Frontier Teams With AT&T To Block Google Fiber Access To Utility Poles (arstechnica.com) 117
An anonymous reader writes from a report via Ars Technica: Frontier submitted a court filing last week supporting ATT's efforts to sue local governments in Louisville and Jefferson County, Kentucky to stop a new ordinance designed to give Google Fiber and similar companies access to utility poles. They're concerned the ordinances will spread to other states. Frontier's filing said, "the issues raised by the case may have important implications for Frontier's business and may impact the development of law in jurisdictions throughout the country where Frontier operates." The ordinance in Louisville lets companies like Google Fiber install wires even if ATT doesn't respond to requests or rejects requests to attach lines. Companies don't have to notify ATT when they want to move ATT's wires to make room for their own wires, assuming the work won't cause customer outages. ATT claims that the ordinance lets competitors "seize ATT's property." Frontier is urging the court to consider the nationwide implications of upholding Louisville's ordinance, saying Louisville's rule "is unprecedented" because "it drastically expands the rights of third parties to use privately owned utility poles, giving non-owners unfettered access to [a] utility's property without the [...] utility in some cases even having knowledge that such third-party intrusion on its facilities is occurring." Frontier said companies should be required to negotiation access with the owners if they didn't pay to install the utility poles. They urged the court to deny Louisville Metro's motion to dismiss ATT's complaint.
Wah wah wah, we don't want competition (Score:5, Funny)
We don't want Google fiber competing with us and providing cheap internet that is 50x faster. What, do you expect us to actually invest in upgrading ourselves, and even funnier, lowering our prices?
Re:Wah wah wah, we don't want competition (Score:5, Funny)
Competition! That's so Un-American! We have worked hard, day and night, for years and years to establish a monopoly, should this now all have been in vain? Isn't hard work rewarded anymore?
Re: Wah wah wah, we don't want competition (Score:1)
We are the job creators! We control the infrastructure because government can't do it properly. We keep costs low and profits high. Everybody that matters is happy.
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You're not. I'm the job creator when I buy your product so you're forced to hire someone to make it. You'd gladly not hire anyone if you could get away with it.
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Unfortunately the job creators have been very good to the Chinese by sending all the manufacturing jobs to China.
So of course they can "keep costs low and profits high." Yeah, no shit Sherlock. Pennies on the dollar cheap Chinese child labor.
So, .. "Everybody that matters is happy." Well the poor slobs that have lost their jobs off-shored to China, maybe not so much
But the bright side, there is all sorts of really cool cheap Chinese made stuff stocked full on Walmart's shelves for whenever those poor slo
Re: Wah wah wah, we don't want competition (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: Wah wah wah, we don't want competition (Score:5, Insightful)
ATT purchased the land on the free market and installed their own poles on it? If that's so, then yeah, I can see this being an unconstitutional seizure of ATT's property if they aren't being paid.
My guess though is that ATT had the government take the property from its previous owners, and is now crying foul when the government is repeating the process.
Re: Wah wah wah, we don't want competition (Score:1)
Telcos got the land for free, and often paid billions to build the poles and lines.
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And they paid with money earned via having monopoly rights to service an area. A virtual tax.
Re: Wah wah wah, we don't want competition (Score:5, Insightful)
What's un-American is one company thinking it can invite the private property of another company.
These poles are on public property. The city of Louisville gave AT&T the easement to install the poles, and they can set any condition on that easement that is not specifically prohibited in the contract. There is a public benefit to competitive markets, so this is a appropriate action by the government. We don't expect FedEx, UPS, and other delivery companies to each build their own roads. It makes no more sense for each wired utility to install their own poles.
Re: Wah wah wah, we don't want competition (Score:5, Interesting)
True story: a neighbor's house is set so far back from the road that he has two of his own poles on his property to bring power/telephone to his house.
Cable company wanted to 'tighten up' a circuitous branch on a dead end street behind his place (ultimately a shorter path for their signal to the end of the street rather than its current long-way-around).
They called him, asked for right-of-way, he said "sure, a free subscription will be your rent for as long as the cable is there", they weren't cool; "no deal". "Okay, fine, b'bye".
Days later they showed up, unannounced, started working, told wife to "mind her business" when questioned, wife called him, called cops, called lawyer, called local zoning enforcement, everybody got there, words ensued.
"he has proven he owns the poles, you're trespassing since they asked you to leave their property and you haven't, you proved previous knowledge of this private property when you first asked them for a right of way, LEAVE NOW BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE" says Captain Cop.
Cable lawyers called, "let's be reasonable", "mutual understanding", "thank you but we said no", "you can't impede a public utility", court.
Judge & Bench Decision: "it's their property and their no means no", cable to pay their court costs and lawyer AND trespassing fines AND emotional distress ("mind her business").
Would have been cheaper to swallow one installation, generate goodwill, and have their system improved by the shortcut.
Re: Wah wah wah, we don't want competition (Score:5, Insightful)
No problem. As soon as the government gives me free space, I have zero problem sharing it with you.
Re: Wah wah wah, we don't want competition (Score:5, Insightful)
What's un-American is one company thinking it can (invade) the private property of another company. This is a right of access dispute and a property dispute.
The custom in the US is that all the various utilities share the same poles. If you go back to the early days of electrification, the different companies all ran separate poles and wires. It was a horrible tangle. The pole outside my house has lines for power, phone, and cable. At least three different companies. I don't have three separate sets of poles. I don't know who pays for what. They may not have wanted to share, but they suck it up and share, and it works fine. Why shouldn't they make room for a fourth company?
Re: Wah wah wah, we don't want competition (Score:5, Insightful)
The company now known as "AT&T" likely had nothing to do with installing these poles. A lot of hard work went into the creation of the original telephone network, and that should be respected. The abuse of customers by Ma Bell overwhelmed that, and they were broken up and lost any right to that legacy. Just because someone re-assembles the monopoly doesn't give them any moral right to that infrastructure - if anything, the reverse.
The "last mile" need to be a set of public utilities nationwide. Cable, phone lines, all of it. Preventing abuse of monopolistic power is a legitimate government power, and that includes natural monopolies.
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Yeah, AT&T was broken up, but the resulting companies each continued to hold rights to items in their respective areas. I don't believe the court removed their rights to infrastructure. FWIW, I inherited some NYNEX shares (which became Bell Atlantic and now Verizon, who claims $93B in property assets as of the end of '15)...there's . That infrastructure was simply divided...the rights didn't just disappear. Merging with other former Ma-Bell divisions, recombines some of that.
All that said, I'm very
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Utility companies (monopolies) are given "un-American" privileges and access to public property in order to provide a service, typically w/o any competition. Often your tax dollars subsidize them. So don't give me this bullshit about it being un-American. It's not a level playing field for competition when you're talking about monopolies.
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Monopoly behavior is not capitalism. Capitalism requires competition. Many pro-capitalists mistakenly embrace monopolies, which is completely counter-productive to their cause.
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Stop with the crazy talk!
Long live the "free market", which never existed and never will if we have anything to say about it!
"Negotiating access" cuts both ways (Score:5, Insightful)
That sounds like a great model to go to... IF Frontier and AT&T then also have to "negotiate access" with all the property owners of the land their poles are on!
Pick an aphorism: Goose/gander, pot/kettle, glass houses, "be careful what you wish for," and all that...
Re:"Negotiating access" cuts both ways (Score:5, Insightful)
Well past time... (Score:5, Insightful)
No. Please spare us the tired, "the guvamint will screw it up" argument. It's bullshit. I can show you public utility districts that make their commercial counterparts in the electrical service delivery business look like third-world pretenders. It works as well as it does for one simple reason, the district is beholden to the electorate, not shareholders.
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> Please spare us the tired, "the guvamint will screw it up" argument.
I came through immigration/customs at IAD just yesterday. All around me, seasoned international travellers were talking about how this was the worst border crossing in the world. It truly was a rousing display of mismanagement and incompetence.
I tremble to think what government-managed broadband would be like.
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Government managed lines for delivering broadband can be compared to your public roads.
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The trick is not to fall into either/or traps. There should be availability for both state and private options in all feasible infrastructure services. Maintaining a fair balance of those interests seems to be a task far beyond the will or capabilities of the vast majority of our current representatives, I recommend we remove them and see if a bunch of fresh minds can't handle the job better.
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Yeah? And imagine what it would be like if the crossing were run by a private company with financial incentive to discover contraband. We'd have 100% "bend and spread 'em!" I'll take good old-fashioned government incompetence over corporate goons with a financial interest in fingering my bunghole any day!
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So what's your point? There are best and worst examples of government management just as their are best and worst examples of corporate management.
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I'd bet that I could name five bad examples for every good one you could list when talking about the feds.
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Let me start...took me about 2 mins to come up with ten.
VA - failure to take care of veterans records. Vets dying waiting for service.
EPA - Colorado mine spill
ATF - Fast and Furious
IRS - targeting
FEMA - Katrina
TSA - Do I need to say anything?
Secret Service - Just reorged last year because of multiple incidents
NSA - collection w/o a warrent
OPM - Failure to secure data from hackers
WMD/Iraq Invasion - It's a bit unclear which agency gets the blame. Exec likes to point to CIA, which can't defend itself public
Re:Well past time... (Score:4, Insightful)
You're thinking about the Federal Government managing broadband but it's really relatively small local utility districts similar to electrical coops (and maybe the electric coops themselves since they own the poles) that should manage this. Most coops like this serve their customers well since their boards are composed of local members of the coops and they're not out to make a profit. Their whole reason for being is to serve their customers.
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I'm gonna call bullshit.
I live just a few miles from IAD, and fly through there all the time. As bad as it is, it's not even close to being "the worst border crossing in the world". And FWIW, I've been to over 50 countries, so I've seen a few of them.
In general, I do subscribe to the same belief as you though. That government management has been a failure in so many areas.
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...to move to a public utility model for telecom. Government owns and maintains the right-of-way and the copper/glass. Everybody who wants to gets to buy access to it, be it last mile or peerage
No. Please spare us the tired, "the guvamint will screw it up" argument. It's bullshit. I can show you public utility districts that make their commercial counterparts in the electrical service delivery business look like third-world pretenders. It works as well as it does for one simple reason, the district is beholden to the electorate, not shareholders.
Yeah, we have that model here in Tennessee, and it works well. For electricity.
You see, the standard that we use for electricity hasn't changed significantly in the last 100 years. Broadband isn't even remotely comparable. The sad reality is that we don't have a good answer as market forces don't work well when there's only one or two providers and government cannot possibly move at the speed necessary to stay updated.
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No, just bitch slap ATT and Frontier. Their monopoly poles exist to serve the people and if they want to play hard ball, revoke their easement and seize the poles and then lease them to everyone with an open annual fixed bid to maintain the poles/conduits themselves. It is beyond the pale for a utility monopoly to block competition. ATT should have run doorstep fiber with all the subsidies and money they have pocketed on broad band fees over the years, now with google fiber and VOIP they are looking to g
Re:Imminent Domain (Score:4, Informative)
Imminent means "about to happen." (to make matters worse there's also an "immanent," or "existing or operating within; inherent")
You want Eminent Domain.
Happened over 10 years ago in Lafayette, LA (Score:4, Informative)
Happened over 10 years ago in Lafayette, LA. But it was a City vs AT&T and Cable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
http://arstechnica.com/tech-po... [arstechnica.com]
Pole Ownership (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Pole Ownership (Score:4, Informative)
That's basically how it is in many parts of Europe, too. Which led to them finding a way to cooperate surprisingly quickly, there's usually very little resistance if a competitor wants to mount something on "your" pole or tower, simply because they know better than to wake the sleeping dog that our variant of the regulation entity is.
Every time they wake up, the telcos got whacked REALLY badly. Sadly, they don't wake up too often.
I propose a counter offer.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Require the "owning" company to move connections, etc., in a reasonable amount of time after being notified. If the connections aren't moved within the legally mandated time, then "ownership" of the pole is transferred to the requesting company. That would prevent the "we don't have time" or "we're going to ignore you" or the other kinds of slimy activities that the owning company would perform in order to handicap their competitor.
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AT&T come and get your damn pole (Score:2)
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The closest pole to me is on my property, and I'm not even an AT&T customer any more.
In most locations, the right of way to the municipality actually includes a number of feet beyond the edge of the road, and they are the ones that provided the utility with the access. Just because your lawn goes to the curb has never meant you actually had full rights to it.
Screw Frontier (Score:4, Informative)
I was forced to use Frontier service for a couple of years. I used their DSL service.
I got 2 or three "cease and desist" letters during this time for exceeding 100GB in a month.
This was in the 2009-2010 range. Even then 100GB was not hard at all to hit.
I also gave up trying to ever get any service from them, their tech support was terrible / non-existent. I was having some trouble getting the router that THEY provided me into a bridging mode so that I could use my own firewall. They kept telling me that it was impossible, that "their side" didn't support it.
After a bit of tinkering on my own, I did get their pos router into a bridging mode.
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Of course they are trying to stop Google. Where I am moving too they are the only provider. It would be nice to have a the ability to go somewhere else in the future.
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Or a more current example
http://www.robertpeterson.org/... [robertpeterson.org]
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If you look in the background, the T in DENTAL is obscured so it looks like DENIAL
That picture is just so /perfect/.
--
BMO
Same thing in San Jose (Score:4, Interesting)
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I called the Northern California Joint Pole Association (NCJPA) myself to ask them some questions, and they were somewhat flummoxed on the phone.
I am not surprised. I believe the NCJPA is primarily a (legal) vehicle that allows the members (PG&E, Comcast, AT&T, etc.) to communicate without clearly running afoul of various other statutes. Lots of member based organizations exist solely to provide such legal cover. It is highly likely that the people you can talk to do not know all the details about how the NCJPA members can exclude others from joining (which is the issue in NorCal).
$1000 tax per year on all post that don't share (Score:2)
Easy really.
Rooting for giant companies (Score:2)
Which giant company are we supposed to be cheerleading for? And why? This is a minor procedural dispute over which forms company A has to fill out when it deals with equipment installed by company F and company T. Someone will decide and those forms will get filled out and the wires will get installed, regardless of the cheerleading.
I've been waiting for an excuse.... (Score:2)
I signed on to Frontier DSL service with the representative insisting that I would get 6Mb service despite my many attempts to get her to qualify that as a max possible speed, and tell me what I should actually expect. She wouldn't hear any of it, 6Mb is what I was getting...
It's been a fairly reliable 1.5Mb max for the past 2 years, never more, at $30/mo.
I've got a "30Mb" service offer for $10-15/mo more from Country Cablevision that I may have to try out since Frontier seems to want more than it provides.
AHEM (Score:5, Insightful)
Towns and cities have the absolute right to let "third parties use your poles" because your poles exist in the public right-of-ways like along roads, sidewalks, and the municipalities grant you easements over people's property, because they see poles as a public good.
This business of using the public for your private profit and then whining about it when you have to abide by rules made by the public, is poor judgement at best. It's whining. The briefs themselves are subterfuge because they ignore the right of the public to regulate pole use.
So stop lying, Frontier and AT&T and get with the fucking program and let competition on "your" (ours, really) poles.
Dipshits.
--
BMO
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Frontier nor AT&T paid for those poles. Several layers of governments paid for those a really long time ago.
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I've always been surprised that this is the norm in the US. In Canada the poles are owned and maintained either by the city or county or IA(improvement area). The utility(outside of electricity) pay a flat rate per x number of poles or per-pole to use them, which goes directly into the cities or counties revenue pool. Around here it's $25/pole, if you're using the old poles still after they've laid new utility poles(they recently moved from 30ft poles placed in the 1910's to 90ft poles), then the company
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They're half right (Score:4, Insightful)
Frontier and AT&T are half right: no one should be allowed to tamper with the existing attachments without notifying the company who owns those wires and giving them reasonable opportunity to act. That way lies chaos and disruption.
They're dead wrong about the "negotiate access" thing though. Those utility poles are in public right of ways. The public has a right to use them under common carriage rules whether their "owners" like it or not. If the utilities don't like it, the localities can and should take them over for public use same as the roads.
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Well, both approaches have one commonality: they're completely unreasonable.
A reasonable approach would work like Miss Utility: give the cable's owner has a brief period of time to act. So long as they act promptly the new installer may not touch. Miss the deadline and any damage to their infrastructure is on them instead of on the new installer.
Revoke all access (Score:4, Insightful)
AT&T doesn't own any of the land that the poles are on. These local governments should threaten to use imminent domain to reclaim the poles and then lease them back to AT&T and anyone else who wants to use them. Basically, force AT&T to play nice or make them pay for the privilege of their monopoly.
A similar situation is playing out in the very sparsely populated area where I live: Centurylink has decided that it's not profitable to service my area so, they refuse to do any new DSL installations. Large expensive homes are built only to find that, at best, they are stuck on satellite internet and, at worst, will have no internet connection at all (cell phones don't work here so, that's not an option). Homes that Centurylink has previously serviced are being sold to new owners only to find out that Centurylink won't *re-install* an internet connection for the new owners. Since Centurylink owns all the poles and refuses to service the area anymore, the situation will never improve unless the local government intervenes.
The problem is that the local governments are either clueless or corrupt (frequently both I would imagine). My neighbor is literally the state senator for my area and when I've brought up the issue with him (in person), he considers it to be so low priority that he gives me some meaningless platitude and changes the subject. I don't think he's necessarily in the pocket of Centurylink, I think he just doesn't understand/believe what I'm telling him. He's from the "business can do no wrong" generation so, some nerd half his age must be either over reacting or just plain wrong.
It's amazing to see our infrastructure stagnate and crumble because the previous generation has sold us out to the highest bidder and doesn't see anything wrong with that.
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If you want to build a bigass house in the middle of nowhere why should Centurytel's other customers subsidize your loss making internet. Move to a small apartment in the city and you will have all the internet you need. Enough with rural rich being subsidized by urban poor
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>>Since Centurylink owns all the poles
The locals telco's rarely 'own all the poles'. Most poles belong to the electrical utilities and the telco and cable companies get access rights.
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Private utility poles on public property? Horrible (Score:1)
This is the kind of thing that we need eminent domain for. They should either lease the space or lose ownership. I hope the voters are watching this, and are ready to pounce if the politicians and courts fall down.
Comcast has the opposite complaint (Score:5, Interesting)
Funny, I just read Comcast has the opposite complaint. A local power utility was about to rip down Comcast's lines for failing to pay their pole attachment fees, "which would have killed service for about 7,000 Comcast customers."
âoeUnfortunately, the utility has been unwilling to compromise and has billed Comcast for arbitrary pole rates that are nearly three times the national average,â said Horwitz. Comcast claimed [the power company is] using their position as a monopoly to gouge customers with high rates.
If the cognitive dissonance of that last quote doesn't make your head explode, it's a good read:
http://stopthecap.com/2016/06/... [stopthecap.com]
Imminent Domain (Score:2)
This type of bullshit is exactly what imminent domain is for. It's time for an exercise of that power.
AT&T could end up owing huge taxes. (Score:4, Interesting)
Capacity (Score:2)
As a side-note to this discussion, it should be pointed out that access to poles should be regulated to some degree if for no other reason than to prevent overloading the weight-capacity of the poles. Poles do not have unlimited weight-bearing capacity.
--Disclaimer: I work for a big telco--
We have sometimes had to re-route our fiber builds because electric-utility-owned poles had reached their capacity. (a very expensive proposition sometimes)
If all carriers were allowed to add cables to a poles without tho
F em to fiery hell! (Score:2)
Fuck AT&T! What a goddawful company. I have to admit, their technology is slightly above average (which is not saying much per telecom conglomerates these days), but their billing gimmicks and annoying caffeinated telemarketers are steaming multi-colored piles of Zika-infected-maggot-filled moldy horse shit.
They NEED competition sooooo badly, it hurts.
Since when can business block competition? (Score:2)
Sure fiber on polls threatens other inferior internet solutions. That is why it is mandatory - it is a much better solution to internet access. That it threatens company's business models that offer inferior solutions is irrelevant. Either they offer equally as good solutions or they lose business to the better competitor. That is how a free market should work and how a meritocracy works.
Their lawyers should be disbarred. (Score:1)
HEY! Get your freak'n pole out of my yard... (Score:1)