So the info from people I know who live in Longmont, was that Comcast was as sleazy as their reputation in dealing with the city.
Comcast executives said in statements to city council that it was physically impossible to deliver higher bandwidth over the existing cable. Edit to add: now over the existing cable they are offering higher speeds. YES, that same cable that pre competition, they stated could not handle higherspeeds.
When Longmont decided to proceed with their own network, lots of FUD from Comcast both before it was successfully delivered and after, but everyone who has it, loves it. And it very rarely goes down.
Comcast then tried to say that they had exclusive contracts with the landlords... but under CO law such restrictions placed on tenants are illegal.
Yes, comcast threw tantrums in city hall on multiple occasions.
Longmont's story is rather complicated and interesting. I don't know all the details, but knew a fair number of the key players. Essentially, Longmont allowed an upstart ISP to put cable in the ground. Part of the deal was that if they were going to sell it, Longmont got first right of refusal (or something similar), and when they went under, the city bought the fiber for cheap. They were sitting on dark fiber for a long time, and they leased it out to several companies who failed to make it work. Then, after enough people in the town and city government cared (I'll call out Jim Wall - the town CTO - for being awesome), the vote passed and with some creaking and groaning, the roll-out got started. Residents got 1 Gigabit symmetric for $50 per month (you're reading that correctly).
Interestingly, nearly overnight, both Comcast and Charter were offering more than 1 Gb/s for $75ish.
You don't need one! Exclusive telecom provider agreements with multiple-dwelling units (MDUs) have been prohibited federally since 2009.
Now, it's a fair bet that the current FCC leadership will flip on this - they published a "Notice of Inquiry" to "seek comment" on what they're now calling "multiple tenant environments" earlier this year: https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-345161A1.p...
But for now, exclusive provider agreements like this are not actually enforceable.
Comcast and Centurylink (though they may haven taken different names at one time or another) have been a duopoly in Colorado for decades. Their prices have gone up and up too -- more, it seems, than inflation. Maybe we'll finally see that come to an end.
Those type of executives will be going to jail soon enough.
There is a theory, I think first proposed by Arthur Schlesinger Jr (who won two Pulitzer prizes, had an equally renowned father, and was one of Kennedy’s top advisors) that American history tends to move in 80 year cycles divided into two forty year periods or so. Every 40 years US society shifts from capitalism and individualism to community and strong federal government. Neither period is inherently bad, but it’s just that capitalism and democracy don’t coexist as much as rule independently, taking turns.
Schlesinger dated the capitalism period to 1980 starting with Ronald Reagan. That means it should end in 2020 or so.
For all the crimes that fall out of the statue of limitations, I can imagine, not necessarily in a good way and probably will be frowned upon by later historians, that McCarthy-style commissions will be set up and these executives blacklisted from business.
To be fair Reagan is a capitalist only mostly just at face value. He increased government size and power more than Obama did. For example, not just did he increase spending but he also partnered with and strenthened the Deep State which has given us great benefits to American Liberty such as Iran Contra, subversion and lies leading to endless pointless wars, and even domestic surveillance.
>"Commercial banking firm’s continuing desire for greater powers received support when Ronald Reagan became President and appointed banking regulators who shared an “attitude towards deregulation of the financial industry.”[1]
His legacy of deregulation often decreased competitiveness and paved the way for the 2008 financial crisis. He even willfully used "left wing" Keynseian economics of tax+spend+cut taxes to get short-term gains at the expense of future generations.
As far as I can tell his consistency appears to be that of an authoritarian, which throws this whole analysis off the rails... In my opinion.
It's very hard to reign in all of these beasts he let loose.
"I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested."[p. 10]
"War is a racket. ...It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives." [p. 23]
"The general public shoulders the bill [for war]. This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations." [p. 24]
General Butler is especially trenchant when he looks at post-war casualties. He writes with great emotion about the thousands of traumatised soldiers, many of who lose their minds and are penned like animals until they die, and he notes that in his time, returning veterans are three times more likely to die prematurely than those who stayed home.
This aligns with the new crony financialism of the 70s and New Deal of the 30s, but makes not much sense before that. It’s a nice digestable notion that correlates with cycles of generational empowerment but not much else. I’m open to the idea, but a bit more scope gives a picture of an industrial empire in a decadent phase.
Once a pattern like that has been noticed and (crucially) correctly analysed, it tends to disappear, as the affected actors modify their behaviour in response to this analysis.
Alright, that is rational. So, why are there so many exceptions to this rule?For example, why is this limited to America? Is this because America has such a free market? And if that’s the case, where did this overwhelming inequality and monopoly dominance come from?
I’m sorry, but this is just incredibly simplistic reasoning and i think deserves some testing and scrutiny. Maybe you’re right, but please explain.
That is something I’ve thought about too. Kind of like passive investing / index funds. It works great, but if everyone is doing it, then it loses it’s original purpose and distorts market prices.
I will say once patterns are discovered they tend to be forgotten as well, so modification can stop happening.
Which explains a lot - if you believe that we're in the middle of a pendulum swing politically and culturally, suddenly a lot of things in the way people are acting makes a a lot more sense.
Arthur Schlesinger Jr’s “The Cycles of American History”
“The Forth Turning” or “Generations” by Neil Howe and William Strauss. Although be warned although those books were well received at the time in like 1993 (including a pretty positive review by the N.Y. Times) they are little less ‘academic’ than Schlesinger’s.
Also the authors Samuel Lubell, R.G. Collingwood, and Frank L. Klinberg.
Regarding the concept of “willful blindness” that is currently experiencing a revival in academic legal circles and is forming the basis for an aggressive, take-no-prisoners approach to white-collar crime, look at “The Chickenshit Club” by Jesse Eisinger.
But Colorado is unique in that town and cities in the state have been able to vote locally on whether to overturn this ISP-lobbying-for-law
Once again Colorado has impressed me on the level of pragmatism they show in their state laws. They have been looking very politically healthy compared to the rest of the US, in my opinion, and I think it is going to pay off for them in the near future.
We have a lot of citizen involvement. You see it in these kind of local activities and overrides, but it goes to the state level ballot initiatives as well.
Sadly, there are some inroads against it. In a rare show of bipartisanship, both the Republican and Democratic parties supported this 'Raise the Bar' initiative to make it more difficult to add initiatives to the state ballot. It doesn't remove the right, but it requires a lot more organization by requiring 2% voter signatures from each state district within a 60 day collection window.
It sucks, but I'm not too distraught. A little more authority was ceded to the political parties but I still have faith that the citizenry are active and involved. We don't all believe the same thing (it's a swing state), but at least we act.
What I absolutely love is the freedom to be independent. As an independent voter, I can vote in the primary for any of the political parties, as long as I only vote once. I don't need to pre-register for that party to be eligible. There are a lot of other improvements to the electoral process we could potentially make, but I'm glad we at least pulled down this low hanging fruit as a first step.
> make it more difficult to add initiatives to the state ballot ... It sucks
Despite a noble history and many success stories, ballot initiatives seem just as corruptible as the parties and perhaps more dangerous with the amount of fake news and propaganda that social networks have enabled.
2% from each district sounds like an absurdly high barrier. Can you imagine how hard it would be to hire enough people just to say hello to 2% of Colorado in 60 days? I think you're underestimating the magnitude of this.
It does seem like a lot but I havent done canvassing before
5.5 mil people about 110k signatures.
Colorado only has 7 districts, 2 (eastside and westside of the state) comprise of almost 40% of the landmass each. 1 district to the north of denver and one to the south. 3 that make up the denver metropolis.
It would be alot but its the 2 outside districts that probably would be the toughest to get
We need 10% in BC. But that's for a referendum, I think. Only happened once in my lifetime, when the old people got worked up over a harmonized sales tax.
>What I absolutely love is the freedom to be independent. As an independent voter, I can vote in the primary for any of the political parties, as long as I only vote once. I don't need to pre-register for that party to be eligible.
This was added last year and there hasn't been a presidential primary where this has happened yet. The republican party might even skip the caucus/primary again and appoint their own candidate.
To me it looks like a somewhat balanced mix of liberals and conservatives, both with a bit of a libertarian/federalist streak. Not a lot of other states seem to look like that right now.
I'd argue that Alaska does. Strong libertarian streak for sure, and the current governor and lieutenant governor are a consensus pairing of a moderate Republican governor and a Democratic lieutenant.
Why? Lightrail is a pretty big disaster in terms of efficient commuting with stops every block. I tried to ride the bus and then lightrail downtown but the commute was twice as long as if I just drove (45 minutes to an hour because the bus/rail weren't synced perfectly)
I lost a lot of respect for Hickenlooper after he waffled on a death penalty decision pushing it off for the next governor. I could have accepted a decision in either direction, but he chose to not make a decision at all. When you are elected the top official in the State, you're expected to make hard decisions. He failed.
Sometimes just faking Comcast out with the threat of doing a competing service is helpful.
The president of the HOA in the neighborhood next to mine was sick of poor service from Comcast, and put a neighborhood broadband proposal on their HOA association agenda. Comcast (the only choice for wired broadband here) got wind of it, and immediately started upgrading their infrastructure and digging new fiber to the curb. Now they have faster and more reliable service than we do.
Similarly in Austin after Google Fiber was announced (even though it will be years before the far northern edges receive service) TWC (now Spectrum) was able to magically increase bandwidth/speeds for everyone at no cost to current plans. It was so simple and immediate that it was almost like they only had to flip a switch to upgrade the speeds.
WOW. The really revealing quote in this article is this:
"But it remains easier and cheaper for companies like Comcast and AT&T, with the help of groups like ALEC, to instead convince clueless lawmakers to pass laws restricting your right to determine for yourself how your money gets spent, and what it gets spent on."
I then googled "ALEC" (and looked past the Alec Baldwin twitter scandal of the day) and was amazed to discover a shadowy group that steers local legislation just about everywhere. Holy crap!
There's at least two people on HN that operate community wired networks. I have my notes on the wrong computer, but you could probably find them with search. The economics sound not great.
Fixed wireless may have nicer economics with the right geography. My parents use it on a farm. I doubt you're going to be able to stream HD netflix/amazon over it through.
Since the Santa Rosa fires, I have been trying to figure out some combination of community broadband and/or mesh network that would provide service during and after emergencies.
Our fire chief lives in Santa Rosa (and lost his house) and his description of the incredible chaos caused by a lack of communications was heartbreaking. i.e. People were evacuated to hospitals that were in the process of being evacuated.
I wish there was a way to run a mesh network on a USB stick Pi Zero sort of thing. Just spread them around town and have a wifi network for when shit gets bad.
When I traveled to Estonia and Lithuania a couple years ago, they effectively had this. Most businesses had wifi and freely gave out the passwords. After awhile I had enough passwords stored on my phone that I had internet everywhere I went within the city even though I didn't have a mobile plan.
Seoul in Korea is much like this - when my partner and I took a surprise trip there, we were worried about getting around and purchasing a SIM as neither of us spoke Korean, but there was rarely a place where there wasn't some sort of wifi access from the major telecom providers with both a paid and free version. You couldn't necessarily do things like youtube or Facebook over the public access, but things like maps, email, and messaging were all very doable.
I think we're still (politically) in the phase of convincing people that cable companies are both a monopoly, and an abusive one.
E.g., here in the Bay Area, I have a choice in my area to go with AT&T[1] for Internet connectivity, but IIRC, they don't meet the FCC's definition of "broadband", so really, for broadband Internet access, my only choice is Comcast. (Now, the FCC was recently trying to re-write the definition of broadband s.t. mobile connectivity could count, but that's such an absurd stretch of the imagination when discussing the market of high-speed Internet access.)
While there is also TWC, I've found that where TWC exists, typically they also enjoy a similar status.
Chattanooga, TN, interestingly, offers ~50x the speed for the same price as Comcast here.
But public utilities have always been an exception. The theory is that it's so expensive to run residential infrastructure like wires (electricity, tip-ring phone, cable) or pipes (gas, water, sewer) that a single company gets to do it and charge for it. In return they
a) must build their facilities to serve the entire community. No cherrypicking dense or wealthy neighborhoods to jack up return on investment.
b) must, in the case of cable TV, offer public access.
c) must submit to public utilities commission regulation
This theory helped push through widespread rural electrification, which was a major progressive victory in the first third of the 20th century.
Is internet-over-Cable-TV infrastructure regulated like Cable TV is regulated? After all it is a repurposing of the regulated infrastructure. In many jurisdictions that's a gray area. Lobbyists and change-averse businessmen LOVE gray areas. They can use them to make legislators' heads hurt, and then say, "pass this law and your heads will stop hurting." It's a tried and true lobbying tactic.
Making the case that a public-utility monopoly should be abolished means convincing everybody involved that the infrastructure cost isn't a driver any more. For broadband it generally isn't: the electric utilities usually own the poles and are happy to have another tenant utility.
The problem is convincing people. You gotta make the case. Good luck Fort Collins.
No, but monopoly abuses are. Wikipedia's description of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act:
The law attempts to prevent the artificial raising of prices by restriction of trade or supply.[3] "Innocent monopoly", or monopoly achieved solely by merit, is perfectly legal, but acts by a monopolist to artificially preserve that status, or nefarious dealings to create a monopoly, are not. The purpose of the Sherman Act is not to protect competitors from harm from legitimately successful businesses, nor to prevent businesses from gaining honest profits from consumers, but rather to preserve a competitive marketplace to protect consumers from abuses.[4]
As far as I know, the question typically doesn't turn on whether a company is/has "a monopoly". Rather, what's restricted is the exercise of monopoly power. In a nutshell this means altering market prices or availability in a way that would not be possible if the market were genuinely competitive (because some competitor would come in and close the gap your change created).
It's understandable that Comcast wants to shut down the competition. They know how much customers hate them. If any competition shows up, Comcast is history.
how to encourage other cities to get such alternate broadband options? can colorado guide the rest of the cities and states to go through similar initiatives?
Wow, I never even knew something like this was an option on the table! Makes me think of open source infrastructure. So what exactly does it take to get independent broadband?
Comcast executives said in statements to city council that it was physically impossible to deliver higher bandwidth over the existing cable. Edit to add: now over the existing cable they are offering higher speeds. YES, that same cable that pre competition, they stated could not handle higherspeeds.
When Longmont decided to proceed with their own network, lots of FUD from Comcast both before it was successfully delivered and after, but everyone who has it, loves it. And it very rarely goes down.
Comcast then tried to say that they had exclusive contracts with the landlords... but under CO law such restrictions placed on tenants are illegal.
Etc. Etc.