Hello Kossacks!
I'm back once again with more US ISP ridiculousness as we continue the fight for Net Neutrality and Common Carrier regulations, and this time it comes from Jason Koebler at VICE Motherboard:
In light of the ongoing net neutrality battle, many people have begun looking to Google and its promise of high-speed fiber as a potential saving grace from companies that want to create an "internet fast lane." Well, the fact is, even without Google, many communities and cities throughout the country are already wired with fiber—they just don't let their residents use it.
The reasons vary by city, but in many cases, the reason you can't get gigabit internet speeds—without the threat of that service being provided by a company that wants to discriminate against certain types of traffic—is because of the giant telecom businesses that want to kill net neutrality in the first place.
Bold emphasis, as always, is mine.
Throughout the country, companies like Comcast, Time Warner Cable, CenturyLink, and Verizon have signed agreements with cities that prohibit local governments from becoming internet service providers and prohibit municipalities from selling or leasing their fiber to local startups who would compete with these huge corporations.
More ridiculousness below the fold.
While you can definitely lay some of the blame at the feet of the municipalities that have signed these agreements, we can see from the case of Washington DC itself that companies like Comcast are using their de facto monopoly power to force these changes...by threatening to cut off service to the city:
In Washington DC, for instance, the country's first 100 Gbps fiber network has been available to nonprofit organizations since 2006—but not to any of the city's residents. During a re-negotiation with Comcast in 1999 in which the company threatened to cut off cable service to the city, Comcast agreed to provide some of its fiber access to the city for the government's "exclusive use."
So, at least they helped the city of DC out, right?
Nope.
"The 1999 agreement was conditioned in important ways," former Obama administration assistant and Harvard University researcher Susan Crawford wrote in a recent paper examining the city's fiber network. "First, the city agreed not to lease or sell the fiber. Second, the contract required that the city not 'engage in any activities or outcomes that would result in business competition between the District and Comcast or that may result in loss of business opportunity for Comcast.'"
Comcast never even made its fiber available to the city, but that agreement, and a future one with Verizon, has, in part, kept the city's DC-NET fiber network out of residents' homes.
They've repeated this scheme throughout communities nationwide, and have lobbied for restrictions to these sorts of municipal networks, as well as filed lawsuits to prevent them. As the article states:
What happened in DC is not uncommon. According to MuniNetworks, a group that tracks community access to fiber nationwide, at least 20 states have laws or other regulatory barriers that make it illegal or difficult for communities to offer fiber access to their residents. Even in states where there are no official rules, non-compete agreements between government and big business are common.
There is, however, hope. We can send a message to these ISPs and do it via one of our public institutions, the FCC. But we can only do that if we keep the pressure on. The fight's not over yet. Call your elected officials.
Petition the FCC. On multiple platforms.
Do not allow the ISPs to take our future from us.