Governor Perdue,
My newly-purchased house is 700′ from the road where Time Warner’s cable runs. Because they have a virtual monopoly, they want me to pay $3250 to run cable to my house before they will ALLOW me to pay for service on top of that.
I would like to express my outrage that you did not veto the recent bill that restricts municipalities’ ability to develop broadband solutions. It is abominable that you vocalized your disapproval of the bill but did not find the backbone to veto it. Many of us contacted you with our concerns but were not heard. Special interests have taken further root as a result, and our state will pay the price and lose further technological footing. I am now directly, severely impacted – along with many others. The Time Warner rep claimed that they are getting many people to actually pay these kind of extortionist fees to fund the build out of their own network – further increasing their monopoly.
Broadband service is of such fundamental importance to our communities that we must find a way to do better. Not vetoing the municipality restriction bill was a major step backwards for us all. I hope you can find a way to move us forward again.
I’ll be posting this to my blog, facebook, etc. and getting the word out wherever and whenever possible.
Thanks for listening,
Michael
Addendum: Yes I am using Time Warner services to host this blog. Yes they have provided me with great service for 11 years. But some corollary of Murphy’s Law applies to broadband access. It should be getting better and cheaper at a faster rate than their monopoly allows.
Would I be writing this if I happened to get an easy service hookup? Probably not. But I did send a previous note to the Governor when I heard about the ridiculous bill.
The bottom line is that broadband internet access is too fundamental a need of the people to be left to a few corporations and a bought-off government. Just like with other basic utilities, the people’s government should ensure that everything is in place, including free market competition as well as government oversight, to provide the people with the best-possible service over shared resources like easements and lines. Municipal broadband, where the people come together to create something good, is an excellent means to that end.
You should start up a web site to collect donations of 25 cents toward your access. It would only take 13000 donations to pay for it. If it works, let me know and I will fund Megan’s education that way :-)
$3250 for 700ft = $4.64/ft
25c gets me .64″, that’s 16mm for every quarter, whoop. i’ll start collecting and mark a line in the driveway, i’ll let you know how far I get. :-)
To add to this scenario, my only other realistic broadband alternative was DSL through Comcast. Thank goodness I had one option at least! But it took constant harassment for 3 weeks before I was connected. They are overselling and understaffed. I was sold a static IP for $3/mo and a 10Mbps/1Mbps connection for $70/mo. Only after three weeks, during hookup, was I told that I’d only get 8Mbps. And the bill was going to be $20/mo for the static IP. What could I do but take it.
I will be looking for any and all alternatives from this point on, and paying more attention to the big guys trying to lobby themselves into a monopoly. The larger issue here is that this country is in real trouble if we don’t find a way out of corporate control of our government. For the people! Peace out…