Sometimes you don’t have to be an individual in order to be a top executive jerk. Such is the case in North Carolina, where big ISP providers are trying to keep internet costs high. They’re avoiding cheaper options and keeping “high” overhead in order to pass the charges along to the customers. What jerks!
There’s been some dramatic developments in the Greenlight project happening in North Carolina. Essentially, the big US ISPs are doing everything in their power including lobbying the state to make it illegal to set up a superior ISP in the area. Now, reports are coming in that say that the big US ISPs are using push polling over the phones to get customers to side with legislation that would kill faster and cheaper broadband.
It’s a staple in every conspiracy theory against a mega corporation. A mega company that has overwhelming power in a set market place locking away any kind of innovation that would pose a threat to its business model. Right now, it’s happening with high speed internet.
For those that have missed this controversy, Daily Tech has a very nice round-up of the big controversy surrounding government initiated broadband. In a nutshell, a city in North Carolina got tired of slow internet for prices that have gone through the roof and getting even more expensive. So, the city took matters in their own hands and rolled out fibre optic cables throughout the city.
The service, currently named Greenlight Inc., approached the Time Warner Cable and Embarq, proposing they use the infrastructure for a more reliable and faster internet connection for a cheaper price. The big cable companies refused, so the government was left with all this infrastructure with no support from the big telecom companies. After doing some research, the government found out that the service would be extremely cheap to run and would give the government huge profits. So, they decided to run Greenlight Inc. themselves.
Oh no! Time Warner can’t have that! What? Healthy competition? Unheard of! In retaliation to the city for having the gumption to think they could offer a competative price on ISP service, Warner and Embarq set their sites on lobbying for legislation to ban such internet provision. So much for the free market. Read on for the whole sordid story.