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Comcast Tries To Derail Fort Collins Community Broadband (dslreports.com)
Karl Bode reports of Comcast's efforts to "derail Fort Collins community broadband": Colorado is one of more than twenty states where incumbent broadband ISPs have quite literally written and purchased state protectionist laws prohibiting towns and cities from getting into the broadband business, even in instances where the private sector has failed to deliver. But Colorado is unique in that town and cities in the state have been able to vote locally on whether to overturn this ISP-lobbying-for- law, SB 152. And guess what? They keep voting to exempt themselves from the law, usually overwhelmingly. Dozens of cities and towns continue to opt out of the restrictive state measure during local elections. More than 100 have done it so far, which should tell you plenty about how locals feel about their local broadband options. Fort Collins, Colorado will be the latest to try and table a petition on November 7 simply exploring the idea of opting out of this state provision and considering a city-run broadband network. But Motherboard highlights how incumbent ISPs like Comcast have already spent more than $200,000 to prevent this conversation from even happening. To be clear Fort Collins isn't certain to proceed with such a network, but incumbent ISPs are terrified they've even begun to have the conversation, and have been running ads like this one to try and derail it.
Government of the people, by the corporations, for the profit.
If you can't vote and can't be put in jail, you shouldn't be able to lobby or contribute to politicians. Corporations are NOT people.
On the one hand you take life too seriously, and on the other, you do not take playful existence seriously enough. Seth
Not the contractors though. They're just fel men.
Whole lotta mid/upper class white folk in that video.
It took a couple tries to get it passed in Longmont (45min south of Ft Collins) but we now have fiber broadband. Built out very quickly
Have gnu, will travel.
" Fort Collins, Colorado will be the latest to try and table a petition..."
US English - to table something means to put it away without further discussion. "Let's table this motion till next week."
British English - to table something means to place it on the table for discussion. "Let's table this ISP motion and vote on it."
I always thought DSLReports was US based and used US English... who knew?
E
P.S. WAY TO GO FT COLLINS and the other 100 CO cities that have fingered "you're number one" to Comcast and the telcos.
But I sure could use the new fiberoptic link. I think Comcast underestimates how much people actually care about fast broadband therese days.
You paid $200K to not have any competition? Then you have to invest at least $400K into building/upgrading the infrastructure that you just prevented from happening. You have one year otherwise you forfeit your rights, you lose your $200K and you give everything built/upgraded so far to the competition you just prevented.
#DeleteFacebook
"Comments have been disabled for this video"
I'm shocked.
If people are apathetic and are misinformed there is no real solution.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
From the Comcast ad
It absolutely will.
I work from home, logged into my employer's computers over the internet.
That takes my car off the road 10 trips per week, during rush hour, the busiest time of day.
I live in Longmont, a city of 100,000 an hour south of Ft. Collins. Longmont set up a municipal broadband utility (NextLight) and is over 60% of the way to running fiber to every single building in city limits (29 square miles). My neighborhood got wired a year ago. I've got $50/month gigabit fiber that runs speedtest at over 930 mb/s - no transfer limits, no extra charges. It was even rated the fastest broadband in the country. Seriously, every medium-sized city should do this. Six people in the house, 20+ devices, nothing ever slows it down, and just about everything is limited only by the sending server capacity.
Were members of Fort Collins' Chamber of Commerce paid off by Comcast? I ask because they're against the idea and are pushing for a "No" vote.
Their statement: "While supporting the concept of a connected community, the Chamber is opposing this ballot issue while encouraging the City to come back with a stronger plan that favors public private partnerships"
Cities were always signing agreements with cable companies and I never understood it. The whole thing was like we the cable company agree to string up trunk lines and you the city agree to never let competition into the mix. It's completely locked people into one choice and yet we had a fit when the phone companies did it. Its part of the problem that prevents people with broadband cable from accessing better speeds for less money.
At one point, Italy experimented with a "syndicalist" scheme in which companies in an industry elected a board, and each board sent a representative for their industry to a superior board. The larger experiment was called "fascism".
davecb@spamcop.net
'Cause the internet won't speed this [traffic] up.
Check out that traffic. There's like 2 cars in front of him at a red light in an otherwise completely clear road system.
They want to build more bridges and flash a picture of an over-constructed underutilised bridge.
They want to spend more on public safety even though they have spare fire engines sitting around doing nothing.
I can understand why Comcast finds this kind of available infrastructure threatening. People may actually get used to things going smoothly at expected pace.
Keep a very close eye out on the state GOP reps and senators that have pushed this legislation to see where the kickbacks are going.and who is getting them.
As Ben Franklin said, the constitution created for us a republic, if we can keep it. With the GOP in charge stand a very good chance of loosing it.
The tv commercials are a bit ridiculous regarding traffic. I only occasionally have to wait through more than one light cycle. We had a vote a few years ago to keep the option to implement municipal broadband and that passed with a large majority so I'm hopeful for this ballot measure.
The GOP hates hates communists so much because they dislike the competition with their mercantilistic monopolies.
Having a state run industry is THEIR thing - they just make sure it's owned by people that pay them rather than the citizens that vote for them.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Comcast executives should be executed. By torture.
Here in Lincoln, NE we asked TWC and AT&T to install fiber optic back in the early 1990s. They refused so the city decided to plant their own fiber. Cable was planted in my yard and I was looking forward to something faster than 5 Mbps for $15/mo. I was also tired of their "your promotion has ended" scam that they used to jack the bill every six months or so. TWC and AT&T went to Congress (money in hand) to whine about "unfair" competition even though they refused to compete. It led to the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Congress gave the cable and telcos $200 Billion to plant fiber nationwide, but the act didn't have non-performance clauses so the money was pocketed by those at the top and they continued to use copper wire and eventually started over booking trunk segments, making it impossible for users to achieve the speeds they were promised and purchased. Cable companies began using a scheme that made every contract a "promotion" which they could conveniently end in six months to two years and justify a price hike on the next contract. Not satisfied, the cable companies began pushing for tiers so they could charge more for their ancient Copper cable.
Last January I got a bill from my ISP. What was $35/mo for 30Mpbs was now $70/mo because "my promotion has ended", a phrase I heard several times before. Go to some other ISP? Who? All competitors were piggy backing on TWC's cable at non-competative rates (the bills were even sent to TWC) or they were running very expensive satellite or FM links. TWC got mixed up because a month later my bill jumped to $130/mo for 30Mpbs. I ended up getting another "promotion" from TWC (no competition) of 60Mbps for $65/mo. Never mind that my download speeds averaged half of that and my upload speeds were 6Mbps.
Also, last January, another ISP showed up. It was offering 40Mbps, 100Nbps and 1Gbps symmetrical fiber optic with no caps and no contracts and no promotions. I'm now running 100Mbps with that much up and down, and a static IP address, for the same money. The line at the TWC store with people carrying back their cable modems was pretty long the day I showed up.
The Internet is no longer a convenience or a privilege. It is a public necessity and utility. Modern day public commons like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google, etc., are where citizens meet to discuss things of interest to themselves and the body politic. Those that own those platforms have decided that views contrary to their own are not allowed, and they claim that not being a government entity gives them the right to suppress the speech of those with whom they disagree.
They are wrong. And labeling opinions they disagree with as "hate speech", as justification for censorship, is equally wrong and marks them as hypocrites, if not petty tyrants.
The 1st Amendment of the Bill of Rights should be extended to include ALL American Internet websites (modern day public commons) that offer citizens an opportunity to express their opinion in comment sections.
The idea of a contract is great in theory. (Generally) two parties freely choosing to bind themselves to an (assumed to be) mutually beneficial agreement. In practice, not so much especially when the contract is between entities of grossly disparate positions of "power" (which means whatever it needs to mean to enable discussion).
There is little "freely" when the choice is to accept an agreement written by a more powerful entity with no possibility of negotiation or do without a facility that is in a practical sense a basic requirement of reasonable participation in society. Especially when civil process has apparently been manipulated to eliminate the practical possibility of competition.
Read a credit card agreement sometime; by the terms of such agreements the Corporation can change the terms at will or whim. Try changing the terms yourself and see where it gets you! Practically, large powerful entities must be balanced by other large powerful entities. A municipality vs Comcast is a lot more balanced than J Average Citizen vs Comcast.
Libertarian-style idealism is kinda cute, but its proponents are likely to be taken advantage of by sociopaths. There are some rights that cannot be given away ( or sold) by contact. I think that in a rational society the 'list' of such rights would be much, much longer.
"I'll believe corporations are persons when Texas executes some!"
I have had Comcast for a few years without any competition except for Century Link. Its not bad, but try to get a cable moved. I spent days calling a place that I could barely understand. I would get an appointment and no one would show or else they didn't have the equipment and would be back with it tomorrow but they never showed. This went on for months and finally I had it resolved. I hope we get a city owned system with hopefully better service. I think most of the problems that I had was co-ordination with what the people overseas or at the local office told me and the contractors were told.
Comcast 1 Gbps for $499/month here.
Plus an $800+ installation charge.
Until that becomes "affordable", I'm stuck on 15/3Mbps Comcast service for $112/month.
AT&T DSL would be much worse. Those are the only 2 providers here.
Give me municipal internet any day.
Greeley also has a city provided broadband initiative up for vote.
And the cable companies wonder why we cut the cord...duh moment.
In 20 states they (cable/telecoms) have passed legislation preventing competition, specifically broadband initiatives. They did this in North Carolina (Replicant controlled state) after Wilson, Raliegh and Salisbury got Fiber To The Home (FTTH).
If you have DSL offered in your area, cut your cord...throttled DSL is faster than throttled cable and 100% of cable is throttled. DD-WRT, Tomato and OpenWRT show you this in real time if you have that firmware on a supported firewall/router.
With a Broadband iniative, if FTTH (not FTTN or FTTP where companies still will throttle) it costs the home owner less than $2,500.00 per fiber run while adding $5,000.00 to the value of their home. Companies compete at the switching station for a consumer's business, so its for profit, just the last mile is controlled by the community. Win-Win
It costs less than $0.50 cents per Gigabit to provide FTTH, if a nation de-regulates and forces their telcos/cable companies to offer their services through third parties as Japan did with NTT.
Japanese consumers could get 50Mbps/50Mbps for $54 per month in the year 2000. A year or two later, over those same Fiber lines, they could get 100Mbps/100Mbps for less than $50 per month...they finally had competition thanks to government forced de-regulation...what must happen here in the USA but will not.
I at least 20 states, Republicants have passed laws preventing competition, preventing brodband, sponsered by the cable companies and telecoms of course.
I am NOT A DEMOCRAT
Just stating a fact, everywhere the ALEC legislation is passed, like this, it's the Republicans that are doing it.
Ironically FTTH is a huge business incentive and reason for a company to bring jobs to a community...without wasting tax incentives that only serve to make an area poorer as the home owners pick up the burden of the loss in taxes from corporations...what happened in New Jersey.
Less than 30 communities have FTTH in the USA...think about that. Do something to change it in your area, your children will thank you!
There is little "freely" when the choice is to accept an agreement written by a more powerful entity with no possibility of negotiation or do without a facility that is in a practical sense a basic requirement of reasonable participation in society.
Cable TV is not a basic requirement. The Cable TV companies did not write the franchise agreements. I was involved in the local government when we dealt with franchises, and the one we had contained a LOT of stuff that the cable company would rather not have there. We demanded PEG facilities and complaint response rates and had authority to veto channel changes. We pissed the cable company off on a regular basis by asking for, and getting, revenue statements to make sure they were operating within the profit guidelines of the franchise, and whenever they asked for a rate increase. The city I live in now wrote in a requirement for the entire system to be upgraded to fiber long before this was a common thing. They have in writing a requirement that ANY change to service is announced to the subscribers more than 30 days in advance, although I cannot get the city to actually do anything when Comcast violates that provision.
So, you have the power structure backwards, and are assuming that because you want something is it a requirement for living.
Now, if you are actually referring to internet, then you've missed the detail that being an ISP doesn't require a franchise from the municipality or agreement from any competitor, unless you want to use the public rights-of-way to distribute your service.
Especially when civil process has apparently been manipulated to eliminate the practical possibility of competition.
"Civil process" has nothing to do with limiting competition. If you want to compete with the cable company, sign the franchise and go for it. You'll lose your socks because you'll never make a profit, but you can try. You'd be a moron to sign a franchise agreement like the ones the cable companies already have, and that's why the city is never going to do it for their services. That's one reason why a municipal internet system is operating at an unfair advantage.
If you want to compete as an ISP, which is what internet service is, go for it. Unless you want access to the local rights of way to distribute your service you don't need a franchise. You'll still need to make sure you make a profit if you want to succeed, and that's another reason why municipal internet services have an unfair advantage. They don't have to make a profit. They can operate at a loss and the general fund will bail them out.
Read a credit card agreement sometime;
Irrelevant. This analogy is so far from analogous to be laughable.
A municipality vs Comcast is a lot more balanced than J Average Citizen vs Comcast.
A fine platitude, but J Average Citizen is not trying to run an ISP. The municipality already has a franchise agreement with the cable company (but not with ISPs in general) that would put them in direct competition with a company that they regulate to some extent -- a third unfair advantage. The municipality can say "Comcast, you must do X, but we don't have to because we say we don't."
Once government creates a system of regulation that limits corporate actions or requires them, then going into direct competition without following the same rules is simply unfair and should not be an acceptable government action.