Judge Tosses Telco Suit Over City-Owned Network 281
tsa sends along news of the city of Monticello, Minnesota, which was sued by their local telco, Bridgewater Telephone Company, because the city chose to build a fiber optics network of their own. The judge dismissed their complaint of competition by a governmental organization. Quoting: "The judge's ruling is noteworthy for two things: (1) the judge's complete dismissal of Bridgewater Telephone Company's complaint and (2) his obvious anger at the underfunding of Minnesota's state courts. Indeed, the longest footnote in the opinion is an extended jeremiad about how much work judges are under and why it took so long to decide this case."
Costly Waste of Time (Score:5, Insightful)
IANAL, but the second part is a warning to TDS against trying to waste more court time. The judge is saying that he's busy enough and therefore if TDS tries to revisit this, it would be another costly loss.
TDS lost a lot of money going after the city. They also lost a lot of revenue because they are now going to try and compete with the city (lol). And they lost the support of their community, who knows they sued the city for unwarranted tax dollars, and taxpayers love bailouts.
Re:Costly Waste of Time (Score:5, Insightful)
Cry me a river.
They lost money.
Oh well! UPS and FedEx lose money every day competing against the government's postal service, and yet they both seem to be doing quite well. Instead of trying to use government to give Bridgewater Telephone a guaranteed monopoly, maybe they should take a page from UPS/FedEx and learn to compete.
Re:Costly Waste of Time (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Costly Waste of Time (Score:5, Insightful)
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And what if I don't like either service. Where's the 3rd company? Oh, that's right, companies aren't allowed to lay their own fiber - government restriction. You call this competition?
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And what if I don't like either service. Where's the 3rd company? Oh, that's right, companies aren't allowed to lay their own fiber - government restriction. You call this competition?
I wouldn't say the government can prevent usage of easements for cabling. But they sure can make it a pain in the ass for the company. However, should they prevent usage of the easements, that could be fought in court. So to use easements, you should have some cash in the bank.
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So to use easements, you should have some cash in the bank.
Exactly. You would need more money than you would under an entirely free system, so here we have government manipulation of the economy dissuading the existence of competition.
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True. But you really can't start any business without capital of some kind. (minus the "did my own web page pimping out my coder skills")
And with the credit market like it is....well, it'll be a while for new business growth.
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Sweet, time to get that new "community swimming pool", which I will create by razing my neighbor's house, building it on his property, and then charge admittance to.
This is going to be awesome. I never liked his house anyway, and chicks in bikinis > fat man in sweats any day.
Re:Costly Waste of Time (Score:5, Insightful)
Why would the government arbitrarily cripple a business? Besides the fact that if they did, they would be sued.
COmpanies lay their own fiber all the time. Yes there are government rule regaurding this, but considering they need to rip up roaads, dig through property, and use the underground infrastruture that makes sense.
BTW, the 'Government' needs permission to do this as well.
I mean, really. How do you think the first company got fiber in the first place?
Yes, this is competition. And no one has to guarantee you a service the meets some standard you want...except government agencies.
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Well, that's the market for you. The government represents the people. The people should be an equal actor in the marketplace, on the same line as a huge ugly telco.
I don't see anything wrong with that. It's called democracy and a free market (long as the telco isn't charged, you know, customs fees).
Or would you rather have a stagnant one-pony market, where the best available Internet connection is something like a 128 kbit/s ISDN that you pay per-minute _and_ per-megabyte charges for? Because that's what y
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Huh? Why would the government prevent a company from laying their own fiber - on their own property?
I'm talking about new companies, or companies from other regions, that want to expand their business, not companies that have already laid cable in the ground and can just stick fiber in the same space. Call your city and ask if you're allowed to stick fiber optic in the ground along your street. They will laugh and hang up.
Re:Costly Waste of Time (Score:5, Insightful)
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I ask, like the grand parent, why would the government do this? What would make them the most money: run this all by themselves (uncluding ISP services); Or rent out the bandwidth in the fibers to whatever company wants to use it? The second alternative have been used here in Sweden with great success.
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ohh... so you mean, create a public infrastructure to allow better competition and thus better pricing to the users of the services...kind of like the interstate system.
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You're sticking to principles, but unfortunately for you the principle you've chosen isn't applicable. If your belief in free market competition had any bearing on reality, this thread wouldn't even exist, because every single dwelling on the planet with electricity would be served by 7 ultra-broadband Internet connections that the occupant could choose between on a whim. Manifestly this is not the case, so it's reasonable to question your assumptions.
First, is the market in question free? No, it isn't.
Re:Costly Waste of Time (Score:5, Insightful)
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Pretty sure it was understood as such....
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Sarcasm is often times both. Watch Idiocracy for a good example.
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Must be due to /.'s monopoly on blog comment scoring
Re:Costly Waste of Time (Score:5, Insightful)
"This, of course, assumes that the government can do a better job with its limited knowledge, expertise, and equipment."
Its not hard today to throw a rock and hit an able network/systems admin or three and many good ones who live locally might be willing to take a slight pay cut to avoid the commute into MSP or just for the fact a govt job is a much less stressful place than private industry.
"I find it hard to imagine that running fiber around is cheaper, but it must mean that their city buildings are right next door to each other or on the same block."
Cheaper than what? its probably slightly cheaper for them than the teleco's (after all they can way speed up their own permit process). And they seem to be reasonably densely populated (and small) for such a move
Area
- Total 6.2 sq mi (16.1 km)
Population (2000)
- Total 11,414
- Density 1,264.6/sq mi (488.3/km)
Actually its pretty densely populated (and small)
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"There are few things that I have experienced the government doing better than a competitive private sector."
I generally agree with this but when a government *wants* to do something like this I prefer its a local government and not the state or federal.
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>>>There are few things that I have experienced the government doing better than a competitive private sector.
Yet another reason Bridgewater Telephone's lawsuit was silly. Surely they have enough competence to outcompete a bunch of gov't bureaucrats. The private company will probably run circles around the government's poor service.
Re:Costly Waste of Time (Score:5, Informative)
*sigh* YOU just made me lose some mod points. But nevermind. Since 1970s, Memphis Light Gas and Water has been running power cables with FIBER inside. In other words, the entire city is full of dark fiber. How much extra did it cost to run the fiber? Not that much, just the incremental cost over what it cost to have power lines that were empty in the middle, instead of being filled with fiber.
What is to stop this city from doing the same thing? It probably already did that, and that is why it feels that it can provide fiber to the house.
Just because *YOU* don't have experience does not mean that your experience is right. People working in government agencies do not start their day thinking how they can be inefficient for you.
Re:Costly Waste of Time (Score:5, Funny)
People working in government agencies do not start their day thinking how they can be inefficient for you.
Some things come naturally.
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Most government agencies are not inefficient at all, and have less waste then private industries.
A bureaucracy is very good at getting complex things done well.
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Goverment doesn't have to do better than a competetive private sector. They can pretend to do better by leveraging their monopoly on takin' people's money at gunpoint into other areas.
Re:Costly Waste of Time (Score:5, Informative)
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It's a shame. I'd love to hire UPS to do my local mail delivery. Maybe then my bills would end-up in MY mailbox, instead of somebody else's mailbox. (I know 18 Kimberly and 18 Denise Street are both girls names, but come on government postman. They're different streets!)
Re:Costly Waste of Time (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, and the cost to send mail would go through the roof.
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Perhaps they are trying to prevent another government from trying to become a government supported worldwide logistics carrier and stealing another chunk of business from the US - where we won't let UPS even touch a mailbox. I think it seems reasonable that they don't want to try to compete against the US govt, the German govt (maybe a simplification), and any other govt that wants to march into the US.
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Hardly the first time American interests have abused NAFTA to the detriment of Canadians.
Other examples: softwood lumber, taking water from the Great Lakes, crippling our attempts to enforce environmental standards [globalpolicy.org], and my current favourite... American private health providers arguing our public health system violates NAFTA [embassymag.ca].
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Re:Costly Waste of Time (Score:5, Insightful)
If the government got out of the business of providing a poor, unprofitable service, businesses with an interest in profit could take over and make them profitable, more efficient, and more reliable.
More likely private industry would take over the profitable routes dropping all the unprofitable ones, making the service much worse than it already is.
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In my experience, I would tend to agree, as it seems (in my area, anyway) UPS/FedEX carriers are lazy, USPS carriers are stupid and lazy.
The USPS people constantly misread names/building, report false delivery attempts in their tracking system, crush/fold/spindle/mutilate things into the mailbox, forget to leave the "pick this up at the office" cards, etc.
I once a couple years ago had a USPS package travel from (on its way to me in Virginia) the point of origin in Kentucky through Ohio->Maryland-> Tex
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That's called "coop-etition". Figuring out where you can rake in extra money by fulfilling a competitor's need, while keeping it a net gain and not marginalizing your own business or letting the competitor put you out of business.
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For any competent private company, it is very easy to compete with the city. Hence the original suit.
Re:Costly Waste of Time (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Costly Waste of Time (Score:5, Insightful)
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There is, but there's essentially nothing you can do about it, its a flaw in the system that can't be fixed short of catapulting lawyers that ignore ethics requirements into outer space.
Re:Costly Waste of Time (Score:5, Informative)
It's called loser-pays. We have it up here in Canada, that and less lawsuits.
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If you genuinely wanted to harass someone with the intention of hindering a competitor, that cost is easily justified.
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You also ahve people who don't have a fair opportunity in civil matters.
Fewer lawsuit, really? Cite needed.
Just ecasue someone is right, doesn't mean the court will side with them. That makes it a very risky proposition even for people that have been wronged.
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It's called counter suit.
For some reason government agencies just don't sue private companies when they clearly should.
Re:Costly Waste of Time (Score:5, Insightful)
This was no waste of money.
They didn't "lose" money on the lawsuit. They "made an investment". The whole point of the lawsuit was to give them a head-start in the competition against the city. They just wanted to tie the cities coffers so they could start their fiber roll-out before the city did. They succeeded in this goal, so their "investment" paid off big time for them.
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Have they started rolling out fiber?
Because I know if I were a big wig in this city and this company was stopping this project, I would make a point of having their permit applications for fiber installation conveniently "lost" behind various pieces of office furniture.
If this gave the telco an opportunity to get ahead its only because the city didn't play hardball.
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Have they started rolling out fiber?
Yes, according to some other article I read on some other site, they have already accomplished 10% of their planned 200 miles of fiber runs. Meanwhile, the municipality could not access the funds it needed to purchase the supplies to begin the project.
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Not much different from what the telco is trying to do with the courts. They stopped the government from providing a service to its citizens. A service that, presumably, the citizens want.
Its the Telco that is clearly in the wrong here.
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Why shouldn't the government provide communication services if the local residents want them to do just that?
What companies are not permitted to lay down more lines due to government restriction?
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Why shouldn't the government provide communication services if the local residents want them to do just that?
Because it makes a mockery of individual rights. The government should only be in the business of upholding and protecting individual rights.
Notice the difference in how we talk. I say should and ought, relying on principles. You say what's convenient. You'd rather have shitty service immediately than long-term, reliable service. "People should get what they want immediately regardless of whose rights are violated in the process."
The ends do not justify the means, ever.
What companies are not permitted to lay down more lines due to government restriction?
Call your city and ask if you're
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1. What rights are you referring to?
2. As opposed to shitty service in the long term as the telco doesn't feel like improving their service?
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This from someone who probably has decent internet service. I live at the end of a DSL run, cannot get cable, cannot get WiMax ... 512K DSL is the fastest I can get.
Who's preventing other companies from providing the service that you want? If the demand is high enough, nothing should be stopping people from getting the service they demand. The only thing that could prohibit such a service is physical force - in this case, government restriction against the laying of lines, among other restrictions.
Re:Costly Waste of Time (Score:4, Insightful)
If the demand is high enough
Dude, America has one hell of a lot of rural areas where demand does not meet financial justification. This is exactly why the gov't passed a bill a few years ago to provide something like $200 million in incentives to have telecos service rural areas. The gov't recognized the criticality of decent internet service for US competition in world markets and therefore provided great financial benefits for telecos to run broadband to rural areas. The telecos took the cash and ran. Why is it OK for the telecos to take cash dedicated to a specific cause and screw the taxpayers but it's evil for the government to say "if you don't do it, we will"? There are some cases (and in this case, MANY very compelling cases) where the government is completely justified in offering services to force competition where none exists today and none is likely in the foreseeable future. If this teleco was the only decent game in town, they might wake up and realize that they are not immune from competition.
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While the economy fails, we still have grammar (Score:5, Informative)
A jeremiad is by definition an "extended critique".
May the Grammar Nazis have mercy on you.
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Merriam Webster disagrees - "a prolonged lamentation or complaint ; also : a cautionary or angry harangue"
Government could have fought back (Score:5, Interesting)
I imagine that the telco must have had to get permits to lay their own fiber. The government could have blocked those requests until the result of the case was decided, thus cancelling-out the telco's attempt to delay the government and get a head start. I wonder why this didn't happen?
Re:Government could have fought back (Score:4, Interesting)
Because blocking legitimate requests for development is generally not allowed. I know California has strict time limits for certain actions, and if no action is taken within a given period, there is the possibility for legal repercussions.
In other words, a jurisdiction can't just say "we don't like it, go away" or "wait until we have what we want." There have to be actual grounds to put something on hold, or even more to deny a project all-together.
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But its not a legitimate request when it is made simply to keep the municipality in question from starting while the litigant stalls implementation. If the requests were made in advance of the municipality deciding to build a network, fine, if not, they should have been required to wait until the dispute was resolved.
Re:Government could have fought back (Score:4, Insightful)
Which would actually support the plaintiff's assertion that the government is abusing its regulatory powers to secure an unfair competitive advantage.
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Re:Government could have fought back (Score:5, Insightful)
Probably because there was no reason to deny them the permits they needed. To do so would have been a corrupt, let alone shitty, thing to do.
I don't know about the rest of the world, however, if I were a city entity involved in a lawsuit with a telco company, I'm going to do everything in my power to be seen as treating people (especially those suing me) as fairly as possible. You don't want to get a pissed off judge any ammunition to use in his/her making an example of you. That, and it's just the right thing to do, and I wish more people felt that way.
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To do so would have been a corrupt, let alone shitty, thing to do.
But when it's convenient, surely you can throw all principles and rights out the window! ;)
Re:Government could have fought back (Score:4, Insightful)
How's it working out for you having your government take a "hands off" approach to your banks? (assuming you are an American).
Ted Rogers was on CBC the other day, and made a comment about how when he was sitting on a board of a bank, there was one bank regulator (govt official) for every member of the bank at all the bank meetings. He said he didn't understand the need for the government oversight until now.
My personal belief is that the government (the people, remember) should own ALL the infrastructure and license it to private service providers. I know it isn't perfect, but I feel it is the best. Businesses have one goal, making a profit. Governments have (or should have) one goal, providing a service to the constituents.
That's what I like about Canada. Now if we can only just elect a majourity government so we can get something done instead of just arguing...
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How's it working out for you having your government take a "hands off" approach to your banks? (assuming you are an American).
Clue yourself in. The subprime crisis was caused by government intervention, not by any "hands off" approach. Just because people can co-opt the word "deregulation" for their own purposes doesn't mean any less regulation is occurring. Check out this excellent article written 8 years ago that predicted the whole thing, down to the huge dollar amount:
The Trillion-Dollar Bank Shakedown That Bodes Ill for Cities [city-journal.org]
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How's it working out for you having your government take a "hands off" approach to your banks? (assuming you are an American).
Clue yourself in. The subprime crisis was caused by government intervention, not by any "hands off" approach. Just because people can co-opt the word "deregulation" for their own purposes doesn't mean any less regulation is occurring. Check out this excellent article written 8 years ago that predicted the whole thing, down to the huge dollar amount:
The Trillion-Dollar Bank Shakedown That Bodes Ill for Cities [city-journal.org]
Right. A single cause for a multi-trillion dollar meltdown. If only it were that [npr.org] simple [motherjones.com]. Rather than try to pin the whole thing on the CRA, perhaps you might also want to look into the Commodity Futures Modernization Act as well, which deregulated the type of insurance (credit default swaps) that banks were using to allow themselves to make the insane loans they were making. The CRA may have been misguided and caused some more risky loans to be made, but it certainly didn't, on its own, lead to lenders
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Rail all you want against government competition but realize that probably most geographic area of the US has little to no competition in telecom.
And what's preventing that competition from existing? Surely there must be a huge demand for it, right? You want it. Everyone wants it. So don't companies see this demand, and want to fulfill it? What can prevent them from doing so except for physical force, and what entity can apply physical force except for the government?
I know. (Score:5, Funny)
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According to Wikipedia, "As of September 2008, the world's population is estimated to be about 7.0 billion (7,002,000,000)."
Somehow I don't think the judge should get 35 billions dollars for his verdict.
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I think that's called bribery.
Missing the main point... (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm surprised no one has mentioned this yet...
This gives other community precedence in other lawsuits across the nation.
Once one telco falls, hopefully the other lawsuits will fall also, just like a row of dominos.
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It was probably voted on in a city council meeting with input from the cities constituents. How do you justify taking that municipal right away?
What does "right away" mean? Do you mean "right of way"? First, rights apply only to individuals, not to government entities, which are charged with protecting and upholding individual rights. Second, you can't vote away rights. Sure, you can pass laws that violate rights, but those rights still exist and are still being violated. Rights violations are never justified.
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A group of people exercising a right to do something they've all agreed on? You aren't really that obtuse are you? Are you going to start bitching that we don't have 5 or 6 power companies per city or something now? Or just keep twisting my words around?
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This isn't the federal government, this is a municipal government. The citizenry wants them to lay a network, they can lay a network. No constitutional arguments here. Cry me a freakin river.
What every telco wants... (Score:5, Insightful)
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What a load of crap. TDS was doing their dog-in-the-manger act, and now is only putting in fiber as an act of revenge.
Business as usual at $US_PHONE_COMPANY
I'm surprised... (Score:5, Informative)
Usually a smart telco doesn't sue, they simply bribe the legislature [acluutah.org] into restricting their municipal competition (bottom of page).
(Basically, Comcast and Qwest bribed the Utah legislature into stopping their multi-muni competitor, UTOPIA, in Utah. The Utah ACLU's letter against such action is here: http://www.acluutah.org/utopia.htm [acluutah.org])
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Personally I think that being a corrupt government official should be called treason. Corrupting a government official should also be considered treason.
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Corrupting a government official should also be considered treason.
How do you "corrupt government officials"? Please explain. Are they puppies without minds of their own or the sense to reject bribes?
If the government was banned from economic intervention, there would be absolutely no incentive for companies offer any bribes.
jeremiad ? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:jeremiad ? (Score:5, Funny)
your decision to gerrymander on the subject is an aloof attempt to cause disruptive comprehension of the litigous subjects in question.
rawr.
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Thank you, Judge! (Score:3, Funny)
Boo fricken hoo (Score:2)
Maybe the judge will have to start working 5 day weeks or holding court past 3 PM.
Here's an idea to help: just start summarily dismissing criminal charges where there's no victim.
Re:Boo fricken hoo (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't know why legalizing prostitution would reduce it, but we've had some positive effects since it was legalized here in Germany. Prostitutes now can get proper health insurance and have legal recourse against pimps (as pimping still is illegal). We didn't legalize prostitution to keep people from going to prostitutes; we legalized prostitution to improve the situation of the prostitutes. As far as I know it helped.
As for legalizing hemp: Yup, I agree there. Legalization would reduce most issues: It wouldn't be as much of an entry drug because you wouldn't buy it from dealers anymore. Hemp consumption wouldn't mean automatically providing money to criminals anymore. Legalization would allow regulation, which would lead to quality controls and thus better quality for the consumers*. Long-term studies would be easier. The situation for addicts would improve as there would be less social and legal danger involved in getting professional help.
Of course it's still a War On Something so we can't expect it to ever end.
* Wow, a sentence where I use the word "consumer" without feeling dirty.
Interesting (Score:2)
A worthy idea (Score:2)
It sounds like we have a candidate for a solution to our overly litigious society - underfunding of the courts.
Possible Telco reply (Score:2)
Indeed, the longest footnote in the opinion is an extended jeremiad about how much work judges are under and why it took so long to decide this case.
Clearly, this demonstrates the inefficiencies of public services compared to private. If the court systems were run by big business, such problems would be eliminated.
Hearing this from 'big business' would not surprise me in the least.