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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
The New York State Public Service Commission (PSC) today voted to revoke its approval of Charter Communications' 2016 purchase of Time Warner Cable (TWC). The PSC said it is ordering Charter to sell the former TWC system that it purchased in New York, and it's "bring[ing] an enforcement action in State Supreme Court to seek additional penalties for Charter's past failures and ongoing noncompliance."
Charter has repeatedly failed to meet deadlines for broadband expansions that were required in exchange for merger approval, state officials said. The PSC has steadily increased the pressure on Charter with fines and threats, but Charter never agreed to changes demanded by state officials.
As a result of today's vote, "Charter is ordered to file within 60 days a plan with the Commission to ensure an orderly transition to a successor provider(s)," the PSC's announcement said. "During the transition process, Charter must continue to comply with all local franchises it holds in New York State and all obligations under the Public Service Law and the Commission regulations. Charter must ensure no interruption in service is experienced by customers, and, in the event that Charter does not do so, the Commission will take further steps, including seeking injunctive relief in Supreme Court in order to protect New York consumers."
[...] Charter has denied failing to meet obligations to expand broadband service. But as we've previously written, state officials say that Charter is trying to count locations that it was already required to serve as part of franchise agreements toward its merger commitments.
[...] Charter's statement did not say whether it will appeal the PSC decision, or whether it will comply with the PSC's order to sell the former Time Warner Cable system in New York. We asked Charter those questions today and will update this story if we get a response.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Monday July 30 2018, @04:22PM (3 children)
I perceive you to be based outside USA. What you hear, believe, "know" about USA is only part of the story, and quite biased by "news" media, advertising, etc. The Spirit of the American Revolution is still quite strong in many of us. There have been many stories of neighborhoods, towns and even cities where people coordinated and built out their own fiber and mesh networks. You just need a good, inspiring leader. Someone who can sell them on the benefits, get (or provide) financing, and make it happen.
In my area, and perhaps US-wide, we buy our electricity from company X, but pay the local electric company a fee to use their wires. I would prefer the wires be owned by society. Define that however you wish. The current (sorry, bad pun) wire-owning company is pretty good, but not cost efficient, IMHO, but I'm not a power-line EE, so what do I know. For instance, the old story / argument about burying power lines: I know many places they buried lines and there have been NO problems for more than 30 years. Cynic in me wonders if they're afraid of losing business / work repairing storm / car crash damage...
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday July 30 2018, @04:34PM (1 child)
Yes, indeed.
I'm quite happy to be proven wrong. Perchance, do you have some linkies, thank you in advance?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by organgtool on Monday July 30 2018, @08:36PM
Here is a good article [arstechnica.com] that has a lot of information about municipal broadband.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Monday July 30 2018, @06:45PM
c0lo has requested links. I don't know how inspired you might be to provide such links - but - if you do some searches, you WILL find that many of those projects have been challenged in court by commercial interests. The theory behind the challenges seems to be something like this: "This is our monopoly area, and the towns and cities are imposing on our monopoly. No matter that we haven't bothered to develop any infrastructure for the town, they are still imposing on our monopoly. City and town owned infrastructure needs to be outlawed!"
Yes, there are stories like you cite, but there are almost as many discouraging stories to compare them to.