Ma Bell's About Face On Muni-WiFi
from the is-that-about-face,-or-just-two-faced? dept
Remember the good old days of... well, last year, when telcos were telcos and they absolutely hated muni-WiFi? It was such a huge threat to their business that they gave Congress people plenty of money to make it illegal. Of course, that was before they actually bothered looking at many of the muni-WiFi proposals, and recognized they weren't really "government-run" at all, but were really no different than traditional telco deals. The government was simply giving away rights of way for placing equipment in return for promises of service. The providers could still be commercial providers with real business models. Suddenly, the industry opposition quieted down. Industry associations claimed that muni-WiFi was great... and AT&T (whose former employee introduced the bill to ban muni-WiFi) was seen providing the very same "free, tax-supported" WiFi they had screamed about just months before. Well, congrats to AT&T for all that hard work trying to stop muni-WiFi. You've just won another muni-WiFi deal (this one without taxpayer funding). Of course, for those of you who thought that muni-WiFi would give consumers an alternate provider, offering real competition to the incumbent telco... well, that doesn't really work so well when that alternate provider is the telco itself.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Could be worse....
Then you would be told by a smaller ISP that it is not viable for them to supply you with broadband because you are on one of the 13% of lines that are faulty.
They could then tell you that;
only Telstra techs are allowed to work on your (any) lines,
getting a Telstra tech to fix your line will cost more than the ISP will make off your contract in two years
so your best chance of getting braodband is to sign up with Telsra for two years.
Testra charges twice the price, charges for excess use (was at Au$0.17/Mb!) and counts uploads and downloads in your quota. Most contracts are for two years and must be signed before Telsta will consider fixing your line. You could sign up and then find that you can not get broadband.
Not to mention that Telstra's fastest ADSL is 1.5Mb/s (crippled ADSL1), while the other ISP's offer up to 20Mb/s......
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Could be worse....
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Its TELSTRA
Pity I can't type......
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: verizon
I called roadrunner and they had me up the next day.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: verizon
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
got so fed up with them, switched to verizon dsl. only problems that came was trying to network the house when coming back from school. occasionally slow speeds at times, but hey, we all get that. tech support and what not has been good.
i don't know what verizon yinz guys use, be mine is great
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Not surpising...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
it's not muni- yet but...
300 spots in a city the size of cinci is far from being municipal, but it's a start. as far as i know it didn't involve the local government, either.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Their position makes sense, now...
No matter who builds the network, the data has to be backhauled somewhere. Point-to-point microwave is great but it's not a panacea, and there's only so much spectrum. The vast majority of those backhaul links are going over telco-owned fiber sooner or later. How could they have possibly opposed anything that would grow their business?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Another example
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Alternate?
Thanks for drawing our attention to the about turn by telcos.
BTW, you should not use the word 'alternate' the way you have; you should use the word 'alternative'.
'Alternate' is synonymous to 'every other' like in 'alternating current'; 'alternative' is an option or recourse.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]