That’s like what, about a thousand times faster than your AT&T ADSL connection for less than what Google charges for Google Fiber?
You know why we don’t have this here? Because of politically-connected monopolies like Comcast.
JAPAN DON’T HAVE NO COMCAST, YOU DIG?
Of course, the Japanese pay waaaaaay too much for rice, on account of bad policies having to do with mom and pop farmers, but they’re doing lots better than us with the internet.
Obvs.
And did you know that there are people living out there west of San Francisco, all the way out there in the Outer Richmond and the Outset (the Outer Sunset) who can’t get cable internet or DSL at any price? Yes, in this day and age, in 2013, there are people in this so-called World Capital of Innovation who go online with a dial up modem because they have no choice.
Poor devils.
Poor, poor West Bay devils. (At least they have Ocean Beach.)
In closing, the Comcast monopoly ought to get shut down and Sony should start selling us internet for cheap.
San Francisco resident Jon Sieker has a beef with AT&T.
See?
“You accidentally gave me a White and Yellow pages this year after I signed up to not receive either of them”
Here’s the proof:
Click to expand – via Jon Sieker
And here’s the note he just sent to Ma Bell, cause you see, Jon has Internet access:
“Dear AT&T,
2 years ago I was so disappointed by the waste that the Yellow and White pages caused, caring about my community and environment, I searched online for what I could do to minimize the waste. I was very happy to find your web site that allowed me to opt out and not receive a White Pages and Yellow pages to save on the waste. Thank you for providing this option as I have The Internet and don’t need a physical phone directory. The Internet gives me all of the information I need including your yellow pages site. I felt great to find and fill out the form that allowed me to NOT RECEIVE both yellow and white pages. I felt I was doing something to save the environment. Imagine my surprise when I was accidentally given both the yellow pages and white pages today.
Please let me know what I should do with the unwanted publications. It would be best if you came and picked them up from me and passed them on to some unfortunate soul with no internet.
As a side not, it would be great if your delivery agents didn’t litter my street and community with these unwanted relics from the past. I have photos of the litter if you are interested or don’t believe me. I would be happy to pass these photos on to you or any of the other organizations copied on this email.
Thank you for your help. I look forward to the solution you provide.”
The hard-core NIMBYs at San Francisco Beautiful (our Comcast monopoly’s L’il Buddy) ended up going two for two yesterday in their crusade ensure that dial-up internet service is the best that some San Franciscans can get. That is, they won a stay from Superior Court Judge Harold Khan temporarily blocking the installation of AT&T sidewalk boxes and they’ll have no requirement to post a bond to keep their stay.
This is, of course, despite the fact that the Board of Supervisors recently approved the installation.
“Residents across the City, as well as the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, have voiced support for competition and choice when it comes to TV, high speed internet and digital phone service.
Despite today’s decision to issue a temporary stay, AT&T believes it ultimately will prevail in the litigation and it remains committed to bringing San Francisco a next generation IP network.”
Which, you know, sounds good to me, but I’m not a NIMBY.
So, when you see these existing boxes, which Judge Khan has no control over, what’s your reaction? Do you say, well there’s graffiti on a telephone box or an electricity box or a mail box so we shouldn’t have telephones and we shouldn’t have electricity and we shouldn’t have mail service? I don’t know.
Click to expand
Let’s hear from the NIMBY side of things after the jump, but I warn you, it’s barely legible.
Here was the scene down at the State Building this morning.
See, it’s Senator Leland Yee, PhD, telling one and all the virtues of online voter reg.
Click to expand
Like, 11 other states allow voters to register online, so why can’t California?
All the deets:
“Governor Urged to Sign Online Voter Registration Bill - Senator Yee, San Mateo Elections Chief, Common Cause, Students push bill to bring California voter registration system into the 21st Century
SAN FRANCISCO – Today, Senator Leland Yee (D-San Francisco) was joined by San Mateo County Chief Elections Officer Mark Church as well several organizations to urge Governor Jerry Brown to sign legislation that would allow citizens to register to vote via the internet.
Several other states already offer online registration, yet California has lagged behind awaiting implementation of the statewide online database system known as VoteCal, which has been delayed until at least 2015 and probably later.
“In the 21st century, especially here in California, it is long overdue to have online voter registration,” said Yee. “SB 397 will not only help protect the integrity of the vote, but will allow many more individuals the opportunity to register and participate in our democracy.”
Yee was joined at a press conference in San Francisco by Common Cause, SEIU, League of Women Voters, Californians for Electoral Reform, and the University of California Students Association, to highlight the major provisions of the bill including provisions that place greater safeguards to fraud than the current paper registration process.
Under SB 397, citizens would input their voter information online and the county elections office would use the voter’s signature from the Department of Motor Vehicles to verify authenticity. That signature could be matched against the voter’s signature at the polling place. Currently, signatures at the polling place are only compared to the paper registration signature, which potentially allows for greater occurrences of fraud.
SB 397 would also minimize the practice of individuals being paid to collect voter registration cards and instead sending in fake names in order to fulfill a quota or to make more money.
County elections officers are also hailing the bill as a potential cost-savings and a way of eliminating administrative errors from incorrect data entry of the paper registration. By using online registration, the voter would enter their own information helping to eliminate spelling errors or an election office being unable to read the paper registration. The new system will also save time and money on data entry by election clerks.
“This law will increase voter registration, increase the accuracy of the registration information, and reduce election costs,” said Church. “Everyone wins.”
In Arizona, implementation of online voter registration saw a decrease of up to 83 cents per a registration for some counties. Mariposa County – the largest election jurisdiction in Arizona – has saved over $1 million since implementing online registration 5 years ago.
“With the passage of Senator Yee’s online voter registration bill, we can finally move California’s voter registration system into the 21st century,” said Kathay Feng, Executive Director for California Common Cause.
The Governor has until October 9 to sign or veto the measure.”
So, really, you should work extra hard instead of sitting on your ass waiting for Mayor Ed Lee or Police Chief Greg Suhr or D.A. George Gascon or Willie Brown or Rose Pak (just guessing on this one) or Randy Shaw or Supervisor Sean Elsbernd or Supervisor Mark Farrell or Travel San Francisco or Plan C or the Chamber of Commerce or the SFFD Union or the SFPD Union or the Union Square BID to call you up to tell you what to write in your next insipid column.
You are the Homer Simpson of Bay Area journalism.
Now, speaking of transit protests, here’s your old column from last month:
What’s this? Spin? Wishful thinking? A mistake? Do you believe everything the SFPD tells you right when they tell you? Even when you wrote this, the story of the .45 was highly questionable. And now, of course, it’s been proven wrong. Any correction there? Any misgivings? No? All right, moving on…
“So far the only group that has gotten satisfaction out of this is the small group of nihilists from Tuesday’s protest. News blogs said they were 150 strong, but I counted only about 80 of them gathered in front of the TV news trucks at Dolores Park.”
“News blogs?” Plural? Which ones? Were they, by chance quoting Chronicle reporter Marisa Lagos? Let’s see what she had to say:
So what’s your point, Nevius? That news blogs suck? That Marisa Lagos, somebody who is much smarter than you and somebody who works harder than you, is wrong? That you don’t want to insult Marisa Lagos so you’ll put blame on SFist or some other entity that you don’t like anyway? That you’re merely a part-time columnist who just blew into town so you’re entitled to do a half-assed job?
It’s got to be something like that.
Oh, BTW, Nev, do you consider yourself, “The Voice of Reason?” Really?
Now actually, the Tweets and whathaveyou that you’re relying on, Nev, consistently stated that “over9000″ protesters were expected at the Monday evening Anonymous happenings. The reason why that’s important is because you’re dealing with an Internet meme.
I myself don’t recall seeing too many AT&T boxes in the 415 with graffiti. The shots produced by the NIMBYs generally are from out of town / out of state. Anyway, here’s one of the genuine AT&T utility boxes already in town. It sort of has graffiti:
From: Date: Wed, Jul 20, 2011 at 4:41 PM Subject: My vote on the AT&T issue To: Scott.Wiener@sfgov.org
I’m sending this email to a number of neighborhood association leaders and other involved folks in District 8, in order to explain my vote yesterday on the AT&T environmental appeal. I would appreciate it if you would forward this email to your boards, memberships, and neighbors who have an interest in this issue. The voters are entitled to an explanation of all of my votes (and I cast many each week), including votes as controversial as this one. People can agree or disagree, but they deserve an explanation.
I will start by saying that I struggled mightily with this issue. Like many of you, I do not like these boxes, or any of the utility boxes that are already on our streets. Part of me very much wanted to vote against AT&T and for an EIR simply because I dislike the boxes. But one of the commitments that I made to myself, and to the voters, was that I’m not just going to be a reactive elected official. I committed that I was going to be the kind of elected official who tried to find solutions to hard issues. I also committed to myself early on that I would not abuse CEQA by ordering EIRs where the law doesn’t support it simply because I have policy issues with the underlying project. As described below, ordering an EIR here probably would have been illegal and certainly would have fed into our City and State’s addiction to environmental review, with the effect that good projects (including public projects) are delayed, killed, or made much more expensive than they need to be.
The issue here was very hard — pretty much everyone agrees that Comcast is in desperate need of competition while also agreeing that these boxes stink. There were also incredibly strong views on both sides of this issue. I received many emails from opponents, passionately and articulately describing the issues with the boxes, and from proponents, passionately and articulately describing why we need the service and competition. This was a no-win vote for me in terms of popularity contests. Either way I voted was going to make one group or the other upset with me. But, for better or for worse, casting controversial votes is what we do at the Board. If I wanted to be loved by everyone all the time, I wouldn’t have run for office.
And, this issue pointed to a major problem we have in San Francisco. We do a bad job managing our sidewalks. Our departments don’t coordinate well. We don’t have a strong master plan. We haven’t fully implemented the Better Streets Plan. That plan is how we should be managing our sidewalks and deciding what to put on them and where. Not through CEQA, which is a blunt instrument that doesn’t get you much other than delay and expense, but through actually having a plan for our sidewalks. As described below, through a strong and well-planned permitting system, we can do that.
So, why did I, in the end, tip in favor of voting to reject the appeal?”
[UPDATE: And oh, yesterday's vote at the Board o' Supes will have no effect upon cell phone service in San Francisco, despite what somemight tell you. Uverse is about TV and wired Internet and wired phone service, for the most part. It's FttN, Fiber to the Node, bro-ham. It's not Fiber to the Cell Phone Antenna, no, not at all...]
Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying. The thing is though, even when you allow the NIMBY’s to give input before you start building a community service center or apartment building or brace of utility boxes, they’re still not happy.
Isn’t that funny?
Don’t you think that ugly people from San Francisco Beautiful had more than a little input on the long-delayed project to bring regular San Franciscans U-Verse Internet and TV and phone and WiFi service? (Way too much input, IMO.)
Anyway, Sunglint was all over yesterday’s action at the Board of Supervisors. See below. (Sunglint is not without strong feelings on the matter, so you’ve been warned.)
Is this an AT&T box? No it’s not. Should area NIMBY’s want it banned? Well, not if they want electricity:
“At approximately 4:45PST, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted to affirm the exemption determination for AT&T’s once-in-a-century telephone infrastructure upgrade project, aka “Project Lightspeed.” This means that AT&T can now start to implement their plan to upgrade the telecom infrastructure in the city, with the goal of delivering higher-speed 24Mbs DSL service within all San Francisco districts. AT&T also calls this as “Uverse” which can be any combination of television, telephone, and internet.
The final proposal seems to allow 495 cabinets to be installed throughout the city of San Francisco by AT&T. Multiple potential sites for each cabinet location are to be evaluated. When AT&T seeks an excavation permit from the DPW, besides doing the usual permit stuff, DPW will also notify that site’s supervisor. Then, that supervisor signs an MOU (memorandum of understanding) with AT&T regarding the site, or one of the alternative sightings are considered. Something like that: the specific details seem fuzzy. There seems to be a formal and sane DPW appeals process, and a my-supervisor-is-crazy-curve-ball appeals process.
Voting against were the following sorry lot of supervisors, with their comments below.
District 1: Eric Mar
District 3: David Chiu
District 5: Ross Mirkarimi
District 6: Jane Kim
District 11: John Avalos
Note to the supervisors listed above: I will be voting against you in future elections, geography permitting, and consider your conduct in this matter anti-internet, anti-technology, anti-jobs: death eaters, all! Here are specific comments.”
All right, I have to go talk a suicidal Comcast executive down from the roof right now. He’s yelling, “Millions, millions, our precious monopoly is going to lose millions!”
Oh, and after the jump, a list of NIMBY fellow travelers, the people who don’t want you to have high-speed Internet and whatnot.
