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Papas Fritas writes:
"Time Warner Cable Inc. has stirred anger over its hike in subscription rates for customers and its efforts to extract hefty fees from rivals to air the L.A. Dodgers channel. Now Meg James reports at the LA Times that the city of Los Angeles has sued the cable giant, alleging Time Warner Cable stiffed the city on franchise fees over four years through 2011. The city seeks nearly $10 million in fees, money it said could have helped ease its budget problems during the financial crisis. 'Time Warner owes L.A.'s taxpayers millions of dollars for the privilege of having its franchise,' says City Attorney Michael Feuer. 'This is a day where we are standing up and saying enough is enough.' The 24-page lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, contends that Time Warner Cable "blatantly refused to live up to its obligations to the city" (PDF) to pay franchise fees to operate its cable network over city-owned rights of way while collecting more than $500 million a year from customers in the city. The city is seeking $9.7 million from Time Warner Cable which includes $2.5 million in franchise and PEG (public, educational and government channel) fees and support for 2008 and 2009, plus another $7.2 million owed for 2010 and 2011.
The lawsuit comes just a few weeks after Time Warner Cable alerted its Southern California customers that it planned to hike rates by an average of about 6% a month for homes that are not covered by a promotional package. Time Warner Cable, in a statement, denied the allegation that it had cheated the city. 'As a major job creator, tax contributor and service provider in the city of Los Angeles, Time Warner Cable is an active and responsible corporate citizen,' the company said in a statement. 'We are disappointed the city has chosen to bring this action, which we strongly believe is without merit.' Jonathan Kramer, a Los Angeles-based telecom attorney and a member of the California chapter of the National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors, said it was 'inevitable that [more] of these types of lawsuits will be filed' and that other cities are considering similar action, but that 'Los Angeles is first to pull the trigger.' 'It's the devil you know,' Kramer said. 'We know Time Warner. But Comcast is much more aggressive when it comes to pushing back (against) local jurisdictions.'"
(Score: 4, Insightful) by edIII on Sunday March 16 2014, @11:30PM
That's a damn good question. These monopolies are tiresome and never good for the consumer. If the city owns everything and gives easements, then any qualifying corporation should be entitled to such easement.
Obviously not everyone can play. Suitability should include a couple hundred million dollar bond (proportional to the amount of easements) with the state so in the case where a corporation cannot continue the funds exist to remove their infrastructure from the city and scrap it. They can keep the leftovers from the bond. Interest from the bond goes towards specific expenses of the corporation, those being the requirement for operating fuel contracts to keep a minimum amount of infrastructure alive during natural disasters no different then telco being on preferred backup. The corporation is responsible for the share of maintenance on the easements. More players, the more distributed the maintenance costs.
In this way there would never be an argument about whether Google could come into LA. They could put up the bond in two seconds flat and start putting their infrastructure in. The bonds protect the citizens, a suitable barrier to entry is put up to protect citizens from abandoned infrastructure costs, and more competition can exist.
It's not like we don't have the space. We could have literally dozens of providers all the way to the last mile and not fill up the physical infrastructure in which all the cabling passes through.
While we are at it, the same should be done for the power grid. It shouldn't be owned or operated by a corporation either. It should be state run. The state controls all the infrastructure and the measurements of how much power is being consumed by a property or generated by it . The state merely operates an energy market where a homeowner is just as capable of selling their excess solar energy on the market as a megacorp operating power plants that produce megawatts. A transaction cost, minimum with a percentage cap, for each sale helps pay for the infrastructure.
It's never made sense to me, other than corruption and malfeasance, to allow any corporation the monopoly over critical infrastructure. It was a recipe for abuse, and we are enjoying the consequences now.
Net Neutrality would be a dead issue if there were dozens of different local providers for Internet. All it would take is one to remain a common carrier and everyone would flock to that one. You can only force people into the a la carte pricing the greedy carriers want. Choice will eliminate that.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.