dslreports logo
Small Texas ISP Says Comcast Drove It Out of Business

A small Texas ISP has filed a lawsuit against Comcast, alleging that the cable giant destroyed the company's lines after it refused to be acquired by the company. The lawsuit, filed last week in a Harris County, Texas court (hat tip: Consumerist), states that Comcast approached the owner of Telecom Cable LLC in 2013, offering to acquire the company's networks and 2,500 customers, located west of Houston.

Click for full size
But after talks extended throughout 2014, "ultimately, Comcast was not willing to pay what Telecom’s operations were worth, and the negotiations ended," the lawsuit claims.

Shortly after rejecting Comcast's advances, things got ugly, the company says.

Comcast decided that instead of buying the small company, they'd overbuild the area, deploying their own lines to these customers. Telecom Cable says the company marked its underground cables with orange flags and spray paint, and sent a map of its network infrastructure to Comcast -- to ensure its subcontractors didn't accidentally damage Telecom's equipment and cables.

But Comcast's workers began disconnecting all of the company's customers, the lawsuit claims, causing a massive wave of disruption that the smaller ISP couldn't keep up with.

"Within six weeks, Defendants destroyed or damaged the lines servicing every single Telecom customer in Weston Lakes," reads the complaint, "and not one of those lines was ever repaired by Defendants."

Telecom Cable says the company needed to use 4,000 feet of cable to repair the damage done by the Comcast contractors. But by the summer of 2015 the company was effectively forced out of business in the impacted area, since the majority of the small ISP's customers had disconnected service out of frustration with the outages. The "vast majority" of those customers are now Comcast subscribers, claims the complaint.

Comcast has yet to comment on the lawsuit.

Most recommended from 41 comments


itguy
join:2017-05-04

39 recommendations

itguy

Member

Not surprised

That's probably right. Whats bad is Comcast whines about Google and the same stuff. I think Comcast should have to pay them what they were asking for buyout.

Umitencho
join:2012-08-11
Jacksonville, FL

21 recommendations

Umitencho

Member

Wow.

Talk about petty on Comcast's part. Either grossly incompetent or very malicious. I wonder if these ISPs need to be broken up rather than merged like they tried recently. Glad I dropped Comcast for another company.
PX Eliezer0
join:2017-01-15
Ho Ho Kus, NJ

20 recommendations

PX Eliezer0

Member

Let the dirt come out in court....

If these statements are true, I hope that Comcast will be exposed for the scum that they are.

It's even worse than AT&T did 100+ years ago when they refused to connect small phone companies to the national grid. The government stopped that in 1913. But AT&T never did actual sabotage!

Of course, NBC News will cover NONE of this because NBC itself is owned by Comcast now.

why60loss
Premium Member
join:2012-09-20

15 recommendations

why60loss

Premium Member

Hopefully the small ISP wins

It sounds like it's likely true so I hope Comcast pays them more than just a fair amount for this very under handed act done to a small defenseless business.

Guspaz
Guspaz
MVM
join:2001-11-05
Montreal, QC

12 recommendations

Guspaz

MVM

No matter how badly Comcast loses, it will be a drop in the bucket

Let's say that Luna wins big and gets $10,000,000 from Comcast. That represents 0.01% of Comcast's revenue: not even a drop in the bucket. Hell, it's a third of what Comcast pays their CEO every year.

EliteData
EliteData
Premium Member
join:2003-07-06
Philippines

9 recommendations

EliteData

Premium Member

-

laws and regulations do nothing to protect smaller businesses and competition when greedy business conglomerates just employ high priced professional attorneys to "get around" the laws and find "loopholes" in the regulations.
it sucks but this type of thing is rampant in just about every commodity and service that exists.
microphone
Premium Member
join:2009-04-29
Parkville, MD

3 recommendations

microphone

Premium Member

I was skimming over the complaint

It seems like Telecom had 2500 customers. The egregious and unacceptable actions from Comcast and/or their contractors appears to have impacted approximately 230 of them. Certainly Comcast should be sued for damages but was the impact really enough to knock the whole company under and make the family relocate to upstate New York?