CenturyLink: Comcast Is Trying To Prevent Competition In Its Territories 110
mpicpp sends word that CenturyLink has accused Comcast of restricting competition in the development of internet infrastructure. CenturyLink asked the FCC to block the acquisition of Time Warner Cable to prevent Comcast from further abusing its size and power. For example, Comcast is urging local authorities to deny CenturyLink permission to build out new infrastructure if they can't reach all of a city's residents during the initial buildout. Of course, a full buildout into a brand new market is much more expensive than installing connections a bit at a time. Comcast argues that CenturyLink shouldn't be able to cherry-pick the wealthy neighborhoods and avoid the poor ones. CenturyLink points out that no other ISP complains about this, and says allowing the merger would let Comcast extend these tactics to regions currently operated by Time Warner Cable.
Re:what's wrong with cherry picking? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:what's wrong with cherry picking? (Score:5, Insightful)
The reasoning is this - if Comcast builds out to the entire city, they're building out to highly profitable areas and to less profitable (or even unprofitable) areas. They do the build into the market with the understanding that they will make money on average, looking at the whole city, even if they lose money in some neighborhoods. Now Centurylink comes in and builds only in the expensive neighborhoods - well, guess what? They can offer cheaper rates in those neighborhoods, because they don't have to offset their losses in the poor neighborhoods. If they snipe away enough Comcast customers, eventually Comcast has to pull out entirely because they're losing money. At that point, who serves the poor neighborhoods? I am not a Comcast fan, but they absolutely have a point here. Competition isn't fair if one provider is being required to serve the whole city, but the other is not.
The solution, of course, is municipal broadband.
CenturyLink (Score:2, Insightful)
Should be forced to build out to poor areas. Reason is they will do exactly as Comcast says, they will not upgrade the rest of their piss poor infrastructure leaving it like it is now, where many houses even in nice neighborhoods can only get 1.5Mbps shit. Lucky for us Comcast is around because cable is the only viable Internet solution currently available because companies like CenturyLink fell back on promises of delivering proper broadband and deploying fiber ages ago.
Did you know in the 1990s these phone companies said the definition of broadband was 40Mbps and they would deploy it if given what they wanted? We never saw it and they got what they wanted.
What we gotta realize is that these companies aren't around to be purely profit driven and they have a mandated duty as a utility company to properly deploy fiber to each and every home which is consistent with keeping their systems modern and capable, which the public has an interest in. If we don't add important requirements for them to follow they shit on people and never do their job, which their job is to do what the communities around them want.
I am also for making it so whom ever deploys fiber first can do it, even the city, state, federal government, or private company, even if existing franchise agreements disallow it. BECAUSE WE SHOULD HAVE HAD FIBER DEPLOYED 14+ FUCKING YEARS AGO BUT IT DIDN'T HAPPEN BECAUSE OF THIS NON SENSE AND PRICKS IN POWER THAT LET THE COMPANIES MILK THE SYSTEM.
Re:what's wrong with cherry picking? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:what's wrong with cherry picking? (Score:4, Insightful)