We have previously discussed how the United States lags behind many countries in the speed and availability of high-speed Internet. As noted earlier, this is due primarily to the powerful lobby in Washington and members who do their bidding in Congress to allow certain companies to control and profit off of such access. The U.S. cable industry and its lobbyists however have been careful to stay out of the public eye to protect their income and the members that they use in Congress. Now, however, the industry has made a rare play in the open. The industry is moving to block plans in Chattanooga, Tennessee and Wilson, North Carolina to offer high-speed internet services to their citizens. Lawyers and lobbyists for USTelecom, which represents cable giants Comcast, Time Warner and others, have mobilized to stop this trend where municipalities have responded to the demand of their citizens for such access. In the world of Washington lobbying, the slowest in this field has continued to win the race. While slow in service, our telecom companies are fast in making friends in Congress.
USTelecom has actually argued that it is merely trying to protect consumers from bad internet connections by forcing them to buy access from it: “The success of public broadband is a mixed record, with numerous examples of failures. With state taxpayers on the financial hook when a municipal broadband network goes under, it is entirely reasonable for state legislatures to be cautious in limiting or even prohibiting that activity.” By the way, Chattanooga offers customers access to speeds of 1 gigabit per second – about 50 times faster than the US average. The service, provided by municipally owned EPB, is now petitioning the FCC to expand its territory. Comcast and others have previously tried to use lawsuits and lobbyists to block such efforts.
I fail to see why a major developed nation like the United States does not offer free high-speed Internet and wi-fi access in the same way that it supplies actual superhighways. This is the key to the modern economy and yet we are allowing companies to manipulate speeds to profiteer at the cost of economic growth.
In publications, USTelecom is calling for the Commission and possibly Congress to preempt such efforts and cut off such access to consumers. If history is any measure, the well-healed telecom lobbyists will have little problem in getting members to listen to their plight.
By the way, we rank 31st in the world thanks to our friends in the Telecom industry and their friends in Congress.
The question is whether the public will finally wise up and demand that this stranglehold by USTelecom be taken from their virtual throats.
bill is obviously an Oliver Stone fan.
THEO,
Thanks very much. Excellent.
Imo, one of the problems was implied when Allen Dulles – a major player in keeping the public ignorant of the 11-22-63 coup d’tat in Dallas said:
“The public doesn’t read”.
John
It’s only a matter of time; the box is open and the give-away Genie is out.
Alexis de Tocqueville prescient understanding of human nature was spot on.
Perhaps a congress made up of two houses; one representing “Tax Payers” with control of the purse strings and one representing all citizens might have been more sustainable.
We need more political parties, tougher for corporations to bribe all of them.
“Res ipsa loquitur.”
Prof. Jonathan Turley
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
Edwin Burke
“The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can
bribe the public with the public’s money.”
Alexis de Tocqueville
How do rational, logical and coherent Americans find themselves subsumed by
the forces of self-serving corruption?
We all know the difference between right and wrong, presumably.
Was the essential control on this representative republic the restricted vote?
Did the original republicans, as founders, allow their political system to
overindulge and devolve into de Tocqueville’s nemesis of “one man, one vote”
democracy? Perhaps “one man, one vote” democracy was Marx in sheep’s
clothing.
Also in honor of Labor Day this is a fitting time to mention the Supreme Court, which many Americans venerate, but which should be understood better as the enemy of ordinary Americans and of their search for justice. Ian Millhiser (affiliated with the Center for American Progress) is coming out with a book in March 1915 and hopefully this site will allow me to give it some publicity:
“Few American institutions have inflicted greater suffering on ordinary people than the Supreme Court of the United States. The justices built a nation where children toiled in coal mines and cotton mills, where Americans could be forced into camps because of their race, and where women were sterilized at the command of states. The Court was the midwife of Jim Crow, the right hand of union busters, and the dead hand of the Confederacy. Nor is the modern Court a vast improvement, with its incursions on voting rights, its willingness to place elections for sale, and its growing skepticism towards the democratic process generally.
In this powerful indictment of a venerated institution, constitutional law expert Ian Millhiser demonstrates how Supreme Court decisions have impacted the lives of everyday Americans, from Reconstruction to the present day….
The rest may be read at http://www.amazon.com/Injustices-Supreme-Americas-Dangerous-Institution/dp/1568584563/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1406230721&sr=1-2&keywords=supreme+court
I feel fortunate having 4G service in my little remote homestead. It’s lightning fast, without copper or fiber optic cable. I mean, cellphone technology was built on wireless transmission, so why shouldn’t data, too? Do you really need a Ferrari when a Chevy will get you there on time? Do you really need to be a 24/7 shut-in when there’s wireless, for less money, to liberate you?
Even so, I’m in favor of competition to bring the cost of everything down. Fiber technology, infrastructure-wise, is cheaper on the frontend, capable of bankrupting slower service, with potential for overnight monopoly for fiber companies. I see this as a food fight, not unlike small communities refusing to allow Walmart in, turf-protecting mom and pop shops that, by rule, gouge locals. I just filled up on 87 octane in a major metro area — fully 60 cents cheaper per gallon than the local thugs want in my little town. You have the Walmart haters who say the hell with competition and favor locals, yet these same people now say the hell with the locals.
Guess who’s slowing things up? FCC Suggests ‘Pilot Programs’ Before Killing Off Copper As AT&T, Verizon Push to Quickly Kill Off DSL, POTS lines.
It’s part of a national effort by both AT&T and Verizon to gut the regulations governing copper networks — so they can sever the huge parts of their networks
they don’t want to upgrade and drive these users either to wireless or fiber optics. AT&T would prefer the FCC move faster with less thinkin’ and such.
“We are disappointed the FCC still appears tentative about dealing with the IP transition, especially when compared with the bold and visionary goals of the National Broadband Plan,”
the company said in a statement. “Certainly, this notice might yield some interesting information, and we will of course cooperate fully with the FCC.
We also intend to provide further detail on our proposed geographic trials as requested, though, we are puzzled it took the FCC six months to decide it needed such information.”
They want it all, as usual.
In honor of Labor Day, check out http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2014_09/antilabor_day051911.php#disqus_thread on the 1934 textile workers strike in LaGrange, GA. They were treated like dogs by the companies in pay, benefits, housing, you name it. No better than the lowest of the low, as they say.
Also in honor of the day, view Harlan County, USA at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyJ5OIGzb-M about the miners.
both feature on digby’s site today.
They are trying to maintain a dwindling franchise–if Google succeeds, for instance, in pulling off Google Fiber, it will be a game changer.
I fear that soon I will have to write this Irish Poem:
Incompetition???
An Irish Poem by Squeeky Fromm
There once was a broadcasting giant
Whose lobbyists were very riant!
They had just swatted down
High speed wireless in town,
Thanks to Congressmen sooo darn compliant!
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Kill the copper and bring fiber 1Gbps to the home. But someone wants to go even faster: 10Gbps, 40Gbps, 60Gbps and 100Gbps.
The NYSE Euronext. Firms executing trades electronically can do so up to 1,000 times faster than the blink of an eye. Algorithms can spot market trends and fire off trades automatically, saving investors’ time and money.
Regulators have expressed concerns that the growth of high-frequency trading could lead to a computer glitch that could pose a systemic risk to global financial markets.
For example, a computer glitch could hypothetically lead to a flood of orders for stocks being sent into the market, said Dan Gray, a senior special counsel in the
Securities and Exchange Commission’s division of trading and markets. The financial exposure with so many orders could swamp the trader and the stockbroker.
Regulators also are keeping an eye on so-called co-location, by which exchanges rent data center space to trading firms near exchanges’ matching engines.
“Everyone wants to be the fastest,” Gray said, but the SEC wants to make sure that “everyone’s getting fair and reasonable access” to securities markets.
I should add that the pols here seldom write bills themselves, they let lobbyists do it for them. Of course it gets modified in various committees and such but the core of the bill is written by someone else.
Maybe that is good or bad given so much ineptitude exists in the state Capitol.
Congress: The worst politicians money can buy.
The telecom industry accomplished essentially the same thing here in Washington State probably 10 years ago. Some of the Public Utility Districts were going to offer their customers fiber optic service and were beginning to build out, but then the politicians in Olympia put an end to that.
A major fiber optic trunk flows through two of the counties where the PUDs where trying to offer service. The speed offered to the customer could have been godlike, but again politicians prevented that from happening.
The corruption never ends
Sent from my iPad
JH,
Excellent points…
Who paid for the initial infrastructure? Who obtained easement? The Communist Corpoations will one day go away like the Pullman Car Conductor….
Interesting how the “gods” of competition just hate completion and how the lovers of the market would rather use the courts to shut down their competition than offer service that is fast, efficient and low cost. Telecom companies are making billions in the US while offering service that is worse than many “third world” countries. In Europe on the other hand the speed is lightening fast and competiton is furious even with all those pesky regulations. Do you think our corproate overlords have been lying to us?
I hope the cities win! By the way, TELECOM doesn’t care that some cities programs don’t work out well…..if that was the standard most of the telecoms would be closed without their monopoly status.
One of the communities in Arizona was offering free wifi within the city limits (with a minutes limit per day) but had to drop it because they were losing money. Maybe this is what TeleComm is talking about. They were running high speed access, but the city lost a bundle on the deal.
Ending the government monopoly (along with the other perks) that utility companies have enjoyed for decades on end would solve a lot of these problems.