Telcos Want Big Subsidies, Not Line-Sharing 340
It seems that a recent survey of global broadband practices by Harvard's Berkman Center at the behest of the FCC has stirred the telecommunications hornet's nest. Both AT&T and Verizon are up in arms about some of the conclusions (except the ones that suggest offering large direct public subsidies). "Harvard's Berkman Center study of global broadband practices, produced at the FCC's request, is an 'embarrassingly slanted econometric analysis that violates professional statistical standards and is insufficiently reliable to provide meaningful guidance,' declares AT&T. The study does nothing but promote the lead author's 'own extreme views,' warns a response from Verizon Wireless. Most importantly, it 'should not be relied upon by the FCC in formulating a National Broadband Plan,' concludes the United States Telecom Association. Reviewing the slew of criticisms, Berkman's blog wryly notes that the report seems to have been 'a mini stimulus act for telecommunications lawyers and consultants.'"
I for one, (Score:5, Insightful)
have not read TFA but anything the teleco's HATE must not be all that bad...
Fascism, DUH (Score:5, Insightful)
America is, and pretty much always has been, a fascist nation. I think the recent bailouts of the banking giants and car manufacturers should prove that it is fascist now; Andrew Jackson himself was fighting fascism when it came to central banking back in the 1830's. War and weapons define the American economy. Boeing and Raytheon and Xi could be considered the ultimate achievement of which a fascist society is capable.
Lew Rockwell [lewrockwell.com] is fond of referring to the central government as the Welfare-Warfare state. Our country has always defined itself through these two socialist conspiracies against mankind - welfare both corporate and personal, which stunts economic growth and creates a class of victims wholly dependent on the largess of their tormentor - and warfare, which is the extension of corporate power through the state in order to secure resources overseas. We should abandon this socialism, this corporatism, this fascism - and create a government that exists only within strict Constitutional boundaries. Nothing else will do for the good of mankind.
Re:Fascism, DUH (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:We paid for the lines. Share them or get off. (Score:4, Insightful)
Better than that - the letters patent are meant to protect and aid business ventures in order to promote the interests of society. If any company is unwilling to do that, we should revoke it and dissolve them.
Re:Fascism, DUH (Score:1, Insightful)
Another repulsive class is the corporate parasite. Worse than the welfare bums, the corporate bums leverage the power of the state to protect their marketshare, patent basic inventions to stifle competition, and use lawyers to crush competitors even when they are in the right. This class is worse in many ways, as it is full of rabid conformist, pseudo-intellectuals who suckle on the teet of the state secondhand.
Then there is the intelligentsia that it installs in state-funded institution and rewards with state-funded grants for as long as the perpetrator blindly supports the state in all its doings. Paul Krugman, wrong about everything so far, is that you? Victor Davis Hanson? The big names of stupid and wrong congregate there.
Then there's the people freedom-lovers should despise the most: the yes men, the intellectual conformists, the button-smashing neanderthals who don't even benefit from the state they blindly support. They are in evidence everywhere in Slashdot, and they are set off most by new ideas. If these conformist robo-drones don't have a ready-made script for something you say, they become immediately hostile as thinking is totally anathema to them. They are generally well educated, or at least, good at repeating things they hear on the idiot box or at school or the inane ramblings of their elected officials. They can seem deceptively intelligent, but don't be fooled - is a router a sophisticated processor just because it transmits processed bits? Certainly not. They hear, repeat, and smash down anything they haven't heard and repeated before.
Re:More competition needed (Score:5, Insightful)
Attn: Telcos (Score:5, Insightful)
Ahem.. (clears throat). FUCK YOU!
The taxpayer gave you Millions if not Billions back in the 90's for infrastructure upgrades. And now, a decade later, with YOU posting record profits, and infrastructure being upgraded at a rate comparable to snails pace, you have the gall to ask for more money from the taxpayers, i.e. your CUSTOMERS?
Pardon me Big Telco, but FUCK YOU!
Isn't bread and circuses (Score:4, Insightful)
Walmart and Fox?
Re:Fascism, DUH (Score:2, Insightful)
If we've always been a fascist nation, and we're the sole remaining superpower, the whole welfare-welfare state thing has a pretty good track record, huh?
Speaking as a member of a welfare state that didn't have a massive economic meltdown and continues to tick along while the US flounders, I'd say yeah, it does have a pretty good track record:
Hint: An idea isn't bad just because the American government is too fundamentally fucked up to implement it properly.
you're a middling propagandist (Score:5, Insightful)
you have the emotional appeal down solid, its pretty good chest thumping stuff
but you're underpinning your inflammatory rhetoric with poor a set of facts
good propaganda never lies, it traffics in half truths. so, for example, you don't want to say the usa has ALWAYS been a fascist state. not mainly because thats a lie, but also because you undermine your final appeal for a return to constitutional roots... well, if those roots are so strong, how come the usa has "always" been a fascist state? its a contradiction. you can't refer to a strong set of principles that never actually worked
no, you need a sympathetic narrative, a demagogue's best friend: its better to refer a mythological past where everything was perfect, the founding fathers reigned supreme. then evil influences crept in. in your particular fantasy, that would be corporations, and they subverted and ruined the garden of eden
so instead you want to say the usa WAS ONCE a solid strong democracy. instill chest thumping patriotism here with strong quasihistoric visions, you know the drill. then change the tone and talk about how money was thrown around and morals and integrity were corrupted, the founding fathers betrayed... good hollywood stuff
good luck to you sir, you're well on your way to being a solid propagandizing demagogue. you have the emotional appeals down solid. now just hone up on the half-truths and you'll be a rabble rouser supreme!
Re:I for one, (Score:3, Insightful)
You might try calling a different pizza place, but you're out of luck if your area doesn't have one or they're already closed after 9pm.
It's basically the same thing with telco's. Only way to change that is to get government to do something about it.
But not by creating pizza's with government cheese. You change things by opening your own pizza shop. (the way I do it is to make my own pizza) The governments job is to make the playing field level, not by providing all services.
It seems that more and more, government un-levels the playing field, by design. It natural when you think about it. We'll put you in charge of pizza shop licensing. Who are you going to lunch with, the sharp dressed person from the pizza lobby, or the wild haired, crazy guy that wants to "revolutionize" the pizza business and stick it to the man. (in this scenario, you are the man.) Since you hang with the PIAA goons, and they offer to do most of you job for you by writing the pizza legislation, what group is going to have the laws in their favor?
Separate ISP's businesses (Score:5, Insightful)
2. Separate the ownership of the infrastructure into another company
3. Make the three companies from part 1 pay company from part 2 for access
4. allow any other company access to part 2's lines for the same fee as it charges part 1 companies
5. don't EVER allow them to merge again
Re:Linesharing (Score:5, Insightful)
There isn't one. But that doesn't mean the monopoly telecoms won't play make-believe (eg OMG customers will have to choose between 'all these confusing options', as opposed to having only one choice, made for them by the single telecom serving their area)
So that would be..? (Score:5, Insightful)
So that would be AT&T, Comcast and Verizon as opposed to AT&T. Comcast and Verizon, then.
Re:I see what they did there... (Score:5, Insightful)
The Bush administration gave this welfare to the telcos, not the Obama administration. The telcos are trying to get more corporate welfare from Obama. Blame Obama for giving my tax money to the telcos when he actually does it, not when the telcos are standing on the corner with a cardboard sign that reads "will lobby for cash".
For Christ's sake, man, open your eyes. Bush was a disaster for this country; indeed, for the entire world -- for everyone but the corporates and the uber-rich.
Re:We paid for the lines. Share them or get off. (Score:5, Insightful)
Guess where the right of way comes from to bury that fiber?
Bah, mod me down, I just can't read. (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't insightful, mod me down. I totally misread the GP and thought his first sentence was sarcastic. It wasn't. His point was that, despite being a "welfare state", the US has clearly done alright, and that corporate welfare is the big problem, something which we both agree on.
Re:I see what they did there... (Score:5, Insightful)
Just make the lines government controlled already (Score:4, Insightful)
I've got a wonderful idea - instead of giving telco's tons of cash to build infrastructure, why doesn't the government build the infrastructure itself (much like the highway system) and then simply lease bandwidth on those lines at a set rate to any company who wants it?
Re:I see what they did there... (Score:3, Insightful)
It theoretically wasn't welfare, it was intended as an incentive. The idea was the money came with strings attached. It needed to be enforced to have any effect.
When it wasn't enforced, it became welfare.
Re:Isn't bread and circuses (Score:5, Insightful)
And you don't get ANYTHING in return for it, right? Oh, what, you want your trash picked up? You want sewers built to your property? You want roads to drive on? You want fire protection? You want the police to arrest those naughty black people who keep making you scared and nervous? You want an army to protect your property claims against foreign and domestic threats? You want clean water running out of the tap?
Tell you what, you keep your extra $35 one year, but stop using ALL of the above services and see how you feel at the end of the year? Or pay someone to perform all of those services out of your own pocket and see how much you have left.
Re:I see what they did there... (Score:3, Insightful)
Notice I said "so-called conservatives". True conservatives don't want welfare for the rich.
Re:I see what they did there... (Score:5, Insightful)
What crap. Trickle down is a failure.
We just saw the era of lowest taxes on the rich and corporations since the introduction of the income tax and the highest level of corporate welfare ever as well... and the job generation rate during that time was one of the LOWEST EVER.
So please stop espousing the idiotic opinion that somehow giving the rich more money means the rest of us get more money. It doesn't work that way now if it ever did and the DATA doesn't lie.
Oh, no they don't.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Considering the lack of attention to the details of improving rural service, I feel that they do not deserve a single nickle of gov't funding.
Fact is, they got a lot of gall for asking for more money after the stunning YTD they posted on the market, both wireless and wired.
Until they can show REAL (as in purchase orders for equipment, permits for installation of same, they really do not deserve any outside funding at all.
They've been living off the fat for this long, I think that it would be high time to put them on some lean rations for a while.
Re:Fascism, DUH (Score:3, Insightful)
The only quibble I have is that corporate welfare really only came into vogue with Reagan after our ideological rival, the soviet union's fate was pretty much sealed.
In Soviet Russia (no joke, no meme) the government controled industry, with disastrous results. In the modern day US, industry controls government, and I fear the result may be equally disasterous.
Re:I see what they did there... (Score:5, Insightful)
Obama isn't looking out for your best interests, and neither was Bush nor McCain nor anyone else who had a snowball's chance of getting elected.
The only question left now is, "how do we get our government back?"
Re:I see what they did there... (Score:2, Insightful)
>>>What we need is a publicly owned infrastructure and privately run services.
Yeah because that's really worked well for the Americans so far:
- post office - billions in debt
- Amtrak - billions in debt
- Retirement Trust Fund (SSI) - will run out of money circa 2016, and then it too will be billions in debt
Let's stay away from government owning anything. It's not needed. I don't know about your neighborhood but where I live there's a giant pipe running under the ground, and it has plenty of room to run 100 separate fiber optics, one for each company. One wire for Comcast, one for Cox, one for Time-warner, one for Apple TV, one for Linux ISP, and on and on and on.
Yes that's inefficient, but so too is having cars made by Ford, Chrysler, GM, Honda, Toyota, Volkswagen, Kia, et cetera. That slight inefficiency allows the citizens to have choice.
Re:Fascism, DUH (Score:3, Insightful)
Nobody ever bothers Lichtenstein.
I wouldn't wanna mess with the Lich King either.
Re:I see what they did there... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I see what they did there... (Score:3, Insightful)
But such is what happens when you let one company monopolize a market.
I also blame the attitude people have toward the Internet. Most people I know talk about the Internet like it's an entertainment service. It's their source of porn and Netflix and MP3s, so they think it's roughly analogous (and no more important than) cable TV or Blockbuster video.
Of course, even these people use the Internet to send business-critical emails, engage in commerce, voice their political views, and pay their taxes. The Internet is a very important part of our infrastructure. It's not just for porn.
Re:I see what they did there... (Score:1, Insightful)
Right, but who owns the pipe? Who is responsible for getting it fixed? Who is willing to pay the bill for it?
These questions seem to be easy to answer (it's communally owned by the utilities through it, you open a market for specialist repair companies that fix and the bill is shared amongst the stakeholders, the companies who have fiber are the stakeholders that pay for it), but in practice, it never happens that way.
1. The lawyers argue for years over who will pay what for the initial installation. The initial stakeholders split the cost for the install (trenching conduit isn't that expensive), then have their fiber run. They then insist that they own the pipe and squabble amongst themselves over how much each gets to use. They can and will stuff it with dark fiber that they never have any intention to use so that nobody else can put any in. If they are forced to allow others to "buy into" the pipe, they will negotiate such a steep initial price that no new providers can get into that pipe. (PS: One for each company will never fly, even if each cable is 96F or more)
2. They will play dirty tricks with each other. When AT&T does anything with the line, they'll "accidentally" kink or damage or otherwise mess with Verizon's fiber. Verizon will return the favor to Comcast, etc.
3. If there is legitimate outside damage, and AppleTV's, AT&T, and Cox's fibers are nicked, but Comcast and Verizon's aren't, even if the conduit is completely breached and future damage is imminent, Comcast and Verizon will stall, stall, stall on any sort of repair work or fee that they are responsible for as a, "Well, it didn't hurt OUR network".
The most practical way to make it work is to have a third party that owns and manages the physical plant, and then leases services to multiple companies. That way, that third party is focused on the maintenance of those physical lines, and the other companies are renters that can demand uptime and quality of service for repairs and the like. That's where people suggest that local governments might be logical caretakers, as they (theoretically) should be business-neutral, and willing to lease line space to anyone who is willing to pay the fees.
The only problem is that the telcos will never really trust anything that they don't directly manage (ostensibly for "quality assurance reasons", but also so they can yell "mine, mine, mine").
Re:Isn't bread and circuses (Score:3, Insightful)
>>>And you don't get ANYTHING in return for it, right?
No not really. I get nice paved roads which are funded by gasoline taxes. I get a navy and army to defend me from outside invaders. A government-run school for my kids, which they don't attend (private schooled), so really I'm paying for a school that I don't get to use. Overall? Not worth the $35,000 I paid in taxes last year. $5000 would be more reasonable.
.
>>>Oh, what, you want your trash picked up? You want sewers built to your property? Fire protection?
Those would be good ideas, but they are all private companies that are billed separately. Not tax funded. Not government provided.
Re:We paid for the lines. Share them or get off. (Score:1, Insightful)
Exactly. Share the lines or let me rip that 4ft tall pale green monstrosity out of my front yard.
Oh and also quit tearing up my property with your trucks while your servicing it. It's my property. I think I still have some rights related to that don't I?
Re:I see what they did there... (Score:3, Insightful)
Wow. You sure make a big deal out of nothing.
The answer is simple: The local government owns both the street and the pipe under the street. Comcast and Verizon and the electric company each own their separate wires that run through the pipe.