Time Warner Cable: How They Fucked Over North Carolina

[TheBlackAdder]

The Empire Lobbies Back: How Big Cable Killed Competition in North Carolina


A snip from the book:

" A lot of people were frustrated in 2011 when the North Carolina General Assembly passed a bill written by Time Warner Cable to revoke local authority to build community-owned networks. A new report from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance and Common Cause explains how Time Warner Cable, AT&T, and CenturyLink bought their bill.

In the two years since, the big companies have refused to invest in better networks and AT&T just announced layoffs for some call center workers. Meanwhile, the state is tied with Mississippi for last place in the US in the number of households subscribing to at least a "basic broadband connection" according to the FCC. Perhaps these decisions should be made locally and not by corporate lobbyists?"


http://www.ilsr.org/killing-competition-nc/

http://boingboing.net/2013/01/03/telcos-lobby-north-carolina-to.html

[Kolesar]

1. Telecom companies invest in cell phone technology to stay competitive and give the cable

and internet customers crappy service. The internet customers are victims of a monopoly and have no recourse.

A guest on Bill Moyers' show explained this a few months ago.

[BlueJazz]

2. "North Carolina General Assembly passed a bill written by Time Warner"

I, and many others are sick and tired (and pissed) that this practice has become so prevalent in our society.
These sons-a-bitches preach about free-Enterprise while waving a flag and eating Mom's apple pie until somebody wants to compete with a large corporation...then it's head to the politicians and whine like the pigs that they are...

[ProfessionalLeftist]

3. The NC General Assembly also fucked over NC

And they got a real rape party planned now that they have a Teabagger accomplice Guv.

[WorseBeforeBetter]

4. Did you see the latest re: Tata?

I just popped on over to the NC group and there it was...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10691308#post1

[ProfessionalLeftist]

8. NC hasn't begun to find out how utterly fucked it is. n/t

[patricia92243]

5. In Asheville, we have Charter Internet - I guess I just don't understand about the Time-Warner stuff

[freethought]

6. The Governor didn't exactly help the situation.

This all started when a few small towns got frustrated with TWC's footdragging on getting broadband installed. They finally decided to do it themselves and actually found out that the cost would not be as bad as initially thought. When TWC got wind that a few small towns were going to set up their own broadband networks that could perform better and at lower cost to subscribers, well the lobbyists were kicked into high gear.

Governor Purdue was a coward, plain and simple. She did not sign the bill, but she didn't veto the bill either. This made it law by default.

Some local journalists have commented that this bill had A.L.E.C.'s fingerprints all over it.

[snot]

7. We're allowing private, near-monopolistic control of essential infrastructure, goods, and services

(e.g., our financial system; the news; the internet; etc.) without adequate regulation. We can stop doing that.

The point is not that we should never allow monopolies, but that when we do, they must be either directly answerable to the people by being government-owned, or very tightly regulated, to make sure they don't abuse the power that monopoly confers.

They should not be in the hands of entities the people have no meaningful control over.