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AT&T and Comcast Finalize Court Victory Over Nashville and Google Fiber (arstechnica.com)
"AT&T and Comcast have solidified a court victory over the metro government in Nashville, Tennessee, nullifying a rule that was meant to help Google Fiber compete against the incumbent broadband providers," reports Ars Technica. From the report: The case involved Nashville's "One Touch Make Ready" ordinance that was supposed to give Google Fiber and other new ISPs faster access to utility poles. The ordinance let 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. But AT&T and Comcast sued the metro government to eliminate the rule and won a preliminary victory in November when a U.S. District Court judge in Tennessee nullified the rule as it applies to poles owned by AT&T and other private parties.
The next step for AT&T and Comcast was overturning the rule as it applies to poles owned by the municipal Nashville Electric Service (NES), which owns around 80 percent of the Nashville poles. AT&T and Comcast achieved that on Friday with a new ruling from U.S. District Court Judge Aleta Trauger. Nashville's One Touch Make Ready ordinance "is ultra vires and void or voidable as to utility poles owned by Nashville Electric Service because adoption of the Ordinance exceeded Metro Nashville's authority and violated the Metro Charter," the ruling said. Nashville is "permanently enjoined from applying the Ordinance to utility poles owned by Nashville Electric Service." The Nashville government isn't planning to appeal the decision, a spokesperson for Nashville Mayor Megan Barry told Ars today.
The next step for AT&T and Comcast was overturning the rule as it applies to poles owned by the municipal Nashville Electric Service (NES), which owns around 80 percent of the Nashville poles. AT&T and Comcast achieved that on Friday with a new ruling from U.S. District Court Judge Aleta Trauger. Nashville's One Touch Make Ready ordinance "is ultra vires and void or voidable as to utility poles owned by Nashville Electric Service because adoption of the Ordinance exceeded Metro Nashville's authority and violated the Metro Charter," the ruling said. Nashville is "permanently enjoined from applying the Ordinance to utility poles owned by Nashville Electric Service." The Nashville government isn't planning to appeal the decision, a spokesperson for Nashville Mayor Megan Barry told Ars today.
I wonder how hard it would be for Nashville to use Eminent Domain to aquire all of the wires and poles then sell it all to Google or keep it if they can?
Trusting software vendors is no smarter than trus
Nashville should charge AT&T and Concast $2500/month rent for each power pole sitting on city property.
Government should not be playing favorites.
Maybe Governments should stop subsidizing the incumbents, even when the alternative is cheaper.
We all hate Google, but the AT&T and Comcast are worse, surely?
Instead to compete with the incumbents, you become beholden on them if you want to provide service to a new customer (which probably means they will be losing a customer) I'm sure they will pull out all the stops.
Nashville Electric Service should require that only their contractors can work on wires on their poles, and provide the same SLA's and charge the same fees to all customers.
I don't hate either, actually. Google is everywhere and I appreciate their efforts to make my life easier, even if at the same time they're recording every time I hit the head ( 2.5 times on average, I looked it up ). And comcast is the only game in town for reliable and fast internet connectivity.
I wish that weren't the case, I really do, but the fact is both companies are doing everything they can to make my life easier. Given all the folks who are actively trying to do the opposite, I have to say I appreciate them.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
While I have serious skepticism over "one touch make ready" rules, there need to be some checks and balances to prevent incumbents from milking the process to slow down competition. The utilities should have primary ownership and control of their services on the pole, within whatever lease rights they have to the property.
However, if they fail to act in a reasonable time frame, I see no reason why there should be no practical recourse; OTMR does that. The contractor making changes should still comply with the carriers' change-control procedures, identifying any poles they are about to touch both in advance and day-of-modification, and checking out when work is complete.
I am surprised that Nashville didn't do this in a different way since they own the poles. A lease amendment with reciprocal terms would seem reasonable for starters.
Forget the FCC rules! This is the real problem. With real competition, filtering would not be an issue.
If google purchased Nashville Electric Service (and the contractors authorized to work on their power poles, and prioritized AT&T and Comcast installs and repairs accordingly.
Really? I don't have any skepticism. Without rules like this, I can tell you exactly how this situation goes:
Google needs access to a particular pole as no available ground is around for them to put up one of their own. They contact the owner - let's say AT&T. AT&T replies that they have to go through a risk analysis: after all, there's a lot of important stuff on that pole.
Google hears nothing. In the mean time the clock is running, their investments in other infrastructure that is waiting on this pole are sitting costing money, etc. AT&T never responds, but when Google goes back to them they reply that the risk Assessment is done but they have to pass it through engineering as well.... and the public utility uses the pole already. So Google needs to get clearance from the local utility before AT&T will let them use the pole.
More weeks go by....... and eventually AT&T strangles any competition that needs access to that pole / tower / etc.
The Supreme Court settled this in the 80's. The pole owner HAS to rest space to others on the poles. The local municipality can not limit the number of providers. As I recall limiting providers was like (akin?) to licensing only one newspaper for a specific area.
You have access to the poles. If the owner is providing slow support to move wires, cables, etc., then that is another matter.
The city directs Nashville Electric to perform all work on the utility poles. Nashville Electric then bills Google for the expense. The work is done properly without some fly by night contractor coming in and breaking other people's stuff.
Why didn't Google propose this? Maybe they don't want to pay Nashville Electric to hire qualified people to do the work and just wanted to have low paid contractors?
I'm not sure "declaring war" was the intent, but to allow competition.
I'm not sure how exactly this favors Google over anyone else either.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
To put it in terms we might understand, it is like if you wrote an important piece of software, then a competitor demanded the right to come in and change your software, but you still had all of the responsibility for it. If the competitor made errors and there were lawsuits, they would be held harmless and you would take the hit.
Moving pole infrastructure involves a lot of effort and great care. Cable TV amps are not just simple boxes, there are multiple runs of cable in the same strand in many places, and taps all over the place. It takes a certain amount of technology just to do the modifications and ensure everything is working again There simply will be outages.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
I don't hate either, actually. Google is everywhere and I appreciate their efforts to make my life easier, even if at the same time they're recording every time I hit the head ( 2.5 times on average, I looked it up ). And comcast is the only game in town for reliable and fast internet connectivity.
I wish that weren't the case, I really do, but the fact is both companies are doing everything they can to make my life easier. Given all the folks who are actively trying to do the opposite, I have to say I appreciate them.
All of these companies are after profit. They all want you in their walled garden to spend all of your money with their products and their partners. Knowing how often you hit the head provides them valuable data with which they can push advertising and other products. Perhaps that is what you want. However I know that elsewhere in the world you can get fiber straight to your home for around 30 euro a month without that sort of relationship. Buying products sponsored by and having a symbiotic relationship with Comcast is not something I want and I should have that choice.
A thought experiment...
How could a local community escape the demand to use a telco monopoly?
Dont got anywhere near the monopoly network.
Talk to the electric company (consumer, city), rail road, power company (state), water company, local businesses, private land owners.
Build a community network that spans out from different utility services, rail, power networks, land back to business and commercial real estate.
An innovative private sector cooperative initiative that brings together everyone locally but the wireline monopoly telco. Let the locals support an ISP from the back of that new private network.
Call it a network on a utility cooperative with local profits reinvested for network infrastructure. Any is ISP welcome from the same city, state, another state.
City and local gov did nothing for the existing telco monopoly to get legal about.
Some locals wanted a new network and they built it on private land that just happened to be linked by non telco private sector utilities.
What can a monopoly telco do? Block the local gov, community broadband first? Then demand a stop to the private sector in the same community second?
Thats a lot of monopoly power to enforce federally on both state, city governments and the private sector.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
While I agree with your reasoning... ultra vires. Government is constrained by charters, constitutions, etc from making any old law it wishes, no matter how beneficial it may seem.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
The utility can retain ownership of the poles, but the municipality can grant an easement to whomever it wants and it doesn't cost the municipality anything.
Sure does cost the municipality something (if the utility chooses to enforce its rights).
Granting an easement to someone else's property is a "taking" under the Fifth Amendment. Without the easement the utility could charge whatever it pleased for the use of a zone on its poles, refuse to grant it if they thought that was in their interest, insist the attachments occur at a convenient time and manner for them, hire their guys to do the hookup, etc.. With the easement they must let the tenant use that section of the poles at the tenant's convenience, for free or for a government-defined price. This reduces the value of the property, so the government granting the easement must pay the difference.
It's less than just taking over the poles, but it's still not free. (Just for starters it will amount to a substantial fraction of what it cost the utility to put in all those poles.)
See "partial taking" and "regulatory taking". There's a LOT of law there and a simple web search will show you far more than you'll want to read right now. B-)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
It basically allowed Google to legally declare open warfare on the incumbent operators
Except the rule was that whoever touched it had to reimburse the affected by 150%. So if Google did knock out AT&T service, they'd owe AT&T 150% cost lost.
Government should not be playing favorites
HA! You should talk to Marsha Blackburn and ask her about her relationship with AT&T.
What I don't understand is how it is ultra vires. The city of Nashville government OWNS Nashville Electric Service. The city owns the poles, and thus should have the legal right to make up any rules it wants regarding what people can do with poles that it owns. It's absolutely insane for the courts to hold otherwise.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
I think they ruled that neither you or Sam can move Joe's crap.
I'm sure the court ruling is a public document. If so, there's nothing to stop you from reading it and finding out for yourself, instead of complaining to a non-lawyer who lives nowhere near TN, much less Nashville.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Fuck it. Cut the wires.
No one is more aware than I of their motives, believe me. I'm in the business of efficient monetizing myself, so their behavior isn't really surprising. And yes; I'm also aware of the potential for abuse. Intimately, given I have the same notions of how to further capitalize behaviors I'm already doing.
Given the power they wield, they absolutely should be mistrusted and held to a far higher standard. I'm on board with that. All I'm saying is that, at my age, when someone is trying to make your life easier ( for whatever reason ), you take time to appreciate it. Because those kinds of folks/companies are few and far between.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
More like run a few 100kv through the wires.
Then you can go easily cite it to back up the claim you made :)
Yeah you are missing something. The fact that the court ruled the new law can't apply to the ~20% of the total poles that ATT / Comcast own and pay upkeep for. The ruling didn't specifically address the poles that the city owns and pays upkeep on, meaning the law should still stand on those poles.
Furthermore, ATT / Comcast must obey the federal laws and move their own crap within, if I remember correctly, 14 days of the initial request or face fines from the city and pay the going rate of the contractor that the requester hires to then move the equipment.
To err is human; effective mayhem requires the root password!
#1 I beat you to it: ultra vires is a direct quotation from the ruling. Just re-read the summary.
#2 I'm not the one asking why. You are.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Like putting up their own metro fiber and building it to take all providers. Another change, even less expensive, is to not grant exclusive franchise agreements. For example, in Maine, if I declare myself a cable provider, I automatically get access to the poles. Also if I declare myself a CLEC and meet all the requirements for being a CLEC, (which Google could do, easily), I get access to the poles.
Eminent Domain is clearly the answer. The city should buy the polls from AT&T and Comcast. They would then be free to regulate them at will.
The thing to remember in the US is that we have a dual-sovereign system of state and federal governments. However, cities are *not* sovereign. They exist completely at the whim of state governments and the state government can organize its cities however it wants. Some states empower cities more than others. Apparently cities in TN don't have much authority and this fight will have to happen at the state level. Unfortunately many cities are islands of smart policies based on critical thinking surrounded by a sea of backward-stupidity. So until the cities get large enough to dominate state politics, they are left struggling at the whims of their incompetent state-level overlords.
But the city, operating in its capacity as the sole owner of a corporation, cannot possibly not have the right to operate that corporation in whatever way it sees fit. Such a conclusion is inherently nonsensical, regardless of what sovereign rights the Tennessee Constitution grants to cities.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
I'm sure the court ruling is a public document. If so, there's nothing to stop you from reading it and finding out for yourself, instead of complaining to a non-lawyer who lives nowhere near TN, much less Nashville.
Yes, the court ruling is a public document. Unfortunately, what you see in the summary is approximately the entire contents of the court ruling. The ruling literally says nothing more than that they overstepped their authority and are permanently enjoined from enforcing the law. It does give a vague hint about the reasons why they can't enforce it on poles that they don't own (saying that it conflicts with federal law, but providing no further details), but it provides no hint whatsoever about the reasoning that resulted in them being permanently enjoined from enforcing it on the poles that they own. The judge could have decided that part by flipping a coin, for all we know; in the absence of a more detailed decision, the decision seems entirely arbitrary, which is unfortunate given how many eyes are on this case nationwide.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
How possible would it be for the municipality to declare it was "Modernizing" their poles, and do a pole-by-pole replacement (paid for by Google, of course)? that would solve the issue of the existing renters being slow to move their equipment by giving a fixed schedule.
The only "right" that a city has is whatever right the state grants to it. That's the point. A city is not a real entity. It's just how the state chooses to organize its affairs. The state could decide tomorrow not to have cities, not to have local school boards, et cetera. This is like saying that the janitorial department of a company should have the right to do whatever it wants. It can do whatever the owners of the company say it can do. And the fact that its a corporation owned by a city (which really means owned by the state) doesn't change anything. A government entity can't use a corporate structure to do something that the government entity otherwise couldn't do. Now some states may have state constitutions that enshrine rights to the cities. And in those cases, there may be a need for a state constitution change to accomplish certain things. But a city still have no sovereignty.
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