SubscribeSummer in western New York has been usage capped.
As alleged summer continues here in endlessly rainy and dreary western New York, and our basement suffers from the trickling of water ingress from the never-ending rains, I’ve had plenty of indoor time as of late, pondering various issues and strategies.
I wanted to bring everyone some updates on where we have been, where we are, and where we are going (in part to take care of some questions which I receive regularly from readers):
ISP Subscriber Agreement Change Notification Tracker
In private beta at the moment, this system is nearly ready for its first testing phase. We’ll be running a special website that will track any changes to ISP Subscriber Agreements, terms of service, or Acceptable Use Policies, and automatically notify those who wish to subscribe to the updates. We’ll also be calling out major changes right here on Stop the Cap! This has proven necessary because ISPs are not always consistent about informing their customers about changes to these agreements, and many others do not timestamp the date of changes. We will, along with a representation of what exactly has changed. When the test goes public, we’ll have a form up to allow readers to inform us about any ISP’s you would like us to track.
Rep. Massa’s Bill: The Special Interests Want Revenge!
As we suspected, Rep. Eric Massa has been targeted for takedown come the next election in 2010. In fact, his opponents are going to make his district a hot target, with a ton of special interest money and outsider cash flooding in to force him out of office. We cannot allow this to happen. If he has our back, we have to have his, and we’ll be calling on everyone to help do what it takes to keep Congressman Massa right where he is — doing the business of the people, not the special interest telecommunications lobbies. I will be putting up a contribution link this week for his re-election campaign and putting some of my money where my mouth is, and I hope anyone concerned with the Internet Overcharging issue will do the same. We need to get started early and stick with him all of the way.
Naughty Phone Companies Need Their Own Special Site
I’ve heard from just about everyone on the issue of FairPoint, and our 13-part series on the nightmare that never seems to end for people in New England who are stuck with this god awful phone company. Even regulators are dropping e-mail my way, some in other states facing the prospect of Verizon pulling out of their communities as well. Everyone wants to know what happened, what’s being done to really fix it, and how they can prevent this from ever happening again.
Because this issue starts to diverge away from the mission of Stop the Cap!, a new pro-consumer website is forthcoming that will be the home for news and information about telephone companies behaving badly on pricing, service, and viability. We’ll still bring all of the news that relates to Internet/broadband issues here, but some of the other deeper issues will work better on a different site. Stay tuned for more details.
Not every phone company is evil, and some do a fine job for their customers. But the days of rubber-stamped business deals that leave consumers out in the cold need to come to an end.
My Personal Ramblings
You will also find an eclectic mix of stories, opinion, and rantings about the telecommunications industry, the media, politics, and life in the Flower City on my personal blog. It’s become more active as a place where I can cover stories and issues that won’t fit anywhere else, and allows people to figure out where I’m coming from on an entire range of issues. It will look familiar to readers here, as it has the same basic look.
Tweets, Twitter & The Social Networking Thing
Stop the Cap! Official Twitter Channel
Phil , since this seems to be a sort of catch-all section, it seems suitable for me to post an item that wanders outside the normal territory of this site – but not by much.
In an earlier comment on this site I mentioned that Time Warner’s justification for its proposed pricing scheme amounts to using its customers as a source of funds for upgrading its infrastructure, and that it should be raising such capital from investors, then charging appropriately those customers who want to buy its upgraded service. Well, lo and behold, what should I see on the web but a letter of to the editor of the Observer newspaper in the UK from a reader complaining that Thames Water wants to do the very same thing:
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Thames Water wants its customers to fund a tunnel (“Record profit water firm raises prices”, News, last week). I thought that in the capitalist system it was the shareholders who provide the capital, getting their reward as dividends. If customers are to provide capital as well as running costs, shouldn’t they be given shares in exchange for the capital element of their charges? Otherwise the shareholders will get the benefit of the customer’s investment.
Geoffrey Bailey
Taunton, Somerset
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Is there some pattern being established here? Is there maybe a course called “Turn All Your Customers Into Investors” that some business school is offering for the executives of shareholder-owned public services (preferably monopolies or oligopolies)? Once this kind of thing gets a foothold, it sticks – as did, for example, the economic dogmas of Milton Friedman and his associates at the U. of Chicago.
Here are links to the letter
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/jun/28/your-letters-observer
and to the original news item
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/jun/21/thames-water-profit-utilities-bills
KP: Most businesses, towns, cities, states, the US are so broke spending way more then they take it. Today it is considered normal for all of them to fleece everybody for every cent they can get. Sure TW wants you to pay for upgrades so does everybody else and the sad part is if it keeps up the whole thing is going to come crashing down. People are broke the UK is broke to.
Corning Mayor may try to challenge Massa. Wonder if any of his backers are big cable?
http://www.democratandchronicle.com/article/20090701/NEWS01/907010346/1003/Corning-mayor-to-challenge-Massa-for-29th-District-seat
I almost forgot “Happy forth of July.”