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from: USTV Media

Video ‘Competition’ In Ohio Begins To Spark Complaints
August 29th, 2007 by Andy in Media and Democracy

Seems that some towns in Ohio are starting to receive a number of complaints from residents regarding AT&T’s solicitors. Here is a letter from one Ohio resident to their local municipal officials regarding rude and pushy behavior on the part of AT&T employees.

On Saturday a representative from AT&T came to my door stating they will be doing fiber optic upgrades to certain homes in the area and it will require their service people have access to my home for 6 to 8 hours. For the inconvenience they will give me a month free access to fiber optic TV. She was insistent as to when they can come in to do this work, as if this is mandatory and I have no say in this matter.

It seems obvious to me this is a sales pitch to use their TV system while under the guise of updating the telephone system.

The rep stated only certain homes would be offered this and seemed to be put out by my questions and that I would get back to her.

Does the city sanction this action?

This is clearly a scheme to be hooked up to their TV networking while making one believe the phone system requires the updating.

Your response please.

I’m afraid this very well may simply be the tip of the iceberg regarding these kinds of developments and portends a number of increasing incidents of this nature. New Jersey is already seeing a rash of this kind of behavior regarding Verizon and their tactics. A key point to this is how residents automatically turn to government when transgressions reach such a point, unawares as to the extent that public authority has been stripped from the governing processes and mechanisms of our society, thanks to decades of privatization and neo-liberal economic ideologies being implemented in nearly every sphere of our civic life.

The Ohio city official that provided the above correspondence to me mentioned that their police department wants to pull AT&T’s solicitor’s permit because it has received numerous calls about aggressive sales people. But unfortunately, no one is willing to go on record and “file a complaint” against AT&T. Apparently, they are afraid of retaliation.

This might be a reason as to why that is not such an unfounded fear…

Role of Telecom Firms in Wiretaps Is Confirmed

Our friends at AT&T - delivering you.

The repeated use of the term ‘corporate state’ by us at USTV is not meant to be a metaphor. And just to drive the point home, there’s this… Bush Seeks Legal Immunity for Telecoms.