FCC saves Charter from threat of having to compete for customers US comms watchdog the FCC has voted to eliminate a key provision in Charter Communications's merger deal with Time Warner Cable that required it to expand into new markets. The commission on Monday revoked the 'overbuild' clause in the 2016 approval deal for the $78.7bn merger that brought both TWC and Bright House Networks …
All cable companies and ISPs have had to go visit hospital due to their combined erections lasting more than four months!
Consumers? Just cattle to clear out the landmines on the way to maximum profits for all the execs of the aforementioned big cable, big ISPs. It's a Win-Win*! Where is the Trump Cheer-leading Squad when these things occur and threaten to effect their services, or lack thereof in 2017 USA? Oh wait, I forgot that all Trump fans are billionaires. So, paying more for less is not an issue for them, apparently. :P
*Consumers excluded.
It seems to me that if Mr. Pai is going to keep orally pleasuring the cable and ISP industries, he should be receiving free Cinemax (colloquially known as "Skin-emax" for those of you outside the U.S.), Playboy Channel and Penthouse TV, if for no other reason than to improve his skills at his primary job.
He places folks into key positions that would be the most toxic (for us consumers) to the division to which they are now leading.
The head of the Environmental Protection Agency is a climate change denier, has sued the EPA repeatedly in the past, & is currently doing what he can to neuter it.
The head of the energy commission is trying to slap down renewables (solar, wind, wave, etc) in favor of boosting coal & frakking.
The head of education is a woman many believe can't even SPELL the word.
And then there's Ajit Pi heading the FCC & in the process of stripping out all the rules put in place to help us consumers in favor of improving the corporations' ability to screw us over instead.
The damage Trump is doing to this country will take decades after his inevitable impeachment before they even can start to scab over, much less stop festering & bleeding us as open wounds.
I would like to appollogize to the world for that man. I didn't vote for him, I'm just one more victim of his jack booted plot for world domination. Sorry about that...
I think you'll find its all quite deliberate, part of an ongoing plan based on the idea "change the culture to change the politics", i.e. don't introduce major political change until you've first modified the majority's idea of "how the world works" and "American political values".
The same thing is happening in the UK, old political groupings being undermined and new ones appearing backed, with varying degrees of openness, by breitbart-friendly billionaires.
There's plenty to blame Trump for, but Pai was appointed by Obama - because you have to appoint members of the other party to maintain the 3-2 balance of the FCC, in fact Trump has a democratic slot he needs to fill. Trump is only responsible for elevating Pai to chair, but he only had two choices unless he wanted to appoint someone new and wait for confirmation.
I believe it was within the hallowed halls of the commentards that someone from outside of the US asked "what's a GOP?". The answer was "GOP members believe that Government itself is the problem not the solution. Once they get elected they set about ensuring that's true."
Unsurprisingly they flip back and forth to whichever argument suits their needs the best.
"We need to improve service to those receiving inadequate service, but we can't if we're forced into less-profitable markets." and "Improving/Competing in certain markets is consuming resources we could be using to expand into other under-served markets".
Surely the FCC and congress are just that corrupt, right? They can't be that stupid, can they?
"The threat of government-mandated, uneconomic entry undermines the incentive for smaller operators to invest in expanding their networks to bring new and better broadband services to unserved or underserved populations," the group argued.
I guess that's why the protests are coming from the small providers then.
"The American Cable Association, whose backers include Comcast and Viacom, leads the charge, filing a letter [PDF] asking the commission to yank the overbuild requirement."
No competition. Anywhere. In urban areas you usually have the same two incumbents (or their legal successors) who have been there for decades (in the case of the telco, a century). In a lot of rural areas: nothing. The people over at B4RN have the right idea, which would work even better in the congested burbs and cities: form a coop and run your own fibre one house at a time, block by block, until you hook up to the municipal switch. The only thing we need to do at a macro level is to primary any politician who starts in about "government unfairly competing with the private sector", like they'd prefer to have Acme Security respond to their 2 AM home invasion instead of the city police (very deliberate about that example because we already know some particularly twisted politicos prefer jackbooted Blackwater mecenaries to US Marines).
Pai is a (presumably sincere) big fan of wireless, but wireless sucks and will continue to for at least another generation. Maybe OK for Netflix, but not going to cut it when serious business is on the line (oh, totally unintended pun!). What I'd like to see the Chairman start promoting are community owned cooperatives that lay and manage the last mile, offering organizing and technical assistance, so we can finally endthe monopolization of broadband by a few parasitical companies.
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