Telecom companies fighting competition

Telecom companies fighting competition
2/27/2005, 1:47 p.m. ET
By MARC LEVY
The Associated Press

KUTZTOWN, Pa. (AP) — Two years ago, this small college town thought it was blazing a trail for other Pennsylvania communities when it built a publicly owned fiber-optic network to deliver cut-rate Internet, telephone and cable TV service.

Then, in late 2004, Pennsylvania lawmakers bowed to the wishes of Verizon Communications Inc. and the state's other local phone providers, passing a bill that gives the companies the power to squelch any new forays into telecommunications by municipal governments.

The legislation, prompted by the companies' worries that other towns would follow Kutztown's example, marked the industry's latest victory in a series of similar clashes across the country.
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But telephone and cable TV companies have responded by flexing political and financial muscle at the state level, arguing that government has no business getting into their business.
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http://www.mlive.com/newsflash/business/index.ssf?/base/business-35/1109530115110680.xml&storylist=mibusiness

trivial to stop them.

installing a city wide wifi

at some point, corporations must be disciplined and their behavior regulated... just like teenagers.

And giving them limits is no more "Anti-Business" then giving curfews to your kids is Anti-Child.

cities that offered very cheap wireless broadband service to its citizens, coming up against the telecom lobbyists.

and the whole story was infuriating.

Municipalities can't start their own service even if they're not served at all by one of the big telecom giants. They're fighting any public effort tooth and nail, even when they have no intention of ever providing the service, themselves.

In the early 1990's, City Public Service, the electric company in San Antonio planned to put in fiber optics to each house and business to read the meters. The eventual plan was to provide telephone and cable TV service with the excess capacity. SBC (then, Southwestern Bell) lobbied City Council to win the city's prohibition against CPS doing this. The argument was the same. Government has no business competing in telecommunications and especially so in the city that SW Bell had recently moved its corporate offices to from St. Louis.. CWA's position was the city was taking union jobs away. This was the earliest occurence of this I know of.

As a side note, SW Bell mobilized the business community against the mayor and he lost his reelection.