I am the founder of Advanced Stream, a Tacoma-based Internet service provider (ISP).
We are at a critical moment in the history of Tacoma’s Wired City initiative.
Click Network has proposed to expand its services and begin selling retail phone and Internet services along with cable television. If approved, this will put Click into direct competition with the three local hometown ISPs, its current partners – Advanced Stream, Net-Venture and Rainer Connect.
Click is presently the impartial operator of the city’s wholesale open-access network. The ISPs are Click’s loyal customers, and we have a great relationship with Click. We have worked together for the past decade hooking up customers to the network and building the Wired City. But if this proposal passes, all that will change; Click will go from being our ally and supplier into our most feared competitor.
It would be tragic if Click became our direct competitor and began taking our customers. It would destroy our young company, only 10 short years after our founding.
We could not possibly compete with Click. How do you compete with someone that sets your prices, oversees your activities, approves your marketing plans and has your customer list? There could be no level playing field.
Tacoma’s open-access platform gives Click a huge advantage over Comcast, for it gives customers a choice of ISPs. Why tamper with a successful model?
Comcast doesn’t have open-access competition, and Comcast customers have no choice of ISPs. When Comcast customers are upset or having problems, they are stuck. If they want to change providers, they have no choice but to leave the network. Often they cannot, since they are under the Comcast monopoly and cannot switch to another system.
On the Click open-access network, it is very simple to switch Internet service providers. Should any of the IPS’s customers feel neglected or disappointed, they can immediately switch providers by calling any of the other local competitors.
The whole process takes five minutes, and no appointment is needed. No waiting for a truck and no need to buy a new modem.
This very notion of local competition keeps all the contenders on their toes. This benefits Click customers and is why our service is better and our prices lower.
This proposal will place Click’s long-term survival in jeopardy, because killing the small ISPs removes a key advantage that Click now has over Comcast.
As the Tacoma Public Utilities board studies the matter, I hope the members remember Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn’s visit to Tacoma, as he sought to free Seattle from Comcast’s monopolistic clutches. Let’s hope they will not forget what life was like before Click came along, when the Comcast monopoly (TCI at that time) was all we had. How Tacoma had only 20 TV channels versus the 60 channels in Seattle.
Tacoma’s revolutionary idea of free competition between independent local ISPs over an open-access network is a success. The benefits Click has brought in lower prices and better service are real. The Click business model is not broken, and crushing the ISPs is not the best way forward. Readers can learn more about the issue at HeyTPU.com.
Destroying the small, hometown ISPs would be a terrible loss for the City of Destiny. The benefits we have gained could be lost, and the monopoly could return.
Mitchell Shook is the CEO and founder of Tacoma-based Advanced Stream Broadband.
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