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

Posted by msmash on from the business-as-usual dept.

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.'

12 of 144 comments (clear)

  1. Pwn Congress and you to can rip off America by Seven+Spirals · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:Pwn Congress and you to can rip off America by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

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

    2. Re:Pwn Congress and you to can rip off America by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    3. Re:Pwn Congress and you to can rip off America by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

    4. Re:Pwn Congress and you to can rip off America by dpilot · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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.

      --
      The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
    5. Re:Pwn Congress and you to can rip off America by currently_awake · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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."

    6. Re:Pwn Congress and you to can rip off America by plague911 · · Score: 3, Informative

      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.

  2. The biggest issue in Vermont by Vermonter · · Score: 4, Informative

    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

  3. Worst slashdot summary ever by MobyDisk · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  4. Worked for me by Doctor+Memory · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

    --
    Just junk food for thought...
  5. Re:Wow by suutar · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  6. Re:Wow by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 4, Informative

    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