Isps Angry About California Law That Lets Renters Opt Out of Forced Payments

I grant you, yes it can cause problems. I can see plenty of entitled people say things like "if we pay for the wires, the landlord reaps the benefits when we leave and some other tenant uses those wires we paid for". Sure. Or you think about it as being able to choose for yourselves and yes that comes with costs, whether you own the place or not. We're not talking thousands of dollars here.

Look, I don't live in California but we definitely did choose our own ISPs at all the place(s) we rented (multiple places, multiple different countries) and yes, we did have the ISP come have their actual "physical wire provider" come out and run the line and we paid whatever fee was necessary for that (unless the ISP did) and the landlord was absolutely involved exactly zero percent of that. Because it meant we could get the kind of line we wanted from a third party provider at a cheaper price than the underlying physical line provider would've given us.

It's absurd to me to think that the landlord would've had to provide for any of that, except if it meant a huge amount of money and then one would've wanted to set up some sort of "cost share" arrangement. But we're talking like a hundred bucks here, for a multi-year period of use. We're renting the property, not internet service from them. Same with electrical service. We of course paid for the electrical service ourselves instead of through the landlord. It gave us the choice(s).