
How landlords get kickbacks to lock tenants into big Internet providers - steven
https://medium.com/backchannel/the-new-payola-deals-landlords-cut-with-internet-providers-cf60200aa9e9#.mps85yo24
======
jdavis703
I lived in a building that had an exclusive deal with AT&T. Problem was they
were out of "connections," and couldn't hook me up. I only had my cellphone
hotspot for months, until I threatened to write a letter to the FCC and CPUC
about their "monopolistic" practices in my building. They got a tech out the
next day.

~~~
therein
I had the same experience in SF. AT&T tried to sell me 28Mbit for $75/month in
SoMa and the building didn't allow me to bring Monkeybrains. They just said no
and told me they had an exclusivity agreement with AT&T. Called Comcast, they
told me they can't because the address looks like a business address despite
being residential.

I called the AT&T representative they got me in touch with. I told them about
how what they are doing is illegal and they can't limit me to use this etc.

They backed down. Gave me free cable, 50% off, waived the installation fee and
came and installed it in a day. Their previous estimate for an installation
was two to three weeks.

~~~
jameskegel
You showed them that this tactic works, and have rewarded them for anti-
competitive behavior. I wish I could say you've won in this situation, but at
what cost to the rest of us?

~~~
cdubzzz
This. Reading this and the original comment is really weird. "They tried to
lock me in, but I showed them by locking myself in _faster_!"

~~~
sliverstorm
A big reason lockin is bad is because they can screw you on price, right? So
getting a fair price is, to some degree, beating lockin?

~~~
TeMPOraL
It depends on whether you only care about yourself, or think a little bit
about others in your situation too. While the poster got himself a nicer deal,
taking it only incentivizes the company to continue with this practice. After
all, per one HNer who can negotiate a better arrangement, they'll have a
hundred schmucks who will take the default.

Now, I understand that in real life, it's not an easy, abstract choice - you
have "only human" issues playing part, like being tired and wanting to get the
Internet situation sorted out ASAP. So to be clear - I'm not blaming the
poster for choosing this way. But it was a suboptimal decision - and the kind
of decision that lets schemes like this exist in the first place, so I
wouldn't call it "beating lock-in".

~~~
in_cahoots
I think that, for the vast majority of renters, getting a discount is about as
much as you can hope for. We would all love to have the time and resources to
take the telecoms to court and set a precedent, but 90% of us (probably more
in SF and among Hacker News readers) don't have the luxury of doing without
the Internet to make a stand.

------
larrysalibra
This problem has been solved other places. For example, in Hong Kong, all
operators have a statutory right of access to common areas of buildings to
provision services to customers in the building.

[http://www.ofca.gov.hk/filemanager/ofca/common/Industry/tele...](http://www.ofca.gov.hk/filemanager/ofca/common/Industry/telecom/inote0004_12e.pdf)

Incorporated Owners/Building Management: "(a) should not impose any fees,
deposit, access charge, administrative charge, escort charge or rental charge
on the Operators for the access of the building, the use of the common parts
of the building or the use of the in-building telecommunications system of the
building for the provision of services to residents or occupiers of the
building (b) should not enter into any commercial contract which will
unreasonably restrict the right of a resident or occupier or deprives a
resident or occupier of the right, to have access to the public
telecommunications services of his choice. Any such agreement is void to the
extent that it imposes such restriction;"

Would be nice to see similar legislation adopted in the USA.

~~~
JadeNB
What is the legal force of ' _should_ not' (as opposed to ' _must_ not')?

~~~
matthewmcg
The last sentence is what does the work--the landlord can enter into a
contrary agreement but it will have no legal effect.

------
ndespres
A client of mine in NYC was getting gouged for Internet service in their
office building, by the incumbent building-wide ISP which seemed to be
operated by the landlord. When it became necessary to upgrade to a higher tier
of service, their only upgrade options from the incumbent provider were $1000+
per month above market rate. When we brought in service from a competing
provider, we learned that we would have to pay the building's ISP a rental fee
for use of the "risers"\- they owned the rights to the conduit from the
basement to my clients' suite, and charged us rent at what I considered an
unfair rate on our use of it.

I think many landlords around here signed away rights on telecom services
without knowing better, or set up exclusive agreements like this and those
mentioned in the article, but this was the worst offender I've ever
encountered.

------
SurrealSoul
My apartment in the midwest provides their own internet service, which is
provided from Comcast. It's an amazing $60/mo plan for 5mb/s with a datacap of
250gb a month. I can not get "real" unlimited Comcast for $50/mo due to the
exclusivity agreement...

~~~
st3v3r
Call your state's Public Utility Commission. I cannot believe that would be
legal.

------
travelton
So happy to see an article about this issue... A few months ago, while
apartment hunting, I was thinking to myself, why are people accepting this?

Several apartments here in Austin, TX do this. In my search, I found the
biggest offenders were Greystar and Camden properties. They lock you in to
these silly "Entertainment" packages. Exclusively Time Warner, Grande, or AT&T
depending on the property.

If you're already in a contract with a provider, you'd have to break your
contract just to move in? That's ridiculous.

It's really unfortunate, as some of these properties are located in very
desirable locations. I couldn't come to terms with being forced to use a
certain provider. So I found a property in a less desirable location that
offered full competition among utilities.

~~~
heydonovan
I've experienced the same. As a consumer, what can we do? Complain on Twitter?
Leave one star reviews?

~~~
antif
I sent a referral in to the California Department of Justice/Antitrust
Division when I ran into this at an Archstone (now Equity) property in Los
Angeles. Didn't do me any good at the time, but hopefully they'll start
investigating and prosecuting if people demand it.

The company that was given exclusive rights to provide service was plainly
advertising a kickback program on their website before, but it looks like
they've cleaned that up since.

Compare this `live` page: [https://www.consolidatedsmart.com/commercial-
services](https://www.consolidatedsmart.com/commercial-services)

With this, from 2004:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20041206091748/http://consolidat...](https://web.archive.org/web/20041206091748/http://consolidatedsmart.com/property-
owners.html)

""" As property owners, managers and business people, you have a captive
audience of resident consumers... we consider it our mission to continue to
offer more profitable ways to maximize ancillary income from your residents
and customers. Consolidated is your proven resource to increase ancillary
profit with:

\- Coin Laundry Systems \- Smart Card Systems \- Satellite Television \- High
Speed Internet \- Domestic Appliances """

Turning customers into captives? Kickbacks? Sounds like the kind of work that
would violate Sherman Antitrust or RICO Act provisions.

------
MichaelBurge
I don't know about internet, but I've declined to allow them to install
satellite dishes. Their technicians will drill holes through your roof with
reckless abandon, and the tenant won't care because they'll likely be moved
out by the time the water damage really sets in from their improperly filled
hole. Not to mention you can't have a one-time installation: They want to
reinstall a new one every time so they can charge the tenant an installation
fee.

Even if they offer the installation for free, I want their barely-trained
technicians to drill holes in my property as much as a fisherman wants them to
drill holes in his boat.

~~~
amyjess
Just letting you know, the FCC prohibits landlords from disallowing satellite
dishes and broadcast antennas from being installed in areas controlled by the
tenant. You can disallow them in common areas (like the roof, which you
mentioned), sure, but the FCC will come down on you hard if they get wind of
you trying to interfere with them installing a satellite dish on their
balcony.

~~~
greenleafjacob
What about the immediate exterior of their floor / unit?

~~~
rahimnathwani
Exterior walls are common areas owned by the landlord:

"OTARD rules do not apply to common areas that are owned by a landlord, a
community association or jointly by condominium owners. These common areas may
include the roof or exterior walls of a multiple dwelling unit."

------
mey
As a member of an HOA board with 7 builds and 13 units, is there a reasonable
way to go about setting up a common conduit system so any ISP could come in?
Currently only Comcast had run lines with the original building of the
property and of course didn't trench properly so no other ISP could come in.

Has anyone done this before?

~~~
pyvpx
you designate an MPOE (minimum point of entry) and then have cabling/conduit
installed from the MPOE to units/residences/NIDs. then your HOA owns the
"inside wiring" and, with the right amount of lawyer magic, each unit can
own/control the destiny of the cable/wire/conduit that goes from the MPOE to
them.

then the real trick is getting the ISP you want to play ball. I know of a few
instances where Comcast just won't entertain the setup whatsoever.
Unfortunately, in telecommunications, largess is the name of the game...

~~~
mey
Awesome, thanks for giving me the term to further research.

There is at least one other ISP that doesn't have access to the property plus
in theory Google Fiber should be coming to town (PDX) so I expect this issue
is going to become more pressing.

------
exabrial
Google Fiber announced several months ago they were moving into my apartment
complex and construction is expected to be completed with 8-12mo. In the mean
time, I got a new job where I get to work from home, so I figured I probably
-ought- to buy internet instead of tethering.

Shortest contract I could sign to get the advertised pricing was 3 years from
the incumbent telco provider here. They offered me the "blazing" package that
had a whole 10mbit upstream.

------
atburrow
In Chicago, I'm currently living in a high rise where the fastest plan I can
get is 24 Mbps for around $80/mo. My high rise has an exclusivity contract
with AT&T U-Verse. I've spoken with AT&T reps and they can't offer any higher
speeds. I also talked to property management and they said there's nothing
they can do for me. They are locked into an exclusivity contract with AT&T for
the wires in the building.

Does anyone have experience dealing with properties who claim to have
exclusivity contracts? I talked to people at Webpass, and they've stated it is
available in my area. They'd come in and set everything up free of charge. I
don't see the downside for my building to allow Webpass to come in.

~~~
hanklazard
I'm in a high rise in Boston, similar situation but with Comcast. I also spoke
with Webpass a few days ago, they say that my building has a revenue sharing
exclusive agreement with Comcast and that Webass does not participate in
revenue sharing agreements. This feels like it should be illegal but my
sister, an attorney, did not see anything obviously wrong under current law.

I'd like to see that change.

~~~
pyvpx
in a MDU, the owner owns the common spaces. that includes risers and inside
wiring. they're free to sell, lease, or restrict the rights to whomever they
please.

just like wifi ratings for hotels have become a "thing", so must exclusivity
agreements and broadband providers when it comes to apartment/housing hunting.

it would be extremely difficult bordering on impossible, in my opinion, for a
law in the US to prohibit property owner rights in a fashion that prevents
these kind of agreements. only a "market" solution would work here. and of
course, that's very difficult on its own.

------
hNewsLover99
Does anyone know if any large-scale landlord is also receiving user data as
well as cash from its ISPs? EULAs are broad enough to let any ISP, website or
app provider to do anything with customer data that they want. Landlords could
already being treated as "partners" and thus negotiating for and receiving
user data in order "to offer goods and services" and "to improve the "UX". Is
this a fair price to extract from a residential "captive audience?"

~~~
_RPM
Very interesting you say this. I thought this was happening in my apartment
after being up for a couple days. SSL connections would keep getting broken
with resources loading over HTTP, I thought that I was getting MITM'd by
property management and injecting advertisements. It would be a pretty good
idea.

~~~
Something1234
So what was actually happening?

~~~
_RPM
I'm not sure. I ended up getting some sleep and then kind of just accepted
that it might be happening. Sites would load a 1x1 pixel. It may have been my
Windows machine was infected. I haven't seen this happen on my Linux machine
yet. It's worth noting that I have since moved out of that apartment.

------
mikeash
In most of the US, you have a choice of one or two wired broadband ISPs
anyway. I imagine most renters don't care about competition, since they know
they wouldn't have much of a choice no matter where they go, and if they're in
an area with two choices, they're likely to be equally crappy.

ISP competition is important, but I see this as a symptom, not a cause. Fix
the root problem, and people might start caring about ISP choice. Once renters
care about ISP choice, big landlords will fall into line.

~~~
chimeracoder
> ISP competition is important, but I see this as a symptom, not a cause. Fix
> the root problem, and people might start caring about ISP choice. Once
> renters care about ISP choice, big landlords will fall into line

Depends on where you live. In NYC, Verizon promised to provide fiber to the
entire city several years back (and there is currently a massive legal dispute
with the city because they've fallen _incredibly_ short of delivering on
that)[0]. It's particularly apalling because Verizon didn't even have to build
out most of the fiber - the city _already had_ a dark fiber network covering
large portions of the city.

I'm one of the unlucky ones. Verizon has fiber running right in front of my
building - other buildings on the block already have Fios. However, Verizon
refuses to provide Internet to my building unless they can also provide TV
service as well[1]. The landlord has given Time Warner Cable the exclusive
rights to provide TV service in my building, so that means that I'm stuck with
only one choice, even though it's technically a "competitive" market.

So, this issue is both a symptom and an exacerbating cause pf ISP non-
competition. At least in NYC, exclusivity agreements make it much easier for
the local monopolies[2] to pretend that they aren't blocking competition, when
in reality they've carefully drawn lines around their territories and have a
"gentleman's agreement" not to encroach on each others'.

If landlords didn't (or couldn't) receive kickbacks like these, it'd be much
harder for them to maintain this illusion.

[0]
[http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20150713/BLOGS04/150719...](http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20150713/BLOGS04/150719982/de-
blasio-administration-goes-after-verizon-for-failing-to-deliver-fios)

[1] This is not hypothetical; I've called up their offices more than once and
confirmed that this is the blocking step before they schedule a date to hook
up the building.

[2] TWC, Comcast, and Optimum have exclusivity rights to buildings all across
the city.

~~~
rayiner
Cities using TV franchises to block competition and extract tithes is a huge
part of the problem. Verizon wanted to wire up Baltimore with FiOS. Baltimore
refused to give them a TV license. The economics of FiOS don't really work out
without TV service, so nobody got FiOS except a few luxury buildings that were
easy to wire up.

~~~
chimeracoder
> Cities using TV franchises to block competition and extract tithes is a huge
> part of the problem

I can't speak to Baltimore, but in NYC, it's the landlord that's responsible
for this, not the city.

> The economics of FiOS don't really work out without TV service

I can sort of buy that argument in areas where they have to do all the
buildout themselves, but in New York, Verizon was handed the existing fiber
network that already ran past people's doors. Then Verizon has the gall to
claim that they've fulfilled their obligations of wiring the city because
'everyone has fiber running past their door', even where they did literally
_no work_ and simply sat on the fiber that others had already built for them.

~~~
rayiner
> even though they did literally no work and simply sat on the fiber that
> others had already built for them.

Source? Verizon has stated it invested $3.5 billion and ran 15,000 miles of
fiber in New York.

~~~
c_c_c
Do you enjoy Verizon press releases? "Miles ran", "houses passed". Industry
doublespeak. NYC residents invested those billions via rate hikes the PUC
granted to Verizon!! It was subsidized even though Verizon claims otherwise.
And they didn't deliver.

[http://www1.nyc.gov/assets/doitt/downloads/pdf/verizon-
audit...](http://www1.nyc.gov/assets/doitt/downloads/pdf/verizon-audit.pdf)

[https://www3.dps.ny.gov/pscweb/WebFileRoom.nsf/Web/B849A0203...](https://www3.dps.ny.gov/pscweb/WebFileRoom.nsf/Web/B849A020314983A3852575D900530827/%24File/pr09054.pdf)

[http://www1.nyc.gov/office-of-the-mayor/news/415-15/de-
blasi...](http://www1.nyc.gov/office-of-the-mayor/news/415-15/de-blasio-
administration-releases-audit-report-verizon-s-citywide-fios-implementation)

~~~
rayiner
I trust public company press releases that commit to concrete numbers: there
is a cottage industry of plaintiffs' lawyers that bring securities class
actions for material misstatements of financial information.

NY residents didn't invest anything in fiber. Verizon got rate hikes because
it has been losing billions of dollars a year in NY. Nationwide, Verizon's
wireline profit margin is in the low single digits--it's utterly ridiculous to
say they're receiving a "subsidy" in the form of above-market monopoly prices.

~~~
chimeracoder
> NY residents didn't invest anything in fiber

As I mentioned in my original comment, New York already _had_ fiber networks
covering large parts of the city. Verizon was able to access these, which
already "ran past" many buildings in the city (including mine), and still
never bothered to hook up those buildings _as they had already agreed to_.

------
rconti
Not at all the same, but I'm in a house in Redwood City and it's frustrating
that part of the city has broadband choice (you can get Wave/Astound OR
Comcast) but my part doesn't. I don't even really understand why -- I don't
get what part of the infrastructure is owned by who, how it's decided, and how
to push for change.

There are local providers such as Sonic who are rolling out Gigabit in certain
parts of the Bay Area, and who insist "the more people in your neighborhood
that sign up, the more likely we are to bring FTTH to your neighborhood!" but
there's no way of judging which one is the more "likely" bet, which is
frustrating.

I wish there was someone I could just throw a couple thousand dollars at to
solve the problem, but no doubt it's vastly, vastly more expensive for them
than that.

~~~
sseveran
I live in Redwood City and my building offers both AT&T and Comcast. The last
place I lived in sunnyvale offered 4 different tv/broadband providers. You
should certainly ask what a complex offers when considering where to live.

------
pc86
> _And then they’ll add little clauses saying “if any part of this agreement
> turns out to be illegal, you can cut out that portion of the agreement and
> the rest of it will stand.”_

As will every attorney in the world for any contract. I don't think I've ever
seen a contract _without_ this.

Comcast does enough ridiculous and illegal stuff, we do not need to reframe
standard practices as bad simply because it's Comcast that's doing it.

~~~
Qwertious
To quote the Steam ToS:

>TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, NEITHER VALVE, VALVE EU,
THEIR LICENSORS, NOR THEIR AFFILIATES, NOR ANY OF VALVE’S OR VALVE EU’S
SERVICE PROVIDERS, SHALL BE LIABLE IN ANY WAY FOR LOSS OR DAMAGE OF ANY KIND
RESULTING [...]

Note the phrase "to the maximum extent permitted by applicable law" \- that
means that if a section is illegal, then it's not to the extent of including
_that_ section. It's pretty commonly used and it's actually pretty nifty,
although I'd appreciate it more if companies didn't try to claim bloody
_everything_ with it attached.

------
jakobegger
In Austria there's a law (might be an EU regulation) that requires the
formerly state-owned phone company to rent the "last mile" cables to other
companies. Made internet a lot cheaper (16Mbit ADSL costs around 25€ per
month).

However, for some reason, private cable companies do not need to share their
infrastructure, so if you want faster Internet you are still stuck with the
local cable company.

~~~
pyvpx
this is called local-loop unbundling. there are various "hysterical raisins"
(aka historical reasons) that cable companies are exempt from this regulatory
requirement. the main one being their infrastructure was not publicly funded
at any time (ignoring tax breaks and a bevy of other direct/indirect public
subsidies)

there is also BSA or bitstream access where, in the case of DSL, the ATM
circuit is provisioned and carried by the incumbent and then handed off to the
competitive provider in a central location. of course, this isn't all that
useful since it's still the incumbent who has to provision the circuit,
maintain the copper and equipment, and generally muck up the customer
experience despite not being the labelled provider.

------
cgy1
My last apartment complex offered 100Mbit fiber for $50/month. My current
apartment complex offers CenturyLink gigabit fiber. I guess I lucked out.

~~~
dawnerd
My apartment has just about every ISP in the area including locally run fiber
that runs 60/month for gigabit. I actually laugh when I see fliers from the
other companies offering "blazing fast" internet for 100+

------
gist
> For existing buildings, stop companies from being able to sign contractual
> provisions limiting access to inside wiring. Make it illegal for landlords
> to get any form of side payment whatsoever for cutting off our choice of
> ISPs.

Sure easy fix. Just void existing contracts that were valid when written. And
this is coming from a lawyer no less.

~~~
abjx
Are you suggesting that the legislature cannot pass a law that voids part or
all of a contract that was valid when written?

~~~
gist
Honestly do you really think that this rises to that level of government
intervention in business practices of private companies?

~~~
abjx
I thought you might have meant that a statute could not affect an existing
contract. I had never heard of that before, but governments sometimes
compensate people who suffer losses because of legislative action, so there
might be something to it.

I don't want the government to interfere much at all in private affairs, and I
don't think "there should be a law against" everything I don't like. I am not
sure in this case, but conspiracies to prevent third parties (tenants and
ISPs) from conducting business are pernicious. I would never enter into such
an agreement myself.

------
jsmith0295
At least in Ohio, the pricing is all the same regardless of whether or not
you're in an apartment. So it's really more like you're selecting an Internet
provider as a part of the renting process.

My concern with having shared utilities is you'll have to wait for some
underfunded bueracracy to fix things if they break, which is likely to take
even longer than Time Warner. Currently, WOW! and AT&T are actually quite
quick about this where I live.

In my opinion, if you were to regulate it, it should just be to prevent the
price gouging.

------
upofadown
>And these shenanigans will only stop when cities and national leaders require
that every building have neutral fiber/wireless facilities that make it easy
for residents to switch services when they want to.

There is no particular reason to limit this to multi-tenant buildings or wired
broadband. The problem of monopoly last mile access comes up in different
contexts. The same legal solution should work for most any situation.

------
foota
I've always thought it would be fairly lucrative to offer to act as an isp
(w/o lock in) for an apartment complex.

~~~
TeMPOraL
We had this idea with my co-worker the other day, about becoming an apartment
complex ISP, getting a high-bandwidth connection to the whole building and
wiring every apartment with fiber optic links. Then, we'd put a server farm in
the basement and offer "Internet + compute services". Like VPSes for techies,
and OnLive equivalent for gamers, except the roundtrip for the latter would be
down to the basement and back up, instead of down to Australia, through China
and back.

The grander idea is to have apartment buildings with their own basement
clouds, where tenants could off-load computational needs. Sounds like a much
more energy-efficient solution than person having either an overpowered device
or a low-power one in constant connection with clouds on the other side of the
planet. Moreover, this idea was part of a general brainstorming about ways to
dumb the cloud back down, so that it's distributed compute-on-demand
infrastructure, and not the shitty third-party data silos it's now.

After reading the comments here I realized that while my friend and I would
have the best of intentions, if ISPs in general were to be allowed to do such
a thing, they'd fuck it up exactly in the way they do in this case.

~~~
foota
Building an admittedly really cool sounding highly distributed cloud platform
hardly sounds like dumbing the cloud back down :p

~~~
TeMPOraL
"Dumbing down" in the sense like ISPs are supposed to be "dumb pipes". I'd
like the cloud to be a dynamically allocated compute resource - i.e. the end-
user rents out computing power and provides both the data and the code that
runs against it (which may or may not be licensed from a third party). The
goal is to separate out the code providers and compute providers, and to keep
the user always in control of their data.

------
curun1r
A note to anyone from Webpass who might be reading this:

Please bring back the map showing the buildings where Webpass is installed...I
looked recently and couldn't find it. Or, if this is too confusing now that
you have many more installed buildings, please provide a list.

When I selected my last apartment, I knew I wanted to try Webpass. So I
started there, pulled up the map of buildings that had it installed and
limited my search to those buildings. Given how much better the service is
than Comcast/AT&T, I can see a lot of people who work out of a home office
wanting to do something similar.

You could even try to work with the buildings that have allowed you in to post
apartment listings on your site...seems like a win-win-win (more webpass
customers, faster filling of vacancies in webpass buildings, residents get
better internet.)

------
ohio2016
A few years back, an Ohio blogger was complaining loudly about the practice of
"slamming" utilities (among other things) by The Connor Group. The blogger got
sued for defamation.

------
Dotnaught
Interesting how the FCC will intercede to prevent physical gatekeeping by
property owners but doesn't do much to prevent the virtual gatekeeping
practiced by platform owners like Apple.

~~~
jjawssd
Whatever it takes for us to connect to Silicon Valley

------
hammock
So many things wrong with this argument. The biggest mistake is the idea that
there is no competition. Of course there is, the telecoms are still competing
with each other to get these agreements with the landlords.

Still the renter lacks a choice right? Not so fast. If internet is so
important to you, as OP tries to make the case with questionable statistics
near the top, then choose a building with internet you like.

The world is not Burger King where everything is have it your way. There are a
finite number of Oreo flavors and yet no one is writing blog posts demanding
their congressman do something about it.

~~~
dhimes
It is illegal for Oreos to make it so that Keebler cannot be sold.

~~~
hammock
It's not illegal for a restaurant to exclusively offer Oreos and not Keebler.
We are talking about renters.

~~~
dhimes
It is illegal for Oreos to make it so. We are talking about goods
distributors.

~~~
hammock
Coke and Pepsi exclusive agreements with restaurants and other venues are like
the oldest ones in the book.

~~~
dhimes
Agree. However, they bid for them- unless it's a chain owned by one of them. I
would hope that if they unfairly used some leverage or provided kickbacks to
the restaurant companies then there would be legal consequences.

 _Sure, a landlord can’t enter into an exclusive agreement granting just one
ISP the right to provide Internet access service to an MDU, but a landlord can
refuse to sign agreements with anyone other than Big Company X, in exchange
for payments labeled in any one of a zillion ways._

So we can either stop it now or not. It's our society. We can make the laws to
help or hurt. Perhaps the landlords _should_ be allowed to skim. And gas,
electricity and water, as well. But I would vote against it.

------
vaadu
BS. Nobody is forced to live in these apartments. If you are looking to rent
and this is important to you then rent someplace else.

~~~
dublinben
What if all landlords in your area have independently reached these
exclusivity agreements with a single provider? What choice do you have then?

~~~
sokoloff
Rent one of their units under such an agreement

Rent in some other area

Buy a place

I can't tell if the original article is legitimate journalism, a submarine
piece for Webpass, or a bit of both.

~~~
st3v3r
So no real choice, then.

------
zeveb
> I live in an apartment. Chances are good that you do, too: Tens of millions
> of Americans live in apartment buildings, and in medium-to-large cities
> these structures account for between a quarter and a half of all housing
> units.

No, if less than half of Americans live in apartments then chances _aren 't_
good that that a random reader does.

> More people are renting these days than ever before.

Not true, according to [http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2016/article/the-life-of-
america...](http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2016/article/the-life-of-american-
workers-in-1915.htm) (which was posted just today): 'If you were alive in
1915, chances are you rented your house or apartment; the ratio of renters to
homeowners was about 4 to 1 in 1920. In contrast, by 2004, 69 percent of
American families owned rather than rented their residence, although that
proportion slipped to 64 percent by the fourth quarter of 2015.'

So _far fewer_ Americans are renting than ever before.

I don't disagree that it's poor behaviour for landlords to grant monopolies to
ISPs. But folks _do_ have a choice in where they live, and it seems to me that
monopoly-free units are likely to rent for more.

~~~
Retra
"Good chances" doesn't mean 50/50\. It doesn't really mean anything. It
vaguely means that the author is welling to bet on it, and smart people have
bet on far less than that.

>So far fewer Americans are renting than ever before.

In 1915, there were ~100M people in the US. At 20% homeowners, that gives 80M
renters. 36% of the current 300M+ population gives > 80M renters. Therefore,
there are more renters today than there were in 1915.

------
gist
Ok here we go again nobody is allowed to make any money and everything is
unfair and capitalism is bad and so on.

In practice if an apartment makes money by way of this "kickback" it also
offsets the rent that they have to charge the tenants of that building.
Similar to airlines, assuming that if one charge is reduced or eliminated it
won't show up in another area (baggage fees) or in the case of a building
reduced maintenance or services doesn't take into account how real businesses
operate. There is nothing wrong with a business making money and in fact a
business that is profitable is also good for it's customers. A business that
loses money is not. The "peanut gallery" (people who write blog posts and
comment on this but don't actually even own their own business) aren't in a
good position to know all the ins and outs.

That said, sure some businesses rip people off (if you want to call it that)
but don't assume that is the default case.

Edit: Perhaps this attorney (at Harvard no less) could write an article about
the 'legal tax' on society as a result of lack of competition in the legal
market. The cost to consumers for that (since it's passed along in product
costs) is almost certainly way greater than whatever the 'vig' is for higher
priced cable television or internet service.

~~~
Gracana
There's no incentive for that profit to be passed on as reduced rates for the
tenants.

~~~
ikeboy
Competition.

~~~
pavel_lishin
Only a factor if there is a significant number of vacant properties that need
to be filled with people, which is not the case in places like SF and NYC.

~~~
gist
Well if that is the case then the price they could charge would be infinite
and they would simply keep raising it.

Even in a competitive market, specifically the ones you have mentioned, the
rent charged is based on supply and demand and the competition. If not what
prevents them from doubling the rent?

~~~
ikeboy
To be fair to the original point, one could argue that sticker price of rent
is more sticky than the imputed cost, and so this is a sneaky way of raising
rent that doesn't reduce demand as much.

But that's a more complicated case to make than "kickbacks therefore bad".

~~~
gist
> so this is a sneaky way of raising rent that doesn't reduce demand as much.

You could say a similar thing about laundry room charges where there isn't any
competition. And also no specific disclosure as well (unless you ask)
therefore is that sneaky? What I am saying is non disclosure does not mean
"sneaky".

But another point is this: If enough buildings are doing this, such that an
article like the parent post is being written, it then becomes something that
a careful apartment shopper should or would consider when pricing apartments
"total cost of rental".

You know if you buy an expensive luxury car they don't specifically point out
that you will have to pay fees to keep your warranty current (Porsche,
Mercedes as two examples). So is that sneaky? After all BMW (as a high end
competitor) includes all maintenance.

