different is what perpetuates bad situations.

Consider this, while you're at it: Many of the really great, transformative inventions and changes that have occurred throughout human history started with ONE MAN with an idea that everyone else said was 'crazy' and 'impossible''; we invented flying machines when everyone said that was impossible; we went to the MOON, repeatedly, and at some point everyone said that was crazy and impossible; we found cures for devastating diseases that everyone thought would never be cured; everyone said having a video telephone in your pocket was just silly stuff from comic books, but we're carrying them around with us right now. Saying we'll never have a 'post scarcity world' or a world where capitalism doesn't rule everything is ridiculous, but never believing anything can be different is what keeps things in a state of status quo.

Re:Pwn Congress and you to can rip off America

[JackieBrown]

I like the world you envision; I just think you are incorrect on some the reasons we are not there yet.

And unfortunately, to get there and maintain, we would need direct government control over a lot of aspects of our lives. For example, is it a correct use of resources for a sports player with no family to have a house with more than1 or two bedrooms or should that go to a larger family? Should families be allowed to be large? In order to elimate or reduce scaricity we need to be micromanaged to a level most people do not want.

Re:Pwn Congress and you to can rip off America

[Anonymous Coward]

> feudalism

Ah, yes, when you can ship people around to where labor is needed without regard to the local culture.

Just like now with illegal immigration and visa workers.

Re:Pwn Congress and you to can rip off America

[Anonymous Coward]

You have no idea what you're talking about. The vast majority of power and phone lines installed in this country were installed by local coop's organized and created by local governments. These were later sold to major corporations for management and upgrades after the initial installation was paid for by the local communities.

Please don't spread propaganda.

Can you source that at all?

I just read a half dozen pages from the first page of Google hits on "history united states telephone lines". Much discussion about independent companies setting up their own networks. References to the big players, Bell Telephone and Western Union. Plenty of mention of other companies founded by this fellow or that fellow. One of these pages uses the word cooperative once when referencing the horde of local phone companies that started up when the Bell patents expired.

In 1893 the patents owned by Bell expired. Like telephones themselves fifteen years earlier, small, independent telephone companies spread across the state. Some companies began as cooperatives. Others were incorporated; the prominent men of the community developing from telephone pioneers to telephone stock holders.

Government driven cooperatives do not seem to have been the majority player.

Re:Pwn Congress and you to can rip off America

[Anonymous Coward]

But just continuing to recite a litany of "How things are right now are how they've always been and they'll always be this way" only leads you in a circle.

You know what else leads people in a circle? Telling them to "Try, for a minute, to think beyond our current reality." and then repeating yourself when they come back to tell you you're an idiot.

You can tell people this all you want, but your post-scarcity world cannot exist without scarcity. Everything has to go to shit for your beyond-current-reality world to be born. Thus, telling people to try to fight against it now is just delaying the inevitable. Better to accept things as they are now and stop trying to fight it. Maybe then your children's children might have a chance at a better world. If you fight it, you may as well be cursing your next several generations.

Re:Pwn Congress and you to can rip off America

[Rick Schumann]

No no no.. you think I'm talking about Communism or Socialism and I'm really not. I'm not talking about any government 'allocating' anything. All I'm really talking about, for starters, is removing the idea of 'profit' as a motivator. People are still paid what they're worth -- but nobody is hoarding wealth for the sake of hoarding wealth (and using it to weild power over others). Anything that used to be considered 'profit' is rolled back into improving things for everyone. I have no idea off the top of my head how this would functionally work; maybe the way 'employee-owned' businesses work?

Re:Pwn Congress and you to can rip off America

[Raistlin77]

Friend, I'm tired of people not reading (and comprehending!) what I write -- and then making comments based on their incomplete or incorrect understanding.

Friend, I'm here to tell you that if you expect people to read and comprehend your entire reply, you are in the wrong place.

Re:Pwn Congress and you to can rip off America

[Anonymous Coward]

Or, more than likely, you're just a dumb piece of crap with no imagination whatsoever who can't be bothered to think about anything being any different than they are RIGHT NOW. You're also likely one of those people who say shit like "we've discovered EVERYTHING about science and technology we'll ever discover". You're possibly one of the assholes who screws whoever he has to to 'get ahead' and hoards money for the sake of hoarding money, then rubs people's faces in it. Regardless of what's true and what's not about you, how about you fuck off and die? Nobody needs your APATHY infecting them and dragging them down.

Re:Pwn Congress and you to can rip off America

[Anonymous Coward]

Absolutely. Sure, dropping the nukes wouldn't have directly resulted in profit. Profit would have been obtained by winning the war.

Re:Pwn Congress and you to can rip off America

[Anonymous Coward]

The best intent is to curb the excesses of both effects on the market.

It's good to have a healthy profit, but excessive profit can quickly become profiteering.

Instead of having a steady supply of customers who keep coming back because the deal is good, you have customers who will jump ship as soon as a better option becomes available or they find a way to live without.

On the other side, if everything is given away, then customers do not place value on the product.

I hate this colloquialism, but there is a truth in it; Hunger has a quality in itself.

Hunger teaches us to prioritize our needs so we do not live with hunger.

Sadly, we don't have a mechanism on the other side of the equation (other than social stigma) that teaches us the same lesson with excess.

Re:Pwn Congress and you to can rip off America

[Anonymous Coward]

On the electrical side:

The first utility to sell electricity from a central plant to multiple customers was George Roe's California Electric Company in San Fran. Private company.

Brush Electric Company was the first to supply electricity for lighting, as well as the lighting equipment itself, to a large number of American cities from coast to coast. Private company.

First large scale electric power plant in the world, Pearl Street Station, was in Manhattan and built by Edison Illuminating Company. Private investors. The later Edison Light and Power Company then spread across the country. Definitely not a government sponsored coop.

Stretching the distance from generation to consumption was the first high voltage line which was constructed from the Williamette Falls to Portland, Oregon. Was only 13 miles to downtown, but was a big increase in how far electricity could be sent. The Williamette Falls Electric Company was founded by local entrepreneurs with funding from General Electric.

The Mill Creek hydroelectric plant was the first three phase distribution system. Built by General Electric after several local towns decided they couldn't effectively build or run plants of their own.

The above instances all being locally generated electricity being delivered to customers relatively close to the generation stations. With rapid improvement in high voltage transformers, companies such as Westinghouse and General Electric began tying the multitude of small grids together.

All told, in reviewing about thirty different pages on the history of the United States electrical grid and the histories of the various big name companies that were involved, the words 'cooperative' or 'coop' are just not coming up.

Re:Pwn Congress and you to can rip off America

[Anonymous Coward]

Or, going the other direction, we could start a movement refusing to grant patents and copyrights and other rent-generating revenue to any private enterprise that uses publicly-funded research as a starting point.

Your post indicates that you think venture capital is a prime mover in the creation of good things like medicines. In reality, though, venture capital is focused on MONETIZING things. Much of what you are talking about came initially from curious researchers who spend decades on the public dole, indulging their passions and/or looking for academic cred.

Re:Pwn Congress and you to can rip off America

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, naive much. You got a lot to learn about the way the world works, sonny! Why do you suppose most of us go to work? For fun? It's human nature to desire more. Star Trek is a TV show for God's sake. Without the profit motive nothing would get done. Nothing worth a damn, anyway.

Re:Pwn Congress and you to can rip off America

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't you start a movement to refuse all drugs and medical equipment that have been initially developed via venture capital? That would show the capitalists how sincere you are in your beliefs and perhaps they will come and put flowers on your (likely premature) grave every year (or, maybe, piss on it).

Actually, what they'd be more likely to do is try to patent even more worthless drugs that they charge fortunes for, then convince us to pay them double when their inevitable cock-ups occur! There are people out there already who will tell you that they won't touch the new stuff, preferring tried and true methods, rather than exploitative profit-seeking money hunters and their shady ways.

IOW, it's already an existing movement.

How would you suggest small startup companies that actually develop quite a few of the drugs (often to be acquired by Big Pharma for big bucks after/if their ideas actually pan out) get the money to fund their efforts?

Not selling out to Big Pharma would help.

Or, would you prefer that we stall medical progress in the name of egalitarianism?

You preferred the stalled medical progress in the name of profit that we have? Not to mention the fabricated research?

Remember, you aren't arguing in isolation.

In most cases, expensive drugs with widespread applicability become much cheaper after they fall off patent - in most cases, people with limited resources can just eschew drugs that have been released on the market in the past ten years or so and still have far better results than someone fifteen years ago had the opportunity to have at any price. In 2067, don't you think it would be better that most everyone have access to off-patent drugs aggressively developed prior to 2057 rather than, due to stalling of progress in drug development, no one having access to drugs that the competitive market would have developed after perhaps 2032?

You overlook the people who will be injured by our current system, a drug industry where billions are siphoned off in terms of personal enrichment, and where the greatest demand is manufactured bullshit. Again, you aren't arguing in isolation.

How long till there's another Vioxx, or Thalidomide, or that mesh that I see legal ads about, or whatever other ones I see?

Those lives are on your hands too.

Many of these drugs developed by startup companies are not obviously going to be winners and many such ventures fail and investors lose all their investment so without a strong profit opportunity, only philanthropists would offer funds and there just are not very many of those (and a lot of them seem to be spending their money on very basic problems in the Third World where they feel can help a lot more people with their money and "bend the curve" for future generations in those areas).

Actually, they're reacting to the lack of any interest or concern at all for those people, as they can see just how terrible the larger industry really is.

Do you think we would be better off with the politicians (perhaps Ryan and Trump aided by lobbyists?) picking which drugs to invest in because they are so knowledgeable?

Trump and Ryan are already making those decisions, in case you didn't know. Not even with research, and cutting edge medications, but routine and run of the mill medical treatments that just don't meet the preferred ideological tenets of the right-wing. So...we have to deal with them anyway.

No way around it.

(Yes, as PharmaBro demonstrated, some capitalists manage to manipulate the government's approval mechanism to jack the prices up on drugs long off patent -- do you really want the government and lobbyists that create such a broken approval mechanism also deciding what drugs get developed and which ones done. In my view, it's better for the government to fix what

Re:Pwn Congress and you to can rip off America

[Anonymous Coward]

They pwned congress. Game over. Maybe a new name is in order. I nominate one of these: Comca$t, ComCaste, ComAssed, Comlast. Someone else can do better, I'm sure.

Communistcast.

Re:Pwn Congress and you to can rip off America

[Anonymous Coward]

... come closer to the Star Trek vision of a post-scarcity ...

Even in Star Trek, everyone has to work and very few people want to solve problems, travel the universe and change the/their world. It's a big hole in the story that is never mentioned. A post-scarcity world will be closer to Brave New World than Star-trek and it's obvious how BNW works: They control reproduction and personalities to create a zero-growth caste system.

If a BNW society spends most of their effort on recycling, their main waste is heat, which can be offset by blocking sunlight. Recycling should make manufacturing cheaper, making a post-scarcity economy achievable.

Like BNW, people in this world want to consume drugs, have sex and have a good time. Unlike BNW, if people have anything more permanent than that, they won't share it. Hence the existence of greed: To get the non-perishable goods that others have, which is a fundamental need but like sex, not a survival need. It's also why communism, which tried to eliminate greed via politics, didn't work.

Greed is used to set the price of goods: Once that indicator is gone, society cannot have efficient manufacturing. That leaves other problems, like manufacturing dangerous goods, which must be controlled by other mechanisms, such as drug regulating authorities, which also increase the cost of making useful (pharmaceutical) goods.

Most countries balance these three factors through a single-buyer mechanism. Since Reagan reneged on the government's duty to speak for the people (and in 2008, congress-critters repeated that betrayal), corporations have been allowed to charge the US government any price they want. (eg. wage deflation, pharmaceuticals, education, housing.) Cost, that is a big reason for decaying infrastructure. With another reason being; the individual, his/her quality of life, is no longer a priority for the US government.

Greed is not the main cause of anti-socialist sentiment in the USA, a misbegotten duty to obey corporations is. That needs to change before the US political system can be changed.

... waving their arms screaming "Socialism!!!"

Banning socialism was the second-worst thing to happen to American politics, the worst was Ronald Reagan.

Re: Pwn Congress and you to can rip off America

[Anonymous Coward]

What a DA statement. Most of the technology I currently use was developed by people smart enough to do so without thought of recompense for their efforts.

Re:Pwn Congress and you to can rip off America

[msauve]

OK. I'll see your Star Trek with a bar of gold pressed latinum, and raise you with Atlas Shrugged, which doesn't require non-existent things like replicators, transporters, and dilithium crystals.

Re:Pwn Congress and you to can rip off America

[Anonymous Coward]

The Internet, transistors and nuclear power were created with government funds.

Re:Pwn Congress and you to can rip off America

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you source that at all?

Try The People's Network: The Political Economy of the Telephone in the Gilded Age, which also references much older works.

You know, from your recitation of your searches, it doesn't seem like you were looking in the right direction, but focusing on the already existing propaganda for your information.

All told, in reviewing about thirty different pages on the history of the United States electrical grid and the histories of the various big name companies that were involved, the words 'cooperative' or 'coop' are just not coming up.

Sounds like another searching problem. Looks like you're searching for a particular group, in a myopic focus that won't shed any light on actual electric cooperatives, because you're not looking for them.

Re:Pwn Congress and you to can rip off America

[OneAhead]

Why don't you start a movement to refuse all drugs and medical equipment that have been initially developed via venture capital?

You're gonna have to learn to be a bit more subtle in setting up a strawman if you want people to read further than your first sentence.

Re:Pwn Congress and you to can rip off America

[uncqual]

It doesn't matter because people who don't care to think about the problem don't read past the first sentence that challenges their beliefs anyway.

In this case, the GP urges eliminating profit from all of medical care (interestingly, though, not from an even more essential industry - food - which we all need daily rather than just some people needing some of the time). Yet, he doesn't address how any new medications, for example, would get developed. There are very few (any?) of modern research intensive drugs being developed by non-profits anywhere in the world.

It's upon the person proposing the elimination of the international system through which drugs are developed to propose a viable alternative to maintain an acceptable rate of safe and effective drug development or to show that they accept the consequences of people dying prematurely because drug development slows dramatically. One way to show this acceptance (since he provided no alternative) is for him personally to accept the consequences the next generation will suffer by eschewing all drugs developed under the system he urges elimination of.

Wow

[93 Escort Wagon]

Does that summary actually explain what the issue is at all?

Re:Wow

[thegreatbob]

Yes, you just need to be able to read above, below, beside, between, several miles away from, etc. the lines in order to catch it. So I guess the answer is really no.

Re:Wow

[suutar]

not really. Short form:
comcast's agreement with vermont's utilities commission is up for renewal, and the utilities commission wants them to continue working on the buildout obligations they picked up when they acquired a local cable company. Comcast doesn't wanna.

Re:Wow

[93 Escort Wagon]

Now, having read TFA, it seems even more egregious than that - Comcast doesn't want to fulfill obligations it already agreed to fulfill as a condition of being allowed to acquire the local cable company.

The biggest issue in Vermont

[Vermonter]

Is that ECFiber is only building infrastructure to service people who can't get Comcast already. So if you are like me and have Comcast available, then you don't get fiber access, even though fiber backbones are running through Comcast territory all over the state

Re:The biggest issue in Vermont

[Xyrus]

That's a lie. The most recent map showing where fiber rollouts show they are confined to small areas of the state, mainly due to comcrap's...how shall we say...influence preventing the expansion.

Comcrap is comcrap. They serve only comcrap.. They have not and will not do ANYTHING in a state where they hold a veritable monopoly for the customer unless they are absolutely forced to. Comcrap is like a new version of AT&T: We're Comcast. We don't care. We don't have to.

Wrong headline

[Rick Schumann]

Headline should read:

How Comcast Is Shortchanging Customers In America

Re: Wrong headline

[Anonymous Coward]

I have Comcast with fiber to the house. I donâ(TM)t live in a big city. Itâ(TM)s just that we also have the choice of AT&T with fiber here. In other words competition works and the market is better than fucking stupid government regulation.

Re:Wrong headline

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

No, it should read:

Comcast says its first amendment free speech is being violated, but nevermind that, we won't present that argument. Rather, here's some rhetoric from a kind-hearted public-spirited regulator what's wrong with that guy he's sweeeeeeeet!

I'm fine with stories that present both sides, but this is flat-out bullshit. Which would also be a more accurate headline.

Re: Wrong headline

[stealth_finger]

So you have a choice of two providers? Both waiting to ream you. Yeah, your system works a treat...

Re: Wrong headline

[Rick Schumann]

You actually think what we have now is 'a competitive market'? How adorable you believe that. What we have are a few 350-pound inmates serving life sentences without parole, and like it or not you're going to be their 'girlfriend', if you catch my drift. The way the system is now is broken in fundamental ways because of monopolies (or near-monopolies), and give them a few years and there won't be ANY competition whatsoever, it'll be just one company and they'll do what they please with impugnity. Would you rather have things that way? Don't even try to claim it won't happen, either, it's inevitable unless something changes -- and that means some regulation, not de-regulating it.

Re: Wrong headline

[Anonymous Coward]

You are lucky. Most of the US has DOCSIS or something coming over two copper wires like a DSL variant. I don't really see the choice here. At best you have a duopoly. It only will get worse, as cable prices will double (goo.gl/4zAQyQ).

The ideal was the old setup of leasing cable/DSL lines where one had a choice of providers. However, with the Powers That Be, our choices will be paying obnoxious sums, or doing all Internet access through our mobile provider.

Re:Wrong headline

[Swave An deBwoner]

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Seriously. How is the First Amendment being violated here?

• 1. Comcast is a religion?
• 2. Comcast is not being permitted to state their side?
• 3. Comcast is being prevented from staging a march down Main Street?
• 4. Comcast is being denied the right to petition the government to let them out of their contract?

No.

Comcast says it’s a “recognized provider of protected speech under the First Amendment and, as such, may not be singled out for undue burdens that infringe on such rights.”

I guess that "Nuclear Powered Megaphone Company" will also qualify as a recognized provider of protected speech under the First Amendment and therefore the potential for radiation leakage will be ignored so as not to cut into their profits.

Voted worse than Monsanto!

[Anonymous Coward]

Comcast: 2014 worst company in America

A Guide to Comcast Business Success

[dicobalt]

1) Provide the minimum possible infrastructure and quality of service to save money 2) Beg the government for free money leading to more money 3) Use saved money to buy out competition 4) Use saved money to buy out content providers to save more money on licensing 5) Use saved money to buy out more competition and content 6) Agree with other providers not to compete with them 7) Use saved money to buy out more competition 8) Use saved money to buy out nearly all competition 9) Conglaturations, YOU ARE WINNER!

One Comcast-in-Vermont Story Per Month?

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

C'mon editors. This is the second Comcast-in-Vermont story this site's crapped out in a month. Could you at least pull up TheRegister to see if there's anything interesting in tech we could talk about?

Re:One Comcast-in-Vermont Story Per Month?

[thegreatbob]

Perhaps drop a story on the firehose? I do actually see a lot of stories coming in that way these days.

Cable/internet is highly regulated...

[burtosis]

As in municipalities can't build their own infrastructure, nor is anyone else allowed to compete. In cases where competition is legal, collusion isn't and companies just divide up the region and everyone charges triple fair market value. Can't let the socialists win by breaking up monopolies and forcing net neutrality, id rather pay triple for 1/4 the speeds and willingly give up my right to a free, fair, and neutral internet. /s

Re:Cable/internet is highly regulated...

[thegreatbob]

Why /s ? Comcast tells us to bend over and take it, so we gladly oblige. It's the American thing to do.

Re:Cable/internet is highly regulated...

[omnichad]

In cases where competition is legal, collusion isn't and companies just divide up the region and everyone charges triple fair market value.

Dividing up by regions is implicit collusion (if not secretly explicit). What needs to happen is some cracking down on this.

Re:Cable/internet is highly regulated...

[Jerry]

" Can't let the socialists win by breaking up monopolies "

uh, Vermont is noted for its heavy lean to the Left and its senator, Bernie Sanders, is a self-declared socialist, yet Vermont got in bed with the devil.

It is common for Socialist to conflate profit with greed, but the Left has a sizable number of Billionaires: most of the Marxist Chinese ruling class, ditto for the Russians, the Cubans, North Korea, and individuals likeBill Gates, George Soros, and a very large number of American charities. *Cue the "not a true Scotsman" fallacy*

Re:Cable/internet is highly regulated...

[Obfuscant]

As in municipalities can't build their own infrastructure, nor is anyone else allowed to compete.

Exclusive franchises have been illegal in the US for almost two decades.

Can't let the socialists win by breaking up monopolies

The only way to force competition in a market is to force a second company to come provide service. You can break Comcast up into 1000 tiny cable companies, but that won't change the costs of a second company entering any of those markets.

And there is no monopoly on ISPs. Never has been. The only pre-existingd dejure monopoly situation was cable -- not the Internet. When you talk about paying triple for 1/4 the speed, you're talking the already non-monopoly ISP business.

Re:Cable/internet is highly regulated...

[burtosis]

You can force companies to come and compete by 1) forcing any isp that used public funds to lay cable/fiber to allow competition and 2) remove laws banning government installations and allow cities to install cable/fiber and then allow competition. Basically just remove the monopolies that currently exist. I live in an area with millions of people the vast majority of which have exactly 1 choice of high speed internet, Comcast. That should Never have happened.

Re:Cable/internet is highly regulated...

[scdeimos]

What needs to happen is some cracking down on this.

Good luck with that. In case you failed to notice there's an ex-telco lawyer running the FCC.

Re:Cable/internet is highly regulated...

[Obfuscant]

You can force companies to come and compete by 1) forcing any isp that used public funds to lay cable/fiber to allow competition

Since the franchise is not exclusive, this is already true.

2) remove laws banning government installations and allow cities to install cable/fiber and then allow competition.

These laws were made by elected representatives. Your issue is not with the ISPs.

Basically just remove the monopolies that currently exist.

The monopolies that currently exist are not legal ones but economic. Your step 1 does not solve the economic issues, and step 2 does so at the expense of the taxpayer.

I live in an area with millions of people the vast majority of which have exactly 1 choice of high speed internet, Comcast. That should Never have happened.

Comcast was never granted a monopoly as an ISP, so if it is one today then it wasn't for legal reasons. What is stopping a competitor? The cost. Solving the cost issue should not require the taxpayers footing the bill.

Re:Cable/internet is highly regulated...

[omnichad]

I have no illusions that it will happen. Just that it's what needs to.

Re:Cable/internet is highly regulated...

[Required Snark]

It's common for Capitalists to confuse theft with profit.

1. Control the law and regulators

2. ???? = Monopoly

3. Profit!!!

Worst slashdot summary ever

[MobyDisk]

This is one of the worst Slashdot summaries I've ever seen. It provides almost no information as to what the case is about while slamming the company and complimenting the regulators. What the heck is his about and why is it relevant tech news? What the heck does the first amendment have to do with it?

which Wall Street knows is essentially an unregulated public utility

This statement is simply false, it is a regulated public utility.

Re:Worst slashdot summary ever

[Anonymous Coward]

This statement is simply false, it is a regulated public utility.

clearly you did not bother to RTFM

Re:Worst slashdot summary ever

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. The summary is just a bunch of anti-Comcast drivel. I have no idea what the actual issue in the lawsuit is by reading the summary and like many other slashdotters, I'm too lazy to RTFA. (not too lazy to complain about a poorly written summary though!)

Re:Worst slashdot summary ever

[Obfuscant]

This statement is simply false, it is a regulated public utility.

clearly you did not bother to RTFM

The entire story is about Comcast trying to fight a requirement put upon it by the public regulation during a franchise (regulatory) renewal, which it would not have to do were it already unregulated. Who didn't RTFM?

Re:Worst slashdot summary ever

[Xyrus]

The aren't a regulated public utility. Sure, by pure legal definition they are but they are a monopoly in a state where their quarterly corporate profits exceed the entire state's budget. They own enough "interests" and have deep enough pockets that they can pretty much get away with anything they want, and they do.

More of that First Amendment crap again

[Anonymous Coward]

Soon, school yard bullies will sue school authorities, claiming that preventing them from insulting, threatening and bullying other students and basically making everyone's life miserable violates their First Amendment rights.

Comcast will compress video to shit & not add

[Joe_Dragon]

Comcast will compress video to shit & not add hd channels so they don't have to upgrade the cable plant.

It's a joke to just have 1 HD each for SHOWTIME, CINEMAX, STARS. But at least they have 2-3 for HBO.

But there don't even have all of there OWN RSN HD feeds. Yes CSN/NBCSN Chicago Plus2 HD is only on dish, directv and att-uverse

Competition would do better than regulation

[scourfish]

I think that getting rid of laws that prevent competition (such as laws preventing local communities from creating their own internet service) would go farther to increase quality of service. On a side note, though, I don't think that high speed internet is an inherent right for people living in a rural are.

Re:Competition would do better than regulation

[aaarrrgggh]

The challenge is competitors can only be viable with a certain minimum penetration depending on the density of households. So, in a suburban town, 20% uptake might work, but when you get to the sticks you need close to 100%. This makes it hard to have competition in all but the easiest markets.

Re:Competition would do better than regulation

[JackieBrown]

Most would rather complain that corporations are evil and government should take over without even realize they are asking the government to take over and fix a problem that the government helped create.

Re:Competition would do better than regulation

[plague911]

This is part of the reason why the sticks will be wiped out within a few decades. They simply are not economically viable due to a lack of economics of scale for their infrastructure. The communities were built in a different age, when the dynamics of value production were wildly different. Now they exist because they can salvage/repurpose previously developed infrastructure and they have united behind the R party to demand government subsidies. You can only live off of old infrastructure and government handouts for so long. You actively see it with community after community drying up.

Re:Competition would do better than regulation

[aaarrrgggh]

You can put in a mile of fiber in the sticks for less than $8k. In a city, the cost is closer to $1 million/mile. All it takes to make rural life work is people working together for a common goal.

Re:Competition would do better than regulation

[Obfuscant]

They simply are not economically viable due to a lack of economics of scale for their infrastructure.

Their infrastructure is also a lot cheaper to install and maintain. It is a good exchange.

If anything, I'd have said that the cities are going to go away as the high cost of infrastructure maintenance and increasing demands of larger populations will cause the system to crash.

Re:Competition would do better than regulation

[Anonymous Coward]

But competition isn't viable, especially in rural areas. There's a lot of area to cover; a lot of capital to invest. There's no guarantee you'll get even 5% of the market for your service. How is someone supposed to deploy an ISP on that?

To top it off, incumbent ISPs could always raise speeds and lower prices, killing demand for a competitor. Verizon FiOS could go gigabit immediately for the same price as Google Fiber, which is probably why they never tried a test city in a FiOS area.

I think there is a way to get competition though: vertical separation. One company owns the wires/cables, while others resell the service. This model already exists in the cell phone industry with MVNOs. In fact, Comcast uses it to sell an Xfinity cell service.

Re:Competition would do better than regulation

[plague911]

While I have no idea if your numbers are correct, or even close to correct. But you fail to even consider population density. Given those numbers (if they are correct) it is still very easily to see how the city results in cheaper service per person.

Re:Competition would do better than regulation

[plague911]

That would have been a viable theory except their is a massive variety of data out there basically completely refuting the your hypothesis.

10 seconds for research indicated that costs for package delivery are twice as expensive in the sticks.

https://www.prc.gov/sites/defa...

five more seconds

"The overall average per subscriber cost is $2,200. For the urban zone of the exchange the average cost is $800 and for the rural zone it is $6,000"

telecom service costs http://www.rural.org/workshops...

There is article after article after article, all indicating that costs per person are MASSIVLY higher in the sticks and the communities and their people are a net economic drain. The science is in, and has been for a while. The sticks are a huge albatrosses on American society

Re:Competition would do better than regulation

[Obfuscant]

costs for package delivery are twice as expensive in the sticks.

"Package delivery" is not infrastructure. Roads and electricity and water are infrastructure. A dirt road costs a lot less than a four lane city street. Above-ground wires cost less both in hardware and in easement costs. Water is not an infrastructure cost at all in the sticks.

There is article after article after article, all indicating that costs per person are MASSIVLY higher in the sticks and the communities and their people are a net economic drain.

As someone who lived "in the sticks" and saw a huge amount of my tax dollars going to fund projects in the big city, I know the opposite is true. But but but city folks subsidize things like phone service. Say that again after you learn that we had to pay to install the phone wire from the closest aggregation point to our demarc and I'll laugh at you.

The sticks are a huge albatrosses on American society

We'll stop sending you the food that is grown "in the sticks" and let all you city folks live off your community gardens, then, shall we? Or will you survive on Soylent Green?

Re:Competition would do better than regulation

[plague911]

"As someone who lived "in the sticks" and saw a huge amount of my tax dollars going to fund projects in the big city," That is as close to an outright lie as you can get.. Rural populations get confused easily. They see large projects in the cities and think their money is going towards it. The reality is they pay far less taxes than than the get back as far as subsidies and the city folk pay far more than they get back.

http://www.rockinst.org/observations/wardr/2011-12-giving_getting.aspx

perfect example.

It is ironic you bring up food prices.

Food prices for American cities would likely be lower if we did not subsidize the sticks. The United States has meaningfully high tariffs on many food imports. This is again done as a subsidy to the sticks people. Additionally the farm subsidies are yet another way we waste money on rural populations. The city folk would be much better off if they could just purchase their food directly from other locations and did not have to deal with the albatross that is rural America.

"Say that again after you learn that we had to pay to install the phone wire from the closest aggregation point to our demarc and I'll laugh at you."

While you may have had to pay some, Civilization likely had to pay orders of magnitude more than you to make that an option. This is a common fallacy in the sticks, they seem to think they if they paid some they paid all. lol

""Package delivery" is not infrastructure. Roads and electricity and water are infrastructure. A dirt road costs a lot less than a four lane city street. Above-ground wires cost less both in hardware and in easement costs. Water is not an infrastructure cost at all in the sticks." Yes the systems used for package delivery are part of the infrastructure. I am sorry but a "package delivery system" is simply a accurate use of the word infrastructure.

"the basic physical and organizational structures and facilities (e.g., buildings, roads, and power supplies) needed for the operation of a society or enterprise."

Re:Competition would do better than regulation

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know if $1mil/mile is a lot, but the overall average is about $300 per dwelling unit. About the same cost as a single truck roll to find out why cable internet is out. I don't even know why you're talking about infrastructure. It only constitutes about 1%-3% of overall operating costs. Customer support is over 10x more expensive than the fiber or the trunk bandwidth. One minute on the phone with tech support covers your bandwidth costs for nearly a year.

Re:Competition would do better than regulation

[Obfuscant]

"As someone who lived "in the sticks" and saw a huge amount of my tax dollars going to fund projects in the big city," That is as close to an outright lie as you can get.. Rural populations get confused easily.

Yeah, us hicks in the sticks is just dumb fucks soaking it up at the public trough.

Your bias is clear and unshakable, so I'll just stop trying to educate you.

Re:Competition would do better than regulation

[plague911]

"Yeah, us hicks in the sticks is just dumb fucks soaking it up at the public trough! " Yup!!! With direct welfare recipients, they at least know what they are doing. Rural communities simply do not, they were taught a myth since childhood that they somehow how are the "producers" in society. Unfortunately all the economic stats point otherwise. The rural communities are a rot, merely existing to cripple the economic powerhouses that are America's cities.

https://www.mckinsey.com/~/med...

Re:Competition would do better than regulation

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's assume the cost for a dense city is $1m/mile. The cost for both rural and suburbs is $8k/mile (suburbs usually don't have to bury lines, so I think this is fair).

City: 1,000 customers per mile * $70/month = $70,000 * 12 months = $840,000 yearly
Suburb: 10 customers per mile * $70/month = $700 * 12 months = $8400 yearly
Rural: 1 customer per mile * $70/month = $70 * 12 months = $840 yearly

In the cases of both city and suburbs, the line costs are recouped in a under a year and a half. In the case of rural, it will take about 10 years to pay off the infrastructure.

These numbers are hypothetical, but it's easy to see how a city could support several telecoms. The same goes for a suburb that's a bit more densely populated than my example. The numbers are sometimes worse for rural areas with houses 3 miles or more apart (of course, there are small towns and clumps of houses in some areas).

Vermont is an expensive place to service.

[rickb928]

Mostly rural, so the lines are long, and low density so subscribers per mile are pretty low outside of the metro areas of Burlington/Montpelier.

The business 'climate' is somewhat less than friendly, though Comcast can make any business climate hostile. Anywhere.

The topology is downright hostile to telecom, with north-south ridges through out the state, making long-haul cabling a serious challenge, and expensive when traversing those ridges. This is not a new problem.

Comcast has plenty of excuses to gouge their Vermont customers. And Vermont will probably just try to legislate the costs out of the equation. Good luck with that.

Re:Vermont is an expensive place to service.

[belg4mit]

What bearing does any of this actually have on them complying with requirements they knowingly agreed to? Particularly since they are allowed to comply in whatever cost-effective manner they see fit? They're not bitching about technical challenges, they're throwing up a red herring about free speech.

Re:Vermont is an expensive place to service.

[Anonymous Coward]

Vermont has long been connected with long-haul fiber through Boston, New York, and Quebec. There is actually plenty of bandwidth, the stable (Few Natural Disasters) environment there also makes it an up and coming place for datacenter construction.

Comcast has long played games, it is surprising it has taken this long for the lawsuits to start flying

Re:Vermont is an expensive place to service.

[lactose99]

Comcast bought this Vermont customer base with an OBLIGATION to expand service to those customers. How they do so is up to them, but they can't just back-out and claim freeze-peach on the whole situation.

Re:Vermont is an expensive place to service.

[bill_mcgonigle]

So basically all the same problems faced by rural electrification and telephone 80 years ago?

First amendent...

[Anonymous Coward]

Comcast is not a human being; you have no rights. Case dismissed; fine doubled.

FUCK YOU COMCAST.

Re:First amendent...

[Anonymous Coward]

Our valued corporate citizens share the same rights and priveleges we all do. This has been documented time and again in case law. Just because you happen to not like this particular company, does not change that.

Re:First amendent...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, the right to be put in jail, yes? The right to pay the high rate of tax? The right to not have any expenses declared for tax avoidance? The right to be held responsible for its actions? No, they get more rights. Because any restrictions is cried off as being invalid for the corporations, only humans.

The whole in the argument

[Anonymous Coward]

The whole in the argument is that Comcast have unlimited resources to defend themselves?

Huh?

Re:The whole in the argument

[oh_my_080980980]

The argument is Comcast is breaking its contract with Vermont. Read the article sometime moron.

Worked for me

[Doctor Memory]

Got a competing service where I live, and I was able to cut my bill in half and raise my average throughput from 12Mb to 525Mb. When I told Comcast I was cancelling, they didn't even try to dissuade me.

Companies don't have people rights

[Anonymous Coward]

Companies go around acting like they represent their employees and/or stockholders, and that one spokesperson in the company speaks for the individual rights and interests of all affiliated people. This is a fallacy. Companies do not have people-rights. I have not signed over Power of Attorney when I work for a company, nor when I buy a company's stock.

In short, neither Comcast nor any other company has Constitutional rights. Only individual people do.

None of the Telcos are putting in fiber

[Anonymous Coward]

I tried to get fiber from AT&T and they said nope, never going to happen. They weren't going to bet retrofitting any neighborhoods with fiber. I think all these companies are waiting for ubiquitous wifi to happen. But that could be years.

Re: None of the Telcos are putting in fiber

[Anonymous Coward]

This. My uncle works for Verizon in MD: he said they arent building out any more fiber. Right now they are working on fiber hubs, then its wifi the rest of the way.

Re: None of the Telcos are putting in fiber

[Anonymous Coward]

WiFi costs too much and works horribly once you get everybody on it.

Greed in itself ain't the issue ....

[King_TJ]

You know ... despite all the hatred for her opinions, Ayn Rand tried to point out the fact that framed properly, "Greed is good." Not a big fan of hers, but can respect her for taking that radical of an idea and backing it up with some reasoning.

If you really take a basic human emotion like greed out of the equation, you remove a prime motivator for humans to work hard to achieve goals. Anything, to excess, becomes bad or unhealthy. Greed is no different. (Gluttony is another one of the supposed "deadly sins" - yet you'd starve and die if you didn't eat regularly.)

Anyone who respects the values behind the Democratic Republic we put together in the USA *should* be waving their arms and screaming "Socialism!" when they see it infiltrating our government. The United States has a pretty exceptional thing going with the government we were formed under - and I'd go so far as to say the majority of problems people point to in the country have their roots in attempts to introduce socialist solutions.

The REAL challenge is how to keep our government from meddling in free market capitalism and allowing "corporatism" to take hold where big businesses collude with government, instead of getting governed by them. I dare say we'd never have found ourselves in the current situation with regards to Internet broadband if we didn't start out with telephones as a regulated government monopoly, followed by government regulation of the cable industry when it was first forming. For something like a decade, Americans were stuck dealing with dial-up modems over analog phone lines because the telcos didn't want to give up their precious copper wire infrastructure. The rest of the developing world leap-frogged right over us (even as we were "gifted" with 64K and then 128K ISDN service over copper).

Given the "monster" our government helped the chosen big businesses build, we're kind of stuck now. That's why you can't really let things like Net Neutrality legislation die. Once govt. meddles with a service like this enough, they can't just duck out completely and say, "It's a free market now! All good!"

But as new technologies emerge, we've GOT to try to learn from these past mistakes .... not throw the baby out with the bath-water, deciding our Constitution and Bill of Rights is outdated and worthless, and advocating a conversion to the same old socialism we've got in plenty of other nations.

Re:Greed in itself ain't the issue ....

[Twanfox]

Ayn Rand, misguided as she was, did not simply posit that 'greed is good' but it was that self-interest or selfishness was the highest and only moral behavior. That could mean a lot of things to different people. It could mean being greedy as it results in your self-aggrandizement. It could mean being altruistic if that is what you want to do. Regardless of what you do, you do it because YOU want to and not because you were told to do it by someone else.

Sadly, she also seemed to believe that people will perform at their best and that the brightest and best always won out. Even her protagonists would happily work for someone better than they if such a person existed. Rent-seeking or other greedy behaviors like patent-trolling are not likely very Rand-ian because they are not creators of anything and certainly are not doing their best at their job. They don't make (and get paid handsomely for it), they just take, as her antagonists do.

As to the notion that somehow, if the government had never gotten involved, we would be in a better place today, I think you may find yourself misguided as well. It seems quite the culture of the USA that we always want the most return for the least effort. That idea has given us such fun ideas as external cost to business. To maximize profits, I skip the cost of cleanup of my manufacturing process and instead dump waste back into the field. Is it toxic? Who cares, and when someone comes to tell me I need to clean it up, I'll cry bankrupt and move on with my money.

I have no high faith that, even if the government withdrew regulation in the best way possible (or even that hypothetical of never got involved in the first place) that we'd be any further ahead of where we are now. Comcast, in this case, doesn't want to provide the best service possible to all people possible. They're not being told they can't. Comcast is saying they don't want to be told what they have to do, even though they were only being told 'Wherever you see fit, run new lines.'

Re:Greed in itself ain't the issue ....

[King_TJ]

Everyone *should* want the most return for the least effort, though. That's how things become more efficient. The best software developers I know wrote great automation scripts that saved people lots of time doing repetitive tasks not because they were so hard-working, but because they were so lazy!

I don't believe in ANY utopias, whether the Star Trek type post-capitalist world or the idea that a minimalist U.S. government with no controls on the free market would make things perfect.

But what I *do* know for certain is that under ANY form of government that's ever existed, humans still act like humans, complete with tendencies to do evil, to take advantage of a fellow man for short term gain, etc. It's impossible to leverage central governance to make it go away. Government itself is run by more humans who sometimes choose to use the power they've been given in self-serving and corrupt ways.

If government never regulated communications in America at all? I think things would be different than what we have today. Better? I think so, in the sense that individuals were free to implement any idea they had that might solve the problem. How many limitations have we imposed on progress BECAUSE we made assumptions early on that government needed to control such things as our airwaves? Initially, it probably seemed like madness not to have an agency like the FCC controlling how much wattage you could broadcast with and what slice of frequency spectrum you could use for various purposes. But imagine the scenario if it was just a "free for all"? Eventually, people would invent other solutions to the problem. Maybe they'd come up with ways to broadcast across a big swatch of radio spectrum, in a shared system with all the other broadcasts? It could work something like the Internet does currently, where all the data goes out to the net in real time and specific chunks of data get routed back to the appropriate receiver. Then, it wouldn't be a matter of "Company X" not even being able to offer cellular service until they can buy a few channels in a costly government auction. CB radio operators would have had radios that let people talk with as much range as they needed, without needing to get a government license first. Wi-Fi would "just work" and work well, without all the standards that have to inter-operate due to the limited frequencies declared usable for the purpose.

Re: Greed in itself ain't the issue ....

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone *should* want the most return for the least effort, though. That's how things become more efficient.

Nope, that is how thievery develops.

The best software developers I know wrote great automation scripts that saved people lots of time doing repetitive tasks not because they were so hard-working, but because they were so lazy!

The most deplorable software developers I know, wrote scripts to allow them to take advantage of others, not because they were efficient, but because they were greedy.

I don't believe in ANY utopias, whether the Star Trek type post-capitalist world or the idea that a minimalist U.S. government with no controls on the free market would make things perfect.

So you claim, but as I will demonstrate later, this is not evident.

But what I *do* know for certain is that under ANY form of government that's ever existed, humans still act like humans, complete with tendencies to do evil, to take advantage of a fellow man for short term gain, etc. It's impossible to leverage central governance to make it go away. Government itself is run by more humans who sometimes choose to use the power they've been given in self-serving and corrupt ways.

Hence the importance of a government that can be called to the question, a topic that was examined centuries ago.

If government never regulated communications in America at all? I think things would be different than what we have today. Better? I think so, in the sense that individuals were free to implement any idea they had that might solve the problem.

And here we have the first sign that you do believe in Utopia, that you do think you have the keys to the gates of Paradise.

How many limitations have we imposed on progress BECAUSE we made assumptions early on that government needed to control such things as our airwaves?

Zero, especially since nothing you say is actually progress.

Initially, it probably seemed like madness not to have an agency like the FCC controlling how much wattage you could broadcast with and what slice of frequency spectrum you could use for various purposes.

Actually, nobody had any idea about these problems. Initially.

Then they learned.

But imagine the scenario if it was just a "free for all"? Eventually, people would invent other solutions to the problem. Maybe they'd come up with ways to broadcast across a big swatch of radio spectrum, in a shared system with all the other broadcasts?

And here we have your second sign of utopianism, as you boldly declare that you can wave the magic wand of imagination and declare solutions to be invented.

It could work something like the Internet does currently, where all the data goes out to the net in real time and specific chunks of data get routed back to the appropriate receiver.

You obviously do not know how much work goes on with the internet to keep things working, or how much control is rigorously enforced.

Then, it wouldn't be a matter of "Company X" not even being able to offer cellular service until they can buy a few channels in a costly government auction.

Because your magic fairy dust solution would let them do it for cheap! Somehow!

CB radio operators would have had radios that let people talk with as much range as they needed, without needing to get a government license first.

You really don't know why CB works, or how it works, do you?

Wi-Fi would "just work" and work well, without all the standards that have to inter-operate due to the limited frequencies declared usable for the purpose.

Because you magically declare it to be so, like any wide-eyed optimist, and nobody can tell you that you don't have a practical implementation, just a baseless declaration that somebody would solve it because of the free market juice you're swilling.

Thank you for such an effective demonstration of your lack of rigorous thinking.

Re: Greed in itself ain't the issue ....

[King_TJ]

So... let's see here. Your "rebuttal" consisted not of anything really showing your ideas are more workable than mine, but simply picking my comments apart line by line and declaring all my hypotheticals "magic" and "fairy dust". Ok, because you say so -- you must be right. Humans would NEVER solve problems on their own without a big central government to mandate rules and regulations first.

Title fix...

[GerryGilmore]

...Just leave off the last 2 words. There you go!

This is really simple

[Solandri]

• If you have a government-granted monopoly in cable service, then the government has the right to regulate you via a public utilities commission. What the government giveth, the government can take away.
• If you don't want a public utilities commission overseeing your operations, then you must give up the government-granted monopoly. Even if it weren't government-granted (i.e. a natural monopoly), you'd still fall under anti-trust regulations.

In the former case, the market desires of the people are conveyed to the business via The People -> government -> PUC -> business. In the case of the latter, the market desires of the people are conveyed to the business directly via competition, and the people switching their spending to companies who better offer what they want.

Re:This is really simple

[Obfuscant]

If you have a government-granted monopoly in cable service

The only reason it is a monopoly is because nobody else has applied for a franchise.

If you don't want a public utilities commission overseeing your operations, then you must give up the government-granted monopoly.

They can't give up what they don't have, and they can't force other companies to come compete with them.

Nobody would claim that Walmart is a government-granted monopoly, but if nobody chooses to compete against them in a market there is no way to force anyone to.

Upgrade to Fiber???

[WaxParadigm]

"Comcast isn't feeling any pressure to upgrade its lines to fiber"

Their infrastructure is coax. If I read the DOCSIS wikipedia page correctly that coax is good for 10gig downstream / 1gig upstream currently and soon 10g/10g.

Why would they convert to fiber? What would they gain from fiber except a lot of expense to convert from one to the other?

Re:Upgrade to Fiber???

[aaarrrgggh]

The issue is how many customers share that maximum bandwidth, and how much is usable due to ingress noise from said customers. The coax plant wasn't designed for upstream communication, and that causes issues.

Re:Upgrade to Fiber???

[oh_my_080980980]

Because that was in the contract that they signed with Vermont. Reading is fundamental.

Re:Upgrade to Fiber???

[Anonymous Coward]

The only benefit to upgrading to fiber is to provide benefit to Vermont's citizens. They're obliged to build out a certain amount of infrastructure to the benefit of disadvantaged regions, as part of the contract with the state that grants them their local monopoly. Building fiber infrastructure isn't something Comcast does for Comcast's financial gain, it's an obligation Comcast must fulfill as a result of Comcast's earlier gains from becoming a state-granted monopoly.

Re:Upgrade to Fiber???

[Anonymous Coward]

The last round of upgrades for COAX costed nearly $10k/house on average. Fiber is about $1k/house. Fiber reduces ongoing operating costs about 20%. This alone will pay off the fiber install in 3-5 years. The COAX upgrade went faster, but it's much more expensive and much slower. They're already talking about 100Gb/s to the home over a "shared" 20Tb/s fiber without having to upgrade the fiber. Terabit per second ports are right around the corner with petabits on the horizon.

I can already get 1Gb/1Gb dedicated P2P fiber over a self-healing passive fiber ring and a static block of IP for $200/m. 500/500 for $120/m. Paying $50/m for the 150/150 package myself. Where do I live? Within 6ms of Chicago.

Guaranteed zero-oversubscription fully dedicated bandwidth. 10 pps ICMP to external servers and getting 0.0000% packet-loss and my ping never budges more than 1-2ms. Even when pinging servers in Europe, my ping never moves more than single digit milliseconds. My average ping is equal to my minimum ping to within two decimal places. The jitter in my ping to my ISP's servers is equal to the serialization delay of a 1500byte packet on 1Gb Ethernet. This is what happens when you have a private local ISP.

When I cared to measure, I had a ping running against AWS Frankfurt for a solid month. Two pings per second, under 100 packets lost, the difference between my min and max ping was under 10ms. When I first got fiber, I was paying $100/m, but now I'm down to $50. For 6 months, I was paying $20 as part of a promo for upgrading from $100/m 100Mb/s to $50/m 150Mb/s. In the past 5 years, my bill has only changed once without notice, ~$0.10 because of some tax code changes. They even told us which code so we could look it up.

ISPs are NOT public utilities.

[Anonymous Coward]

ISPs are not public utilities, unregulated or otherwise. The internet is not an essential item, nor is it a right. Where do people keep getting this insane idea. These are private companies with a private user base.

Re:ISPs are NOT public utilities.

[oh_my_080980980]

Running lines through people's properties using something called an easement. Time to fuck off ass-hole.

Re:ISPs are NOT public utilities.

[Anonymous Coward]

Try applying for a job. The modern landscape has changed and what used to be a "nice to have" turns into a "must have" if you want to be competitive in society.

That is where people are getting this "insane idea" as you put it. Times change, get with it.

Re:ISPs are NOT public utilities.

[plague911]

Says you?

States define by law what is considered a public utility, it is entirely their prerogative to define it however they like. Additionally it is easily arguable that access to the internet is more essential than access to a phone system which has long been defined as a public utility.

Re:ISPs are NOT public utilities.

[tepples]

Though Internet access is a necessity among job seekers in the 2010s, Internet access at home is arguably a luxury, as one can use the Internet at a local public library or restaurant.

Re:ISPs are NOT public utilities.

[Anonymous Coward]

Though electricity is a necessity among job seekers in the 2010s, electricity at home is arguably a luxury, as one can use the power outlet at a local public library or restaurant.

Yep, it checks out. No need for an expensive electricity bill -- just charge your laptop at a restaurant!

Re:ISPs are NOT public utilities.

[tepples]

Someone following AC #55336919's thought processes might counter that the Amish manage to thrive without tying their homes to public utilities.

Reality disagrees.

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of the R&D is done by government. Internet? Government. Roads? Government. Electrical grid? Government.

Paper surcharges

[tepples]

The internet is not an essential item, nor is it a right.

Internet access becomes essential once enough government agencies add a surcharge for filing forms as paper rather than electronically or even eliminate the paper option altogether. This has already started happening, such as with copyright registration at the U.S. Copyright Office.

public?

[Anonymous Coward]

What do you mean "publicly owned"?

Owned by the government? Then politicians will be bought by the corporations and they'll just enrich cronies (corps)

No, it should be owned by the people. And we get the rental income in the form of a check.

Next door in New Hampshire and have Fiber :)

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm in Keene, New Hampshire which is directly in the path of the fiber roll out that runs up and down the New Hampshire / Vermont boarder area. Currently it's not cheap to get fiber. I pay $150 / month for a 25/25 business connection. On the plus side I do have a number of different choices for service and paid $3,000 to get connected. I was lucky and along the path where fiber was run. A neighbour in a different part of the city (town really, 25,000 people) was quoted $17,000 to be connected. Much faster service is available a town over in Winchester. Keep in mind Keene and the area this is servicing is fairly remote. The older areas of Keene are fairly packed and houses are close together and shouldn't really be an issue to roll out fiber. West Keene where I am the homes are a little bit further apart and each home has more land (3/4 of an acre here). The problem with the costs here are down to the city demanding serious $$$$ to license access to the polls. The $17,000 bill was entirely down the license fees demanded by the city and has nothing to do with the cost of connecting. The physical cost to connect was less than $3,000. The reason mine was $3,000 was because of the distance (and lack of junction boxes in which to connect near by even though fiber runs up my road/poor planning). His distance to a junction box was very short compared to mine, but none of the poles between him and the junction box were licensed from the city.

Quite frankly it's probably government meddling that created the problems we have currently and I'd rather see government get the heck out. Though it could mean we end up not getting fiber here. However looking at it from the other direction the reason we have (or would have) monopolies now is because of government interference and the granting by local governments said monopolies in the 1980s.