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Supreme Court Rules Against Community Telcos
Posted by
michael
on Thu Mar 25, 2004 01:01 PM
from the one-phone-company-to-rule-them-all dept.
from the one-phone-company-to-rule-them-all dept.
acherrington writes "Today the Supreme Court ruled against a group of Missouri communities offering telecom services where it is prohibited by Missouri law. At least eight other states -- Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, Nevada, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia -- have similar laws. Today's ruling will most likely result in more lobbying by the Baby Bells at the state level to stop community-sponsored telecoms who are fed up with poor service and monopolies."
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Supreme Court Rules Against Community Telcos
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They saw it coming (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.dixie-chicks.com/ | Last Journal: Tuesday July 24, @05:17PM)
Last month, we got a note in the mail that TVS was now "Cedar Valley Communications", and no longer directly affiliated with TVEC. This was pretty depressing... it was so nice to call up the phone company and talk to a person instead of to a robot.
Now, it makes sense. With an 8-1 decision in the works, TVEC/TVS must have known that they were about to get hammered by Texas law. With little hope for legislative help from the Republican puppet government [takingontomdelay.com] in Austin, they spun off TVS.
At least I don't have to worry about getting a bill from the clueless megacorporation [sbc.com] I was stuck with before.
It's the republican FCC that ALLOWS little tellcos (Score:5, Informative)
(Last Journal: Friday November 02, @02:49PM)
That seems an odd position to take, given that it's the Republican FCC commissioner that keeps pushing for the legalization of competition in communications, and fighting off the courts when they try to turn it back.
The local electric co-op, Trinity Valley Electric, had a phone subsidiary, Trinity Valley Services. [...] Last month, we got a note in the mail that TVS was now "Cedar Valley Communications", and no longer directly affiliated with TVEC. [...] Now, it makes sense. With an 8-1 decision in the works, TVEC/TVS must have known that they were about to get hammered by Texas law.
That doesn't make sense either. As another poster has already pointed out, the Supreme Court decision was against GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS (cities, townships, counties, etc.) running phone companies. A Co-op is a corporation with its customers as its stockholders - as strictly private eneterprise as any other corportation. Unless TVE is a misledingly-misnamed government entity the ruling would not apply to it.
When we moved to [TVE's] service area last summer, I was exctatic to be out of the grasp of the scandal-plagued monopoly [bucorp] I'd been forced to buy power from before.
As far as scandal-plauging, there are few scandals to equal the routine operation of nearly ANY government operation. I, for one, am more than happy to see the big government, now that it's broken up the national telephone monopoly (a creature of its own regulation), telling the little governments to dump their own creatures.
To anyone who lives in a region with its own city phone service, who believes that their service is good and wants to keep it that way, I have this suggestion:
Go to the legislature of the governmental body that runs the little tellco (i.e. city council or whatever) and suggest they spin it out as a coop. (This will preserve much of its structure, and give the customers even more say in its operation than they had as citizens of the parent governmental division.)
If you don't do this, expect your government to sell it to the local corporate-behemoth tellco at a kickback-driven bargan price - which will be paid off at compound interest in your next telephone bills.
Re:It's the republican FCC that ALLOWS little tell (Score:5, Informative)
That's baloney. Powell's son is trying to get others to do his work for him, and the courts have stated he hasn't been granted the authority to do that by congress. You can paint it anyway you want, but I have paint thinner.
= 9J =
Re:Republican FCC kills little tellcos (Score:4, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Friday November 02, @02:49PM)
The little guy in this case was a group of rural counties.
Which is exactly the position I'd expect him to take in this case.
Since when is a government, at any level, the "little guy"?
Good news (Score:4, Informative)
(http://das.doit.wisc.edu/)
Nothing precludes any small private coop, company, or partnership from becoming a telecom provider.
The Telecommunications Act of 1996 says that "states may not prohibit 'any entity' from getting into the phone business. That does not include political subdivisions of states, said Justice David H. Souter, writing for the court."
This ruling is a good thing, as it keeps government out of the telecom business, where it belongs.
Re:Good news (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.slashdot.org/~lukewarmfusion/journal/ | Last Journal: Tuesday August 02 2005, @02:49PM)
I don't want it controlled by the gov't (even on a community level), but our local ISPs are pretty weak in service, support and pricing. They just can't compete.
I don't see why the gov't can't invest in (and get a return from) a local ISP. Let the ISP run the system, let the gov't. help to fund it and when the profits appear, some of those go back to the gov't.
It avoids privacy issues while still allowing the consumers (and the government) to benefit by providing reasonable competition against the giants.
Re:Good news (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://moofie.lastcoolnameleft.com/)
Re:Good news (Score:5, Insightful)
And what the hell is wrong with people, coming together as a community (perhaps in the form of the local government) and providing cheap telephone service? I'm sure you'd be happy as a clam if I hadn't included the parenthetical remark, but isn't the government of the people and for the people?
Re:Good news (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Good news (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.rhymezilla.com/ | Last Journal: Monday December 19 2005, @11:54PM)
That's fine, and there is nothing wrong with that, since people can choose to create a company to offer whatever the hell they want. GOVERNMENTS DO NOT AND SHOULD NOT HAVE THIS ABILITY. As for your "parenthetical remark:"
> (perhaps in the form of the local government)
As soon as the government gets into things they get an unfair advantage over private companies because they can subsidize things with taxpayer money, thereby ruining the other business's chances. Also, when the government controls things, they have more opportunity to demand other things. They can then demand that EVERYONE pay a certain tax, part of which goes to upgrading their telecom infrastructure.
Well, if I don't use that phone service, I should not have to pay, but that is the way things work in the U.S. You always pay for things you'll never use.
> isn't the government of the people and for the people?
Yes, that statement is true. This one is not: "The government is of the people who want cheap phone service, for the people who want cheap phone service, at the expense of local phone companies."
Would you say it was perfectly fine for local governments to get into some other business, such as web hosting? What if, since they can support it, they decided that they would offer web hosting for their community at $1 per month. You own an ISP/host in that community. Wouldn't you be pissed off that the local government effectively put you out of business? Sure, you can argue about quality of service, but that is not part of this question, since we cannot guess what the quality of service would be for a nonexistant entity.
Re:Good news (Score:4, Informative)
(http://www.hyperlogos.org/ | Last Journal: Wednesday July 18, @08:19PM)
There is no reason whatsoever that the local government should not provide any service its citizenry desires, so long as it does not conflict with federal law (though IMO federal law needs to be pared back considerably) or proceed in an anticompetitive fashion. The solution to avoiding that is to have completely open government process, and in a system without sufficient citizen oversight I would not think it was a particularly good idea to let the government run anything at all.
Using tax monies to fund the system, except as acting as its customer, is wrong. This is not solely because that would go against the will of the average taxpayer, but because it would be anticompetitive. Clearly at some point a governmentally-owned entity will have certain advantages because they will have inherent right of way on city streets, for example, but remember that carriers are required to resell some of their capacity, and they would be no different. Whether or not that's a good deal for anyone involved is another question but at least they are subject to the same checks and balances as everyone else.
This applies to any other business as well, including your web hosting example. Unless they're spending tax money to do it, they can't offer you web hosting cheaper than it costs them to provide it. But if they provide it at their cost, then I see that as government serving the people, which is what it's supposed to do anyway.
Re:Good news (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://devwrights.com/blog)
The government's purpose is whatever its citizens decide it should be.
If its citizens want to replace a quasi government entity like a phone company with a genuine government provided service, it's OK. We had a terrible power crisis for example in California. Who avoided being raped by Enron, et al? LA County, since they generated their own power.
There are reasons to privatize things, and their are reasons not to. Don't make it out like it's so obvious.
Re:Good news (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://www.itsdarkhere.com/~josh/)
Phone service is an integral part of our lives. But even disregarding the necessary aspect of it, phone service is one of those systems where a natural monopoloy forms (at least locally.) It doesn't make sense to have 5 lines going into your house, from 5 different companies. It's more efficient and cheaper to have one organization responsible for local service. A corporation will naturally leverage this monopoly to increase profits, at the expense of consumers.
Re:Good news (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, in some cases it is. (Roads, Buses, etc)
Consider the postal system for example. It's a government-run monopoly that seems to work just fine, doesn't it?
The gov't DOES have a place providing services like this when whoever provides the service is going to have a local, regional, or country-wide monopoly. Without heavy government regulation, or a gov't run service, customers are going to be forced to pay the "monopoly price" instead of the "fair market price" this is a bad thing for everyone except the monopolist.
The gov'ts purpose is to provide for the welfare of its citizens. Keeping them from getting raped for telephone service falls under this goal.
IMO, the power and phone lines should be gov't owned, just like the roads. They are a public utility.
Re:Good news (Score:4, Informative)
Actually it hasn't. [usps.com] Net income from the last quaterly report is listed as 1.817 Billion dollars.
I don't know why you're posting financial information from 2001, but things have changed quite significantly since then. Either you were unaware, or you're one of those types who believes that "the gov't can do anything right and we might as well do away with it."
Inefficient municipalities (Score:5, Funny)
(Last Journal: Monday November 29 2004, @12:13PM)
You would think that the Congress of the 90s would be unafraid of small towns starting their own telcos. After all, governement is so "inefficient" in their minds that they couldn't possibly compete with such "efficient" and capable telcos like SBC, MCI and Global Crossing for services like DSL, etc....
Re:Inefficient municipalities (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Good news (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.thepatcave.org/)
This is incorrect.
The ruling states that a state may make a law banning local municipalities from providing telco service. If the state chooses not to make such a law, local municipalities are still free to enter the telco market
Re:this keeps DEMOCRACY out of the telecom busines (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow. (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://www.thoughtbug.com/ | Last Journal: Thursday September 27, @05:52PM)
good for the telco business (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://lonelycoast.com/)
states' rights (Score:2)
(http://microsoft.toddverbeek.com/)
Hands OFF! (Score:3, Funny)
Rail Trains
Pharmacies
Telecom
Current status:
Rail Trains - all but dead
Pharmacy - corrupt and overpriced
Telecom - sucks oh so bad
If only there were a pattern so we could learn something from this.
Re:Hands OFF! (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://www.slashdot.org/~lukewarmfusion/journal/ | Last Journal: Tuesday August 02 2005, @02:49PM)
Telecom sucks oh so bad because of the telecom companies.
Just look at the pricing, support and service agreements for the major players. Those are their rules - not the government's. When it comes to the government passing legislation that benefits those companies, look at what's behind them - usually a lobby group or one of the companies themselves putting heavy pressure in the right places.
Which leads many people to question why these corporations have so much influence....
Re:Hands OFF! (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://www.snowplow.org/tom/)
You say this like it's a bad thing. It's because of the FDA's rigorous testing process that America didn't have several thousand Thalidomide babies along with the rest of the world. On the other side of the coin, we've had a steady stream of scares, scandals and deaths from the largely unregulated herbal/dietary suppliment industry in recent years.
Do you really want to be taking a drug that causes permanent hearing loss in 7% of patients, results in a six-fold increase in your chance of having a heart attack, or causes degenerative nerve damage after eighteen months' worth of use? Because if the FDA didn't test drugs thoroughly enough, that's the kind of risk you could be exposed to every time you took a new drug.
Re:Hands OFF! (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.dixie-chicks.com/ | Last Journal: Tuesday July 24, @05:17PM)
Rail Trains
Pharmacies
Telecom
I usually agree with your comments, but I think you're a bit off today.
Rail Trains - all but dead
True, but not because of government regulation. In fact, it was lack of government foresight that allowed the auto and tire industries to shut down rail-based public transit.
Pharmacy - corrupt and overpriced
In what way does this have to do with the government? Compare the "market-based" (read: monopoly-controlled) US system with the Canadian system. Note that buses of US citizens head to Canada for cheap drugs -- not the other way around.
Telecom - sucks oh so bad
The comparison this time would be with Europe. I'm no expert, but everything I read on Slashdot indicates that Europe's regulation of telcos resulted in a superior wireless network, while the US corporate welfare system caused a tangled mess of incompatible systems.
"The Government" isn't the solution to all problems... but neither is "The Market".
On the other hand, your comment has been moderated as "Funny", so maybe I just didn't get the joke and should come down off my high horse...
Re:Hands OFF! (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.dasnet.org/)
Cable TV - rates increased, quality decreased
Airlines - rates increased, quality and choice decreased, most of the "big 6" now rely on government bailouts
I know there are more examples of this, but I can't think of any right now (in my post-lunchtime food coma).
Disheartening (Score:5, Insightful)
I remember a case in Roswell (or was it Alpharetta), GA where a car (Lexus?) dealership huffed and puffed and blew down the wishes of the people who wanted to keep the area as a nature preserve. That community lost the battle to the car dealership. Not related to telco, but none the less, an erosion of community rights, not to mention common sense.
Sigh....
Bush v. Gore (Score:1)
pro states' rights (Score:4, Informative)
This just in, Supreme Court re-defines (Score:4, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Thursday September 30 2004, @01:33AM)
Was this case badly reported, or did the Supreme Court just ignore the plain english used in the law?
Read the headline as... (Score:4, Funny)
Tacos? (Score:1, Funny)
(http://192.168.0.1/)
Thought for a second there that the Supreme Court was banning tacos.
The Unjust Supreme Court (Score:2, Funny)
How about a Topic Name Change (Score:4, Informative)
(http://www.tiernok.com/)
The article wasn't that long, took all of half a minute to read. It boils down to:
1. Earlier law states entities may create their own telco groups (close enough, I don't have that window open anymore)
2. Local and city governments are sub-parts of the state government
3. The government doesn't count as an entity in part 1
4. Therefore: Local and city governments do not have this allowance under the specied law.
3 cheers for all the posters crying about loss of rights and rewriting laws and such, if they had read the article it probably would have been slashdoted by the time I got there
community cell phones? (Score:1)
(Last Journal: Wednesday July 12 2006, @11:49PM)
What about VOIP? (Score:3, Interesting)
Couldn't these companies use VOIP? As of right now VOIP isn't considered a typical phone service and regulated by Big Brother correct?
Or are they typical overly broad and generalized laws that apply to any way of providing a service using a phone?
Effect on non-profit telcos? (Score:2, Interesting)
(http://www.dreamhost.com/r.cgi?171038 | Last Journal: Wednesday September 24 2003, @12:03PM)
JGG
Government should only operate unprofitable biz's (Score:4, Interesting)
For example, take the US Postal Service. A daily mail pickup and drop-off at every address in the USA (including the most rural) would simply be impossible if there was not one and only one company providing that service. This is a perfect case of a service the rest of the government depends on, that likely would not exist if the free market was left to fend for itself. FedEx and UPS can compete in the high-price overnight market with the USPS, but nobody else has the ability to get a physical document from any point in the USA to any other point in the USA for 37 cents, or less than that even if you have a large volume of mail and pre-sort it properly.
In the case of Amtrak, the government is keeping the national railroad network alive for the sake of transportation redundancy. This came into play after the 9/11 attacks when all air traffic in the USA was grounded... the trains were able to keep running and some people and things were able to reroute themselves to get where they were going.
This is also why the government keeps up the Interstate highways. In theory, in the state of war on the US mainland, the Army could easily control any stretch of Interstate highway so that vital convoys could have a fast and trafic-free mostly-direct path from one metro area to another.
So long as there's still a profit to be made in the ISP business, then the government doesn't belong in it, just to regulate it so things don't get out of hand. If things ever do get totally out of hand (and we're nowher near that yet), then the government should step in to make sure there's affordable Internet access for the sake of keeping the network alive.
Re:Government should only operate unprofitable biz (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh, get a clue.
Rail traffic ... have you ever considered the subsidies
the government offers to the auto, road, and aviation industries?
In terms of subsidy per passenger mile, those industries
are far more heavily subsidized than rail traffic.
Or to put it differently, the problems rail traffic has
are basically that its competition is so extensively subsidized
that it's all but impossible to compete.
"Our" government is quite heavily in the business of distorting the economy. Primarily to benefit military industries (the auto industry only really took off after WW2, as a way to turn tank-production capacity into a dual-use technology) at the expense of more naturally efficient mechanisms. Although the individual characters in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? were clearly not real, except maybe Jessica Rabbit!, the plot to abolish the public transport system is very well documented as being true. But the major war contractors were allowed to get away with it.
Profit is not God. Although far too many of the people now running "our" government worship it, even when it conflicts with their basic responsibilities to support healthy (local) communities and to support civil rights.
This is great (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://josephbales.com/ | Last Journal: Tuesday February 21 2006, @03:32AM)
Article Troll (Score:5, Informative)
There is a reason gov't isn't supposed to compete (Score:3, Insightful)
Privately owned co-ops are OK, but the costs may be prohibitive.
Expensive (Score:1)
Telecom is an expensive business dam expensive. Whats a 5ESS go for, something like 10 million. What about a Titan 5500 (2-3 million and up). These are rough price tag's for Central Office Equipment. Your not going to get a whole influx of people into the business it is an expensive one to start. Who can afford some of these prices? Cities and govenerments.
Lets just block some competetion and open it up to the private sector. Get a clue: It wont happen. The price is too high.
PS: dont forget the price to lease dark fiber, DWDM and the Tight Trasmission Laser (TTL's) for your 48 boxen.
Please no prices from ebay showing a different amount. You may still need service and support contracts. Not to mention a crap load of qualified people to run this junk.
Perspective (Score:4, Interesting)
The area that I'm concerned about here: will this regulation retard development of free wireless services like The Personal Telco Project [personaltelco.net].
You don't want it anyway (Score:2)
As my local electric co-op likes to point out, the munis have lower rates, but they are not investing in generation. Both the coop, and the big infester owned utilities in the area have higher rates (by a little), serve much less customers per mile of line (~100 for the munis, 45 for the company, and 14 for the co-op. The latter are real numbers as of the annual meeting this week). They can also legally take over any line the others have built, at no cost (but this varies from state to state).
You can be sure town governments who know nothing about telecoms will screw this up in the long run too, but you won't even know how until it is too late. Low prices are not everything, as all the wal-mart haters point out.
So you want to start your own Telco?? (Score:2)
Nice to see...... (Score:1)
(http://www.fuckingdie.com/)
It is bad enough when a regulatory body (I am looking at you CRTC) is unwilling to make any real moves to help small telco startups from being crushed by large monopolies, but to have a group like the supreme court of the United States blatantly crush a small (Community Run) telco is insane.
Wouldn't it be a novel concept if all of the consumers got together and started their own telcos? Then what would the big guys do? Oh, wait a minute, we used to have those before deregulation - They were called crown corporations. Can you remember when your telco used to be more concerned with service than profit? Well I can. (I live in BC by the way.)
Oh! It says Telcos... (Score:1)
(http://daniel.the-gallaghers.org/)
Too much slashdot...
And here I thought... (Score:2, Insightful)
(http://www.coldacid.net/ | Last Journal: Tuesday November 02 2004, @04:21PM)
Things were so good before competition. . . (Score:4, Interesting)
Bell Canada. It was the only game in town. A MONOPOLY. But, it was under government control, and (at that time), the government wasn't (so much) the enemy of the people. In regard to the telecom game, they pretty much did a worthy job. That is, if Bell screwed you, a simple call to the CRTC would get their butts kicked into shape and your connection flowing nice and smooth.
In the Eighties, it cost $15 a month for basic service. There were no extra fees, and Bell couldn't refuse to hook you up. FIFTEEN BUCKS a month.
What did competition bring?
Well, first of all, there isn't actually any competition. There's STILL only one phone system; it's just that now third party companies are allowed to buy discount bandwidth on that one system and re-sell it at lower rates. --And they don't have to pay to help maintain the physical system. Hmm.
And how does the phone company react to all that dropping revenue and the increasing cost of maintenance and development in a growing market? Why, they raise the cost of basic local service! Something goes wrong with your land line? Well, now it costs $100 bucks just to get some contracted company out to look at your phone. (Unless you buy the 'insurance' package for a few extra dollars per month).
And now if somebody screws you, who do you call? That's right! Nobody. Now, if you're unhappy, you're supposed to switch over to a different carrier, because that's how competition works!
On paper, anyway. --And only if a couple of chapters and logical positions are deliberately missing from the Free Market handbook.
If there was 'real' competition, there'd be more than one company stringing lines up all across the country. And that's called, "redundant, wasteful stupidity". Because competition slims down bloated structures, right? Sure.
There is NOTHING wrong with the idea of socially controlled telecommunications. Communications shouldn't BE a profit-making venture. It's a vital resource to a healthy society. Do you want to talk to people who enjoy sharing ideas, or would you rather communication happen among a bunch of Lawyers who think in terms of "Billable Minutes"?
I think enough discussion and information has been presented over the years to quite put an end to the reign of 'Free Market' armchair philosophers who read a book on it once, and who vote for square-jawed right-wing criminals who promise to punish the 'lazy' unemployed, but who make policy to ensure that unemployment is nice and high so that Big Business will have permanent access to cheep labor.
My phone service and phone bills suck now thanks to 'free market' politics and the people who push for such things. Thanks guys. The worst part is that I saw it coming, bitched and complained, and the world patted me on the head and called me silly.
Ah well. At least most of the hobbits are using cell phones now. It's easier than ever to walk through the world unchallenged, now that most people have voluntarily radiated their brains. Just don't get caught playing by the house rules! Man! Hell hath no fury like a muggle trying to categorize you on a computerized form!
"I don't need one of those awkward and painful a brains. See? Instead, I have a set of instructions! Much easier! Amd Thou Shalt Not. .
-FL
Comm Telecos Are Not New (Score:1)
(http://www.coyotedata.com/ | Last Journal: Sunday March 07 2004, @01:19PM)
promises, promises... (Score:2)
(http://home.earthlink.net/~bluethundr | Last Journal: Tuesday August 19 2003, @12:23PM)
Still, there is economic incentive for the feds to accomplish this. But 2007? I think I might as well ask the next black guy I meet where his mule is (as long as he's smaller than me and doesn't know kung-foo).
Re:This is bullshit!!! (Score:1, Flamebait)
(http://evilempire.ath.cx/)
It all comes down to the adage, "if you can't innovate, legislate!"
Read the article. Read the ruling. (Score:1, Interesting)
(http://das.doit.wisc.edu/)
This does NOT prevent competition or free markets. It prohibits no company from entering the telecom business.
It prohbits governmental agencies (cities, counties, etc.) from becoming telecom providers.
Exactly as it should be.
The only thing that's "bullshit" is your comment.
Re:This is bullshit!!! (Score:1, Insightful)
You goofy kids with your "cry Bush". If your house burns down, are you going to blame him too?
Re:Just use a cell-fone carrier as your main provi (Score:1)
Re:Just use a cell-fone carrier as your main provi (Score:2)
(http://www.pdxbiodiesel.org/ | Last Journal: Wednesday March 19 2003, @08:01PM)
But trading the evil of your landline provider for the evil of your cellular provide is hardly a win-win. But at least with Cellular you get to leave your house...
Now we just need more alarm and monitoring companies to switch to cellular service instead of landlines...
Re:Don't forget (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Don't forget (Score:1)
This does not always happen. Again, in general, this tended to not happen in the deapest back waters of the country. For GWB to refuse to learn and speak as a representative of the United States lables him as a back water hick.
Re:Entities (Score:1)