ISPs Object as California Lets Renters Opt Out of Bulk Broadband Plans (arstechnica.com) 45
The California Broadband & Video Association has objected to legislation signed by Governor Gavin Newsom on October 15 that allows apartment tenants to opt out of mandatory bulk billing for internet service. The cable industry group called the measure "an anti-affordability bill masked as consumer protection."
The association said property owners would have to provide refunds to tenants who decline internet service provided through building contracts. The law "undermines the basis of the cost savings and will lead to bulk billing being phased out," the group said. Assembly member Rhodesia Ransom, who authored the bill, said lobby groups for internet providers and real estate companies worked hard to defeat it.
The association told the Sacramento Bee it was disappointed Newsom signed the legislation because it would be "an impediment to utilizing an effective tool" that helped middle-class Californians get discounted rates. The law takes effect January 1. Tenants who are denied the right to opt out can deduct subscription costs from their rent.
The association said property owners would have to provide refunds to tenants who decline internet service provided through building contracts. The law "undermines the basis of the cost savings and will lead to bulk billing being phased out," the group said. Assembly member Rhodesia Ransom, who authored the bill, said lobby groups for internet providers and real estate companies worked hard to defeat it.
The association told the Sacramento Bee it was disappointed Newsom signed the legislation because it would be "an impediment to utilizing an effective tool" that helped middle-class Californians get discounted rates. The law takes effect January 1. Tenants who are denied the right to opt out can deduct subscription costs from their rent.
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Look, this man has a problem with... one of the most awesome sounding names of all time? Rhodesia Ransom? Kickass.
Great; it shouldn't be a thing. (Score:5, Insightful)
> The law "undermines the basis of the cost savings and will lead to bulk billing being phased out," the group said.
Good; it's monopolistic, predatory, and ultimately unnecessary. The entire practice is aimed at driving consistency and forced adoption rates, not anything else.
Re:Great; it shouldn't be a thing. (Score:5, Insightful)
More than that, it's opt-out. If there actually is a "cost savings" that the tenants actually see, they won't be too fired up to opt out unless they have another reason besides cost.
These industry mouthpieces love to lie.
Re:Great; it shouldn't be a thing. (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed. The promise that limiting renter's choice to a single provider would result in beneficial cost savings was one of those lies that everyone knows is a lie the moment they hear it, yet everyone with decision making power pretends it is the truth (and many other adjacent parties just thoughtlessly repeat it).
Similar to "this merger will allow us to eliminate wasteful spending on competition and thus offer higher quality service at lower prices, without firing anyone!"
Or "disallowing third parties from making repairs will keep our clients safe"
I could go on, but I wouldn't be saying anything novel or revelatory.
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> The law "undermines the basis of the cost savings and will lead to bulk billing being phased out," the group said.
Good; it's monopolistic, predatory, and ultimately unnecessary. The entire practice is aimed at driving consistency and forced adoption rates, not anything else.
When the ISPs talk about cost savings, they mean for the ISPs, not for consumers. Bulk billing does indeed remove some costs for the ISPs. Well, maybe that's how the ISPs can convince themselves that they're not lying.
translation: (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:translation: (Score:5, Insightful)
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I used to work for a wannabe "ISP" - their main business was providing other services to apartment complexes, but they heard tech was a money printer, so they moved into repackaging and reselling services from an actual ISP.
The few apartment complexes they set up before I left were a predictable shitshow. The whole apartment complex shared a single IP, with everything behind NAT. Each apartment had a wifi access point, but no modem. I wasn't directly involved with that property, but I have no doubt every as
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I've chosen not to live in complexes that had these deals, especially when they were the worse choice in the area for providers.
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The issue is that as an owner of a house I can chose to dig the ground and add a conduit for a new fiber provider, while if I rent something, the owner may simply not allow this.
In areas with tenants rights laws, the owner can not prohibit this. The owner can make the tenant bear the cost of having it professionally done -no DIY allowed, must meet building codes, proper internal routing in crawlspaces/walls (no stapling cords to the outside of the building), etc. The owner can make the tenant pay for the repair of any damages that result due to the installation. But the tenant has the right to have services installed.
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The problem is the legislatures legalize these fees as the law of the land. So if one is position that they must rent, they are stuck with it, unless they want to commute from another state. And many state legislatures have legalized these fees, so even that's not an option.
If something is good... (Score:5, Insightful)
...people choose it voluntarily and often pay for it.
If something is forced on people, it's often not good.
If "bulk billing" is a good deal, customers will choose it.
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Bulk billing being tied to your housing kind of makes it difficult to decline.
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Until a law comes around that mandates opt-out. Which is exactly what this law is.
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Exactly. If these bulk deals really do offer such amazing affordability then the ISPs have nothing to worry about. The fact that they are worried though tells you a lot.
Re:If something is good... (Score:5, Interesting)
Additionally even the build-up costs to ISPs to get to these residences is per-capita small, because multitenant housing means that even if only a minority of units subscribe to the service, the costs to reach the premises is still spread out among multiple customers.
Granted, most of the carrier-integration I worked with was either metro optical ethernet or much older frame-relay connecting to points-of-presence where OC3s interconnected those points-of-presence, but in either case it was set up where the service provider came into a service-entrance room, and cabling left the service provider's equipment for some kind of physical demarcation point that acted as the official split between the service provider's responsibility and the on-premises tenant or property owner's responsibility. In our few multitenant buildings the service provider would do some on-premises work and actually place that demarc in the customer's own suite. This was not generally seen as being all that big a deal to do.
I would expect that large apartment complexes would already have a dedicated room for headend equipment, and that the service provider would use some other medium besides coaxial cable to get from that headend back to the central office, and between that headend equipment and the customer cablemodem would be normal coaxial cable run within the complex. Absolutely it is not a sure-thing that there would be sufficient customers to make this profitable, but that's a business risk that the provider should accept on getting into this line of business. We're not obligated to make their business model work for them, that's their responsibility to figure out.
As a result (Score:2)
the ISPs will be forced to raise their rates due to the elimination of a scam, oops, I mean, the increased cost of doing business
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the ISPs will be forced to raise their rates due to the elimination of a scam, oops, I mean, the increased cost of doing business
... and then lower them again as competition returns to the marketplace.
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I'd call that an "if" rather than an entailed consequence. There are LOTS of ways to maintain a monopoly.
I am shocked. (Score:2)
I'm half-joking.
Consumer Rights (Score:5, Interesting)
I've been negotiating with ISPs to get better internet service in my building. "Google Fiber" (which isn't even fiber, its fixed wireless access in my area), wanted to charge a reduced-rate-per-unit to deploy access into my building. The problem however, is that a large number of units dont need/want it. We have several elderly retired people who have no internet access at all. Anyone who would want/need higher end access, such as business w/ static IPs, would still need to get their own separate ISP, and pay for both. Anyone who would need higher bandwidth would need to pay for both. Anyone who would want cable television and/or telephone service would need to get those separately with no option to bundle. Its literally all about getting vendor lock-in and a single bill from the building, rather than one-bill-per-unit. They want to simplify things on their accounting department, that's about it, but it doesn't matter that it absolutely removes options from consumers.
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It isn't 5G. They're point-to-point fixed wireless bridges operating at 60GHz. I've had the service in the past without even realizing they were using fixed wireless in my previous apartment building. The service was solid, reliable, and maintained speed at all hours. But I do agree that the name is highly misleading at this point.
Really prevents sharing internet (Score:2)
In a lot of apartment complexes, the physical proximity of tenants make sharing internet trivially easy. Just ask a neighboring unit (or one directly above / below) if they want to split internet costs with you, and you split the bill. Or if you're really smart, have two neighbors "split" the bill with you 50/50 each and they are paying for the internet.
If everyone's internet cost is already included in their rent then obviously this isn't an option. Or folks who just use the internet on their phone over ce
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I was poised and willing to do this in the past. Living on a middle-floor of a building that had apartments on both sides (with a common back wall) I could have provided service for 17 neighbors!
So.... tech.... (Score:2)
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To add some insights into this, granted I'm a sample size of 1...
2.4GHz spectrum from my unit is fairly crowded.
But 5GHz lack of ability to penetrate many walls means it is almost entirely clear. And as of right now, I cannot see ANYONE else using 6GHz from my scanning, so I have 100% availability currently of this spectrum. Granted, 6GHz devices are much newer, as 5GHz goes all the way back to the original 802.11a spec, but even then, I see minimal usage on two channel ranges at 80MHz channel widths, with
Just impacted by this myself (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't live in California but I've just gotten bitten by this. My apartment complex was sold to a new management company last year and this summer they installed wifi transmitters in all the apartments and then announced that we all now have fiber internet with a whopping 200mb up and down for the low low AND MANDATORY fee of $65/month.
These apartments have DSL and Cable internet providers as well and I've been a customer of both - currently on cable internet with 1gb down and 300mb up!
I can't even opt-out. When I renewed my lease last year they added an addendum that they had the right to charge fees for included utilities. Guess what's a "utility" now? Internet.
There's not even a way to setup a hard connection with ethernet to their transmitters (wifi only) and there's no "cable tv" included (not that I had cable tv but if any of the renters had a combo tv/internet deal they're further boned)
I've got no problem with them offering the service. But this mandatory, no opt-out fee for an OPTIONAL service that's also served by 2 other ISPs is predatory and monopolistic.
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These apartments have DSL and Cable internet providers as well and I've been a customer of both - currently on cable internet with 1gb down and 300mb up! I can't even opt-out. When I renewed my lease last year they added an addendum that they had the right to charge fees for included utilities. Guess what's a "utility" now? Internet.
I'd set up a seedbox or a Tor relay on it just out of principle and just keep using your cable.
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I'd set up a seedbox or a Tor relay on it just out of principle and just keep using your cable.
Nice, an AC comment worth reading for once. This is exactly the right answer. Fucking nail that connection, just keep it using the maximum transfer 24/7, however you do it. If they force you to have their service, then use it... use it hard.
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I'd be concerned that these APs provide commercial NAT IP addresses, so not ideal for server applications.
I had Google Fiber in a house, but moved to an apartment about a mile away. I took my fiber jack and router with me, without telling GF that i'd moved (paperless billing oc). I attached my GF router to the the fiber jack preinstalled at the apt, and it just worked, without ordering service. But it now issued a commercial NAT IP. When I swapped-in the exact same model jack from my house, I got a routable
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Hopefully, they had chosen a service plan with a bandwidth cap and, typically, astronomical overage fees. :)
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All these costs have always been paid in rent. Landlords came up with some kind of a narrative to convince state legislatures to let them add additional ad hoc fees on top of the advertised rent, which they call utility fees (or "RUBS" fees), which are completely unrelated to any tenant's usage of any utility. Despite any narrati
Anti-affordability? Really? (Score:2)
The cable industry group called the measure "an anti-affordability bill masked as consumer protection.
They LIE. They don't enter into these agreements with apartment complexes in order to make internet more affordable. They do so because by making it mandatory, they can charge *more*.
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It sounds like there are ways to do this right, where everyone saves money and gets their own connection on which they can change service tiers, and crappy ways like what that poster described. It makes sense for an ISP to offer discounted connection