6 ms·

Don’t Blame Big Cable. It’s Local Governments That Choke Broadband Competition

38 points by taylorbuley 13y ago

ceejayoz 13y ago
Local governments heavily lobbied by Big Cable, in many cases... and outright sued by them when they attempt to do things like municipal broadband/wifi.
- r00fus 13y ago
  And in states like PA, the state government takes bribes from Comcast and slaps down municipalities that try to shake the boat. The Feds (if the corporatists continue to entrench power) It will take big players like Google - and the increasing importance of access to data - to pry open this decades-old corruption scheme.
sc68cal 13y ago
I'd strongly suggest looking into the backgrounds of the authors. One is a lobbyist and another is a former politico for Republican candidates. Berin Szoka: http://techfreedom.org/people/berin-szoka http://techfreedom.org/people/berin-szoka >Berin Szoka is the President of TechFreedom. Previously, he was a Senior Fellow and the Director of the Center for Internet Freedom at The Progress & Freedom Foundation. Before joining PFF, he was an Associate in the Communications Practice Group at Latham & Watkins LLP, where he advised clients on regulations affecting the Internet and telecommunications industries. Before joining Latham's Communications Practice Group, Szoka practiced at Lawler Metzger Milkman & Keeney, LLC, a boutique telecommunications law firm in Washington, and clerked for the Hon. H. Dale Cook, Senior U.S. District Judge for the Northern District of Oklahoma. >TechFreedom is supported by foundations as well as web companies and broadband providers (including Google). Jonathan Henke: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Henke https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Henke >Shortly afterward, Henke served as the New Media Director for the Republican Communications Office, an office of the Senate Republican caucus under the leadership of United States Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY).[6] Congressional Quarterly wrote that Henke "launched one of the first and most successful blogger outreach operations on the Capitol Hill, one that has served as a template for other offices."[7] During his time as New Media Director, Henke contributed entries at QandO less frequently than before, and in January 2007, two other bloggers, Bryan Pick and Billy Hollis, joined QandO. >Henke announced in June 2007 that he would serve Fred Thompson's presidential campaign as an Online Brand Manager.[8] Though Thompson withdrew his candidacy in January 2008, Henke continued to work as a consultant, and started his own firm later that year.[9]
- acgourley 13y ago
  Those sound like good qualifications for someone writing on the matter - am I missing something?
  - sc68cal 13y ago
    Is it a good policy that will benefit the citizenry, or is it a policy that is the extension of a political ideology that believes that government should not regulate anything?
    - autodidakto 13y ago
      "Is it good policy" is exactly the question. And that question isn't answered by checking their political ID card.
    - tbrownaw 13y ago
      Why can it not be both?
    - adventured 13y ago
      That's like claiming Democrats want to regulate everything. It's such a broad statement as to be completely without value. It does not apply to most Republican politicians I'm aware of, and not all Republican politicians are the same. Also worth noting, the Republican-heavy government under George W. Bush in fact massively expanded regulations at the federal level (and deregulated almost nothing). So the facts of action do not jive with the claims being made. Maybe if you said libertarian it would be accurate.
- rayiner 13y ago
  Tech Freedom and the Progress and Freedom Foundation are think tanks, not lobbying outfits. Latham & Watkins's communications group does regulatory filings and advises companies on regulatory aspects of mergers and things like that, not lobbying work. I can't think of a background that qualifies someone more to talk about the hurdles created by municipal regulation than someone who actually has to deal with those regulations on behalf of his clients. As for Henke, just because he's a Republican doesn't mean he's wrong...
jacobquick 13y ago
This article is ridiculous shilling. Who do you think lobbies state and local governments to keep the cost of entry high for access to the streets they've been digging around in? The "big cable" trade association who "shouldn't be blamed." The cost argument is based on numbers that factor out long-term costs of letting contractors dig wherever they want. They rip the streets to shreds and since it's the lowest bidder the asphalt has to be completely redone after one or two winters. In Boston we watched this happen to most of the region during the big dig and that work was being done by the best people available. The open access argument is absurd. What they mean is they want to run fiber down streets with high incomes and let the cable monopolies continue to gouge everyone else. It's a real shame but if you want residential internet to get better in the US there's probably going to be a lot of federal spending involved. Which we could have managed back when all the cable lines were first being run. Back when we had a functioning government. In the 1970s.
- fluidcruft 13y ago
  I gave up when I hit this nugget: "The problem? Local governments and their public utilities charge ISPs far more than these things actually cost. For example, rights of way and pole attachments fees can double the cost of network construction" Actually digging holes in streets, obtaining right-of-way access to private property, and putting up your own poles is half as expensive as just using the holes and poles the public has already built? Oh, really? I'm more inclined to think they're grousing about not being able to mooch the public's infrastructure investments for free.
- rayiner 13y ago
  > What they mean is they want to run fiber down streets with high incomes You can't have your cake and eat it too. If you want cheap prices and high quality service, then you have to deregulate the industry, and a deregulated telecom industry will focus on the high-end consumers, just like every company does. Apple doesn't focus on making computers for poor people, and all those companies peddling their wares on Facebook aren't selling basic essentials affordable by poor people and people in rural areas. Someone in the tech industry should understand better than most that in nearly any industry, companies will chase premium, up-market consumers because that's where the money happens to be. If you want poor people and people in rural areas to have high-quality internet service (or really, any internet service), you have to be willing to pay for that. The way municipalities have chosen to pay for that is granting utility monopolies. That decision isn't something that comes for free. It comes at the cost of worse service for the wealthier urban people who would get better and cheaper service in a free market. Also, as a practical matter, municipal and state governments destroy everything they touch. I'm not a small government drum-beater, and I'm a proponent of regulation in many contexts, but the lack of transparency and scrutiny makes municipal government regulation the worst kind of regulation.
schrodingersCat 13y ago
This article is partially correct. The mayor of my town was censured in an ethics committee hearing in part due to his shady dealings with a broadband provider. As a result, Comcast is STILL the only game in town. Did lobbyist have something to do with this? Undoubtedly. But clearly "big cable" is not the only part of the problem.
jbooth 13y ago
Hi everyone, I actually signed one of these contracts as a local elected official. We had no money, laying off teachers and cops 3 years in a row. Cable company shows up and offers to fund our public access TV and hook up a bunch of electronics, to the tune of $100-200k or so as part of the contract. What the fuck do you think we did? Yeah, we signed the contract, but it was their demands (we did have both comcast and verizon in the market, at least). We came cheap, because the fans of the free market have starved local governments of resources. The cable companies have way more resources than any given local government except for a few cities. They're the ones playing the tune, we marched to it. Blaming it on local governments is willfully stupid.
- adventured 13y ago
  So you're saying that local governments have less funds to spend today than they did 15 years ago? I don't think so. I wasn't aware America still had a free market, much less one that sprung up in the last 10 / 15 / 30 years to deprive local governments of their massive spending binge over that time. The data I've seen indicates total government expenditures have doubled over 15 years, and it's even faster at the local level. The local + state spending haul is close to $2.6 trillion annually now. It's practically another federal government system in size. What has actually happened is local and state governments ballooned in size massively since the late 1970s. Having over expanded without any means to actually pay for it, all based on insanely optimistic (fraudulent?) economic projections, now those governments are having to shrink due to their own poor management. California is perhaps the greatest - and most well documented - example of this, both at the state and local level.
  - jbooth 13y ago
    So you're saying that local governments have less funds to spend today than they did 15 years ago? I don't think so. Relative to costs, yes. Their funding has gone up, in general, by less than inflation[1]. Then account for the fact that their costs involve a lot of healthcare benefits that suffer 15% inflation, and relatively few things like electronics that get cheaper over time. When you talk about things like 'ballooned in size', you're really missing the picture. Money that goes straight out of our coffers to the health fund isn't bigger government. It's more money, same amount of government. [1] In my case in Massachusetts, it was strictly 2.5% revenue growth a year, a figure that's less than inflation in most years, certainly in the early 2000s which is the time period I'm talking. Commenters below illustrate a similar picture for California, your favored example.
wnevets 13y ago
Local governments lobbied by big cable. Comcast lobbied Harrisburg hard to gimp Philadelphia's free WiFi initiative
nostromo 13y ago
A friend and I, on a whim, spent a fair amount of time looking into how to create an ISP using our own hardware. The hardware is cheap, right? How hard can it really be? But we ended up exactly as you'd expect from reading the article: trying to figure out how companies get pole attachment rights. If I wanted to pay a contractor to string a line between our houses, that should be doable right? Well, no. For our local government, there was no clear way to get approved to use the public utility lines. Once you find the office that manages pole attachments, if you ask them about the approval process, I guarantee you'll get blank stares. I think it's possible that it's been so long since any new companies have been granted attachment rights, the people in city government don't even know what to do with you if you ask to apply. This leads you only one route: lobbying the city council, which is where our little experiment ground to a halt. (Btw, if you want to see the positive aspect of having regulatory hurdles to run communications lines, check out this old picture of New York: http://www.baltimoresun.com/media/photo/2012-07/71033655.jpg http://www.baltimoresun.com/media/photo/2012-07/71033655.jpg and http://www.nwhistorycourse.org/ttcourse/Year2/unit2/week9/images/Wires-Undgd1890-1910-800.jpg http://www.nwhistorycourse.org/ttcourse/Year2/unit2/week9/im...)
Vivtek 13y ago
I think I'm safe in blaming both - to different extents in each location.
aaronbrethorst 13y ago
Not in Seattle: http://gigabitseattle.com http://gigabitseattle.com
Yourfags 13y ago
As an anecdote, I havn't even read the article, but I live in orleans parish in New Orleans, LA. I have a choice of two high-speed internet providers, Cox cable and AT&T, I have AT&T, and recently I was told I needed to switch to AT&T U-verse, which sounded great, I mean upgrades are good right? Months later I come to find out that my internet and phone which are now bundled together no longer work periodically, and during stormy times they practically never work: Long story short, my house is a) too far from the nearest point of service for anything faster than a 1.5Mbps connection, b) it's not real U-verse service c) I can't even keep the bundled phone and internet, though thankfully they did reduce our bill somewhat. The real kicker is though that for 6years there has been a lawsuit against Orleans parish because our former mayor was an executive of cox cable and made it ILLEGAL, yes illegal, for fiber optics to be installed in Orleans parish. It's ridiculous we're not talking high explosive weaponry, slaves, or other contraband; but I could just move out of my parish where the law isn't quite so foolish.
js2 13y ago
Riiiight.... like in NC where TWC lobbied successfully to restrict competition from local governments: http://www.engadget.com/2011/05/22/nc-governor-will-let-cable-backed-bill-restricting-municipal-bro/ http://www.engadget.com/2011/05/22/nc-governor-will-let-cabl... http://www.muninetworks.org/content/after-4-years-twc-buys-its-north-carolina-legislation http://www.muninetworks.org/content/after-4-years-twc-buys-i... This was after Wilson, NC was unable to get neither TWC nor Embark to build out a fiber network for its residents, so the city built it out themselves: http://www.wilsonnc.org/living/fiberopticnetwork/greenlighthistory/ http://www.wilsonnc.org/living/fiberopticnetwork/greenlighth...
laurentoget 13y ago
This would be believable if the situation in Europe wasn't a direct counter-example. They do have local governments there too. Yet with regulations forcing the owners of the local loop to share their facilities, they broke the monopoly of the ex state-owned phone operators.
yk 13y ago
It should be mentioned that fibers are a natural monopoly [1], that is a market were it is essentially impossible to win against the first guy in the market. This is, because the first company who lays fibers in a location has costs X for an expected revenue Y. The second company has also costs X, but only a expected revenue Y/2. And additionally the first company can roll over their dept, and can then operate at a smaller revenue. So as long as the competition is not willing to pay the additional costs for strategic reasons, it is very hard to compete against an already entrenched (pun intended) cable company. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly
BerinSzoka 13y ago
Folks, we at TechFreedom cover a wide range of issues. Just today, we joined 18 other civil society groups in EFF's lawsuit against the NSA's surveillance of telephone call records; announced an event in San Francisco on reforming the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act to rein in this overly broad law with reforms such as proposed in "Aaron's Law"; and endorsed reforms that would cut the red tape that prevents many of the schools and libraries that most need E-Rate funding from getting it. So.. please take a moment to look through the range of our work before leaping to conclusions. You might start by perusing our Facebook & Twitter feeds: http://twitter.com/techfreedom http://twitter.com/techfreedom http://facebook.com/techfreedom http://facebook.com/techfreedom

38 points by taylorbuley 13y ago

Local governments heavily lobbied by Big Cable, in many cases... and outright sued by them when they attempt to do things like municipal broadband/wifi.

r00fus 13y ago
And in states like PA, the state government takes bribes from Comcast and slaps down municipalities that try to shake the boat. The Feds (if the corporatists continue to entrench power) It will take big players like Google - and the increasing importance of access to data - to pry open this decades-old corruption scheme.

sc68cal 13y ago

I'd strongly suggest looking into the backgrounds of the authors. One is a lobbyist and another is a former politico for Republican candidates. Berin Szoka: http://techfreedom.org/people/berin-szoka http://techfreedom.org/people/berin-szoka >Berin Szoka is the President of TechFreedom. Previously, he was a Senior Fellow and the Director of the Center for Internet Freedom at The Progress & Freedom Foundation. Before joining PFF, he was an Associate in the Communications Practice Group at Latham & Watkins LLP, where he advised clients on regulations affecting the Internet and telecommunications industries. Before joining Latham's Communications Practice Group, Szoka practiced at Lawler Metzger Milkman & Keeney, LLC, a boutique telecommunications law firm in Washington, and clerked for the Hon. H. Dale Cook, Senior U.S. District Judge for the Northern District of Oklahoma. >TechFreedom is supported by foundations as well as web companies and broadband providers (including Google). Jonathan Henke: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Henke https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Henke >Shortly afterward, Henke served as the New Media Director for the Republican Communications Office, an office of the Senate Republican caucus under the leadership of United States Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY).[6] Congressional Quarterly wrote that Henke "launched one of the first and most successful blogger outreach operations on the Capitol Hill, one that has served as a template for other offices."[7] During his time as New Media Director, Henke contributed entries at QandO less frequently than before, and in January 2007, two other bloggers, Bryan Pick and Billy Hollis, joined QandO. >Henke announced in June 2007 that he would serve Fred Thompson's presidential campaign as an Online Brand Manager.[8] Though Thompson withdrew his candidacy in January 2008, Henke continued to work as a consultant, and started his own firm later that year.[9]

acgourley 13y ago
Those sound like good qualifications for someone writing on the matter - am I missing something?
- sc68cal 13y ago
  Is it a good policy that will benefit the citizenry, or is it a policy that is the extension of a political ideology that believes that government should not regulate anything?
  - autodidakto 13y ago
    "Is it good policy" is exactly the question. And that question isn't answered by checking their political ID card.
  - tbrownaw 13y ago
    Why can it not be both?
  - adventured 13y ago
    That's like claiming Democrats want to regulate everything. It's such a broad statement as to be completely without value. It does not apply to most Republican politicians I'm aware of, and not all Republican politicians are the same. Also worth noting, the Republican-heavy government under George W. Bush in fact massively expanded regulations at the federal level (and deregulated almost nothing). So the facts of action do not jive with the claims being made. Maybe if you said libertarian it would be accurate.
rayiner 13y ago
Tech Freedom and the Progress and Freedom Foundation are think tanks, not lobbying outfits. Latham & Watkins's communications group does regulatory filings and advises companies on regulatory aspects of mergers and things like that, not lobbying work. I can't think of a background that qualifies someone more to talk about the hurdles created by municipal regulation than someone who actually has to deal with those regulations on behalf of his clients. As for Henke, just because he's a Republican doesn't mean he's wrong...

jacobquick 13y ago

This article is ridiculous shilling. Who do you think lobbies state and local governments to keep the cost of entry high for access to the streets they've been digging around in? The "big cable" trade association who "shouldn't be blamed." The cost argument is based on numbers that factor out long-term costs of letting contractors dig wherever they want. They rip the streets to shreds and since it's the lowest bidder the asphalt has to be completely redone after one or two winters. In Boston we watched this happen to most of the region during the big dig and that work was being done by the best people available. The open access argument is absurd. What they mean is they want to run fiber down streets with high incomes and let the cable monopolies continue to gouge everyone else. It's a real shame but if you want residential internet to get better in the US there's probably going to be a lot of federal spending involved. Which we could have managed back when all the cable lines were first being run. Back when we had a functioning government. In the 1970s.

fluidcruft 13y ago
I gave up when I hit this nugget: "The problem? Local governments and their public utilities charge ISPs far more than these things actually cost. For example, rights of way and pole attachments fees can double the cost of network construction" Actually digging holes in streets, obtaining right-of-way access to private property, and putting up your own poles is half as expensive as just using the holes and poles the public has already built? Oh, really? I'm more inclined to think they're grousing about not being able to mooch the public's infrastructure investments for free.
rayiner 13y ago
> What they mean is they want to run fiber down streets with high incomes You can't have your cake and eat it too. If you want cheap prices and high quality service, then you have to deregulate the industry, and a deregulated telecom industry will focus on the high-end consumers, just like every company does. Apple doesn't focus on making computers for poor people, and all those companies peddling their wares on Facebook aren't selling basic essentials affordable by poor people and people in rural areas. Someone in the tech industry should understand better than most that in nearly any industry, companies will chase premium, up-market consumers because that's where the money happens to be. If you want poor people and people in rural areas to have high-quality internet service (or really, any internet service), you have to be willing to pay for that. The way municipalities have chosen to pay for that is granting utility monopolies. That decision isn't something that comes for free. It comes at the cost of worse service for the wealthier urban people who would get better and cheaper service in a free market. Also, as a practical matter, municipal and state governments destroy everything they touch. I'm not a small government drum-beater, and I'm a proponent of regulation in many contexts, but the lack of transparency and scrutiny makes municipal government regulation the worst kind of regulation.

schrodingersCat 13y ago

This article is partially correct. The mayor of my town was censured in an ethics committee hearing in part due to his shady dealings with a broadband provider. As a result, Comcast is STILL the only game in town. Did lobbyist have something to do with this? Undoubtedly. But clearly "big cable" is not the only part of the problem.

jbooth 13y ago

Hi everyone, I actually signed one of these contracts as a local elected official. We had no money, laying off teachers and cops 3 years in a row. Cable company shows up and offers to fund our public access TV and hook up a bunch of electronics, to the tune of $100-200k or so as part of the contract. What the fuck do you think we did? Yeah, we signed the contract, but it was their demands (we did have both comcast and verizon in the market, at least). We came cheap, because the fans of the free market have starved local governments of resources. The cable companies have way more resources than any given local government except for a few cities. They're the ones playing the tune, we marched to it. Blaming it on local governments is willfully stupid.

adventured 13y ago
So you're saying that local governments have less funds to spend today than they did 15 years ago? I don't think so. I wasn't aware America still had a free market, much less one that sprung up in the last 10 / 15 / 30 years to deprive local governments of their massive spending binge over that time. The data I've seen indicates total government expenditures have doubled over 15 years, and it's even faster at the local level. The local + state spending haul is close to $2.6 trillion annually now. It's practically another federal government system in size. What has actually happened is local and state governments ballooned in size massively since the late 1970s. Having over expanded without any means to actually pay for it, all based on insanely optimistic (fraudulent?) economic projections, now those governments are having to shrink due to their own poor management. California is perhaps the greatest - and most well documented - example of this, both at the state and local level.
- jbooth 13y ago
  So you're saying that local governments have less funds to spend today than they did 15 years ago? I don't think so. Relative to costs, yes. Their funding has gone up, in general, by less than inflation[1]. Then account for the fact that their costs involve a lot of healthcare benefits that suffer 15% inflation, and relatively few things like electronics that get cheaper over time. When you talk about things like 'ballooned in size', you're really missing the picture. Money that goes straight out of our coffers to the health fund isn't bigger government. It's more money, same amount of government. [1] In my case in Massachusetts, it was strictly 2.5% revenue growth a year, a figure that's less than inflation in most years, certainly in the early 2000s which is the time period I'm talking. Commenters below illustrate a similar picture for California, your favored example.

wnevets 13y ago

Local governments lobbied by big cable. Comcast lobbied Harrisburg hard to gimp Philadelphia's free WiFi initiative

nostromo 13y ago

A friend and I, on a whim, spent a fair amount of time looking into how to create an ISP using our own hardware. The hardware is cheap, right? How hard can it really be? But we ended up exactly as you'd expect from reading the article: trying to figure out how companies get pole attachment rights. If I wanted to pay a contractor to string a line between our houses, that should be doable right? Well, no. For our local government, there was no clear way to get approved to use the public utility lines. Once you find the office that manages pole attachments, if you ask them about the approval process, I guarantee you'll get blank stares. I think it's possible that it's been so long since any new companies have been granted attachment rights, the people in city government don't even know what to do with you if you ask to apply. This leads you only one route: lobbying the city council, which is where our little experiment ground to a halt. (Btw, if you want to see the positive aspect of having regulatory hurdles to run communications lines, check out this old picture of New York: http://www.baltimoresun.com/media/photo/2012-07/71033655.jpg http://www.baltimoresun.com/media/photo/2012-07/71033655.jpg and http://www.nwhistorycourse.org/ttcourse/Year2/unit2/week9/images/Wires-Undgd1890-1910-800.jpg http://www.nwhistorycourse.org/ttcourse/Year2/unit2/week9/im...)

Vivtek 13y ago

I think I'm safe in blaming both - to different extents in each location.

aaronbrethorst 13y ago

Not in Seattle: http://gigabitseattle.com http://gigabitseattle.com

Yourfags 13y ago

As an anecdote, I havn't even read the article, but I live in orleans parish in New Orleans, LA. I have a choice of two high-speed internet providers, Cox cable and AT&T, I have AT&T, and recently I was told I needed to switch to AT&T U-verse, which sounded great, I mean upgrades are good right? Months later I come to find out that my internet and phone which are now bundled together no longer work periodically, and during stormy times they practically never work: Long story short, my house is a) too far from the nearest point of service for anything faster than a 1.5Mbps connection, b) it's not real U-verse service c) I can't even keep the bundled phone and internet, though thankfully they did reduce our bill somewhat. The real kicker is though that for 6years there has been a lawsuit against Orleans parish because our former mayor was an executive of cox cable and made it ILLEGAL, yes illegal, for fiber optics to be installed in Orleans parish. It's ridiculous we're not talking high explosive weaponry, slaves, or other contraband; but I could just move out of my parish where the law isn't quite so foolish.

js2 13y ago

Riiiight.... like in NC where TWC lobbied successfully to restrict competition from local governments: http://www.engadget.com/2011/05/22/nc-governor-will-let-cable-backed-bill-restricting-municipal-bro/ http://www.engadget.com/2011/05/22/nc-governor-will-let-cabl... http://www.muninetworks.org/content/after-4-years-twc-buys-its-north-carolina-legislation http://www.muninetworks.org/content/after-4-years-twc-buys-i... This was after Wilson, NC was unable to get neither TWC nor Embark to build out a fiber network for its residents, so the city built it out themselves: http://www.wilsonnc.org/living/fiberopticnetwork/greenlighthistory/ http://www.wilsonnc.org/living/fiberopticnetwork/greenlighth...

laurentoget 13y ago

This would be believable if the situation in Europe wasn't a direct counter-example. They do have local governments there too. Yet with regulations forcing the owners of the local loop to share their facilities, they broke the monopoly of the ex state-owned phone operators.

yk 13y ago

It should be mentioned that fibers are a natural monopoly [1], that is a market were it is essentially impossible to win against the first guy in the market. This is, because the first company who lays fibers in a location has costs X for an expected revenue Y. The second company has also costs X, but only a expected revenue Y/2. And additionally the first company can roll over their dept, and can then operate at a smaller revenue. So as long as the competition is not willing to pay the additional costs for strategic reasons, it is very hard to compete against an already entrenched (pun intended) cable company. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly

BerinSzoka 13y ago

Folks, we at TechFreedom cover a wide range of issues. Just today, we joined 18 other civil society groups in EFF's lawsuit against the NSA's surveillance of telephone call records; announced an event in San Francisco on reforming the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act to rein in this overly broad law with reforms such as proposed in "Aaron's Law"; and endorsed reforms that would cut the red tape that prevents many of the schools and libraries that most need E-Rate funding from getting it. So.. please take a moment to look through the range of our work before leaping to conclusions. You might start by perusing our Facebook & Twitter feeds: http://twitter.com/techfreedom http://twitter.com/techfreedom http://facebook.com/techfreedom http://facebook.com/techfreedom