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What an insane day.

Cannot explain the anger I feel over the damage done by one telecom company. Rogers goes down for some as of yet undisclosed reason and it has a domino effect on a chunk of our infrastructure.

Finally got cell and internet back at 11:40PM. ATMs down everywhere, no interac, most places only accepting cash. The teller at my bank was initially hesitant when I asked to withdraw cash then was like “oh ok!” when I only asked for $100.

Reminded me a bit of the 2003 black out, only we all still had land lines and carried more cash back then.

My biggest concern is how many 911 calls were affected by this. When my dad was sick in October, I had to call the paramedics for him one Sunday morning. Can’t even imagine the helplessness of not having someone answer on the other end.

No company should have this much power.

(At least I found some Crystal Pepsi in the wild today. )

#rogers #canada is three corporations in a trench coat #cell phone #rogers communications #monopolies #telecom monopoly #canada #canadian telco #canada loves its monopolies

This week completely scrambled the video landscape, and its implications are going to take months to fully understand.

Content companies need to wake up.

The Trump administration has guaranteed vertical monopolies. The perfect monopoly. Companies can now control content and the access to it via the internet. What’s at stake: censorship, content blocking, throttling, pay to play, fast lanes and selling your data.

Americans are now pwned at all ends of the spectrum.

First is the district court’s decision to approve the merger of AT&T and Time Warner announced just moments ago. That will create one of the largest content creation and distribution companies in the world when it closes. It is also expected to encourage Comcast to make a similar bid for 21st Century Fox, further consolidating the market. As Chip Pickering, CEO of pro-competition advocacy org INCOMPAS put it, “AT&T is getting the merger no one wants, but everyone will pay for.”

But the second major story was the final (final final) repeal of the FCC’s net neutrality rules yesterday that will allow telecom companies like AT&T to prioritize their own content over that of competitors. In the past, AT&T didn’t have all that much content, but the addition of Time Warner now gives them a library encompassing Warner Bros. to TBS, TNT, HBO and CNN. Suddenly, that control over prioritization just got a lot more powerful and profitable.

The F.C.C. has overplayed its legal hand.

76% of Americans support Net Neutrality yet Ajit Pai, Republicans and the #TelecomMonopoly persist

Allowing such censorship is anathema to the internet’s (and America’s) founding spirit. And by going this far, the F.C.C. may also have overplayed its legal hand. So drastic is the reversal of policy (if, as expected, the commission approves Mr. Pai’s proposal next month), and so weak is the evidence to support the change, that it seems destined to be struck down in court.

The problem for Mr. Pai is that government agencies are not free to abruptly reverse longstanding rules on which many have relied without a good reason, such as a change in factual circumstances. A mere change in F.C.C. ideology isn’t enough. As the Supreme Court has said, a federal agency must “examine the relevant data and articulate a satisfactory explanation for its action.” Given that net neutrality rules have been a huge success by most measures, the justification for killing them would have to be very strong.

There is a long history of anticompetitive throttling and blocking — often concealed — that the F.C.C. has had to stop to preserve the health of the internet economy. Examples include:

AT&T’s efforts to keep Skype off iPhones

the blocking of Google Wallet by Verizon.

Services like Skype and Netflix would have met an early death without basic net neutrality protections.

#bernie sanders #net neutrality #fcc #ajit pai #brendan carr #michael o'rielly #mike o’rielly #republicans complicit #gop complicit #plutocracy #telecom monopoly #ustelecom #buying votes #buying democracy #buying america

Trump's FCC Can't Get Its Way on Net Neutrality

Ajit Pai @AjitPaiFCC is going to Kill Net Neutrality on Dec. 14, 2017. The “FCC plan would give Internet providers power to choose the sites customers see and use“.

#SaveNetNeutrality #ResistTrump #ResistAjitPai #ResistGOP

Now that the Republican-controlled Federal Communications Commission has decided to toss a massive favor to their friends in the telecom industry and revoke open internet rules, there may soon be no regulatory barrier preventing ISPs from implementing paid prioritization schemes or outright blocking or censoring competitors.

Based on the tax cuts, Republicans will fast-track and RAM it down American throats no matter what the majority wants.

GOP: Choice means Pay to Play #CronyCapitalism

According to an Associated Press review of seven of the country’s biggest telecom providers, ZERO were willing to “rule out the possibility” of establishing fast or slow lanes for various streams of content.

Three providers—Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile—declined to specifically say they would not block or censor content in the future.

Of course, trying to plumb these statements for actual commitments is a fool’s errand, since ISPs have

a long history of lying

throttling applications they claim consume too much bandwidth, or blocking competitors and things like BitTorrent.

While ISPs trying to force their users back into AOL-style walled gardens is probably not going to happen, consumers should be prepared for telecoms to renege on their promises of self-regulation as soon as it’s convenient.

“But hey, these guys didn’t run most of their competition out of the business by playing nice.”

Make Monopolies Great Again!