[TriLUG] Move over Google: Wilson, NC did it a long, long time ago

Sat Feb 28 08:42:23 EST 2015

On Sat, Feb 28, 2015 at 7:46 AM, William Sutton via TriLUG
<trilug at trilug.org> wrote:
>
>
> On Sat, 28 Feb 2015, Steve Litt via TriLUG wrote:
>
>> On Fri, 27 Feb 2015 20:22:17 +0000 (UTC)
>> John Vaughters via TriLUG <trilug at trilug.org> wrote:
>>
>>> >When you have an imposed monopoly of one or two service providers
>>> >who collude on contractual terms, they are identical to the behavior
>>> >that you find so shocking in the government.
>>> I couldn't disagree more.
>>> 1st -  I make an agreement for a service and I know what service is
>>> traded for pay. There is nothing hidden here.
>>
>>
>> And they reneig on the agreement, and for practical purposes you can't
>> say boo. Nothing hidden there either, they do it all the time.
>>
>>> 2nd - I do not agree
>>> there is a monopoly. If this is such a clear monopoly, then the Gov.
>>> should attack that with monopoly laws on the books.
>>
>>
>> The government should have attacked the broadband carriers with
>> monopoly laws years ago. The government doesn't do that anymore:
>> They're too afraid of people who shout that everything the government
>> does is evil.
>
>
> Case in point:  the Comcast-NBC-Universal merger.  Anyone with any sort of
> sense could see that this was bad for the consumer, but they let it go
> anyway.  Now Comcast^WXFinity wants to swallow Time-Warter.  They have a lot
> of radio ads going in the DC Metro area to pursuade our congress critters
> why this is a good idea.  What they fail to mention is that for years
> they've been sucking the customers dry while providing ever worse service.
> For example, when they shifted everyone off the analog channels to their
> digital service, they started by dropping channels, and then proceeded to
> degrading the remaining analog channels, then professed ignorance when
> complaints were registered.
>
> The only case in recent memory where the Government has actively pursued
> anyone or anything is the BP-Deepwater Horizon disaster, where at the outset
> of the trial they announced that they wanted the maximum penalty of $17
> billion.  Of course, that makes sense given that Democratic administrations
> typically have a mandate from their constituents to push for environmental
> regulation.
>
>>
>>> 3rd - A
>>> corporation is not a Gov. entity and owes no transparency to anyone
>>> other than what is required to be a corporation under US laws.4th -
>>> FCC is a Gov. entity and we are their employer and they owe us an
>>> explanation for their actions. This concept seems to be lost on the
>>> young.
>>
>>
>> They gave us an explanation. We're paying double the money for half the
>> performance of other developed countries, and it's all going in the
>> pockets of the broadband vendors. Won't invest? Hell, they haven't
>> been investing. Now they just have an even lamer excuse.
>
>
> Yup.  It's been a cash cow for the broadband providers.  That's why they've
> gone to such trouble to keep competition to a minimum.  For example, making
> cities sign exclusive licensing agreements.  Huntsville, AL, for example,
> was a franchisee of Comcast.  If you wanted anything else, you were going to
> be getting satellite.  No Verizon, no Cox, no TWC. On the border between
> Alexandria, VA and Arlington, VA, there's a section that can be serviced by
> either Cox -or- Comcast.  Prices there are routinely $30/month lower than
> places where either of the companies has exclusive territory.  Explain to me
> again how "Together is Better", Comcast.
>
      Comcast IMHO has the worst service, period. I knew some people
who moved from a town with Cox to another served by Comcast. They used
to bitch a lot about Cox but then realized why I despise comcast. I
myself am in a area served by TWC and, well, they are not as lousy as
comcast but cox still managed to be better.

A lot of large companies claim they are for free market but that
really translates to "until I can get monopoly." One of the tenets of
capitalism is to charge what the market can bear; the corolary is if
you control the market, you can raise the prices because you are the
only game in town.

The *features* we have with land lines - and cell phones for that
matter -- are not there because the companies like us but because we
the customer can switch carriers. Maybe not as easy with cell phones
because not many phones can do GSM and CDMA and most carriers want to
force you to use *their* phones, but still the principle is valid.
those cell carriers did not provide data and then faster data speeds
because they like us; if they had their way we would have to be
grateful to pay $.1 a minute every time we called locally. Same goes
for laying fiber or whatnot: if they could force us to use 300baud
modems they rent and then pay per minute like it used to be in the
early days of personal computer, they would.

Market drives changes. A market that is restricted and controlled
drives less changes than one that is not.

Government in principle should be taking the side of We the People
(you know the by the people for the people part in that silly piece of
paper), but politician's main goal is to be reelected. And, he who has
the most money backing him usually wins. And, the offers of guaranteed
high paying job when they retire does sound attractive.

If you want to see that changing you need to be more politically
active and not vote on sound bites, pigeonholing/partyline voting, you
talking points, and "issues." And then make politicians accountable.
And make as many people you can do the same. Right now not enough of
the population votes, and those who do want someone else, ideally some
celebrity, to tell them who to vote. Kinda like in Futurama when the
people from Osiris-something were reading the Wall of Profecies:

High Priest: Great Wall of Prophecy, reveal to us God's will that we
may blindly obey.
Priests: Free us from thought and responsibility.
High Priest: We shall read things off you.
Priests: Then do them.
High Priest: Your words guide us.
Priests: We're dumb.

>>
>> Maybe the young people know that the government they pay taxes to is
>> charged with protecting them from oligopolies. Or maybe the young read
>> his8tory books, explaining why laws were made to bust up the likes of
>> Standard Oil in the first place.
>
>
> Doubtful...The current crop of youngsters (and frankly some of the older
> folks too) seem to have bought in to "Hope and Change".  What they didn't
> realize is that they really bought "rope-a-dope".  It's one thing to be
> young and idealistic, it's another when you actually have to make your
> paycheck stretch and you suddenly realize that that "free healthcare" you
> voted for isn't actually free.
>
>>
>> SteveT
>>
>> Steve Litt                *  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
>> Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance
>>
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>
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