Time Warner stomps Wilson, North Carolina
p2pnet news view Freedom | P2P:- Wilson, North Carolina, home to about 47,000 people , says it’s “well connected“.
It is indeed.
“My name is Brian Bowman,” blogs the city’s public affairs manager, “and I’ll bet my broadband is faster than yours”.
He goes on »»»
I have a 10Mbps up/down connection at my house. I buy it directly from the City of Wilson.
After less than a year of residential service, almost 3,000 Wilson households are subscribing to Wilson`s fiber optic network.
Local businesses can get up to one Gbps symmetrical (upload and download). Local homes get up to 100 Mbps (up and down).
We call it Greenlight.
Greenlight was created to provide the best communication infrastructure for local businesses. Even though we`re a small city, we believe our citizens deserve the best service available.
Excellent! A small community shows the world it it doesn’t have to accept a cookie-cutter service from a cookie-cutter company.
But Wilson’s all-fiber optic network has seriously angered Time Warner.
It went online in December last year, and, “provides the fastest subscription based Internet speeds in North Carolina – up to 100 Mbit/s for homes, up to one Gbit/s to businesses,” says the Wikipedia.
“All citizens who can afford it, will have access to Greenlight’s high-speed Internet access (minimum of 10 Mbit/s symmetrical), telephone service and high-definition television. The city is marketing the service as Greenlight, Inc.
But Time Warner, having dropping its plans for metered services “for the time being,” appears to be back to its old [nasty] ways, said Daily Tech.
The corporate giant went after the tiny city because if it didn’t stop the service in its fiber-optic tracks, other communities might follow suit.
And that absolutely cannot be allowed to happen.
Brian says Wilson asked the cable/landline companies to provide a service, “and were turned down so we built it ourselves.
“It was not created to provide competition.”
But, “Rather than admit defeat to the pesky local service and go quietly, Time Warner Inc. and Embarq decided to take the fight to the state government, lobbying for several years to get the state government to pass laws to try to destroy the local effort,” says Daily Tech.
And, “sure enough, thanks to a lot of hard work (and money), the cable companies are close to getting their wish — North Carolina’s State Senate have proposed bills to not only effectively crippling or banning the local service, but also to prevent such services from getting funds under the broadband portion of the national Stimulus law.”
Here’s how Brian explains it »»»
NC Senate Bill 1004 and House Bill 1252 would change the law to stop other NC cities from providing broadband. The bills are titled Level the Playing Field but their effect is to protect cable monopolies in our state.
If the cable/phone companies really want a level playing field, they`d open their books like we do in the spirit of open meetings and open records law. They don`t want a level playing field. They want to be the only team on the field.
Bottom line, these companies are using your state lawmakers to protect monopolies. It was wrong in 2007 when a similar bill died in the house and it`s wrong today.
Local provider Embarq, “still defends its decision, saying it has the right to make money (which it argues Greenlight Inc. does not),” says Daily Tech, continuing:
“The company’s spokesperson states, ‘We would love to deploy DSL everywhere. We try to make smart financial decisions not only for shareholders but customers. In the very rural areas, sometimes it would take two, three or more years to even pay for the investment’.”
Critics say cable companies, “are desperately trying to stifle competition,” says MediaPost, adding:
“As it is, Time Warner Cable seems to have a good thing going. The company’s financial results, released yesterday, show it made a profit of $164 million for the first quarter. Additionally, the company now boasts 8.6 million subscribers, up from 7.9 million last year, while the costs of providing broadband fell to $33 million from $40 million.”
The North Carolina bill is slated for a vote next week, says the story.
(Thanks, Marc)
May, 2009
blogs – Someone wants to shut the gate on your freedom of choice, April 21, 2009
Daily Tech – Time Warner, Embarq Fight to Outlaw 100 Mbps Community Broadband in Wilson, NC, April 22, 2009
MediaPost - Cable Companies Try To Cripple Municipal Broadband, April 30, 2009
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May 2nd, 2009 at 6:27 pm
Time Warner tried to pull that stunt here in Greensboro, but when they heard of a protest for that Saturday, they crawled back in their little mouse hole. The protest went on anyway. Now Time Warner is trying to do the tier pricing again! Keep boycotting their sorry asses!!
May 2nd, 2009 at 7:20 pm
@Niel
Given their profits, it sounds like nobody is seriously trying to boycott them. Or they have a complete monopoly in a large number of places (as if one city would bust them!).
Personally, this is scary stuff. If the corporations not only threaten to remove net neutrality, but are given a legal monopoly, and make it literally illegal for a community to fend for itself, we’re heading down the crapper faster than ever. Really.
When are the people of the USA going to get off their sorry asses and reject these corporations? If only a small minority of people care enough to think about it, we’re never going to make headway. We need to oust the sorry politicians that allow this crap to happen, and trim the government like an overgrown wisteria. Personally, I think athens-style ostracism was a good system. Idiots or powermongers didn’t last long, and you had every incentive not to be that way. Although today, ostracism would probably be a social issue (not allowed to be a government employee or hold any office) rather than a life-threatening issue.
May 3rd, 2009 at 9:40 am
This is a situation where the people need to mobilize. Yes, many people in state legislatures are clueless, reactionary, and easily influenced. But a concerted effort by the people to do some influencing on their own can speak volumes. Here in Maryland, we have organized significant letter-writing campaigns using, you guessed it, the internet, as a way for concerned citizens to quickly send a letter to all of their local representatives. When our legislature saw thousands of letters pouring it they did stop to ask why – and changed their position on the issue.
It’s frustrating that you have to do this kind of stuff to make sure that citizens are represented in the capitol instead of corporate interests, but if you don’t make the effort you are essentially taking this crap lying down. Years ago, it used to be nearly impossible to contact a representative – but now, with the internet, one college campus can send several thousand letters via email in a matter of days. I hope the citizens of Wilson make that effort – it sounds like their local government has put a lot of effort into making this a reality, and I guarantee the local businesses and citizens they are currently serving don’t want to be forced to switch back to Swine Warner.
May 4th, 2009 at 1:16 am
Why can’t we have this service everywhere? Why do we have to pay these greedy corporations exorbitant monies for a poorer service than the state can provide?
May 5th, 2009 at 3:06 am
Okay, I know I’m probably not super-popular right now, but here’s some thoughts:
“Why canât we have this service everywhere? Why do we have to pay these greedy corporations exorbitant monies for a poorer service than the state can provide?”
Why does it HAVE to be “The State” providing it, tho?
That’s the line of attack that Time Warner is using here — trying to stop “cities” from providing broadband. Also, they’re doing this by lobbying (which is another reason that I think Lobbying is a double-edged sword at best.)
We’re all in different countries, right?
Well what needs to happen is the creation of not-for profit corporations (yeah, I said corporations) specifically constructed as public-interest broadband-providers, but NOT directly affiliated with the State.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-profit_organization
Basically, it would involve creating the equivalent of what in the U.S. are called “5013(c) nonprofit” organizations.
Remember how I said I was involved with the local ham radio scene at one point? Well the local club used just such a structure, and we were able to put together quite a decent implimentation for ourselves, not to mention by “networking” with other clubs.
What needs to happen, is an umbrella-organization (a foundation or something similar) which serves as a clearinghouse for how to start and run your local version (compliance suchlike.) Honestly folks — instead of bitching about how evil the corporate megaliths are simply because they’re acting the way they’re DESIGNED to act, it’s time for some of us to DO something about it.
You don’t think such things can be put together on a shoestring, and leveraged?
Go on over to http://www.autistics.org. It’s a website run by a woman named Amanda Baggs and her friend Laura Tsilonik, up in Vermont.
Basically, they’re two disabled autistic women who managed to put together a decent Autistic self-advocacy and mutual-aid type setup using relatively modest funds, and leveraging existing resources.
Like I said, it’s way past time for us to stop BITCHING and start doing something about it:
You’re concerned about the kind of service the corporate megaliths provide?
How about starting a “not-for-profit” ISP explicitly for social benefit and non-throttling and all suchlike?
(Jon’s managed to leverage what started as a relatively minor personal blog thanks to the beneficence of an “anonymous donor”.)
Think about it: a tax-deductible organization explicitly dedicated to making your LOCAL community better by easing the “digital divide”, and coordinating information on how to start and run things like it?
(Better use for our money and time, than just protesting and lobbying, but that’s just me.)
Release the “how-to” manuals under some form of free-culture license, and no matter what the corporate megaliths attempt to do, they won’t be able to smash it. (Think: FLOSS software scene etc., for inspiration.)
Hell, the nutty/Black-hellicopter types are doing better than US, in this regard. (www.abovetopsecret.org.)
Donation-based, but we use something like community mesh wifi or something to mitigate the physical “wiring”.
Go ahead, folks — shoot this idea down, so we can all go back to complaining about the oppressiveness of our corporate overlords.