I send this email to Curt Barret on May 1st
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Hi all,
You are receiving this email since I really respect the feedback of the District41preschoolparents@yahoogroups.com alias. Plus, I've copied a few of the folks I've seen on the various friends / Ben Franklin PTA / Event alias as well a few of our local politicans (Terra Costa Howard, JR McBride & Pete Ladesic).

My name is Vanessa Pierce (email vanessa.pierce@sun.com) & I have a husband named Eric and have 4 young kids.

This one has to do with the AT&T DSL tech performance that I receive at my house. If you are fed up with the DSL performance at your home & dont want to invest in high cost of cable to get high speed performance, please send emails to curtb@glenellyn.org. Curt Barrett is the Assistant Village Mgr & is copied on this email.

I already cleared the concept of me initiating an email to the Village of Glen Ellyn during my conversation this afternoon with Kurt Barrett. He promised to forward my concerns to Village Board et al.

I apologize in advance if you've already discussed this issue ad nauseum or dont care about issue but I'm rather passionate about fixing my horrible DSL performance after spending last month of down DSL service & trying to get all my phone / internet lines upgraded.
I already explored cable & I'd have to more than double to triple the total cost of all my services compared to my AT&T bundled packages (which has dish, cingular, 2 phone #'s w/ local & long distance phone, internet)


****BACKGROUND******
I want the Village of Glen Ellyn / Village Board to understand how important it is to me/my family (since I work from home & require highspeed internet access) as well as the citizens of this community to get out of/ renegoitate the ARCHAIC 15yr Cable Television franchise agreements we have such that we can allow other highspeed Internet technology options (such as AT& T high speed internet access) the ability to upgrade their telecommunication infrastructure (at no cost to us consumers) so they can provide me & other residents of Glen Ellyn, IL the Top Tier Professional DSL service we need (even 2nd or 3rd tier would be okay)

What the Village of Glen Ellyn needs to do is offer Franchise Rights to AT&T such that they can the capital infrastructure investment in Fiber Optics to the Nodes which in turn allows them to pump up data transmissions speeds of DSL service for folks like my family which is located too far from central office.
All the municipalities in Illinois with the exception of Wayne & North Chicago (near Waukegan) are balking at the expansion of offerning AT&T franchise rights (as well as access to public land to invest in fiber optic upgrades) because that have 15 year LUCRATIVE contracts with the CABLE providers which basically gives them a monopoly on cable tv services (but which has morphed into cable internet access as well)

NOTE: Glen Ellyn did bring in "competition" by allowing 2 cable operators into Village but they are forcing us into cable choice only rather than allowing competition for other technology options for our high speed internet access business.

My service performance is horrible because I'm too far (live 0.9 miles from train station) from the "central office" on both my lines. There are now 4 levels of service for DSL & I can only get the lowest level (tried upgrading to the 3rd tier but doesnt work). I dont mind paying $39 a month at all but I'm left with the $14 service due to technology.

In order for me to have high / business speed DSL, AT&T needs the village of Glen Ellyn to allow AT&T franchise rights (since need to work on public land) so AT&T can invest (@ their own cost) in upgrading / bringing fiber optic technology to the "Nodes".

What I learned today is all based on talking with AT&T DSL tech who came to my house to fix my service performance& then confirmed this with the Assist. Village Mgr Kurt Barrett.

I found out / verified that we in Glen ELlyn (along with virtually every municipality in Illinois except Wayne & North Chicago -near Waukesa) are stuck with these15yr franchising contracts with Cable companies. The village party line is that AT&T wants too much in their franchising agreements & that we are locked into virtual "non-compete" agreements with cable companies.

BTW, the reason I know all this (& why I'd just go off running with what the DSL tech said) is that I completely understand all this technology from my 8 yrs spent as a Telecommunication (ie Signal) Captain in the US Army where I was responsible for setting up switching, cable, mobile telephone services for 24 hr / 7 day week battlefield (yes, like Iraq) enviromnents.
Plus, my first job back in early 90's was working on telecommunication products that went on to help revolutionalize some of the technology we take for granted today....example is a muliplexing box which converted 1 copper pair telephone line into 2 lines with a box at the house & printed circuit board system board at the central office.

Email sent to Curt Barrett on May 4th
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Why we need more bandwidth from AT&T-Feature Story: Introducing the Sun Streaming System


Curt, Pete Ladesic,
As a follow up to my email from the other day on why we should allow AT& T ability to upgrade & provide fiber optics to the "nodes" so residents like me can get at least 3rd & maybe even top tier DSL service veruss the lowest level I receive now...

My company is developing technology that requires high high internet speeds (ie ability to push more bandwidth through our existing infrasture.)
Attached is a news article on Sun Streaming System "an IP video delivery platform that enables telco and cable operators to deliver next-generation services for half the cost of comparable offerings. The Sun Streaming System has the highest video streaming capacity at the lowest cost of any product on the market. At approximately $50 per stream, the system is poised to reshape the ecomonics of personalized video services over IP."

Guess what....because Glen Ellyn has ANCIENT cable franchising contracts I'm completely restricted from having even opportunity to have access to such services because I have such POOR DSL bandwidth since Glen Ellyn will NOT let AT&T invest in the fiber infrastruture..
I'd have to give up my DSL & get cable. That's not competitive enviroments....

Even though I'm not a lawyer nor have I read / had access to GE's 15yr cable franchising contracts, but just from what I've learned in last few days, I think any lawyer could really build a quick case for violation of anti-trust / monopoly laws. Esp since I heard a commerical today for Comcast where they are advertise phone service over cable...So we let them offer telephone but AT&T cant offer TV???????????????
http://www.sun.com/featured-articles/2007-0426/feature/index.jsp

AT&T fiber? The refridgerator sized boxes every block or so for Project Lightspeed would look very appealing to most GE residents I beleive.

DSL? Stop-gap solution at best.

I suggest upgrading to Comcast broadband, which - Irony of Ironies! - used to be owned by a company known as "AT&T". The "AT&T" that had the Dow symbol of "T".

As to SBC, now known as The New AT&T, I suggest they negotiate with each municipality for franchise rights like everyone else does. There is not one thing stopping them from doing this.

What? Are they above the law or something?

quote:

Originally posted by ByTheNumbers:


What? Are they above the law or something?

They are just cheap. They stand to make millions, yet don't want to pay the minimal franchise fees in most areas.

Plus, as I mentioned... most municipalities don't want the stupid PL boxes strewn about their town. Imagine a gunmetal grey small refridgerator anchored in the parkway out front of your house.

quote:

Originally posted by Tony Rio:

They are just cheap. They stand to make millions, yet don't want to pay the minimal franchise fees in most areas.

Plus, as I mentioned... most municipalities don't want the stupid PL boxes strewn about their town. Imagine a gunmetal grey small refridgerator anchored in the parkway out front of your house.

They are also egregiously disingenuous, what with all those faux WeWantChoice.com cartoons they run on TV.

Classic FUD - Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt, with a side order of Confusion.

They try to make it appear as if there is some grass-roots campaign of dedicated "consumer advocates" fighting against the evil empires of monopolistic cable companies when really, all The New AT&T wants is to get in the action themselves - without following existing laws that seem to work quite well.

Many towns, villages and muncipalities have more than one cable provider. AT&T just doesn't want to be bothered with all of the numerous negotiations.

Like I stated: What? Are they above the law?

They also post stuff like this rant. Evidently, it's a part of some sort of "guerrilla marketing" campaign. Or it sure looks like it is.

quote:

Originally posted by ByTheNumbers:


They also post stuff like this rant. Evidently, it's a part of some sort of "guerrilla marketing" campaign. Or it sure looks like it is.

Having been involved in the nastiness that went on out here in the tri-cities with our municiple broadband initiative (good friends were the spearheads) I immediatly thought the same thing...

quote:

Originally posted by CPT_Mom:
Email sent to Curt Barrett on May 4th
=================================================
Why we need more bandwidth from AT&T-Feature Story: Introducing the Sun Streaming System


Curt, Pete Ladesic,
As a follow up to my email from the other day on why we should allow AT& T ability to upgrade & provide fiber optics to the "nodes" so residents like me can get at least 3rd & maybe even top tier DSL service veruss the lowest level I receive now...

My company is developing technology that requires high high internet speeds (ie ability to push more bandwidth through our existing infrasture.)
Attached is a news article on Sun Streaming System "an IP video delivery platform that enables telco and cable operators to deliver next-generation services for half the cost of comparable offerings. The Sun Streaming System has the highest video streaming capacity at the lowest cost of any product on the market. At approximately $50 per stream, the system is poised to reshape the ecomonics of personalized video services over IP."

Guess what....because Glen Ellyn has ANCIENT cable franchising contracts I'm completely restricted from having even opportunity to have access to such services because I have such POOR DSL bandwidth since Glen Ellyn will NOT let AT&T invest in the fiber infrastruture..
I'd have to give up my DSL & get cable. That's not competitive enviroments....

Even though I'm not a lawyer nor have I read / had access to GE's 15yr cable franchising contracts, but just from what I've learned in last few days, I think any lawyer could really build a quick case for violation of anti-trust / monopoly laws. Esp since I heard a commerical today for Comcast where they are advertise phone service over cable...So we let them offer telephone but AT&T cant offer TV???????????????
http://www.sun.com/featured-articles/2007-0426/feature/index.jsp

I don't think your antitrust suit is going to work.

The reason for blocking the build has to do with the definition of what a video service is, and how it's handled. It has to due with AT&T's requirement under current state law to apply for a franchise because they want to offer video services, and the fact that any franchise offered must be comparable to existing franchises in Glen Ellyn. Since all the existing franchises in Illinois have buildout requirements, and AT&T will not sign any agreement with a full buildout requirement, they can't be offered a comparable franchise.

Nobody in Illinois is "stuck" with franchise agreements. By Federal law, no city can grant an exclusive cable franchise, so any provider that wanted to come in, and play by the rules (local, state, & federal) could come to Glen Ellyn.

Video, Internet, and Phone services are all handled differently under law. There is no requirement for any phone provider to hold a franchise, nor is there any requirement for a cable provider to offer phone services.

Yes, you would certainly want competition but not the way AT&T is going about it.

Read more here http://www.geneva.il.us/att/ILHB1500.htm
and here http://www.geneva.il.us/att/Lightspeed.htm

As to "high high internet speeds," you're not going to get them with Project Slightspeed. Perhaps if we lived in a Verizon territory and could get their FIOS offering, but not here, not ever, with AT&T.

quote:

Originally posted by Tony Rio:

quote:

Originally posted by ByTheNumbers:


They also post stuff like this rant. Evidently, it's a part of some sort of "guerrilla marketing" campaign. Or it sure looks like it is.

Having been involved in the nastiness that went on out here in the tri-cities with our municiple broadband initiative (good friends were the spearheads) I immediatly thought the same thing...

This bone-headed sentence literally confirms it to me:

"I'd have to give up my DSL & get cable."

Waaah, Waahh, "I'd have to give up my DSL."

What a kook!

I am not particularly concerned about speed; however, AT&T DSL speed is slower when compared to Comcast cable. However, I will never pay for Comcast ever again.