Actually, two separate comments. The first is about the 47 USC 553 statute.
I believe that anonymous is correct; 47 USC 553 does not cover internet services. There is a strong distinction in law (many different laws and regulations) between cable and ISP services, even though they're provided over the same wire. The cable companies fought for these distinctions, since they didn't want to be bound by the "public service" requirements for their ISP-type services. Your cable company MUST provide you cable TV service (probably), under various laws and agreements; they need not provide you with internet services. Cable services are price-controlled; internet services are not. And similarly, cable services are protected by this law, while internet services are not. My second comment: On Thursday 27 June 2002 03:18 pm, David Rosenstrauch wrote: > And I think that's exactly the reason why TWC is so concerned about all > this: they're worried that customers who share bandwidth will slow > down all the other customers on the line. No. It has nothing to do with the customers, only profit-maximization. TWC does calculations all the time along the lines of: --If we remove this channel from the line-up and replace it with this one, how much more revenue can we get for it and how many subscribers will complain or cancel? Is the net effect positive or negative? If the net ends up positive, they do it. If the net ends up negative, they don't. End of discussion. Their calculus says that cracking down on the heavy internet users can improve their overall profits without making many people unsubscribe. Thus, bandwidth caps, blocked ports, threatening emails sent to people with wireless nodes. Their ideal is a fully-locked down service where you pay extra for every computer hooked up, you pay extra for using it during peak times, you pay extra for using premium services like IRC... Other companies don't think like this. When they need to increase revenue, they try to sell more units, not reduce the quality of the current service. But nothing you can do will change the way TWC thinks about this issue. This, in a nutshell, is why no one should purchase internet access from TWC or Verizon (or any other behemoth). Small companies do not *employ* legions of middle-managers devoted to squeezing current customers until they cry uncle, but the behemoths do. Never purchase an ongoing service from a company that employs people whose sole job it is to figure out how much worse they can make that service before you'll cancel. -- Michael Sims -- NYCwireless - http://www.nycwireless.net/ Un/Subscribe: http://lists.nycwireless.net/mailman/listinfo/nycwireless/ Archives: http://lists.nycwireless.net/pipermail/nycwireless/
