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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.'
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.
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
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.
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.
#DeleteChrome