Recent Headlines
October 2, 2009
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 […]
October 2, 2009
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 […]
September 27, 2009
Hong Kong remains bullish on broadband. Despite the economic downturn, City Telecom continues to invest millions in constructing one of Hong Kong’s largest fiber optic broadband networks, providing fiber to the home connections to residents. City Telecom’s HK Broadband service relies on an all-fiber optic network, and has been dubbed “the Verizon FiOS of Hong […]
September 23, 2009
BendBroadband, a small provider serving central Oregon, breathlessly announced the imminent launch of new higher speed broadband service for its customers after completing an upgrade to DOCSIS 3. Along with the launch announcement came a new logo of a sprinting dog the company attaches its new tagline to: “We’re the local dog. We better be […]
September 23, 2009
Stop the Cap! reader Rick has been educating me about some of the new-found aggression by Shaw Communications, one of western Canada’s largest telecommunications companies, in expanding its business reach across Canada. Woe to those who get in the way. Novus Entertainment is already familiar with this story. As Stop the Cap! reported previously, Shaw […]
September 22, 2009
The Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission, the Canadian equivalent of the Federal Communications Commission in Washington, may be forced to consider American broadband policy before defining Net Neutrality and its role in Canadian broadband, according to an article published today in The Globe & Mail. [FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski’s] proposal – to codify and enforce some […]
September 21, 2009
In March 2000, two cable magnates sat down for the cable industry equivalent of My Dinner With Andre. Fine wine, beautiful table linens, an exquisite meal, and a Monopoly board with pieces swapped back and forth representing hundreds of thousands of Canadian consumers. Ted Rogers and Jim Shaw drew a line on the western Ontario […]
September 11, 2009
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 […]
September 7, 2009
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 […]
September 1, 2009
In 2007, we took our first major trip away from western New York in 20 years and spent two weeks an hour away from Calgary, Alberta. After two weeks in Kananaskis Country, Banff, Calgary, and other spots all over southern Alberta, we came away with the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: The Good Alberta […]
August 31, 2009
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 […]
August 27, 2009
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 […]
This is exactly what is happening in the UK too.
That is why the farmers are doing it themselves in our rural area. Wish us luck! If we can do it so can any other rural area, its the only way we are going to get a fit for purpose connection.
Does no one here understand how capitalism works? Look at cars or computers or air conditioners or washing machines or microwaves or any other piece of technology, ever.
The most cutting edge technology will be very expensive and only the rich can afford it. The rich will fund the establishment of the new technology, so that successful technologies will eventually come down in cost and spread to the masses. What this documentary is calling for is wealth redistribution, and it won’t fly in the United States.
Actually, I think your model works in a marketplace with economy of scale and robust competition. We don’t have that in broadband because it is a de facto utility, constrained by capital construction costs, limited spectrum, and a financial system that considers competition anathema. In decades past, the government would declare the duopoly most of us endure anti-trust and would break it up. Phone company and cable company networks would be forced open to wholesale resale pricing, allowing multiple providers to sell over these networks (traditional DSL and cable) that have already fully recovered their initial investment. I admit to… Read more »
You demonstrated in your last paragraph that you recognize the wealth redistribution: from cities to rural areas (or from wealthy city residents to poor ones, as implied in the video). I bet we will simply disagree on whether rural areas “deserve” service that is subsidized by people who live in cities. Your first paragraph simply recognizes the effects of the fact that the telecommunication industry in the United States is NOT a free market. It is HEAVILY regulated. In fact, there is an entire federal bureaucracy (FCC) that exists just to regulate it. In addition, telecom companies will get all… Read more »
Thanks for the quick reply John. While you may have been right about the regulatory situation if this was the 1980s, Congress has radically deregulated the telecommunications industry, particularly with the 1996 Telecom Act. Additionally, successive FCC chairmen under Pres. George W. Bush specifically adopted a hands-off position for the FCC with respect to broadband, and FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski has not directly re-asserted that authority. Some examples: 1) Telecom franchise agreements that prohibit competitors were declared null and void years ago. Many states now have cursory statewide franchising rules that would allow any new entrant to compete, but few… Read more »
So the story is thus: the government created the conditions for favored corporations to become entrenched in their regions, and scaling back those conditions has proved insufficient to reverse the damage done. I don’t see how that makes a good case to trust in government solutions, but I guess I just don’t have enough faith in politicians and bureaucrats.
I recall in the late 1970s everyone was clamoring to get cable television into their respective communities. A number of the cable companies around at the time argued that the only way they could attract investor dollars and safely spend the capital to build the systems was to win an exclusive franchise to serve each community. Many got them, along with tax abatements, favorable zoning treatment, regulated prices for pole attachment fees, and other breaks in return for agreeing to wire their respective territories. As systems were being built in the early 1980s, the industry was engaged in a merger… Read more »
The only regulatory oversight regime that will get established is the one crafted by and favorable to the subjects of regulation. You just painted a picture of that fact.
Even though I loathe rent-seeking, I can’t blame the big greedy corporations for working within the system to enhance their position as much as I can blame politicians for failing to serve the broader interests of their constituents.
Perhaps this movement should turn it’s focus toward ending corruption instead of adding regulation. Term limits and limits on the power of government will help.
The corporations are the politicians constituants, it’s all about lobbying money and how much they get in order to buy their next election or secure their cushy job when they rejoin the private sector working for one of the companies they favored with legislation. If you’ve ever run a business, even in small towns you’ll see that first hand like I have where getting things done like re-zoning often takes several thousand dollars donated to the right politician in your town. In any case, it’s rediculous for you to blame the government for this, while they can make mistakes, the… Read more »
You’re talking about commodity items will decent competition, however even those if you start talking about computer components aren’t above abuse such as price fixing by so called competitors. Broadband is not a competitive industry, the players have consistly tried to carve out and trade their way into exclusive territories so they wouldn’t have to compete with each other in order to maximize their profits by gouging consumers as much as 100-1000% on items such as reselling bandwidth per Gig. In a market like this with the huge requirements for spending on infrastructure, there is no incentive for any of… Read more »
I concur with Scott. Telecom infrastructure is a natural monopoly like roads and highways. And as Phillip points out, this natural monopoly is prone to severe market failure consequences when there is insufficient profit motive. That’s why alternative business models are needed such as cooperatives where earning a profit for investors — in this case the customers themselves — isn’t the goal but rather providing needed telecommunications services. I’m interviewed on this point in the documentary.
Fred Pilot
President
Camino Fiber Network Cooperative, Inc.