Telco Sues Municipality For Laying Their Own Fiber 408
unreceivedpacket writes "Ars Technica reports that a company called TDS Telecom is attempting to sue the town of Monticello, Minnesota for deploying their own fiber network. Shortly after the town voted to lay the fiber, TDS Telecom filed suit and notified the town that they would be deploying their own fiber network. The telco has recently responded to Ars Technica, saying they only sued to save Monticello from itself, apparently feeling that the municipality is unprepared for the onerous costs of maintaining such a network, and would lack the expertise to do so."
Inane (Score:5, Insightful)
So Just.... (Score:4, Insightful)
How do towns set up a municipal electric service without being sued?
More importantly, how many speeding/parking/jaywalking tickets does this Telco plan to get when passing through town?
Support The Municipality (We're Onto You) (Score:5, Insightful)
Thanks, but no thanks (Score:5, Insightful)
How is this any different than a town building a road. A solid internet infrastructure is just as important to city/state growth as a the transportation system. It's just simple.
"No fair, I can't compete with the state." is not a good enough reason for me to care about your problem. Things like this would have been used to stop building the Interstate system in late 50s. Reasoning like this has allowed the infrastructure of the US to suffer, because someone companies are magic beings that solve problems and the government just ruins your life.
What a load (Score:5, Insightful)
Towns already run their own water pipes, sewer pipes, fire alarm systems, roads, etc. What is one more cable?
I call BS if you say running fiber takes more expertise than running water and sewer pipes. Electrons can go uphill of their own accord, water needs help.
Simple Economics (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes and no (Score:2, Insightful)
Governments should not be competing with private businesses. It's not their role. Monopolies aren't fun, but government run monopolies are downright depressing. Even if the government allows competition, how do you compete with an entity that has the power to tax or borrow against taxes?
Much of the current "problem" is due to previous government created monopolies in local telephone and cable. The solution is not more of the same intervention.
At the same time, I think the lawsuit is misguided. If I were a shareholder I would be telling the company to cut its losses, pull up stakes, and get out of Monticello. It's clear they've gone over to the dark side, and it's pointless trying to compete with techie-welfare.
When Ann Arbor was about to repave Division st (Score:5, Insightful)
I recall, decades ago, when Ann Arbor was about to repave Division street - the main north-south drag for the core city. They were going to do it up properly so it would last.
They'd had a lot of trouble with utilities tearing up the roads to work on their underground stuff, then not restoring them adequately. (In southern Michigan winters this resulted in frost heaves that soon tore the road back open, resulting in the need for more repairs - sometimes over and over. By which time the information about which utility had torn it up originally had been lost.)
They couldn't really ban them from digging up the street to work on their stuff.
So they passed a new ordinance that would result in a MAJOR cost for any company that tore up the street AFTER it was redone, for a decade or so, and gave 'em some large number of months to get their underground installations fixed up and upgraded before the repaving. (I think they imposed some "fee" - read "fine" or "tax" - but don't know the details.)
That street was dug up all summer as the several utility companies rebuilt everything under it and installed new conduit and manholes for future expansion. (Better to get it in now, while there's no special issues on doing the work, than take the chance that the city's post-repaving gotchas would stick in court - or cost more in court fees to get them struck.)
And that road surface stayed pristine for years.
Now it seems to me that, if this telco wants to play hardball, this municipality could find similar stuff to do to them. B-)
Granted that the courts might eventually strike down whatever the city does as unfair competition, too. But it would still cost the telco more money to get that to happen - and tit-for-tat is well recognized as a very successful strategy.
Downside is it needs to be done in a way that doesn't end up stalling both projects while the citizens sit on their thumbs waiting for an internet connection.
= = = =
Also: Didn't a federal court just strike early-termination fees for cell phone providers? Might be possible to go after that if the telco does a long-term contract lockin to try to keep the citizens on their net once the delayed city net is live.
Broadband prices AREN'T coming down (Score:3, Insightful)
The Telco's have no rights to force people to buy their goods.
I might add that CABLE TV SUCKS too. There is no variety or quality.
Re:what? (Score:4, Insightful)
We don't need more legislation. We need the judicial branch (ie, the court the suit is going into) to do it's job. Whether that would lie in the town or the telco's favor, I won't side - but this is not something legislation should fix.
Re:TDS Is An Effing Joke (Score:4, Insightful)
And who are you?? Fucking George Carlin?
If the guy wants to be a namby pamby who can't say what he means, then leave him alone.
Re:Yes and no (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:what? (Score:4, Insightful)
.Works fine in Burlington, VT (Score:1, Insightful)
They have there own fiber network. Have for a while. Works great and is cheap. 8Mbps symmetrical for $72 a month (the slowest is 3Mbps for $33).
From their website:
Although we are a City Department, this network is privately financed and clean of any taxpayer contributions. To pay for the effort, Burlington Telecom will provide the three basic services itself: cable TV, telephone, and high-speed Internet. But anyone else will also be free to use the network to deliver these or other services. (This is similar to a City providing public roads while also providing basic bus service as well. Citizens and businesses can use the bus service or they can use the roads to provide their own transportation.)
We believe that the citizens of Burlington deserve to have such open and universal access to a telecommunications network with sufficient capacity and flexibility for the foreseeable future at a reasonable cost. We will strategically and efficiently roll out BTâ(TM)s services to the community in a consistent, cost-effective manner with an emphasis on quality customer service. Here are our goals:
1. to provide the highest quality telecommunication services available
2. to provide superior customer service and technical assistance
3. to provide a single, easy-to-read bill for all your services
4. to be competitively priced if not cheaper than our competitors
www.burlingtontelecom.net
It can be done and done well.
Re:what? (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe the municipality needs to get a license to lay the cable? They might be okay along road alignments they control but they may be crossing property boundaries at some point.
Re:Support The Municipality (We're Onto You) (Score:3, Insightful)
It often comes as a sort of deal: Your water company enjoys a monopoly status, subject to various regulations that you have to perform, in exchange for funding to cover the plumbing for the unprofitable areas. ... The city ... paid for costs of plumbing by taking out a bond, secured against a tax raised against people's water bill.
How is enjoying a monopoly an exchange for receiving tax dollars to build out your infrastructure?!
Re:Not a government's job (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Not a government's job (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a perfect example of something a *local* government should do, if the local populace votes and approves of it.
Re:Craziness (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Support The Municipality (We're Onto You) (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, because pipes never break, get dug up, etc. If you have 5 times the pipes, you have something like 5 times the cost of maintaining them.
Protection racket (Score:5, Insightful)
*spits on ground in disgust*
Re:.Works fine in Burlington, VT (Score:3, Insightful)
In related news, armies of telco lawyers have been spotted approaching Burlington, VT.
Seriously, Burlington may be grandfathered in, but newcommers will not be so lucky. We have a similar success story in Tacoma, WA. These anecdotes undermine the telcos claim that they seek to 'save municipalities from themselves'. So it is important for the telcos to stomp these out wherever they might crop up.
The way I would build a municipal fiber network... (Score:5, Insightful)
...would be to build as just a foundational infrastructure. It would be fiber all the way from each home and business to the various connection points. These would be buildings, not little pedestals. These fibers would then be leased out to any company wanting to provide services over them. There would be 4 actual optical fibers to each home and business (more for special cases), so it would be possible for "light up" providers to offer only one type of service, and customers could get their phone, TV, and internet, from different providers if they so choose. Or people and businesses could lease them directly to have a very high speed point to point service wherever they want.
It's not competing against the telco ... it's providing them with a fiber based infrastructure they can use. It's not competing against cable TV ... it's providing them with a fiber based infrastructure they can use. It's not competing against broadband services ... it's providing them with a fiber based infrastructure they can use.
It's just a road. The city and state generally build roads and let people use them. The directions the telcos and cable TV companies are trying to go is the equivalent to not only them building the road, but also them building all the vehicles and allowing no other vehicles on the road, and them restricting what parts of town people are allowed to even go to.
Cities often provide public transportation. So some basic default services is not out of the question, anyway. But it might get structured so it is not a major competition. For example, it might provide connectivity only within the city itself and not to the world internet. It might carry only over-the-air TV stations, and not all those satellite based national channels.
I'd bet a lot of business would love to jump in and provide services over an infrastructure they don't have to pay all that up front cost to build. Whether it's paid for by leasing the fibers, or by taxes, is something the city would have to decide.
Re:When Ann Arbor was about to repave Division st (Score:2, Insightful)
They couldn't really ban them from digging up the street to work on their stuff.
Oh yes they could. Permit denied.
Re:Not a government's job (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Corporatism (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Yes and no (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Yes and no (Score:1, Insightful)
Governments should not be competing with private businesses. It's not their role.
This is pure horseshit. It's just trotted out by slacker corporations every time they don't want to do something progressive. They've shouted it so long and so loud that they think it's one of the eternal first principles. It's damned well time they were called on it.
If they refuse to provide a service "because it's not profitable enough" -- like 20% annual ROI -- then the government has every right to prove them wrong. Suddenly 5% ROI is fine for the corp because they now see that 5% of something is better than 0% of nothing. Basically the town is calling their bluff. Fuck the corp.
This is just like in my area years ago when the garbage companies all wept bitterly at the idea of a government mnandate to provide newspaper recycling. "There's no money in it -- waaahhhhh!"
So the city said, "Tough shit -- people can tie up a bundle of newspapers, sit it on top of the garbage can and, by God, you'll pick it up". More "Waaahhhhh" bullshit from the garbage fools. Meanwhile, some small entrepreneurs, happy with a smaller profit, drove around at night picking the bundled papers (still unwanted by the garbage jerks) and did their own recycling.
Suddenly the garbage creeps were thrashing around in tantrums on the floor of the city council chambers, whimpering about all the small operators "with no overhead to pay like we have to" --stealing -- their God-given newspapers. Duplicitous sons of bitches. They'd just been holding out hoping the city would pay them a bigger bounty for adding the paper collection.
The rapacious bastards knew from the outset they could turn a profit on the papers. Their attitude was just that, if they couldn't make a killing on the deal, then, sure as shit, no one else would be given the opportunity.
Re:Support The Municipality (We're Onto You) (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not like it's just a handout.
If you're pumping ground water, you're drawing down the water table. If more than a few people are doing this, the water table then has to be replenished regularly.
Individuals that have drilled their own wells aren't going to pay to replenish their own water usage... It's up to government to pay for all that. That's precisely what is happening where I am. Your city/county has just decided to contract that job out to the water district, and it's no surprise they've decided that it's cheaper for everyone, and more fair, if they run water pipes instead of letting people drill wells, and charge people per gallon.
It's certainly quite irritating for those that spent the money, but aren't lucky enough to be grandfathered in for years, but no rule is perfect.
Now, if you were, instead, operating off your own cistern, and they made you stop, that would be pretty onerous, since it doesn't draw down the ground water, and therefore doesn't require the government to spend money to replenish the supply (...of rain).
Re:Corporatism (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't have unregulated capitalism. That would actually be a good thing. While there is a government there is no unregulated capitalism. without a government this wouldn't even be an issue.
sorry, wrong.
I live in the southeast.
Whenever a hurricane hits the gas prices shoot up a buck because the republicans killed off the regulations on oil speculation, and refuse to punish oil cos when they go-a-gouging.
The last time we had "unregulated capitalism", snake oil salesmen made people wary of medication, meat was as hazardous as nuclear waste, and we had a stock market crash that put 30% of the populace into hoovervilles.
The correct answer is "proper regulation".. the kind that places big business and the government at loggerheads.
When big business and government fight each other making no gains, the little guy wins.
Re:Corporatism (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Thanks, but no thanks (Score:1, Insightful)
Government enforced private monopolies are much, much worse than either, because a private monopoly is solely motivated by profit. The government at least has a good chance of having peoples' best interests in mind.
Re:Corporatism (Score:1, Insightful)
But, there wasn't "unregulated capitalism" in the 20s leading up to the Great Market Crash. We had fractional reserve banking and other government-private enterprise collusion. That is what lead to the Great Depression. Further, the short sighted policies of the New Deal sustained the pain of the bad economy for far longer than it should have. Those New Deal policies are still hampering our economy today.
Re:Craziness (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Craziness (Score:3, Insightful)
You don't pay to build it. The municipality sells bonds to pay for the construction, then leases out bandwidth/pipe space to interested companies. The income from this pays back the bonds and pays for the maintenance of the infrastructure.
You pay for access to the leased space, at a markup of course. You are paying for the content: water; natural gas; telephone; IP address, connectivity, and bandwidth.
I'm also very much in favor of small government, but the municipality should own the power lines, com lines, data lines, fiber, sewage pipe, gas pipe (natural, maybe others if there is a need; plan ahead), and water pipes. These transmission mediums are then leased out to providers who sell water, gas, sewage disposal, com bandwidth for a profit. Hell, Arrowhead or Sparklets could lease pipe space and sell their water that way! Your subscription to these various services allows the commercial enterprise to pay the lease from the muni, which can then pay for the maintenance. And before anyone complains that they can't even take care of the roads (which would generally be true, I agree), the difference here is the income stream from the commercial enterprises to the muni. Properly written, the bi-laws of this 'civic company' would go a long way towards making sure the income is sufficient and is properly spent on upkeep. True, no plan, especially a government plan, is perfect, but the companies don't always spend well either.
Notice that I indicated leasing pipe space to the water vendor (and other, similar products). Some communities own their own water company and/or power company. Infrastructure would be a separate division (because it handles much more than just power lines and water/sewage pipes), so that division bills the water and power divisions for the leases. This is already how similar things happen. (We have construction going on at our local library. The electrical was handled 'in house', IE: by the city's maintenance division, electrical sub-division. They bill the library division for the work. The money may only shift from one account to another, but it's proper accounting.) The reverse would be the power company being the contractor for taking care of the power lines and the water company doing so for the water lines. Assuming that they are low-bid/best-deal/best-track-record.
While competition would still be minimal for providers of hard goods/services like water and sewage disposal, probably still non-existent, it could happen under this design. The power, com, data stuff is just so much bandwidth, so can be planned for and expanded as needed, so competition is virtually automatic. You could sign up for Charter while your neighbor chooses AT&T Uverse.
Maintenance contracts might sometimes be handed out to the very companies that lease space. I could see AT&T being paid to keep all the data/fiber/com lines and related equipment running. Transparency would be a requirement so that the public can be sure there is no malfeasance such as kick backs, bribery, etc influences the contracting.
This whole plan asks a lot of our muni governments, but nothing more than we should already be demanding: proper planning, including foresight; fiscal responsibility; openness; and dedication to us, the people they serve. It is also not a complete plan as much research would need to be done to see how best to implement it, and what items would be included in this new infrastructure ideal. Let's get the debate started!
Re:Corporatism (Score:3, Insightful)
When the Gallup poll in 1939 asked, 'Do you think the attitude of the Roosevelt administration toward business is delaying business recovery?' the American people responded 'yes' by a margin of more than two-to-one.
It's a leading question. You could ask a lot of questions in the form of "Do you think $politician's $policy is worsening $problem?" and get a positive response. If there's any doubt or controversy people will be inclined to say yes. A more honest survey would list the item and ask how the person felt about it, on a negative to positive scale.
The business community felt even more strongly so.
Shocking! Who could imagine that the business community would take negative views towards regulation?
"Taken as a whole, government policies of the New Deal served to lengthen and deepen the Great Depression."
Another leading question. The people running these surveys either have an agenda or are inept at trying to remove bias.