Q. What moves faster than North Carolina’s cable and DSL service?
A. Legislation to make sure the state’s telecom companies can continue to provide slow, expensive, and hit or miss service for years to come.
Big Telecom money has greased the process as H.129, the Telecom Monopoly Preservation and Protection Act is rushed to the House floor before North Carolina consumers know what is happening.
Residents have until Monday evening at 7pm to make their feelings known on this anti-consumer nightmare for cities and small towns:
H.129 will shut down the digital economies of small cities like Wilson and Salisbury just as they are primed to sell themselves as a great home for high-tech, high-paying jobs.
H.129 guarantees rural North Carolina will resemble the 21st century equivalent of Oliver Twist — begging for whatever limited broadband the state’s phone companies refuse to deliver.
The appalling truth is that the companies pushing for this bill only want broadband service on their watch, under their control, with their high prices and virtually no competition or choice. And now AT&T is prepared to limit your broadband usage as well, establishing usage caps and overcharging customers who exceed them.
Do you want your broadband choices limited to these phone and cable companies? Considering North Carolina broadband is ranked 41st out of the 50 states, it’s clear they don’t consider the state a priority.
But it does not have to be this way. Where providers drop the ball, communities should have the choice to pick it up and run with it. That is what Wilson and Salisbury did, and the result is the best broadband service in the state. That’s a threat Time Warner Cable and CenturyLink can’t afford to ignore, which is why they want these networks stopped at all costs.
Defeating H.129 is critical to the state’s broadband future. As written, it delivers no new broadband connections, does not promote or provide any competition, or help any individual or community. It was written by the state’s telecom companies to benefit them, and them alone. It guarantees you will be stuck paying ever-increasing bills for limited service indefinitely.
Tell House members they must do what is right for the voters, not what is right for the cable and phone companies. Tell them to VOTE NO ON H.129. The broadband saved may be your own.
You can find your individual representative and their contact information below the jump. Please get writing and calling today!
NC House of Representatives Members
2011-2012 Session
(Click the name of your Member to obtain current contact information)
Next week, we are going to start talking about a similar bill in the SC legislature, so we’ll have plenty for you guys to do starting Monday. It’s becoming more obvious to me if I had to deal with AT&T or Verizon, I’d much rather deal with the latter. Over the past three years, AT&T has been a far bigger anti-consumer pest than Verizon, although both have gotten too big over the past several years. I have to say at least Verizon recognizes its landline network is a dying asset and they invested in fiber to turn that around, much… Read more »
Thanks for documenting this stuff Phillip. I have friends that don’t believe me when I tell them the big telcos are trying squash local broadband initiatives, even in places that the big telcos refuse to serve. (Time Warner quoted me $100,000 to connect my small business in Upstate New York to their nearest point, just 5 miles away.)
Appreciate your hard work helping to open eyes. I am trying to educate my urban broadband-using friends about what their providers are really like.
Stephen, It’s funny how you mention about TWC’s quote. I myself have had a quote from them stating that they want around the same dollar amount to run a line to my house which is around 4 miles from the nearest point. I asked them 6 years ago when I moved to my house, and then again just a couple of months ago, and still the same answer. I too live in Upstate NY, in Berne. I have even contacted Mid-Hudson cable which services Rensselaerville (not to far from where I live) but they can’t run line either because of… Read more »
Be Sure to Read Part One: Astroturf Overload — Broadband for America = One Giant Industry Front Group for an important introduction to what this super-sized industry front group is all about. Members of Broadband for America Red: A company or group actively engaging in anti-consumer lobbying, opposes Net Neutrality, supports Internet Overcharging, belongs to […]
Astroturf: One of the underhanded tactics increasingly being used by telecom companies is “Astroturf lobbying” – creating front groups that try to mimic true grassroots, but that are all about corporate money, not citizen power. Astroturf lobbying is hardly a new approach. Senator Lloyd Bentsen is credited with coining the term in the 1980s to […]
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Just like FairPoint Communications, the Towering Inferno of phone companies haunting New England, Frontier Communications is making a whole lot of promises to state regulators and consumers, if they’ll only support the deal to transfer ownership of phone service from Verizon to them. This time, Frontier is issuing a self-serving press release touting their investment […]
I see it took all of five minutes for George Ou and his friends at Digital Society to be swayed by the tunnel vision myopia of last week’s latest effort to justify Internet Overcharging schemes. Until recently, I’ve always rationalized my distain for smaller usage caps by ignoring the fact that I’m being subsidized by […]
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A federal appeals court in Washington has struck down, for a second time, a rulemaking by the Federal Communications Commission to limit the size of the nation’s largest cable operators to 30% of the nation’s pay television marketplace, calling the rule “arbitrary and capricious.” The 30% rule, designed to keep no single company from controlling […]
Less than half of Americans surveyed by PC Magazine report they are very satisfied with the broadband speed delivered by their Internet service provider. PC Magazine released a comprehensive study this month on speed, provider satisfaction, and consumer opinions about the state of broadband in their community. The publisher sampled more than 17,000 participants, checking […]
What can we here in South Carolina do to help? Thank you for your yeoman’s work.
Next week, we are going to start talking about a similar bill in the SC legislature, so we’ll have plenty for you guys to do starting Monday. It’s becoming more obvious to me if I had to deal with AT&T or Verizon, I’d much rather deal with the latter. Over the past three years, AT&T has been a far bigger anti-consumer pest than Verizon, although both have gotten too big over the past several years. I have to say at least Verizon recognizes its landline network is a dying asset and they invested in fiber to turn that around, much… Read more »
Thanks for documenting this stuff Phillip. I have friends that don’t believe me when I tell them the big telcos are trying squash local broadband initiatives, even in places that the big telcos refuse to serve. (Time Warner quoted me $100,000 to connect my small business in Upstate New York to their nearest point, just 5 miles away.)
Appreciate your hard work helping to open eyes. I am trying to educate my urban broadband-using friends about what their providers are really like.
Stephen
Stephen, It’s funny how you mention about TWC’s quote. I myself have had a quote from them stating that they want around the same dollar amount to run a line to my house which is around 4 miles from the nearest point. I asked them 6 years ago when I moved to my house, and then again just a couple of months ago, and still the same answer. I too live in Upstate NY, in Berne. I have even contacted Mid-Hudson cable which services Rensselaerville (not to far from where I live) but they can’t run line either because of… Read more »
Alek — Very interesting NY coincidence. I will definitely ook into the TOA aspect and franchise area. How did you find that out?
Here’s the email I got from TWC. I also got, prior to that, a signed TWC contract to supply me with service with no connection fee.
http://blog.agrilan.com/2010/09/no-so-big-foot-time-warner-business.html
Stephen,
I got the information from here, {58932C04-4384-4CF9-B568-B0AB0A605F7F}
It lists all towns in which the franchise is expired or is about to expire.
Edit:You’ll have to copy and paste the link as it did not highlight the whole link.