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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

by gxs 13y ago

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.

cwilson 13y ago
The first line of defense is simply to up-vote posts like this on HN and Reddit, as well as posting to Twitter and Facebook. The more people who know about it, the more fuss we create. I know that's not much, but it's how we've beaten greedy initiatives like this in the past (SOPA). I agree with you though, if it were made dead simple to contribute in some way towards an initiative against this specific bill and others like it, I'd of course donate.
- djchen 13y ago
  People also need to vote with their dollars. I understand thats only part of it but its a necessary part. Look at what T-Mobile has done for wireless plans, if more people switched to them for example, I'm sure AT&T/VZW/Sprint will wake up and start offering better pricing/plans. It won't fix the issue, that boils down the law makers need to make the landscape more competitive and easier to compete in. But at least it helps in the short term.
  - sn0v 13y ago
    I've been waiting to switch to T-Mo for months now, but they've got incredibly poor reception in my (urban) area. And I'm not talking 4G, I'm talking about basic calling/texting.
    - kristopolous 13y ago
      Me too. But I'd rather have poor cell phone coverage than personally fund AT&T or Verizon.
      - sn0v 13y ago
        I've been wanting to support T-Mo as well. Unfortunately, being accessible on the phone is highly important to me :/
reginaldjcooper 13y ago
Just FYI, If it was a free-market enterprise, you would have reasonable prices and services. As proof I submit certain areas of Europe where companies are required by law to lease the last mile of wires to competitors at reasonable rates. As it stands, if, say a city tries to band together and make low-cost high-performance municipal internet, the existing companies will sue to maintain their monopoly.
- fennecfoxen 13y ago
  > If it was a free-market enterprise, you would have reasonable prices and services. The free market only efficient under certain circumstances: when transaction costs are small and when there are few barriers to entry. One well-known form of market failure is the "natural monopoly", and one form of that applies here: the geographic monopoly. The barriers to entry for a new ISP may be quite large, if significant investments in physical infrastructure which must be made before the ISP can operate. (One can also intuit that having multiple physical telephone networks connecting to houses in the same neighborhood would be wildly redundant.)
  - ams6110 13y ago
    Most monopolies are not natural or at least not entirely so. They are enabled by government regulation. In many areas for example, even if you wanted to and had the funding you would be prohibited from starting up a new cable or telco because of local franchise regulations allowing only one provider of those services.
- rsync 13y ago
  "If it was a free-market enterprise, you would have reasonable prices and services. As proof I submit certain areas of Europe where companies are required by law to lease the last mile" Did you read that before you hit submit ? If you're pro-regulation that's fine and if you're a free market fanatic that's fine too ... but what you wrote is just pure gibberish.
  - reginaldjcooper 13y ago
MichaelApproved 13y ago
Your solution isn't a business idea that needs to be created. There's already a system in place to take action against issues like these. The solution is political. These companies, especially cable and land-line, use public resources that can be regulated and expanded. There are politicians and lobbying groups that are trying to reform the system. If you had the time, you could join one of their causes. If you don't have the time, you could donate money to their campaigns and groups. Think nothing could get done? You're wrong. It's a slow process but, if enough people support the cause, it can get done. I'm sure people can point out mayors who ran on the platform of reform and lost. That doesn't mean you give up or become cynical. Major fights against entrenched organizations take time but it's possible to change the system. A mayor lost an election? Help him/her run again. Keep at it.
rndmize 13y ago
> 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 13y ago
  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 13y ago
    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-warrior http://chicagotonight.wttw.com/2011/09/21/long-distance-warr...
- 13y ago
maxsilver 13y ago
It's easy to take action. Buy DSL from a third party. Someone like "DSLExtreme", or ACD.net, or similar non-AT&T provider. They're (some) of the companies who directly use these agreements that AT&T is trying to destroy. If more companies like them existed, and/or had better revenue, they could stand up and fight for their future. Of course, no one will sign up for their service, because they'll only be able to provide you with 0 to 6mbps of service (because they only are allowed access to Central Offices, and not the smaller offices / boxes AT&T uses to get you Uverse), which makes them significantly slower than either ATT Uverse or Comcast in the vast majority of markets. Which is why we're in this mess in the first place.
- judk 13y ago
  Those providers can't offer better prices because they pay wholesale from the monopolist and add their business on top. They can only compete on service. That's nice, but I want to pay less overall.
- mng2 13y ago
  In my current apartment, it's not even possible to get 3rd party DSL. (Reply from DSLExtreme: After looking into your prequalification results we determined that we cannot provide High-Speed Internet Service to your location.) And what's worse is that my apartment isn't wired for cable either (cable guy came out, said "sorry dude"). So what's left? Satellite? Tethering? I wish there was a reasonable alternative, and I would be happy to buy even measly 1.5 Mbps service as long as the money wouldn't be going into AT&T's coffers.
bhauer 13y ago
If symbolic action is your cup of tea, might I suggest taking a look at my side project, Brian's Taskforce. The model is a hybrid between petition sites and charitable giving. The basic idea is to propose local improvement ideas and put down symbolic donations to charity alongside those ideas to emphasize how important the ideas are to you. The powers-that-be then can see more than just a number of "votes" but see a dollar amount that is going to good causes if they take action. https://www.brianstaskforce.com/ https://www.brianstaskforce.com/ I've not had a whole lot of luck drumming up interest. But then, I'm terrible at that. While the original intent was to use it for local improvements, I later added national and business-oriented subdomains. I've been trying to get my local town of El Segundo California to make several changes that would amount to modest but noticeable quality of life improvements for me by putting $1,000 bounties on each. For example, paving better sidewalks along portions of my daily walking commute. But so far, my only successes have been in convincing local businesses to make some small changes. I believe in the concept, but I think a volume is necessary and I don't have nor have I yet developed the skill to create the volume.
grahamburger 13y ago
Interesting. I would say free market enterprise is the only thing that will eventually allow disruption in this market. I work for a company doing just that now, and it's very easy to see that customers are ready for a change. The market is ripe for disruption.
- Ygg2 13y ago
  Cute, but free market won't help you if you are fighting big wigs like these. You'll get crushed using dirty tricks that can be 100% free market compatible or just bought out. I place more faith in Google in this regard. At least they have cash to fight these monopoly titans.
  - grahamburger 13y ago
    Easy there. I've been doing this for nearly 10 years and have had enormous success at a regional level taking customers from the Big Boys. Now I'm taking it nationally. Don't patronize me I knew a lot about what I'm doing.
    - Ygg2 13y ago
      Perhaps, it's all as grand as you say. But if you were small enough to not be noticeable, now you'll catch their eye. Best of luck. Either way free market is nothing to be idealized. It's not that great on its own. Free market never existed in its pure form and from a theoretical standpoint its not that great. Note: I patronize for your naive belief in the free markets.
drzaiusapelord 13y ago
>we hadn't looked at their bill in a year and because getting cable in their building is a pain in the ass. Oh come on. Yes, the situation could be better, but this is your parents' problem. Yell at the landlord/condo board/super and get an agreement with cable or at least get them to drop a line in the basement. Cable is dying to get in every building they can. We have a small remote office in DC and I single-handily got Comcast to run a line to the building (which isn't even ours). All for a $150 a month deal for a 50mbps line. Before we were paying almost that much for 3mbps Verizon 'business' DSL. Another tenant saw it and bought internet and TV and others will probably in the future. Its not hard to get these guys to run these lines. It takes a few months but it happens.

by gxs 13y ago

cwilson 13y ago

The first line of defense is simply to up-vote posts like this on HN and Reddit, as well as posting to Twitter and Facebook. The more people who know about it, the more fuss we create. I know that's not much, but it's how we've beaten greedy initiatives like this in the past (SOPA). I agree with you though, if it were made dead simple to contribute in some way towards an initiative against this specific bill and others like it, I'd of course donate.

djchen 13y ago
People also need to vote with their dollars. I understand thats only part of it but its a necessary part. Look at what T-Mobile has done for wireless plans, if more people switched to them for example, I'm sure AT&T/VZW/Sprint will wake up and start offering better pricing/plans. It won't fix the issue, that boils down the law makers need to make the landscape more competitive and easier to compete in. But at least it helps in the short term.
- sn0v 13y ago
  I've been waiting to switch to T-Mo for months now, but they've got incredibly poor reception in my (urban) area. And I'm not talking 4G, I'm talking about basic calling/texting.
  - kristopolous 13y ago
    Me too. But I'd rather have poor cell phone coverage than personally fund AT&T or Verizon.
    - sn0v 13y ago
      I've been wanting to support T-Mo as well. Unfortunately, being accessible on the phone is highly important to me :/

reginaldjcooper 13y ago

Just FYI, If it was a free-market enterprise, you would have reasonable prices and services. As proof I submit certain areas of Europe where companies are required by law to lease the last mile of wires to competitors at reasonable rates. As it stands, if, say a city tries to band together and make low-cost high-performance municipal internet, the existing companies will sue to maintain their monopoly.

fennecfoxen 13y ago
> If it was a free-market enterprise, you would have reasonable prices and services. The free market only efficient under certain circumstances: when transaction costs are small and when there are few barriers to entry. One well-known form of market failure is the "natural monopoly", and one form of that applies here: the geographic monopoly. The barriers to entry for a new ISP may be quite large, if significant investments in physical infrastructure which must be made before the ISP can operate. (One can also intuit that having multiple physical telephone networks connecting to houses in the same neighborhood would be wildly redundant.)
- ams6110 13y ago
  Most monopolies are not natural or at least not entirely so. They are enabled by government regulation. In many areas for example, even if you wanted to and had the funding you would be prohibited from starting up a new cable or telco because of local franchise regulations allowing only one provider of those services.
rsync 13y ago
"If it was a free-market enterprise, you would have reasonable prices and services. As proof I submit certain areas of Europe where companies are required by law to lease the last mile" Did you read that before you hit submit ? If you're pro-regulation that's fine and if you're a free market fanatic that's fine too ... but what you wrote is just pure gibberish.
- reginaldjcooper 13y ago

MichaelApproved 13y ago

Your solution isn't a business idea that needs to be created. There's already a system in place to take action against issues like these. The solution is political. These companies, especially cable and land-line, use public resources that can be regulated and expanded. There are politicians and lobbying groups that are trying to reform the system. If you had the time, you could join one of their causes. If you don't have the time, you could donate money to their campaigns and groups. Think nothing could get done? You're wrong. It's a slow process but, if enough people support the cause, it can get done. I'm sure people can point out mayors who ran on the platform of reform and lost. That doesn't mean you give up or become cynical. Major fights against entrenched organizations take time but it's possible to change the system. A mayor lost an election? Help him/her run again. Keep at it.

rndmize 13y ago

> 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 13y ago
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 13y ago
  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-warrior http://chicagotonight.wttw.com/2011/09/21/long-distance-warr...
13y ago

maxsilver 13y ago

It's easy to take action. Buy DSL from a third party. Someone like "DSLExtreme", or ACD.net, or similar non-AT&T provider. They're (some) of the companies who directly use these agreements that AT&T is trying to destroy. If more companies like them existed, and/or had better revenue, they could stand up and fight for their future. Of course, no one will sign up for their service, because they'll only be able to provide you with 0 to 6mbps of service (because they only are allowed access to Central Offices, and not the smaller offices / boxes AT&T uses to get you Uverse), which makes them significantly slower than either ATT Uverse or Comcast in the vast majority of markets. Which is why we're in this mess in the first place.

judk 13y ago
Those providers can't offer better prices because they pay wholesale from the monopolist and add their business on top. They can only compete on service. That's nice, but I want to pay less overall.
mng2 13y ago
In my current apartment, it's not even possible to get 3rd party DSL. (Reply from DSLExtreme: After looking into your prequalification results we determined that we cannot provide High-Speed Internet Service to your location.) And what's worse is that my apartment isn't wired for cable either (cable guy came out, said "sorry dude"). So what's left? Satellite? Tethering? I wish there was a reasonable alternative, and I would be happy to buy even measly 1.5 Mbps service as long as the money wouldn't be going into AT&T's coffers.

bhauer 13y ago

If symbolic action is your cup of tea, might I suggest taking a look at my side project, Brian's Taskforce. The model is a hybrid between petition sites and charitable giving. The basic idea is to propose local improvement ideas and put down symbolic donations to charity alongside those ideas to emphasize how important the ideas are to you. The powers-that-be then can see more than just a number of "votes" but see a dollar amount that is going to good causes if they take action. https://www.brianstaskforce.com/ https://www.brianstaskforce.com/ I've not had a whole lot of luck drumming up interest. But then, I'm terrible at that. While the original intent was to use it for local improvements, I later added national and business-oriented subdomains. I've been trying to get my local town of El Segundo California to make several changes that would amount to modest but noticeable quality of life improvements for me by putting $1,000 bounties on each. For example, paving better sidewalks along portions of my daily walking commute. But so far, my only successes have been in convincing local businesses to make some small changes. I believe in the concept, but I think a volume is necessary and I don't have nor have I yet developed the skill to create the volume.

grahamburger 13y ago

Interesting. I would say free market enterprise is the only thing that will eventually allow disruption in this market. I work for a company doing just that now, and it's very easy to see that customers are ready for a change. The market is ripe for disruption.

Ygg2 13y ago
Cute, but free market won't help you if you are fighting big wigs like these. You'll get crushed using dirty tricks that can be 100% free market compatible or just bought out. I place more faith in Google in this regard. At least they have cash to fight these monopoly titans.
- grahamburger 13y ago
  Easy there. I've been doing this for nearly 10 years and have had enormous success at a regional level taking customers from the Big Boys. Now I'm taking it nationally. Don't patronize me I knew a lot about what I'm doing.
  - Ygg2 13y ago
    Perhaps, it's all as grand as you say. But if you were small enough to not be noticeable, now you'll catch their eye. Best of luck. Either way free market is nothing to be idealized. It's not that great on its own. Free market never existed in its pure form and from a theoretical standpoint its not that great. Note: I patronize for your naive belief in the free markets.

drzaiusapelord 13y ago

>we hadn't looked at their bill in a year and because getting cable in their building is a pain in the ass. Oh come on. Yes, the situation could be better, but this is your parents' problem. Yell at the landlord/condo board/super and get an agreement with cable or at least get them to drop a line in the basement. Cable is dying to get in every building they can. We have a small remote office in DC and I single-handily got Comcast to run a line to the building (which isn't even ours). All for a $150 a month deal for a 50mbps line. Before we were paying almost that much for 3mbps Verizon 'business' DSL. Another tenant saw it and bought internet and TV and others will probably in the future. Its not hard to get these guys to run these lines. It takes a few months but it happens.