New York Threatens To Kick Charter Out of State After Broadband Failures (arstechnica.com) 83
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Charter Communications could lose its authorization to operate in New York State because of its failure to meet merger-related broadband deployment commitments, a key government official said. NY Public Service Commission (PSC) Chairman John Rhodes said that "a suite of enforcement actions against [Charter] Spectrum are in development, including additional penalties, injunctive relief, and additional sanctions or revocation of Spectrum's ability to operate in New York State," according to a PSC announcement last week. Charter agreed to expand its network in exchange for state approval of its 2016 purchase of Time Warner Cable (TWC). New York officials say that Charter has failed to meet its commitments, even though Charter claims it has. Rhodes accused Charter of "gaslighting" and noted that the PSC has already ordered Charter to stop making misleading claims about its broadband deployment progress. The PSC last month ordered Charter to pay a $2 million fine and complete the promised network construction. If Charter doesn't meet its merger-related obligations, the company will "face the risk of having the merger revoked," the commission said at the time. A revocation of the merger could force Charter to spin off its Time Warner Cable division in New York, but it wouldn't affect Charter's ownership of TWC in other states.
Obligatory Nelson Muntz (Score:3)
Haw-haw!
Pay attention Alanis (Score:2, Funny)
Sounds like Charter is about to ..... lose its charter.
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Cue whining of shills (Score:1)
They will blame New York State for this, in the entirety, and seek to exonerate the poor innocent corporations of their just and due share of blame.
Re:Cue whining of shills (Score:5, Insightful)
Living in Charter/Spectrum territory. They have greatly increased internet speed for all the users with 100mbs as the baseline from 30mbs 2 years ago with TWC.
However their push was them saying how much they are going to expand coverage in the area. And NY should hold them to these claims. Bandwidth improvements is just a flip of a switch.
Re: Cue whining of shills (Score:1)
Well I live near San Antonio, TWC was at 200Mbps and they jusy rolled out the new modems to upgrade everyone to 300Mbps for free.
Spectrum happened, suddenly ads about Spectrum's "blazing fast" 100Mbps plans being the only option.
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Yeah, I've had a very positive experience with Charter/Spectrum too. I used to pay $70 for 25Mbps internet. When Spectrum came in, I was able to get 100 Mbps for $65 a month. So no complaints from me. Of course, they didn't automatically convert us over. They would still be happily charging me the $70 for 25Mbps if I hadn't taken the initiative after seeing the new price structure on their website.
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Of course, they didn't automatically convert us over. They would still be happily charging me the $70 for 25Mbps if I hadn't taken the initiative after seeing the new price structure on their website.
I discovered that literally yesterday. I've been piddling along with 50 megabit for $65/month for years. Come to find out I should be getting 200 megabit for the same price, in my area.
Telcos are evil.
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New York seems like it doesn't take what corporations say at face value much, and instead hold them accountable. It's almost as if New York has had extensive experience with organized crime which puts them in the right place to deal with corporations.
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That's certainly not true of Time-Warner/Spectrum where I live in Austin. I pay for 200 Mbps service (there's no point in paying for more, as you'll see in a moment), but I have NEVER gotten more than 60 Mbps on any speed test ever. It galls the crap out of me to be paying so much and getting so much less.
The problem is that actually fixing the real problem is expensive (I live in the hard limestone hills - trenching to run new fiber is expensive, so they're still running crappy coax infrastructure), so d
About f**king time. (Score:4, Insightful)
These telecoms make all these promises to get regulatory approval and then never follow through.
It's about time someone held them to account (even if it's minor).
Re:About f**king time. (Score:4, Interesting)
The Governor of NY, Andrew Cuomo, is probably trying for a 2020 bid against Trump, and facing reelection this year. While he has a track record of being conservative for a Democrat, he is trying to rebrand himself as progressive (the Anti-Trump) and pushing agendas he never cared for before.
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The Governor of NY, Andrew Cuomo, is probably trying for a 2020 bid against Trump,
Cuomo would be a fool to do so. Unless Trump chooses not to run or something happens in the next 2 years he has pretty much has 2020 in the bag. Despite what the talking heads on TV keep saying Trump is actually doing a good job as president. This, and the fact that his support among Republicans is at 80%. The highest of any president since Ronald Reagan.
This, and with the expected massive losses expected for the Democratic party in the mid-terms, it would be best that the Democratic party concede 202
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Wait, which Trump? He's doing a terrible job, or have you not noticed his major free trade gaffes that pissed off every single senior Republican? Of course he seems to be changing his mind at the last minute, and this is his trademark style of deal making - keep threatening until someone blinks and then say "just kidding!" The economic damage to farmers (a core Trump base) is much larger than the tax cuts and his $12 pledge of subsidies isn't going to help much (and giving handouts to farmers just pisses
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and giving handouts to farmers just pisses them off, which he would know if he had ever met one
They don't seem to have a problem with the handout that's the biennial Farm Bill. Or forcing all gasoline to contain a percentage of corn derived ethanol.
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There really are a lot of conservative farmers that are unhappy with subsidies, as they see it akin to welfare.
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As long as they hate the Farm Bill & useless mandates to subsidize corn prices, they're okay in my book. Otherwise, fuck their hypocrisy.
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Wait, which Trump? He's doing a terrible job,
I'm sure that is what you have been told. Hell, you may even believe it. But by virtually every real world indicator Trump is doing a good job. An this is truth no matter what you have been told or choose to believe. Now this might not be truth tomorrow but as it currently stands as truth now.
Now I've learned not to debate with people with TDS so this will be the last thing I say in this thread on it. Take it as truth or not, it really doesn't matter to me..
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I'm sure that is what you have been told.
Who cares what I've been told. All you have to do is observe and it's obvious from that.
But by virtually every real world indicator Trump is doing a good job.
Lolnope.
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Trump's foreign policy seems to be all about picking friends and enemy's randomly. Someone whispers in his ear "it's so sad the embassy isn't in Jerusalem" and the next minute the tweets start flying. I honestly believe that Trump usually has no opinion on so many issues but instead pays attention to whoever whispered in his ear last or whatever late night show he watched. That why he seems to flip flop so much and do unexpected things (like pointing out a non-existent crisis in Sweden that left Swedes s
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They really aren't. When it comes to getting funding from the DNC, they are reluctant to support candidates that they don't see as viable.
Remember awhile back when Gore lost the elections, the Democrats unfairly blamed the Green party and Nader for spoiling the election. The truth is, the Democrats expected the the Green party voters to end up voting for them by default and so they failed to do significant work to attract those voters.
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Thanks for the the laugh. That said, Trump is going to be tough to beat in 2020, but not because of the job he's doing - but because Mueller will still have jack and shit on his probe. Allowing Trump to run against hacks in the media and hacks in the Democratic party - and he'll be right.
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spineless career politician
Worse than spineless. He's a weasel hiding in the skin of progressive voters. And the Democrat voters would be committing political suicide if they voted him to be their PotUS candidate. He doesn't grasp how much damage he did to himself nationally by railroading in the NY SAFE act (a draconian, Potemkin village anti-gun bill).
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Rules are for other people, said every CEO ever.
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Dude, this is what you're asking for:
Me: OK, AC. Give me a million dollars and I promise I'll build you a two million dollar house!
[five years later]
AC: Where's my 2 million dollar house
Me: Oh, I haven't gotten around to it.
AC: OK, we'll just forget your promise.
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Escrow? (Score:3)
Wouldn't requirements like this--promise of some sort of future, demonstrable action in order to allow a current one--be good for an escrow-type setup? An approximate cost and timeline of the project is defined as part of the agreement for it, the promisor puts that amount into the escrow account, things move ahead. As the promisor makes and shows progress, they can remove funds from the escrow to cover those costs. If the project is satisfactorily completed, promisor gets anything left in the escrow account including any interest it may have earned. If the escrow account goes dry and the promisor does not complete the project as agreed, fine come into pay.
Should the promisor fail their duty, the government in question uses the funds to implement the action themselves (insomuch as the funds will actually allow) in addition to risk of the merger being revoked.
Puts an extra stick to the company to keep up their agreement.
Re: Escrow? (Score:2)
Then you're putting your public works under the thumb of lenders. When capital dries up in a bad economy, you don't want that to impact your ability to improve things.
If TWC/Charter are booted... (Score:2)
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They could split off the New York part of TWC into it's own company as hinted in the summary.
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So, what's the legal basis for that action? Seriously, revoking their charter to operate in NY is certainly within their power, but I can't see any way they can order the company to divest itself that way, if Charter-TWC don't want to do it.
Note, of course, that the Federal government has that power. Which in no way implies that the NY government has that power....
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So, what's the legal basis for that action? Seriously, revoking their charter to operate in NY is certainly within their power, but I can't see any way they can order the company to divest itself that way, if Charter-TWC don't want to do it.
Note, of course, that the Federal government has that power. Which in no way implies that the NY government has that power....
The state government has considerably more power than you know. If Charter doesn't do as its told, 100% of its infrastructure in New York State can be confiscated. It's called eminent domain, and the Supreme Court of the United States has already upheld its use for purely economic purposes. New York State could take control of every inch of cable Charter used to own in the state and either run it itself, or sell it off to any other company it chooses. This has already been litigated. There's nothing Ch
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They don't order the company to divest, but they order the company to stop operating in the state. The divestiture occurs naturally at that point.
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FWIW, NOBODY can afford to "properly maintain" their copper infrastructure anymore, given how little revenue can be extracted from it these days. In many cases, especially in northeastern states, the incumbents like Verizon are *prevented* from fully replacing their copper infrastructure, since they are the "carrier of last resort", and must continue to offer POTS service by law....
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Bah (Score:5, Funny)
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Sarcasm about the (real) problem of porn aside; public WiFi isn't an acceptable alternative to in-home wired connections, and given the density of NYC, even the lightening-fast LinkNYC speeds we get now would be seriously degraded if big portions of whole buildings started piling on them with the bandwidth demands of a home instead of mobile. (I'm also not sure public WiFi hots
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So if the internet sucks, wouldn't the week make up for it?
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Re: Good! (Score:2)
Sadly, it likely is just posturing (Score:4, Insightful)
Municipal ISPs can provide gigabit fiber, often with a backup of mesh WiFi of many/most areas, for very modest rates. Majority of the time it's not city employees doing the work, it's some outside small ISP doing everything. And they still pull a modest but respectable profit.
Until we reform the laws, which means addressing the corruption issues, the bandwidth picture is not going to change. Hell, you don't even need to do THAT. Just force telecoms to justify the money that they are given from taxes. It'd be hilariously easy to charge them with fraud.
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What you say makes complete sense but sadly there is a fairly large body of Americans who believe that the government doing anything is always bad. That coupled with big telecom money makes change almost impossible some places.
Doubtful (Score:1)
I hope Charter gets kicked out of NY, they deserve it. The company has a major lack of regard for keeping commitments.
Let's say they kick them out (Score:2)
Charter can just shut down their systems and everybody that is using them would have to switch. I bet the price for FIOS goes right through the roof if that were to happen. I doubt they could force them to sell but even if they did Charter could tie them up in court for years.
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That assumes there's an option to switch to. Where I live, my only wired broadband option is Spectrum. FIOS wasn't expanded to my area so they're not an option. The closest other things to an alternative for me are DSL (much slower, older technology that the phone companies want to shut down, and costs just as much as Spectrum) or going fully mobile (slower, low caps or throttling for "unlimited" plans, much more
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I doubt they could force them to sell but even if they did Charter could tie them up in court for years.
New York State can force Charter to sell. It's called eminent domain, and it's an open and shut case in federal circuit court because the Supreme Court has already ruled on the subject recently. Charter could sue to prevent it. They would lose. They could appeal. The appeal would be denied. Kelo v. City of New London is settled case law. Takings for purely economic purposes are the law of the land, federally.
New York State was not one of the states that amended its constitution in response to Kelo.