US ISPs Using Push Polling To Stop Cheap Internet 417
An anonymous reader writes "What happens when a new ISP is started somewhere in the United States that completely blows out of the water all the other ISPs in the area, in terms of price and performance? Apparently, that question is being answered in North Carolina, where Greenlight Inc., a company started by a city government, is trying to offer faster, more reliable, and cheaper Internet service to the local residents. Time Warner and Embarq can't compete. So they are not only lobbying the state government to destroy the upstart competition, but are now using push polling methods to gain support, across the two cities that could benefit from the new ISP, for the 'Level the playing field' legislation they got introduced in the legislature." A local news outlet provides coverage more friendly to the incumbents' point of view.
Push Polling (Score:5, Informative)
Because I had never heard of the (incredibly vague) term, I RTFS and found in the comments a description:
The story submission is lame, and the story it's about is too. Anyone have a link to a good story on the same subject?
Re:How can they win? (Score:5, Informative)
Its not just roads. As an earlier post pointed out, many city or county governments handle garbage collection, electricity, and/or natural gas.
All of these are handled in other places by private companies.
City of Chicago handles garbage collection.
In the city of Darien, BFI handles garbage collection.
City of Naperville does electricity.
ComEd sells me my electricity.
Re:Push Polling (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Explain push polling to me? (Score:3, Informative)
It's a "political poll" delivered under false pretense with prejudiced questions.
A poll designed not to collect your answers but to feed you misinformation (FUD) and influence your opinion.
Generally, they are very effective. People investing time in taking a poll believe the pollster is an authority on the subject, so there is a strong tendency tend to believe all the misinformation, and many people's opinions can be influenced dramatically.
(Especially if they were neutral on or unaware of the subject beforehand)
The practice is actually illegal in some states.
Re:Merit (Score:5, Informative)
I agree 100%. And in this instance of Wilson, NC, this is the case. From the Mayor Brian Bowman's blog:
One last note, Wilson tax money does not fund Greenlight (ed note: Wilson's municipal ISP). Citizens who choose Greenlight buy the services just like they would from any other provider.
Greenlights rates (Score:3, Informative)
So this is what they are offering, at a profit right? (No govt. subsidies putting TWC out of business in the area, right?)
http://www.greenlightnc.com/home/internet/internetonly/ [greenlightnc.com]
$59.95 for 20 mbps UP AND DOWN? 2UP? And they do this profitably right? Then is it possible everyone else is getting screwed over by their ISP Monopolies/Duopolies?
"The 20Mbps speed includes both uploads and downloads and is the fastest residential speed available anywhere in North Carolina."
Go Greenlight go! I wonder what the real estate is like in the area served.
Re:Merit (Score:5, Informative)
They're a non-profit organization, with 100% of revenue funding the employees and expansion of service.
Re:AS someone who worked for a small ISP (Score:3, Informative)
This happened at a place that I used to consult for.
We would pay verizon about $30/mo per customer to get access to the physical infrastructure, and on top of that, we had to pay for the throughput bandwidth and support costs. We sold DSL at about $50/mo.
Then Verizon came in and started direct selling DSL to the customer for $30/mo.
I mean, we were paying them for local loop access, AND we were buying our upstream bandwidth (a fractional DS3, i think?) from them.
They get their goddamn money either way.
Now, someone like a city of 40,000 people probably has the clout to have a major ISP like Cogent or Level3 or someone trunk a connection at a much cheaper rate, skipping Verizon entirely.
Re:Push Polling (Score:5, Informative)
Because I had never heard of the (incredibly vague) term
Example of a push polling question: "would you still vote for Joe Candidate if news of his secret heroin addiction were to become public?" Basically, it's a speech disguised as an opinion poll.
Re:Well yeah... (Score:5, Informative)
The immediate goal was 98% coverage by the end of 2007 and 100% as soon as it would be possible to get there. At the moment the coverage is at about 99.5% with an estimate that they will reach practically 100% by the end of the year. To achieve this goal they have so far given local governments 850 million NOK to build and improve infrastructure; and ISP and local commercial interests have contributed to; in total about 1.5 billion NOK has been spent.
If you can read Norwegian www.regjeringen.no [regjeringen.no] has more info.
Here is a quote from 2007 by the then Norwegian Minister of Petroleum and Energy; Åslaug Haga [wikipedia.org]
The quote is in Norwegian [regjeringen.no] so I have tried to translate as best I can.
Creation of a broadband infrastructure is an important part of our [the party coalition in Government] goals for the districts. We can not accept that anyone in this country becomes losers in the digital evolution. Broadband also gives opportunities for economic development and growth. To ensure full broadband coverage the Government has decided to stimulate faster expansions of the infrastructure; especially in those areas were it isn't commercially profitable to do so.
Think of this as you will; but despite my disagreements with some of the things said and done by various ministers and the government in general; at one point I agree. Full broadband coverage is essential to modern life. It is a means of communication, of gaining information about what is happening, of paying your bills if the nearest bank is a day away, or an important tool for education or self-education. And much much more. Providing full coverage with affordable broadband should be a goal for any country that wish to ensure their citizens grain a high degree of familiarity with technology; and wish to remain competitive in the global market.
Re:TW pays a bribe for access; Greenlight benefits (Score:1, Informative)
The project in Wilson, NC isn't costing tax payer money. It was financed by bonds. Only the credit of the town was tapped to get the infrastructure built. Users of the service are paying its costs and paying on that bond.
Bonds help spread a utility investment cost over time for the people who use it over time.
North Carolinians, write or call NC Congress. (Score:5, Informative)
The bills in question are NC Senate bill 1004 and NC House bill 1242. You can find contact information for your state congresspeople here:
http://www.votesmart.org/index.htm [votesmart.org]
And remember, even if you're a NC resident who doesn't live in Wilson, this is a *state-level* issue, and your opinion counts. Not only that, but if these bills pass, it means no cheap internet for you, either. Be heard now, while it matters.
Re:Won't work (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Well yeah... (Score:3, Informative)
My house has two different telecommunications cables - from BT and Virgin. Pretty much everyone in the country has access to BT, except in Hull where Kingston provides it instead, but only about half the population has access to Cable, mostly Virgin, but there are about two places where Wight Cable provides it. If you have a large business in the centre of London or some of the other large cities, you might find another company that will supply you with a pipe.
Virgin, or NTL/Telewest before them didn't cable the rest of the country because it wasn't economically viable for them to do so. Similarly, other companies don't supply pipes outside large city centres because it isn't economically viable. That is why there is a natural monopoly. If all the residents of a small village pay BT to supply the communications infrastructure, that is just about doable, but if the money was split between two or three companies each supplying their own set of pipes, then it wouldn't be workable.
Re:Push Polling (Score:5, Informative)
Well if you want to know what a "push poll" is, you could have googled it and the first thing up would be an article on Wikipedia [wikipedia.org].
But anyway, the basic idea is that polls should properly be designed to be impartial in themselves. If you're really trying to find out what people think about the President's performance, for example, you might call people and ask, "Do you approve of the President's performance so far?"
If, on the other hand, you aren't interested in what people think, and instead you're hoping to influence opinion, then you might ask something like, "Doesn't it bother you that the President is doing such an obviously awful job?" or "Aren't you bothered by the outrageous amounts of money the President is spending?" That's push-polling.
In the 2000 election, Bush's campaign called around asking something like, "How would you feel if you found out John McCain had an illegitimate black baby after an affair with a black woman?" Now that didn't happen, but the question was defended as "hypothetical" even though many of the people called didn't believe it was hypothetical.
Sometimes when doing a push poll, the idea is to affect the results of the poll so that they can publish them and say, "See, [X]% of the people see thing my way!" But then sometimes, they don't even bother to record the responses because the point is just to try to influence opinion under the guise of a poll.
Re:TW pays a bribe for access; Greenlight benefits (Score:2, Informative)
TWC might have to pay that bribe or access fee but that money isn't subsidizing Greenlight. Greenlight's infrastructure was paid for with a special bonds issue. And it currently operates at a profit on it's revenues alone. It is not funded or supported by funds from anywhere but it's self.
It is a good arguement that they have a competitive edge if they aren't paying the same fees that the private companies have to pay. But those fees can't come close to closing the gap in their prices. In a previous discussion someone showed that a still inferior service package (six less channels, decent channels not fluff, and notably worse internet connection) from TWC costed close to $50 more per month, and it was an introductory rate.
Re:Merit (Score:3, Informative)
I've no particular problem with socialism in general, nor the government providing more and more services. However, the Tenth Amendment [cornell.edu] specifically states that any powers not granted to the Federal Government by the Constitution are reserved for the States or the People. That means that if the Constitution doesn't have a section on Federally-owned businesses, then the government can't own one.
On the other hand, it also means that any government-owned companies would have to be owned at the state level, and then it's totally okay with the Constitution.
Econ 101 (Score:2, Informative)
The problem with pure-er capitalism is that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
Not true, and never has been true.
As was proved during the Reagan era, the rich AND poor BOTH get richer when Government gets out of the way (i.e., fetters to productivity are removed).
Re:Well yeah... (Score:2, Informative)
The 2 big losers refused. THAT is why the city gov't decided to do it themselves.
Government run by corps? Of course. But there's no such thing as a free market. The entire system is broken. Deal with it.
Re:Econ 101 (Score:5, Informative)
As was proved during the Reagan era, the rich AND poor BOTH get richer when Government gets out of the way
Wrong. 80% of the population experienced a decrease in income from 1977 to 1988 (Kevin Phillips [wikipedia.org], The Politics of Rich and Poor, p. 17).
Re:AS someone who worked for a small ISP (Score:5, Informative)
Had the villagers gotten together and negotiated with the telco directly, then there probably wouldn't have been an issue, saved some money, and one hell of a headache.
I think you missed the last article about this situation - the city did ask the telcos to provide service (after providing marketing demographics), and the telcos said no. They then took the next logical step - they set up their own ISP to serve their needs. I don't see what else they could have done.
Re:Well yeah... (Score:5, Informative)
This is free market 101. Why government sucks.
Are you insane? For a change a government is bringing wonderful service to its taxpayers (low-cost, high-speed internet) and you somehow still make the comment that "government sucks"?? That's not even trolling, it's certifiable.
I am not kidding when I say this: You have a mental disorder. Probably severe cognitive dissonance, but you'd need a full exam to be sure. Please see a therapist. Honestly. No joke.