Did Comcast Sabotage This Independent ISP That Spurned It?
The former owner of a small internet service provider in South Texas is suing Comcast, accusing the cable giant of systematically and deliberately severing all of its cables, essentially sabotaging the small business and running it into the ground.
Anthony Luna was-until recently-the owner of Telecom Cable LLC, a small telecom company with 229 customers in the Houston area. Luna had provided his service for eight years, and was planning to continue providing that service until retirement.
In 2013, Comcast offered to buy Luna's business outright, but according to Luna would not offer him a fair price for the company. Luna refused to sell, so Comcast expanded into the region on their own, as a competitor.
Comcast's first task as a new telecom in the area was to lay down cable. As a precaution, Luma says he marked all of his own lines with paint and flags, and sent a map of his lines to Comcast.
Nevertheless, Luna quickly received a service outage, and found one of his cables had been cut. While he was attempting to contact Comcast, the contractors hired by the cable giant destroyed three more.
Luna says he repeatedly tried to contact Comcast, but the company never responded. Meanwhile, Comcast's contractors proceeded to cut every single cable Luna's company had. Within six weeks, Luna had no customers and no business.
Comcast will likely argue that Luna didn't take the necessary precautions to safeguard his cables, and therefore Comcast can't be held responsible for damages. But Luna maintains that he followed all the protocols, and moreover that he would have been incredibly foolish not to.
We've reached out to Comcast to comment on this story, and will update if we hear back.
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