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."

Comments

Re:Uh huh...

[mishehu]

With all this talk of Net Neutrality around here, it's no wonder we're all so Ajitated.

Fascism

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Fascism

[FrankHaynes]

More likely: AT&T or Comcast will repair their own junk, then send the repair bill to Google. If Google refuses or is slow to pay I'm sure their fiber might suffer some "accidental" damage at key utility poles.

But since they all would have been in it together, sharing the same utility poles, it's in everybody's best interest not to mess up their competitor's stuff and just work on their own. Comcast shares poles around here with old AT&T copper telephone lines and that's the way they treat them.

Never ascribe to malice that which can readily be attributed to stupidity. They'll break more stuff by mistake than any other cause.

Re:Fascism

[mikeiver1]

"It's actually a perfect example of common sense." I think you are confusing the term "common sense" with the term "stupidity" The incumbent broad band providers are dragging their feet every inch of the way to prevent any competition. Be it at the pole or in the court room, every day they delay is another day that they can continue to flees the customers. We continues to be at the mercy of these Cretans and be forced to used them due to the monopoly they have over us. They simply use their power and money to buy the politicians to enforce their will on the people. I have said it so many times and I will say it again. The last mile should belong to the local counties and be a non for profit corporation. All providers should have to play out of the same CO's and all traffic should be over fiber to the home. Changes in provider would be a quick as changing dirty under ware. A simple change in a routing table!

Re: Fascism

[K. S. Kyosuke]

We continues to be at the mercy of these Cretans

I thought it was about Poles?

Re:In Related News...

[Evangelical_Molester]

You have strange ideas of how representative our Congress actually is, how much power individuals have vs huge corporations and how legal decisions are arrived at in our country. I'm going to be nice and leave it there.

Push them back

[lhowaf]

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?

Re:The REAL issue instead of NN

[slack_justyb]

Ensure right of access to poles for other companies besides the big guys

Local governments set that. Any attempt at what you are purposing is literally the Federal government dictating what goes on what pole at the city level. I'm not sure anyone here could find something that would bring the "Don't tread on me" zealots out faster. No complaint on your proposal, but seriously that would incite a firestorm way larger than the whole "government death panels". Just saying, the uneducated are still a pretty powerful voting block and Comcast/AT&T do pretty much own the main ways those folks tend to get their FoxNe.., er, news.

lack of competition that is the actual issue

You are going to first inform folks why that's important to them, addressing the issue with terms like "competition" only works if folks know to shop around, or that shopping around is actually an option. Think about hospitals. People don't stop to think for a second that, "Oh hey, I can actually shop around for hospitals." ISPs are pretty much same game here, no one really understands why having multiple carriers in an area is a good thing, they just see "INTERNET". NN addresses the problem at the folks who "make" Internet. Now NN isn't a really good fit, but NN versus nothing, I'll take the first one.

Its not NN that is important

You're right, if folks were well informed and understood basic economics then this would be a no fuss issue. HOWEVER, we don't live in that world and addressing that problem is more than likely a multi decade thing and I'll be good and dead by that point, same for you more than likely. I get what you are saying, "trust the consumer..." Problem is that average rate consumer is an idiot and ISPs are really, really, really good at understanding and playing that to their advantage. So all things considered, I'll take the less impossible option to be implemented.

Re: In Related News...

[K. S. Kyosuke]

What is next, deciding is someone is guilty by popular vote based on how they look?

No, you already have that.

Re:The REAL issue instead of NN

[Karmashock]

Not talking about the actual problem is not helpful.

The more people talk about NN, the less they understand about the problem. In fact, I WANT the monopolies to abuse their power because only that will probably wake people up to the real issue here.

You say "but the locals"... shine a flash light on it. Because if local competition were allowed, the whole issue would be moot.

As to shopping around, you can't blame people for not shopping around when they have no choices.

As to people are not well informed so we need to allow monopolies to drive up costs, retard investment in infrustructure, and then blame everything on federal regs that don't matter...

I disagree. talk about what is actually the problem instead of being a tool for big ISPs that WANT this solution because it means no one can compete with them for the low low price of doing what they're already doing.

NN is totally irrelevant. With or without it the internet will work exactly the same. They're not going to bill you extra for accessing certain websites... it would cause a riot. Verizon might be that dumb as they are proven to be very stupid when it comes to these sorts of things. But all the other ISPs are not that stupid.

All it does is give the Feds more leverage to regulate something that we all want to be free whilst at the same time ensuring our service will continue to suck by making competition less likely.

Its the option of Tools. Let us not be Tools. Let us not do this course of action... it is Toolish.

Re:The REAL issue instead of NN

[Karmashock]

and the fewer companies are there the easier collusion is... and really... its all about the government locking out competition to make it possible.

That's all it is... Open it up and the corruption doesn't do anything. It will only make corrupt companies bad service providers which will make them lose market share as customers vote with their wallets.

But don't give them choices and people can't fix it.

It has nothing to do with NN. Its all about the competition the government shuts down.

And again... its mostly at the local and state level. But it is pervasive and national.