In their second major ruling on Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed a federal court verdict that would have required cable companies to open up their networks to third party Internet service providers. The decision will severely limit broadband operations for competing ISPs such as Brand X and EarthLink.
“The Bush administration has made it clear that they are hostile toward small, independent service providers like us. And we think that is a big disaster for consumers, and a huge win for the monopolistic phone and cable companies, which spend millions of dollars on lobbying efforts,” said Jim Tickrell, president of Brand X Internet.
Under The Communications Act of 1934, cable companies are defined as "information services", allowing them to restrict access to cable lines. This is in contrast to telephone companies, which – under the bill – are required to share their lines with competitors. Companies like Comcast and Time Warner argued that opening up the market to further competition would damage their business and lead to a decline in the amount of money they invested in their networks.
Along with the ruling, the court also reinforced the FCC’s ability to make critical decisions when it comes to interpreting the nuances of the Communications Act. Because the case was so technically involved, the court said it was reasonable to defer to the expertise of the FCC.
News source: ZDNet
“The Bush administration has made it clear that they are hostile toward small, independent service providers like us. And we think that is a big disaster for consumers, and a huge win for the monopolistic phone and cable companies, which spend millions of dollars on lobbying efforts,” said Jim Tickrell, president of Brand X Internet.
Under The Communications Act of 1934, cable companies are defined as "information services", allowing them to restrict access to cable lines. This is in contrast to telephone companies, which – under the bill – are required to share their lines with competitors. Companies like Comcast and Time Warner argued that opening up the market to further competition would damage their business and lead to a decline in the amount of money they invested in their networks.
Along with the ruling, the court also reinforced the FCC’s ability to make critical decisions when it comes to interpreting the nuances of the Communications Act. Because the case was so technically involved, the court said it was reasonable to defer to the expertise of the FCC.
News source: ZDNet
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This guys people a choice, and the market competition. This is good news.
Bush has absolutely nothing to do with this. The President, be he republican or democrat, cannot simply create and pass laws or make judicial decisions.
Excutive != Legislature != Judicial
If you have a problem with this, instead of blaming Bush, speak to *YOUR CONGRESSMEN*. It's THEIR job to pass laws. More on track with the article, if you owned a business in direct competition with mine and I demanded you give me one of your buildings so that I might better compete, wouldn't you laugh in my face? Whatever happened to common sense?
What is the beef with Bush??? This was the supreme court's ruling, not a product of the Bush administration. And as we all know, Bush as basically no influence over the supreme court seeing as how he has not successfully nominated a single justice.
If you like Bush or not is a moot point in this case.
Last edited by 74534 on 28 Jun 2005 - 14:25
While I do not understand why Jim Tickrell pointed the finger solely at Bush in his statement above, to imply that the Supreme Court is non-partisan & is not influenced by their ploicital party, is absurd.
True, the President cannot make judicial decsions, but when the opportunity presents itself, the President can, and usually does, appoint someone who is expected to rule in favor of the views that align with the President's party.
All to often Supreme Court rulings are influencend by policital party views. Please don't get me wrong, this isn't an attack on conservatives... a Supreme Court bench led by Democrats woulds be guilty of eactly the same thing. Shouldn't the Supreme Court be as non-partisan as possible? Interchange the word "Bush" with "conservative" and the statement makes perfect sense (ie. this ruling was 100% in line with political party views).
On paper, yes... but in reality, when one group holds the power in each branch, the lines becomes increasingly blurred.
Last edited by 10547 on 28 Jun 2005 - 16:13
I do agree that those who sit of the Supreme Court put their own views into their rulings far too much. The Supreme Court's only job is to interpret existing laws and the constitution. It is not their job to effect policy based on the political climate or what they think is best for the country.
A Supreme Court Justice is really nothing but a referee.
Why is that silly? Yes, Clinton appointed the last two justices, and they were both Democrats. However, the other 7 members of the Supreme Court are Republican... I'd say that qualifies the word "conservative" as a valid description.
Anywho, that wasn't my point. The first point was what you agree with, that the Supreme Count isn't as unbiased as it should be. The second being that Jim Tickrell's comments towards Bush are not to be taken litterally, but they are more aimed at entire conservative-controled govt.
As such, if the old monopolies were forced to open up their networks, competition would be stimulated allowing for more investment, and a better deal for the consumer. That's the idea at least - in the UK, it has worked very well. We've got lots of competition in the ADSL market, BT has cleaned up its act, good job. We've got cheaper internet access, faster internet access - companies are forced to compete and do one better to keep on getting new customers - in doing so, however, we all get a good deal. It would seem like a bit of a raw deal for people in the states today, on this issue, and the Grokster.
Whilst the Grokster issue has nothing to do with monopolies, this is a good example of why they aren't really a very good idea.
Last edited by 1409 on 27 Jun 2005 - 22:46
One good thing is that customer service is awesome. and I hardly ever experience any outages. I guess the high prices don't bother me too much since it's all good.
For those of you out there damning the "Man" because he makes you use a cable box to get all the good channels, what do you need for Satellite? Oh yeah! A Box, and an oversized frizbee on the side of your house, and a contract! Oh yeah, and the box I get for 9 bucks a month? If it dies it's replaced, and I don't have to buy it. Your box? If it becomes obsolete or bites the dust, oh well, you've got to buy a new box.
Did we forget the FCC mandate that all OTA programming needs to be digital? What do you think people will complain about when they can get clear digital signals OTA, not to mention you have the SatelliteCos claiming all of their programming is digital, though the content is simply digitally encoded analog programming? People will ask, "Why get cable when Satellite and OTA programming looks better?" CableCos are simply trying to compete. Welcome to capitalism.
The SUPREME COURT ruled on this decision. Last time I checked, President Bush didn't appoint any of the judges there.
I agree completely with this decision. If a company purchases the lines, they don't *have* to let someone else come in and make money off it. In fact, I feel this will *increase* competition in the city I live in. We don't even have Comcast! Only Bright House's Road Runner. If another company wants to come in, they can put up their own lines by taking the initial investment to do so, then grab subscribers away. In the past, other companies tried to come in and were refused - A smart business decision by Bright House (at the time Time Warner) as my city is around 100,000+ in size.
Some of the people who oppose this might want to look into the issue a bit deeper than just taking the quotes from the "losers" in this case at face value.
The SUPREME COURT ruled on this decision. Last time I checked, President Bush didn't appoint any of the judges there.
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I guess they figure that because Bush is the most powerful politician in the US that he is directly responsible for everything any level of government does.
IMHO, saying "Bush", "The Bush Administration", "Conservative", or "Republican", can be interchanged in comments like the above... it's just slightly more powerful of a statement if directed at the leader.
This ruling is no doubt aligned with the conservative views. To blame Bush as the sole entitiy responsible for this ruling is silly, but then the ruling is aligned with his & his party's views.
Had Democrats held the majority of the bench, there is a solid chance that the ruling would have been just the oposite, and then the cable co's would be bitching about Clinton/Democrats/liberals.
We need a non-partisan court, or as close to one as possible... of which we are not even remotely close to having.
Last edited by 10547 on 28 Jun 2005 - 16:15
Justices Rehnquist, Scalia, and Thomas are generally considered to be the conservative wing of the court. Justices Souter, Breyer, Ginsburg, and Stevens are generally considered to the liberal wing. Justices Kennedy and O'Connor are typically seen as moderates, and hence are the swing votes who often determine the outcome of close cases.
3 conservatives, 4 liberals, 2 moderates...
Seems pretty even to me. Whats funny is that John Paul Stevens is the most liberal and was appointed by Gerald Ford
What BrandX is proposing is idiotic. Continuing growth of Internet access would slow to a crawl, the whole business of internetworking would be in jeopardy (goodbye cisco?), many people would lose their jobs, etc. for no benefit other than put money in BrandX's pocket so they can become a large competitor on unfair terms. This would be as devastating on the American economy as the "dot com bubble" popping.
To recap, I agree completely with the ruling.
Chalk up another win for Big Buisness.
I am right near a state line and the company here is charging $40 a month for 1.5mbps/128k and Comcast is up to 4or5mbps/??up for about the same. How is this fair? There isn’t any competition here and I'm suffering from a non evolving network.
In the end I agree with the ruling but in my case where the small company is the monopoly and is charging for service people had 4-5 years ago ... never upgrading ... is getting annoying.
For those who claim satellite is the way to go, we'll see just how reliable your internet or television service is when the weather turns crappy. I loved Comcast before I even worked for them. They have always treated me right, and still continue to do so as an employee.
But Comcast is no better then any other cable company... money grubbing monopolies
Business is not meant to be nice and share like kids are told to do in kindergarten. Businesses are out to make money, and unless a profit can be made, don't expect anyone to share what they don't have to.
I would bet that if you were a wealthy shareholder or even a top exec for one of those companies you would be just as greedy. People can state that money will never change or corrupt them, but it isn't true. It will change you regardless, but may corrupt you if you let it.
Companies like Earthlink and AOL (I have no idea what the hell Brand X is, never heard of'em) are third party ISPs, always has been, always will be.
In fact, companies like AOL is not a ISP, but rather a Commercial Online Service.
The reason I say that is because back then in the early 90s before the internet became extremely popular, there was AOL. At the time AOL had no internet service, at least it wasn't hooked to the internet, just yet.
But AOL wasn't the only big game back then, there was Prodigy, Compuserve and other services like them. There was also alot of BBS systems where people can dial into another computer , download files (like Doom WADs, alot of BBS services had alot of Doom fans sharing their maps and mods), go to chat rooms, etc. Many BBS operators also had subscription plans that allows them access to, *ahem* porn.
Anyway, AOL used alot of (and still uses alot of) crappy softwares, horrible front ends and they censor alot of their paying customers, they even changed the names of Usenet groups because some groups were very anti-AOL, (alt.aol.sucks) they changed it to something that sounded more politically correct. (By the way, Steve Case is a liberal democrat. Surprise Surprise!)
AOL wasn't even near in quality in terms as a internet service. When they did hook up to the backbone of the Internet, they used softwares attached to it that made the service, even for dialup, horribily slow. It still slow even when they started their crappy company.
I am afraid he may be correct. This also gives big shots out there more power to raise prices on their services which would leave only the middle class and rich class being able to afford it and the poor people will get disconnected because there's no cheap broadband options for them to choose from.
That was 1934, it's an old and outdated law. It needs to be changed. Technology changes every year and laws needs to be updated to reflect that change.
To interprete that, there's alot of old farts sitting in benches that have no clue how to turn on a computer, much less operate it. These so called Judges are so outdated that they need to be replaced with younger generation of people who are technically savvy. Just replace Judges that handles electronic laws with younger judges (with a HIGH IQ please, mind you. Preferably with an IQ of 140 and up) and the problem is just almost solved.
Makes perfect sense... If you cant afford to run wire to homes, then you shouldnt be able to use your competitors..
What a joke! We rarely loose reception, and the only reason we ever do is that the deer rub thier antlers on the 4x4 we have the dish mounted on and move it significantly. Storms so rarely bother it that it isn't worth mentioning. All it does is flicker if its REALLY bad. You dont know what your talking about.
Competition is always a good thing! Cable doesn't find my area lucrative enough for them to run more miles of cable. The only option other than incredibly bad reception from a tri-pod antenna is a sattelite dish. Sadly in my area of the country there is only one provider for sattelite internet, with an up front fee of $600.00 and 63.00 a month. You know, if we didn't have to eat, and do all those other living expense things we might be able to swing it. If this (Direct TV)company had any competition, everyone would have a chance. Thier greed is stupid and a bad business move.................sell to the masses, not the privelidged few. Throughout history, those were the most sucsessful businessmen. Sam Walton, Woolworth, McDonalds, Disney.
Last edited by 49488 on 30 Jun 2005 - 07:05
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