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AT&T, Comcast Lawsuit Has Nullified a City's Broadband Competition Law (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: AT&T and Comcast have convinced a federal judge to nullify an ordinance that was designed to bring more broadband competition to Nashville, Tennessee. The Nashville Metro Council last year passed a "One Touch Make Ready" rule that gives Google Fiber or other new ISPs faster access to utility poles. The ordinance lets a single company make all of the necessary wire adjustments on utility poles itself, instead of having to wait for incumbent providers like AT&T and Comcast to send work crews to move their own wires. AT&T and Comcast sued the metro government in U.S. District Court in Nashville, claiming that federal and local laws preempt the One Touch Make Ready rule. Judge Victoria Roberts agreed with AT&T and Comcast in a ruling issued Tuesday. Google Fiber is offering service in Nashville despite saying last year that it was waiting for access to thousands of utility poles. "We're reviewing [the] court ruling to understand its potential impact on our build in Nashville," a Google spokesperson said this week, according to The Tennessean. "We have made significant progress with new innovative deployment techniques in some areas of the city, but access to poles remains an important issue where underground deployment is not a possibility."
Alright ATT/Comcast, have your way with my supple anus.
..Federal Judge Victoria Roberts announced her early retirement from the bench and her intention to move to a luxury mansion in Tahiti.
to rip out all of ATT cables. Then, when they send someone to fix their own shit, they can fix yours too.
Problem solved.
More like she retires and gets a nice job on the board.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
But Ajit Pai’s FCC says only 1 ISP choice is sufficient competition so clearly this ordinance was totally unnecessary. /s
This is a perfect example of fascism. Corporations acquiring the real power over the people by either colluding with politicians in power, or by brute force of their money, through lobying, corruption, using the legal system as a weapon, etc.
This is exactly the reason democracy was created: To take power away from the wealthy elite and give it to the people as a whole. Of course, this goes completely against human nature, so democracy is, and always will be, a constant uphill battle.
Everyone is clapping along like harbor seals to the Net Neutrality narrative. However, is it the lack of competition that is the actual issue.
https://www.wired.com/2013/07/...
Its not NN that is important. That actually solidifies the monopolies. Ensure right of access to poles for other companies besides the big guys. And NN will be irrelevant.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
One Touch Make Ready has always struck me as problematicâ"What company would accept the competition moving, adjusting and disconnecting their cables/devices? Itâ(TM)s a recipe for sloppy work and unhappy customers.
A better solution would be to provision the poles and conduits for multiple carriers and have a requirement that each carrier has right of first refusal to do work on their own lines within a short period and only then would the competition be allowed to modify things.
The new mafia
Poor foresight on administrations enacted rules that incumbents took advantage as first installers. Presumed logic, pass these rules and we invest. Incumbents business plans to install first were based on such assumptions. They have an active asset that donâ(TM)t want others risking damage. Hindsight. While a bit different, similar dynamics slowing wireless small cell deployments but at least municipalities taking a harder look at the access to the assets.
Pass an ordinance that requires the incumbents to respond to request to prepare their poles within (x) time or face penalties of $(y) dollars per hour. If the incumbents tell the city to pack sand, invoke eminent domain and kick their butts to the curb (revoke their semi-monopolies). After all, Google is standing by and ready to fill the need.
Can you tell IANAL?
Simple but bit of a devils bargain: Open the US market to China Unicom
Broadband infrastructure should be a public utility, not the subject of competition. Who cares about that ordinance?
And it's pretty scary that Google wants to own your fiber..
How is this following the law?
Nashville says, yes, you can put your cables on our right-of-ways, but you have to follow our rules. Incumbent telcos do not move their cables on the right-of-way when told to. The city says, its our property, our rules, we will move your stuff. Federal judge, not city judge, says, no city, you may not tell companies what to do on your own right-of-ways. Sounds like overreach to me.
I was struggling to figure out if you were uninformed or a troll.
They're not going to bill you extra for accessing certain websites... showed me that you are probably just really uninformed. You have grossly misunderstood the controversy.
The ISPs don't charge you more under non-NN frameworks, they charge the content providers more. The content providers are forced to pass at least a portion of that charge on to their customers (that's you.) So, first, you see higher prices for services. Not from your ISP, from Netflix et al.
Worse, startup competitors cannot afford the extra charge for speedy packet delivery that Netflix can, so you will not see all of those startups that could have figured out a better mix of content to provide you. They just never happen.
The bigger problem with your theory about competition is that in basic economics, somebody wins. Once they win, they drive competition out of the market and you lose all of the benefits of competition. This happens over and over and over...
Repeat after me:
The natural state of an unregulated free market is domination by a series of monopolies and colluding oligopolies.
Not to mention that you want to try to start simultaneous conversations with thousands of municipalities and counties and states and hope to accomplish something before we lose the war. This sounds like a shill argument, but I believe that you are just unaware.
Captcha: serene
Nashville should just implement a multi-touch delay tax. $100 per day per pole that one provider has to wait on another should do it.
Doesn't take much for any Corporation to "convince" anyone these days.
And lease them to corporations at cost. This would allow much needed competition in the broadband market.