scaredpoet
join:2001-03-26
Monmouth Junction, NJ
2 edits | You're still comparing apples to oranges.
In your cable analogy, you're stealing cable because you are licensed to use the service for one household, and not share or resell it to other households. The cable company built the infrastructure and supplies the service, not you.
IF you built your own network, supplied your own infrastructure and backhaul, and signed all of the necessary deals with the networks providing content, then you could conceivably do what you like with it, including sharing the heck you wanted, and your cable company can't accuse you of promulgating theft of cable service. Assuming of course, the cable company doesn't decide that you're infringing on their monopoly and should not be allowed to compete with them, in which case they might lobby (if they haven't already) for exclusive franchise agreements.
New Orleans built their own wireless infrastructure, not BellSouth. They erected the hardware, negotiated the backhaul with an upstream provider, set up the infrastructure. They are a sharing a resource *they* created, not BellSouth. And yet, BellSouth feels that their near-monopoly control should not be challenged. it's not about theft of service; it's about BellSouth being able to control who makes their resources available in an area where the resources are scarce, and artifically keeping those resources as scarce as possible so that BellSouth can inflate the cost to consumers, and the resulting profit.
New orleans is not preventing BellSouth from offering their own service. If BellSouth wanted to set up their own WiFi access points and let people use them, I'm sure the city of New Orleans would do nothing to stop them.
What business is it of BellSouth's what the city does with the resources they've built of their own accord, and under what basis does this law they've lobbied for prevent theft?
Verizon Wireless offers EVDO service in New Orleans. Again, it's using infrastructure they built. And yet BellSouth isn't going after Verizon... yet. Why is that? What's the difference here? |
