Superbowled!

Turf wars eliminate broadcast; show up integral problems in system

©Bryan Zepp Jamieson
2/3/08
http://www.mytown.ca/zepp
 

The power is back on (we had a bit of snow, about fourteen feet in the past month, and so the lights got a bit iffy from time to time), but I still won’t be watching the Super Bowl. Now, this isn’t a big deal for me, since I wasn’t planning on watching it anyway. Or rather, I might tune in at some point near the end of the game and watch the last ten minutes or so if it’s a close game and I don’t have something else to do.

OK. I admit it. Football bores the hell out of me. But, of course, other people find it more interesting. I respect that. I like hockey and footie, which most of my neighbors find boring.

Most of my neighbors are going to be a little upset this afternoon, and it won’t just be cause of the ten foot berm the snowplow left at the end of their driveway.

Our local cable provider, Northland, and Fox have some sort of dispute going, and with talks broken down, Northland has been intermittently dropping Fox and inserting some other cable station, usually FX. Fox is carrying the Superbowl, and Northland will not be carrying Fox this weekend. So no Superbowl for the folks on cable, which is most of the people in town.

I don’t know what the pissing match was about. I heard that Fox wanted to quadruple the rate they charged Northland for the right to carry the Fox stations (all the Fox stations were dropped on the 1st of the month). I don’t know if that’s true or not, and of course, both corporations are keeping mum, reasoning that it’s nobody’s fucking business what the issues are.

The local politicians are yammering for Northland’s scalp, of course. They may not know what the issues are between the two companies either, but they do know that the Superbowl isn’t on TV, and a lot of local football fans are gawdalmighty pissed about that. Lucky it wasn’t a labor action that caused it; those stalwarts of the American people would probably be demanding the employees be lynched.

I’m a bit annoyed at Northland myself. We aren’t getting all the digital subscriber channels because the satellite dish is buried in snow. When it was installed, my wife warned the installer that if it was that close to the house, it would get buried in snow when a big snow came, but he eyed the dish, five feet off the ground and four feet from the roof, and decided he had installed hundreds of these and knew better. Well, he was wrong, and it’ll be a week before we can get to the dish, or the snow melts away enough for it to resume functioning.

Telecom companies in general are a pain in the ass. For example, the city of Mount Shasta, ten miles from my house, has had a variety of broadband providers now for about three years. Out my way, Northland was the first. They offered a package of internet, TV, and phone (you get to keep your existing number) at a monthly rate that probably would save us about $50 a month.

Except I would have to drop my Finest Planet internet account. With my office system on AT&T/SBC/Yahoo/whatever DSL, and home on Northland cable, I wouldn’t have any justification for keeping Finest Planet, and damn it, I LIKE them. They’re reliable, inexpensive, and they don’t sell your internet activities to the Department of Homeland Security.

Plus I’m looking out at my buried dish, and I’m thinking that right now, it’s just my cable. With their package, it would be my internet and phone, too. Too many eggs, too rickety a basket.

DSL is coming to my area, but the phone company, Frontier, doesn’t want to share. They aren’t going to let anyone else piggyback on their DSL lines. So Finest Planet, which would LOVE to offer DSL in my area, is out in the cold. And if I go to Frontier, I still have to drop Finest Planet. They are, however, reliable, and the availability of on-line programs means that I could, if I so desired, drop Northland and just view the TV I want on my computer.

My story isn’t particularly unique. Even in large cities, where choices are wider, consumers find themselves stymied and frustrated by bickering and turf wars among all the various telecoms. The result, on a national level, is that Americans get crappier options, poorer service, and it costs more. In places like France or Japan, where one outfit controls the whole show, there is nearly 100% coverage, and connections speeds are four to six times faster than what is available to most Americans. Not only do you have the inefficiencies of a fragmented and combative corps of providers, but you have the profit motive, which adds 20% to the cost right off the bat, and which, in the case of larger companies, means you are dealing with an entity that feels a stronger obligation to its shareholders than it does to an often-captive consumer base.

It’s the same problem that afflicts medical care in America, writ small. Internet access isn’t a life necessity the way medical care is, but like medical care, it falls far short of where it should be in terms of availability and affordability.

I’m guessing that we won’t see any real reform in this area until Americans start noticing that places like Chad or Uruguay are beating the pants off us in the internet markets, or private providers are noticing that tens of millions of Americans are simply logging on via satellite through international providers, who, being non-profits and who have broadband to spare, don’t mind people piggybacking. The American companies, of course would petition the government to please make them STOP, and the US government would probably start leaning on other countries to set up some sort of encryption so Americans would remain a captive market to a system that doesn’t work right and costs too much.

That said, try to avoid being thrilled at the news that Microsoft is engaged in a hostile takeover bid of Yahoo, so they can knock out the top internet search engine, Google. Microsoft does not have your best interest at heart.

And don’t expect Hillary Clinton or any of the Republicans to help out. The Republicans believe corporations should have a steady supply of prey consumers. Hillary today came out and said that she favored a health scheme in which people would be FORCED to pay insurance companies for health care, and she would permit them to garnish wages to that end. In short, a private form of taxation on behalf of the same companies that have already hopelessly screwed up our medical system! Does anyone think that if she’s willing to entertain a worst-of-both-worlds notion like that, that she’ll suddenly turn around and fight for the right of people to have easy, affordable, and available internet service?

In the meantime, if anyone knows how the game is going, don’t bother telling me. I really don’t care.
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