ISP's Attempt to Stop Public Broadband

[brentspeak]

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/pcworld/20050618/tc_pcworld/121416

Tom Spring Fri Jun 17, 9:00 PM ET

When tiny north Kansas City, Missouri, announced that it planned to offer affordable high-speed Internet access much the way it does other public services, local attorney Brian Hall was ecstatic. Though Hall could get DSL service from SBC Communications, he says that he found the service unreliable, supplying lower speeds than he expected. But then goliath Time Warner Cable asked a Missouri federal court to block the city's efforts.

Time Warner's initial case was dismissed, but the company appealed the ruling and vows to stop North Kansas City from offering services it plans to provide residential customers later this year.
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(I have heard that Big ISPs have already blocked public broadband in two states, but I don't know the details.)

[yowzayowzayowza]

1. So unsuccessful salesmen can now count on ...

a corp of lawyers to close the deal. Ah, that free market at werk!

[dArKeR]

2. "free market", what free market? In 1982 San Jose had ONE cable TV

provider, TCI. In 2005 San Jose has ONE cable provider, Comcast. (Same monopoly diff. name.) I believe the entire country is in the same boat. What Democracy?

[Robbien]

3. Common Dreams had a piece on this last month

Is Cheap Broadband Un-American?

We have Big Media to thank for saving Americans from themselves. Just as the notion of affordable broadband for all was beginning to take hold in towns and cities across the country, the patriots at Verizon, Qwest, Comcast, Bell South and SBC Communications have created legislation that will stop the “red menace” of community internet before it invades our homes.

And to think that Americans might want to receive high-speed access at costs below the monopoly rates set by these few Internet Service Providers (ISPs).

Today, monthly broadband packages offered by the national carriers hover above $50, barring access to millions of Americans who can’t afford the sticker price. Cities and towns across the country have taken up the task of building a cheaper alternative -- often choosing easy-to-build wireless mesh networks -- to bridge the gap that has kept many on the darker side of the digital divide.

Telecommunications giants have mobilized a well-funded army of coin-operated think tanks, pliant legislators and lazy journalists to protect their Internet fiefdoms from these municipal internet initiatives, painting them as an affront to American innovation and free enterprise.

Their weapon of choice is industry-crafted legislation that restricts local governments from offering public service Internet access at reasonable rates. Laws are already on the books in a dozen states. This year alone, 10 states are considering similar bills to block public broadband or to strengthen existing restrictions.Spinning broadband as theirs alone to provide, ISPs have chalked up some early victories—including a draconian law now on the books in Pennsylvania, which strips local governments of the right to choose their own homegrown broadband solutions without the prior approval of a monopoly phone company. In late 2004, Verizon dictated the law word-for-word to local legislators, who then quietly slipped it into the middle of a 72-page bill that appeared to call for improved communications infrastructure for all Pennsylvanians.

more at
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0412-36.htm

[0rganism]

4. Properly speaking, it's not the "ISPs" who are doing this

These are huge media conglomerates who happen to moonlight as ISPs cracking down on public utilities, not ISPs generally. For cities to take over DSL services would essentially mean a reclamation of all the telephone lines, which the telcos will fight every inch of the way. Then you have the cable TV companies who see their area broadband services threatened by a municipal competitor.

So, never mind that the city could probably do just as good a job for a helluva lot less money out-of-pocket than the media giants. As always, expect people to get screwed in the name of some fat cat's version of "competition".