Comcast Sues Nashville To Halt Rules That Give Google Fiber Faster Access To Utility Poles (arstechnica.com) 95
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Comcast yesterday sued the Nashville metro government and mayor to stop a new ordinance designed to give Google Fiber faster access to utility poles. Comcast's complaint in U.S. District Court in Nashville (full text) is similar to one already filed by AT&T last month. Both ISPs are trying to invalidate a One Touch Make Ready ordinance that lets new ISPs make all of the necessary wire adjustments on utility poles themselves instead of having to wait for incumbent providers like AT&T and Comcast to send work crews to move their own wires. The ordinance was passed largely to benefit Google Fiber, which is offering service in Nashville but says that it hasn't been able to deploy faster because it is waiting to get access to thousands of poles. Nearly all the Nashville utility poles are owned either by the municipal Nashville Electric Service or AT&T. Because Comcast has wires on many of the poles, it has some control over how quickly Google Fiber can expand its network. When Google Fiber wants to attach wires to a new pole, it needs to wait for ISPs like Comcast to move their wires to make room for Google Fiber's. The Nashville One Touch Make Ready ordinance "permits third parties to move, alter, or rearrange components of Comcast's communications network attached to utility poles without Comcast's consent, authorization, or oversight, and with far less notice than is required by federal law and by an existing Comcast contract with Metro Nashville," Comcast's complaint said. Comcast asked the court to declare the ordinance invalid and permanently enjoin Nashville from enforcing it. The pre-existing Make Ready process "seek[s] to ensure that all providers can share available pole space cooperatively and safely, without interfering with or damaging any provider's equipment or services," Comcast said. The new procedures mandated by Nashville "are so intrusive that, tellingly, Metro Nashville has wholly exempted its own utility pole attachments from the Ordinance's coverage." Even though Google Fiber announced yesterday that it will pause operations and cut 9% of its staff, the ISP said it would continue operations in Nashville.
Can't we sue Comcast to cut off thier Internet? (Score:5, Insightful)
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I am an original customer of @Home (Around 1999) which was acquired by ATT and then sold to Comcast. I have tried many other ISP, but haven't found anyone working better than Comcast and have returned to Comcast within a year. I don't know whether it meets your criteria but for me, I can say at the least, they are the best of the worst. Nothing better has ever been available in my area. Recently ATT has started offering fiber based internet and I might try out but their prices are higher than my "promotiona
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and this is exactly the problem with monopolies, a turd sandwich may taste better than a douche smoothie.
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ATT will be better until they exceed their original planned build out, and then your service will get worse and worse and worse. If you go with them, make sure you get up and down speed guarantees in your service. That at least will give you ammo should your speeds fall below those. I haven't seen ATT go back and add capacity anywhere, even when their fiber internet service dropped down to copper speeds.
I can't wait to see what AT&T's cost cutting measures will mean to CNN. Surely they could save a fortune cutting investigative reporting.. :)
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I too am an original customer from @Home. When AT&T bought it out and turned it into ATTBI the service went to absolute crap. With @Home I originally had 10Mbps down and 10Mbps up, which was the limit of the modems at the time. Later it was reduced to 10Mbps down and 1Mbps up, which at the time was still extremely good.
Then AT&T bought it out. AT&T decided to change it to 10Mbps down, 128Kbps up but they screwed up badly. Rather than limit each customer to 128Kbps, which was pretty bad, they thr
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I worked for @Home and ATTBI. ATTBI was 1500/128 which pissed off a TON of @Home customers.
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Then, who will provide cable Internet for those who have nothing else affordable and fast? :(
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The world would be a better place if Comcast didn't exist.
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It's easy to talk when you have other options and others don't
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The problem is not Comcast.
The REAL problem is lack of competition thanks to corrupt PUCs allowing legislated local monopolies and the way US laws are written which prevents the FCC and FTC doing anything about it.
Light-touch "Free markets" invariably end up with a single dominant player.
Heavy-touch "Free markets" frequently end up with a single dominant player by law.
There's a Goldilocks position somewhere in the middle that the USA used to be good at but has forgotten about in recent years. You can only h
Reality (Score:1)
Comcast says they'll do some adjustments. Ooops. They forgot. No wait, they did another pole. No, not that one, the other one. Whups, we were confused, we only thought we sent somebody out. Don't worry, give us another six months!
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Comcast says they'll do some adjustments. Ooops. They forgot. No wait, they did another pole. No, not that one, the other one. Whups, we were confused, we only thought we sent somebody out. Don't worry, give us another six months!
I see that you are a Comcast customer too. I can only imagine how bad it must be for a competitor like Google Fiber.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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You didn't address the question of what happens when you have a utility not acting properly, which is the reality here.
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You didn't address the question of what happens when you have a utility not acting properly, which is the reality here.
Well, if a privately owned utility isn't behaving properly, you can try to sue them. Good luck with that. They can then blame government regulation. Also, they'll lobby for people who call for tax cuts so they get bonus points for cutting the budget of the departments capable of compelling the utility to behave better in the first place.
If a public utility is doing poorly, you can vote the boss out or run to replace them if your neighbors agree. If they don't support you, that means it's not that bad in the
Re:Reality (Score:5, Insightful)
You forgot to mention that while you're suing and lobbying to even string up your first wire they are spending months lobbying on their own and improving their own network so you aren't as competitive and otherwise undercutting you at ever turn.
It's exactly how cable ISP's fight municipal broadband. Sue and cry that it's unfair competition and while it's all rolling through the courts they're busy stringing wire and servicing customers long before the municipal can, undercutting their position.
This is one of those situations where we need a strong government to seize the utility poles and mandate fair and equal access for all.
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I have seen competing utilities move each other's lines. It leads to an undocumented mess of cables that are less reliable and harder for a future party to add to down the road. Nobody is responsible for pole loading, and things break.
There is something to be said for "I got here first, so go pound sand."
Now, if the pole-owning utility had and has standards in place dictating where cables Shall be installed, and they
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Using up all available utility pole space by putting in your own cabling egoistically inefficient, without considering that someone else may need to put in cabling as well, and then dragging your feet to make room later is also not nice.
If you are not nice then why should other companies have to be nice to you?
In other words, this law serves to right a wrong. Admittedly it could have been done better. One could set a legal maximum period to make room for example, and then add a hefty penalty for non-complia
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One could set a legal maximum period to make room for example, and then add a hefty penalty for non-compliance. Then use that money to sent a civil servant to make room. Plenty of alternatives of this nature.
I'm sure you'll see this in the next bill.
Re:Reality (Score:5, Informative)
Funny, Comcast never seemed to be particularly concerned about their service being interrupted before Google Fiber arrived in Nashville.
A year ago, my Comcast service would often drop out dozens of times a day (confirmed by my modem logs). Calls to Comcast service got me nowhere. You know what finally fixed my Comcast service? When Comcast ran brand-new cable throughout my neighborhood while in mortal fear of Google Fiber.
Comcast doesn't care if their service works or not. They certainly never seemed to care in the past 10 years, at least until Google Fiber came to Nashville. I never got a dime of reimbursement for all the times my Internet or cable TV quit working. And now they moan and groan about possible interruptions due to Google Fiber installing their own equipment? Laughable.
But here's the most important point: Nashville residents simply DO NOT CARE about the lawsuits. They expected legal action, and they still overwhelmingly told the Metro Council that they wanted Google Fiber. The Metro Council has gotten the message loud and clear, and the city is not going to back down.
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Nashvillian here, looking forward to the rollout, 5.9 miles away from the nearest apartment complex with a scheduled installation, but in a dense subdivision, so just maybe it'll make it. Meanwhile, Comcast isn't too bad for ISP service ~90/20 Mbit is typical and am on a 75Mbit plan. As soon as Google says they're available, I'll install it at the two locations I own.
I had a horror story of trying to get Comcast set up when I bought my house. It was formerly a rental, called in for new service, sales transf
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A year ago, my Comcast service would often drop out dozens of times a day (confirmed by my modem logs). Calls to Comcast service got me nowhere.
Did you call your local franchise authority to complain and ask for their help?
When I was fighting Comcast about a cableCard and what they wanted to charge (after saying it would be free), I called my local franchise specialist. HE called Comcast, and in about half an hour I got a call from Comcast Customer Resolution (or whatever it is they call the office where this kind of thing gets resolved) with a solution. (It's free.)
They expected legal action, and they still overwhelmingly told the Metro Council that they wanted Google Fiber.
If Comcast fails to meet the terms of their existing contract, sue them. The corr
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Bullshit. It happens all the time, all over the place. And yes, it's a measurable source of damage. If the "utilities" (comcast and at&t aren't utilities) put their stuff where they're supposed to, AND MAINTAINED IT, there would be far less need to mess with their shit.
The entire reason for the complaints is to stack more red tape on Google's fiber expansion -- read: THE COMPETITION. And yes, they DO drag their feet on these requests.
This is why we can't have nice things (Score:2)
Why shouldn't they? (Score:2)
From the article: The Nashville One Touch Make Ready ordinance "permits third parties to move, alter, or rearrange components of Comcast’s communications network attached to utility poles without Comcast’s consent, authorization, or oversight, and with far less notice than is required by federal law and by an existing Comcast contract with Metro Nashville,"
Any surprise here?
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More accurately, a truck with a crew of four, hiding around the corner, travels half an hour, sets up for 20 minutes, works for 5 minutes and then charges for an hour and promptly drives off, to hide around the corner again. How many thousands of dollars do you think it cost and how many thousands of dollars do you thing they will charge and never forget it's you that pays for that bullshit.
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Nope, it's Comcast/Google who pays. See, notice how when the law passed, Google Fiber's announced prices didn't go down. Sure, if the costs get too high, they'll have to raise their rates, but until then prices are determined by many factors other than cost of production. In fact, I don't think anyone really looks at cost of production to set prices, just to determine if a product should be discontinued because its unprofitable..
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Did you read my comment at all where I explained why that's wrong?
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Yet you're expecting them to act like charities, because you think they are artificially lowering prices below their maximum profit point. If they could pass increases on to the consumer by raising prices, they'd have raised them already for the extra profit. Increases to fixed prices do not normally affect the optimum price for greatest profit, but they do reduce profit.
However, "have to pass the increases along to our customers" turns out to be good PR when they raise rates.
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Nashville could Use It to take over the poles
- the last time somebody tried taking over the poles like that the entire world went to war for 5 years or so, not the greatest idea...
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Nashville could Use It to take over the poles
- the last time somebody tried taking over the poles like that the entire world went to war for 5 years or so, not the greatest idea...
Well done. I wish I had mod points.
On one hand, but not the other (Score:1)
Re:On one hand, but not the other (Score:5, Informative)
Damage to Comcast's lines is already covered by applicable law. This is not made explicit in this new ordinance [nashville.gov], but because the ordinance requires the attacher to both post a bond, and to indemnify (protect from legal repercussions for damages) the pole owner, it's clearly something obvious to the lawyers who wrote it.
This law also requires notification be sent to anyone whose lines are moved, and places liability for certain costs on the one doing the moving - cost for the existing user to perform inspections, and cover the costs for any mistakes made that bring it out of spec with the pole owner. And the pole owners may require approval of the contractors who actually perform the work.
Also, the law does require that the new line owner gets permission from the pole owner, and that any work that could reasonably cause a service outage must notify the existing line owners, and must coordinate with them if they choose to do so (within a certain timeframe - if Comcast sits around for a month after being told of outage-causing work, the work may proceed without them).
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NES Fascinating (Score:5, Informative)
Re: NES Fascinating (Score:2)
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Is comcast stalling work on purpose?
You win the indignant clueless person award. Yes, Comcast has been trying to deny access to public property to their competitors, just because they parked some equipment there first. For months and months.
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> They have enough money,
No, they don't.
Today it would cost trillions in construction, labor, parts, assessments, lobbyists, bribes, etc. to build a new network of utility poles/pipes/conduit/etc. rivaling what the entrenched telecoms have near-exclusive access to.
Easy solution (Score:3)
All you have to do is let the incumbent monopoly move their wires themselves, for the competition, before the independent contractor is scheduled to do it. But, oddly enough, they've been dragging their feet, almost as if they want to hurt their competition. So let them have to do it quickly if they want to do it themselves.
I live in Nashville... (Score:5, Interesting)
AT&T and Comcast have both had 20 years, *two* decades, an *entire generation* to roll out their own fiber, but they didn't, because they're a monopoly and fark you, you miserable customer. And during that 20 years, the only thing they had to worry about was making sure our state lawmakers were given enough bribes, whiskey, hookers, and blow to tow the company line.
Then Google Fiber comes to town, and now that they're doing AT&T/Comcast's job better than AT&T/Comcast ever did, suddenly it's DerpCon 1. They know that as a natural monopoly, there is only going to be *one* broadband utility when the dust settles. And they're doing everything in their power (short of actually getting off their ass and running their own fiber) to stop Google.
If you look in the dictionary under "regulatory capture", it has a photograph of Tennessee's legislature. Our elected fuckwits used their usual Underpants Gnomes logic:
1) Block cities/co-ops from competing with AT&T/Comcast
2) ???
3) Vigorous competition and fiber everywhere!
By a complete coincidence, campaign contributions from ISP's increased by a factor of 100x (not 100%, 100 *TIMES*) that year.
If any of the crew from /r/nashville is here, please share our warm feelings about Comcast and Marsha Blackburn...
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"they're doing AT&T/Comcast's job better than AT&T/Comcast ever did" Never have truer words been spoken especially since that job is "making sure our state lawmakers were given enough bribes, whiskey, hookers, and blow to tow the company line".
Google has entire departments dedicated to lobbying lawmakers. I got a funny contract - Do Qualuty Assurance on a project which is used to maintain records of all the donations Google has given to all the lawmakers . The app could do pivots by geography, issue
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Long term the only way out is another utility with legal access to offer anyone new network, city/community or better access laws.
Too many monopolies, regions with only one telco, or strange telcos that stay away and don't network each others areas.
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If you look in the dictionary under "regulatory capture", it has a photograph of Tennessee's legislature
I think it's just a picture of Marsha.
Re: I live in Nashville... (Score:2)
"AT&T and Comcast have both had 20 years, *two* decades, an *entire generation* to roll out their own fiber, but they didn't, because they're a monopoly"
The fact that FTTH only became financially viable in the past 10 years has nothing to do with them not rolling out FTTH before that ...
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Japan and Korea have been doing FTTH long before that.
This is about squeezing the last possible cent out of the copper.
If you put fibre and FTTH in, then you have to amortise the costs of the relay project over 20 years, even if you can charge the end equipment upfront.
If you put in xDSL, you get to charge 100% of the cost of the equipment up front and the copper was paid for a long time ago. Because xDSL is getting "harder" you can also scam extra subsidies for installing it.
The part that would scare the t
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Cost vs reward. How much does it cost to roll out fiber to a home? How much will they recoup from the little old lady on a fixed income who complains that her $17.90 phone bill is too high?
Are AT&T/Comcast attempting to use their political influence to make things work their way? Absolutely.
Are AT&T/Comcast automatically lazy and/or greedy for not rolling fiber before now? No. Notice that even Google Fiber is only rolling on major cities.
If AT&T/Comcast haven't rolled fiber to the node, that's
This why mega mergers are bad, nbc not reporting (Score:2)
A quick google search shows nothing about this lawsuit on nbc.com or msnbc.com or nbcnews.com one example. https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com]
But they are reporting on executives leaving google fiber.
Exempted (Score:2)
Metro Nashville has wholly exempted its own utility pole attachments from the Ordinance's coverage
This will make it difficult to argue there is no problem with the practice.
How about an SLA instead? (Score:2)
Simple solution (Score:2)
Why not just append a reasonable grace period. Call it 30-days for the sake of argument.
Google Fiber requests that Comcast "move, alter, or rearrange" the following cables : blah blah blah.
Once the grace period has elapsed, if the moves have not been completed, Google is free and clear to move them (while assuming all responsibility for damages incurred, obviously)
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that's exactly what the ordinance prescribes - http://www.nashville.gov/mc/ordinances/term_2015_2019/bl2016_343.htm
1. The Attacher will not perform Complex Make Ready without first providing thirty (30) days’ prior written notice, which includes electronic communication, to the applicable Pre-Existing Third Party User;
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Well hot damn, I missed that bit in there.
I'd +1 you if I could
Smart (Score:1)
Are trying to protect Comcast? (Score:1)
Evil by any other name (Score:2)
I wish I could get at least closer options from ANYONE else.... Just yesterday I received a letter in the mail from comcast. They're throttling my account to 1TB per month or pay an extra $50 per month for unlimited internet.... I ALREADY PAID FOR UNLIMITED INTERNET!! That was the option I selected just 2 years ago when I moved into my house. I already pay $150/mo for basic cable + internet, now the vultures want another $50... I h
There is no spoon (Score:2)
How many cheering this on are in the AirBnB thread cheering on NYC using laws to protect the entrenched interests.
Oh, right. That's different, because Comcast's arguments are transparently self-serving.