
How AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast are working together to screw you - c0nsumer
http://www.timmins.net/2013/12/11/how-att-verizon-and-comcast-are-working-together-to-screw-you-by-discontinuing-landline-service/
======
gxs
Business Idea: Make it easy for Joe Schmoe's like myself to take action
against issues like this.

I hate the monopoly the cable company has in my area. I hate that my parents
were paying AT&T $50/mo. for a 1Mbps connection because we hadn't looked at
their bill in a year and because getting cable in their building is a pain in
the ass. I hate these new early upgrade programs the wireless carriers are
rolling that are a plain rip off (give us your phone and pay full price for
your upgrade but in payments). I hate that if my phone miscalculates my usage
and I go over by even 1MB, Verizon charges me $15 that month.

I'm all for free market enterprise, but recognize (much like Adam Smith) that
it doesn't work for all sectors of the economy.

With that said, I am a busy working professional trying to make it in this
dog-eat-dog world. I'm well educated, have the means, but even for me, I
haven't a clue as to what to do about all the things I just ranted about.

I don't have the solution, but I hope someone finds a way to make it easy for
me to contribute to the democratic process.

~~~
rndmize
> Business Idea: Make it easy for Joe Schmoe's like myself to take action
> against issues like this.

I do believe that's called a PAC. Lets be frank though - how much money are
you going to get if you put together an anti-telecom PAC? I'm gonna take a
guess and say it'll be an order of magnitude less than what AT&T and Comcast
are willing to spend purely in campaign donations, in addition to lobbyists
etc.

What's more - AT&T and Comcast will continue to do this year after year. Much
like we've seen no lack of SOPA-lookalikes cropping up every few months in the
house or senate, this isn't going to be some "donate $20 now and all these
problems will go away!" thing. It's going to be a battle of attrition, unless
you do something on the very drastic side (I hear some Scandinavian countries
have government controlled/deployed fiber and the ISPs all compete to provide
service over it; if there's better alternatives I'm all ears).

~~~
001sky
_how much money are you going to get if you put together an anti-telecom PAC_

what about free labour? that's what the op seems to be hinting at. people want
to take action. but they need ROI on that <action>. They need scale,
distribution, co-ordination. etc.

your other points are good ones, especially the persistence and duration of
entities like the telco's on influencing legislators over their entire
careers, etc. that persistence and their deep pockets make them formidable
opponents. for sure.

~~~
joelhaus
I see obstacle #1 as raising awareness. While everyone hates their cable bill,
it's not obvious that there are viable alternatives to the current structure
of the industry. It also doesn't help that the current structure benefits most
major TV media outlets (i.e. Viacom, Comcast/NBC, Fox and ABC/Disney).

I use this subreddit as an outlet to vent/post relevant articles:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/bandwidth/](http://www.reddit.com/r/bandwidth/)

There are also useful lessons to be learned from history; particularly, MCI's
fight against Bell System monopoly. There's a good documentary about the
breakup called Long Distance Warrior[1].

[1] [http://chicagotonight.wttw.com/2011/09/21/long-distance-
warr...](http://chicagotonight.wttw.com/2011/09/21/long-distance-warrior)

------
PhantomGremlin
I hate to be Debbie Downer, but --- this battle has already been lost. Not
just this battle, this war has already been lost.

Go ahead, write a letter. But you won't. Maybe, just maybe, you'll make the
effort fire off an _angry_ email. Yeah, right. That will really accomplish
something. Err, no it won't.

Don't like what I said? Neither do I! But, tell me, in specific, concrete
terms, what can "the little guy" do about this? Nothing, except for opting
out. E.g. using Ooma instead of ILEC dialtone. Use Netflix instead of a cable
subscription. Big deal. You're still buying IP dialtone from the oligopoly.
And the number of cord cutters is still relatively insignificant.

~~~
pikachu_is_cool
> Use Netflix instead of a cable subscription.

No, using Netflix just feeds these bureaucracies more money. Torrent
everything that you can, and encourage others to do so. It really is the only
way to take these horrible entities down.

If you want to support the content creators, then give them a direct donation
after torrenting the content instead of letting the record companies or what
have you get its dirty hands on a huge chunk of it.

~~~
yoloswaggins
Ah yes, the ol' honor system. It's certainly worked on a large scale before.
[nope]

~~~
pikachu_is_cool
There's no point in arguing against it. It's going to happen eventually
whether you like it or not. Better to prepare now.

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gergles
Additionally, they are all rolling out DPI ad-serving platforms that sniff
your traffic (and I'm sure also sell it to any .gov with a dime) -- AT&T being
the current worst offender by charging a $30 a month penalty if you try to opt
out of it. (See www.dslreports.com/shownews/ATT-Offers-70-1-Gbps-in-Austin-
With-a-Big-Catch-126969)

~~~
salient
$30 a month if you opt out of not wanting AT&T to spy on your traffic? Surely
that's unconstitutional/illegal and worthy of a class action lawsuit?

~~~
Ricapar
It's all in the wording.

You're not paying $30 extra to opt-out. They're giving you a $30 discount for
you to hand over your data.

It's the same way gas stations get away with "charging extra" for credit. Most
credit card vendor agreements do not allow the merchant to pass along the 3%
or whatever fee to the customer. So what the gas stations do instead is give
you a "cash discount".

~~~
pekk
This kind of spying should not be allowed, period.

~~~
yoloswaggins
It's not spying if the customer agreed to hand over the information.

That's why you have to read contracts very carefully.

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nitrogen
A comment on the article:

    
    
      doug says:	
      December 11, 2013 at 11:51 pm	
    
      I was led to your site by Hacker News. But no matter
      what you have to say, I refuse to read white and
      fluorescent green text on a black background. Get real.
    

Way to show some class, Doug, whoever you are. A shining example of Hacker
News wisdom and congeniality.

There are plenty of technical options for overriding a site's stylesheet. I'd
much rather have this jarring white and green on black than an AJAX-loaded
JavaScript-only "app" that takes a week and a half to load a few paragraphs of
text.

~~~
shawabawa3
Oh god...the next step to this is "like if hacker news sent your here" on
youtube videos.

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marincounty
This is an important story. Comcast in particular is already a monopoly, and
just might be the most hated company in the history of man--by customers and
their own employees.

~~~
lukeqsee
"Civil" disobedience? If they are truly this hated (and they seem to be), why
hasn't anything been done? What's holding people back? Internet/TV addiction?

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doctorshady
I sent mail to my state's public utilities commission and the FCC about this
very issue. AT&T's lobbying efforts being what they are, please take some time
to do it yourself too.

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javajosh
Can someone please write a TL;DR for me? I sense that this is an important
issue but my eyes seem to glaze over trying to figure out what's really going
on here. The accusation is that AT&T is lobbying to attain a monopoly to share
with Comcast, but the gist of the move is quite hazy. Thanks.

------
mathattack
Very heavy statements. "They are working together to screw you."

Actually, they're only going to screw the very narrows subset of rural users
who don't have access to competitive wireless or internet options.

If your only choice is Landline or Nothing, then this is a big deal.

If you have cable companies, landline broadband, wifi, and other broadband
providers fighting for your service, this is a much less big deal. It's stupid
scare mongering.

The only service to be slightly worried about is in emergencies. Your landline
phone plugged in to the wall will usually still take a call if there's a power
outage since the switching station has backup energy. But that's only if
everyone isn't calling at once.

~~~
kvinnako
"If you have cable companies, landline broadband, wifi, and other broadband
providers fighting for your service, this is a much less big deal. It's stupid
scare mongering"

I live in a suburban area. Not too far from metropolitan. and close to
(5miles) to a major ivy league university. Lets see my options: verizon dsl
(3mbs to 6mbs) - 54$ optimum - (15mbs but I barely get 1mbps at peak) 54$ soon
to be 60$ wifi - sprint (4g/3g speeds, can say I get around 1 to 2 mbps)- 54$
for 4GB.

dslextreme (3mbs) for 24.99$

For me the best value for my money is dslextreme. If that option is taken
away, then I don't really have much chioce because very one else is colluded
and price is fixed in some private inter company meetings. So you are the one
without any real facts just discrediting the real issues the article points
out.

~~~
mathattack
Is 4 choices not enough? The answer is more competitors and more technologies.

~~~
kvinnako
No, these choices are not really competitors for each other. I don't mind
having only 2 choices if they were just comcast and optimum or at&t and
verizon. I think you are confusing between choices and competitors. dslextreme
is a competitor to verizon and thats what will keep verizon delivering better
service. But if verizon and optimum are the only choices (with prices fixed) ,
none will work to make it better for the consumer. And lack of competition is
the reason why these companies are jacking up prices.

------
knodi
Can we spam our reps emails, until they do something? If they get 1k emails a
day and can't find read any other email, I say thats a good start.

~~~
wavefunction
You're going to DOS their offices then. Just write a nice, single email free
from spelling or grammatical errors. I've started corresponding with the
offices of my congressmen a few months ago, writing a letter whenever some
issue comes up that matters to me.

I lay out my case for why the issue is important to me, then illustrate the
importance of the issue to larger US society, then I ask what sort of actions
or policies the politician is going to take on the issue.

I have gotten a response every single time and while some of the responses
have tended towards the more formal, "blow off" type of response, I can tell
that someone at the office is at least reading what I've sent them and
responding.

------
bluedino
Are there any technical reasons that they want to drop landlines? Any benefits
like the cable providers dropping analog channels?

~~~
simoncion
TFA indicates that there's no technical reason. You really should read it.
It's a good read.

------
yoloswaggins
I like the message but dear god that website looks like the Neopets store
front I made when I was 10.

~~~
simoncion
I deeply appreciate the no-nonsense, no-fluff, high-contrast layout of that
website. _shrug_ to each his own, I guess.

~~~
ByronT
How about the dancing Pikachu favicon?

~~~
super-serial
It dances?!?

Damn you Google Chrome. I thought of switching back to Firefox due to privacy
concerns, but got accustomed to Chrome's dev tools. But then this happens...
that might be the final straw.

------
zw123456
Here's a business idea, start a company that competes with AT&T, Verizon and
Comcast, offering better service at a lower price? If they are as awful as
everyone says, that should be easy I would think. Shrug.

~~~
craigching
Just ... wow. Easy? Man, I don't even know where to start with a response to
this stupidity.

~~~
vinceguidry
Pretty sure he's being sarcastic.

~~~
zw123456
Of course, and am now I am hell banned for it.

~~~
vinceguidry
You're not hell-banned. Your post was just downvoted.

~~~
zw123456
It was a stupid smart alec comment on my part. I need to improve my posts.

