Time Warner Cable Won't Compete, Seeks Legislation 621
narramissic writes "The good people of Wilson, NC pay $99/month for 10/10 Mbps internet service, 81 TV channels and telephone service. How'd they manage that, you ask? Well, the city-owned and operated cable service called Greenlight came into being when the City of Wilson approached TWC and local DSL provider Embarq and requested faster service for the area. 'TWC refused the request. And so Greenlight was born,' says blogger Peter Smith. 'Now Time Warner Cable and Embarq are upset that they've got competition, and rather than try to go head to head with Greenlight on price and service, they've instead been lobbying the state government of NC to pass laws to put Greenlight out of business. Apparently they're having some success, as the NC State Senate has proposed bills that would do TWC's bidding.'"
Convert? (Score:5, Interesting)
I am not a legal eagle on NC law, but I would think it wouldn't be that difficult to convert to a citizen run profit/nonprofit corporation and then TWC is effectively screwed.
They need to be put in check (Score:5, Interesting)
Surprised? (Score:3, Interesting)
This has happened before, for a municipal-sponsored project.
From the project manager's blog, some of what they are doing is actually fair: not allowing cities to price below costs. This makes a lot of sense and is actually good for competition. Not allowing subscription fees to pay for other city projects - this on the other hand is not necessarily fair. Ideally TWC should be pricing their service competitively to Greenlight such that no extra profit is left over to fund other city projects. But they don't want to do that. They just want to minimize the threat from Greenlight given that they can't get rid of them. In my opinion, though, a public service using public resources should not overcharge to begin with - it should charge all subscribers a fair rate so that it's a self-contained project which provides exactly the service it was created to do.
Re:Convert? (Score:2, Interesting)
But then they couldn't use tax dollars quite so easily, could they?
So... publicly owned infrastructe do work, eh? (Score:4, Interesting)
It does seems like it from the few working experiences that we have around the world [1,2]. I hope this is realized that we do need to guarentee a public network, maybe along the private one but nonetheless a good public network!
We need ISP agnostic fiber to the homes, now!
For those in Canada (note the "eh" in the title :P), give your voice below, the CRTC is asking for advise (for what it's worth...):
http://isppractices.econsultation.ca/ [econsultation.ca] (english)
http://pratiquesfsi.econsultation.ca/ [econsultation.ca] (franÃais)
[1]. http://cis471.blogspot.com/2009/04/why-is-connectivty-in-stockholm-so-much.html [blogspot.com]
[2]. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/04/shocker-aussies-to-build-own-open-access-fiber-backbone.ars [arstechnica.com]
Re:Convert? (Score:4, Interesting)
The idea is to use tax dollars for the initial costs of infrastructure and then convert to a private entity once established for operational costs and maintenance. Not a terrible idea at all. Makes me wish I lived in a smaller town, actually.
Re:Convert? (Score:5, Interesting)
You make it a co-op that is owned by the customers...
Re:What crap... (Score:3, Interesting)
Why not? What's so special about the idea of non-governmental corporations that makes them preferable?
Democratic Socialism at Work for benefit of all (Score:2, Interesting)
This is another example of how a socialist system run by the peoples representatives can do better than some private dictatorship run for the benefit of wealthy elite interests. This is because the city government is controlled by the people and is operated with consent of the people to provide services in the common interest and in the common good, at the highest quality and lowest cost. The purpose of corporations instead is to provide the worst service at the highest cost to enrich wealthy plutocrats that run them. Thats why the corporations adn wealthy elites through their Republican conservative ayn rand and rush limbaugh elitist pro-corporate totalitarian plantation slave labour admirer puppets will fight tooth and nail against anything that will benefit and improve the conditoons of the common people and give them control over their lives and make systems that benefit everyone, rather than exploit us for the mansions and yachts of a wealthy elite. This totalitarainists are clearly in control of North Carolina, being the neofascist Republican totalitarian state it is, and want to assure that the people are rupe to be raped by massive corporations and to destroy anything that gets in the way of exploitation of the people for benefit of elite yachts.
Their goal is to impoverish common people, starve people to death with slave wages and deny health care to the people so they can continue to expand their own wealth. since the 1980s this is whats been happening, with waes of common people falling, unemployment growing, and quality life falling, the only people who have gotten wealthier are the elite fat cats who control our economic system. When are we going to stop putting up with slave wages, high prices and lousy service so some arrogant CEO can sit on a yacht all day, and who considers that his birth right. A major cause of our present economic recession and as well the fact americans are dying because of lack of healthcare when every other country has universal health care coverage for less per capita cost, is that we have greed and an economic system rigged up by the wealthy and greedy elite to make themselves richer at the expense of everyone else. They own so much opf the economy that they control everything, people are under their control at their wal mart job, how much money adn what life they have is controlled, their health care is controlled, how much things cost is controlled. There is a hidden tax in everything we buy that goes not to help the poor but to pay for some greedy corporate elites yacht, this is the corporate overhead adn profit margins corporations put ine verything we buy which is made for cents in china and sold for hun dreds here, both impoverishing chinese and destroying american jobs, the only winners are corporate elitist fascists. ALL of this is done WITH NO CONTROL over it by the people. Unlike our government, the people have no voice in this corporations which have more power over peoples lives than government, and who actually buy the government through campaign contributions, dismantle all pro-consumer and pro-working class government regulations so corporations become defacto governments above the law. THus law becomes something ratheer than to protect peoples freedom, something to protect masive corporations like we see with RIAA and MPAA, at the same time government ignores the basic needs of people to food shelter, medical care and housing. The corporate system is one who only see people has having a value to expand and enrich corporations, they see people as things to be exploited, used and thrown away again and left to die when no longer useful to them. It needs to be replaced with an economic system for and by the common people, a democratic socialist system where we elect who runs the corporations who control the economy.
Re:So they have two Cables running in parallel? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Convert? (Score:5, Interesting)
Perhaps a more efficient way of doing things would be for the city to maintain the physical infrastructure, whereas smaller ISPs like yourself would lease bandwidth on the public lines.
Re:Government should not be a competitor to indust (Score:5, Interesting)
This situation is similar to the people forming a co-op to provide themselves with network connectivity, only corporations are crying foul because instead of forming a co-op to get things done, the citizens (not subjects in this case) went through existing channels (local government).
This is precisely the kind of grassroots involvement that I LIKE to see because if people believe they can change the local government, they might believe that they don't have to lie down when corporations make their state and federal government steamroll them.
A government should, ideally, stand back and let private citizens do their own thing, but thats not happening, not at the state level, not at the federal level. TWC has lobbyists, the township citizens did not. Until the township has the same pull as TWC, the local government needs to step up and fight fire with fire.
We are well beyond a free market economy, and while its nice to think about what government would look like without the past 233 years of corporate influence, that's not the world we live in. The only way to get a free market economy would be to abolish corporations, abolish the current government, demolish the infrastructure, and start from scratch. Why? Because for every email, vote, and action taken by a citizen, a corporation will pay X dollars to a lobbyist to drip honey in senator's ears. To get a free market economy, you'd have to get rid of lobbying, all of the laws influenced by lobbying, the lobbyists, and all of the senators who were put in place by campaign contributions from corporations.
Besides, as long as there is a system to game, people will game it, why shouldn't the local government game it for the direct benefit of its citizens?
municipal internet a bad idea (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not defending TWC in any way, but municipal Internet systems are generally a bad idea. They don't keep pace with technology improvements and the cross-subsidy from the grants and what not tends to drive all the commercial systems out of the community.
Altoona PA was a good example. They created a municipal dialup system in the mid-90's because they thought that $20 was too much to pay for dialup. They were still stuck with it in the middle of this decade because they'd driven out the ISPs who would have brought in DSL and Cable modems.
Municipal physical infrastructure (like Utopia out in Utah) is a somewhat better idea. There you reframe the competitive process without ending it.
Re:Convert? (Score:4, Interesting)
Becuase it is government that is acting, there is coercion involved
Is a small town that much different from a company? Because an executive makes a decision, there is coercion involved. Anyone dissenting is forced to suck it up, or quit their job. Chances are the executive wasn't even elected. Of course, nothing is stopping the people in that town from moving to some other town. Changing jobs often requires moving - so which is a "free"er market - a small town or a corporation?
Re:Convert? (Score:3, Interesting)
because many localities have service agreements with cable companies. That was all good and fine when each town had their OWN cable company. Now, they're all owned by one of the big 3-4 players that simply don't care about upgrades. The town gave themselves permission to lay their own lines (OK) but the problem is that they also ran Cable TV service (after granting monopoly to somebody else) which is probably causing the row. These things come up every 5-10 years for renegotiation, and TWC probably walked away from the table.
If it was a matter of contract law, like in the other town (Wisconsin?) then the court would shut the town's ISP down. The fact that they're trying to get the law changed pretty much means the town did it properly. That's the big push both telcos and cable companies are making for state-wide contracts. Living in Michigan, we still have cities that are outside the main AT&T grasp, and even though we have Comcast all over, the service agreements are by town and can be "revised" ... this could happen all over.
But exactly, the point is to force all the towns to give up their local monopoly... not to mention the illegal grab to take away from the small third parties in little towns. Of course, the towns still won't get the services and won't be able to get them for ANY amount of money if corporate suits don't want. Obviously, the town managed to take care of it's needs on a town's budget. They probably issued bonds or something but they're making their money to pay the bills, and provide better service at a better price. The question is why TWC WON'T do that if private industry is so much better?
Re:Convert? (Score:5, Interesting)
I live in Provo, UT (for the next week, anyway). Provo used tax money to build a fiber infrastructure, then leased it out to two companies who provided tv/internet/phone.
Provo lost money every month. Know why? Provo wasn't legally allowed to advertise service on their own network, precisely because it was city-owned; the majority of Provo-dwellers I've spoken with didn't even know about it. (For unknown reasons, the companies who the city leased the networks to weren't advertising either. I heard about it from my neighbor who had service from them. I have no idea how he found out about them.)
Eventually, Provo simply sold the fiber network to some company in Salt Lake City at a huge loss.
This is why Sandy (where my parents live) refused to join Utopia (a loose coalition of cities in Salt Lake Valley building fiber networks) - they felt it would be a waste of taxpayer money, since they felt they would inevitably lose a lot of money on the project in the long run.
Re:Convert? (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not arguing for nor against the idea. I'm simply describing what happened over the last year or two in Provo and Sandy, and the reasons behind those events.
I don't think a city-run utility needs to run a profit; however, running a "huge loss" is probably undesirable, especially if most residents of an area don't want (or worse, don't know about) the new service.
Re:Convert? (Score:1, Interesting)
Also, depending on how they are structured, municipal owned/run entities enjoy some other nearly insurmountable advantages over conventional businesses because
This might all be good - but one needs to be careful what one asks for. In 20 years, for example, when Wilson's system is technically obsolete (when 10% of the citizen expect 10Gb/sec to their curb and actually consumes the bandwidth), will Wilson's taxpayers be willing (or should they) pony up $50M to upgrade? Also, what motivation does Wilson have to improve their system since they will, effectively, have no competition - sort of like the DMV.
On the other hand, perhaps Wilson will provide a national public service by being a hotbed of torrents given their high upload speeds and low broadband price (that is, until that forces Wilson to introduce tiered service and caps, perhaps forced by a vote of the citizens who don't want to see rates raised and personally never transfer less than 50GB a month -- oh, wait, didn't we start here?)
Re:Convert? (Score:3, Interesting)
The capitalist argument is that private companies are favourable to nationalised industries as the private companies can provide higher service or lower costs.
The key word there is "can". Private companies can be expected to eventually produce the most efficient product or service possible. However, this only happens when there is sufficient competition, and 2 companies is generally not enough. They generally balance out and become the same thing, only different. The government actually has the most ability to provide the highest value of a product or service, but they rarely have the motivation of profit that a private company does.
It's competition that drives capitalism's efficiencies, and in pretty much every case where it fails it is because for one reason or another, there is not enough competition.
The problems we have with internet service were generated by the government mandated telephone system. At the time it was deemed necessary to have a nation-wide telegraph/telephone system, but there was nobody large enough, and it was too expensive, for anybody to make it happen. So the government granted monopolies to those companies willing to risk the investment, and our teleco's have been thriving off it ever since. Sure the monopolies were broken up from a huge monopoly to smaller regional monopolies, and it helped the problem, but it wasn't enough. In many areas there is still little to no choice, and the monopoly rears its ugly head and the consumer gets screwed.
There needs to be a change, but I'm not sure how to push it. I don't like the idea of government backed companies, but I do like the idea of government owned infrastructure. It was a mistake to allow the telco's to claim ownership of the phone lines. Perhaps we should have just been more patient; I'll bet the technology would have proliferated eventually anyway, and our telco situation would be drastically different. Better or worse, who knows.
Re:Convert? (Score:3, Interesting)
CPI (Consumer Price Index, a measure of inflation) was -0.4% (that's negative; prices went down) March 2008 to March 2009.
My Time Warner cable bill was +4.8% for Feb 2008 to Feb 2009.
CPI's got nothing to do with it.