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Letting The Market Choose Decent Broadband
An Anonymous Coward pointed out this piece on the regulation (and more to the point deregulation) of broadband Internet service. The article takes the viewpoint that solutions possible by relying on "the human spirit of innovation and creativity" are a better antidote than most of the broadband reforms so far proposed by politicians on behalf of lobbying groups. The author takes a stance some people may consider unrealistically optimistic, but makes some good points about the effects of arbitary deregulation.
Obviously you would need to setup the market for central office space so to discourage monopolization. I don't think that regular telcos would dominate because their service doesn't make much money at all. It's not as if a provider needs to have all of their equipment in the CO, anyway. They only need enough to hook into a fat pipe back to their own offices.
Boy, you ain't never seen a free market. The US economy? Hah! IP law alone blows any concept of a free market away. The goddamn telcos would be cutting each other's lines and firebombing the competition in a free market. The illicit drug market is as close to a free market as you'll find, what with turf wars and murders galore, but even it is regulated in reverse.
It really can be *your* bush.
Go here and get your very own W, then put him in your pocket or attach some srings and pull them.
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Moderator's essentials
Personally, I believe in a FAIRLY regulated marketplace, becaues the Big Lie that Libertarians and Conservtives use to prop up their laissez-faire ideals is of a 'free market' that does NOT exists and has NEVER existed ANYWHERE at any time.
technically it isn't bundling, what you are paying for is connectivity, and what you pay doesn't cover the cost of that connectivity. what you isp is betting, is that if they can get enough subscribers, that they can cover the cost of those subscribers by selling advertising, webhosting and other business services (pretty much the same formula used by the publishing industry). the free website, mail and news servers are provided as an incentive to draw more subscribers (these services are almost free compared to the cost of connectivity - how much does 20m of disk space cost?). so far this strategy hasn't worked for anyone except AOL, so all isps are losing money, and the larger ones buy up the smaller ones in hopes of reaching critical mass and finally becoming profitable. broadband is losing money faster than dialup, and no amount of regulation will change that. DSL is most likely a failed experiment, and will go away in a few years. as the bulk of cable is owned by either aol or at&t it has a small chance of becoming viable, but then we will all have to live under the restrictions of aol. you are also confused as to infrastructure. there are two preexisting privately owned networks, cable and telephone, these are then leased by the different isps for broadband purposes. this is why there are so many provisioning problems, there can be as many as three separate companies can be involved in your DSL service; your isp, the DSL network provider (covad), and your local telco. cable is a little simpler as only your isp and local cable co are involved.
Failure can't be allowed since it's not fair for some people to succeed while others fail.
This of off topic, but I have RoadRunner, and I can assure that speeds are no where NEAR 56k (I average 220+ KB/s from servers that can actually keep up with me, like ftp.kernel.org). Unless things are VERY different everywhere else in the world, the whole 56k bit is just pure FUD. Remember, you share bandwidth with your DSL too, just at a differnet place.
The real competition isn't between vendors on the same medium (because really one would naturally think that the people that own the wires going to your house would likely have the possibility of being the lowest priced), but rather between different technologies: i.e. here in Ontario, like in most places in the States, we have ADSL and Cable fighting for the consumer's business, both backed by very large companies (the cable conglomerate and the telephone conglomerate), and now there is two-way satellite and in some areas high speed radio access.
Forget regulation. The market will provide an efficient solution soon enough if you let it, but that's just my opinion.
What's not my opinion but fact however is that it is morally wrong to form a democratic mob to gang up on and squash the will of any smaller group of people, even if that group forms a so-called monopolistic company. Take use of force out of the equation.
You don't do something right by starting with something wrong.
Any company who offers both connectivity and other services has an inherent conflict of interest. Moving ownership of the last mile to a separate company which only supplies connectivity removes this conflict of interest.
Female Prison Rape in NY
BT only became a monopoly when it was PRIVATISED, before that it was simply a public service. Don't forget that the public paid for the development of the British telecoms network owing to the fact that it was originally a part of the Post Office. Who knows what BT would be like today if it were still publicly owned? Can't imagine it would be in debt to the tune of £30BN though, and France Telecom doesn't look too bad. One of Thatcher's best ever moves was to not allow BT to control the cellphone market in the UK, just look at Vodafone now!
And don't confuse my comment as indicating a desire to see the police and army-backed politicians getting heavily involved. All I suggested is that if the existing laws, which the telcos are violating, are enforced with more bite, it might help. No new laws, just the existing laws.
Now the telco, violating the law, gets hit with a massive fine. The government collects it and (probably squanders it on pork but let's be optimistic) helps pay for things for the public good (hey, it happens -- even politicians screw up once in a while and do something good). It's a win-win. The telcos are less likely to rape their competition the next time, and the public gets more money from the mountains of gold the telcos are sitting on.
Of course, this will never work, since the telcos have used some of their mountains of gold to buy off politicians to ensure the penalties for breaking the law are child's play.
________________
Private Essayist
this seems to be a common free-marketeer fallacy: lets deregulate the industry! the freemarket will solve everything!
taking no account whatsoever of previous examples where deregulation has screwed us over..
want a good example? just ask california, im sure they're enjoying the effects of deregulation (albeit of a different industry) with their rolling blackouts..
Ratio of replies to old sig content : replies to actual post content > 0.5. Sig changed.
Funny you should mention California power. Partly due to the crisis and the free market system of wholesale power, a small Public Utility District in Washington State which happens to own a dam on the Columbia River, is rolling in dough.
Guess what they are doing with some of the excess profits? Wiring the whole district with fiber optic lines.
And this is in a pretty much rural, small-town area.
----
Work Hard, Rock Hard, Eat Hard, Sleep Hard, Grow Big, Wear Glasses if You Need 'Em.
We know now that when the cable industry says
it can't open its network, it really means it
won't.
-- George Vradenburg, AOL senior VP, 1999-06-15
AOL and Time Warner may not open their cable
networks to all ISPs - and that AOL had never
suggested that any cable operator should.
-- George Vradenburg, AOL's senior VP, 2000-02-14
But the second one isn't a direct quote. Anyone got a version which highlights the change in attitude of AOL re: broadband access after they teamed up with TimeWarner?
-- Ender, Duke_of_URL
Great idea. Let's do that with all sectors so we can have a standard of living on par with Mexico....
There was no such thing as "deregulation" of the California power industry. It was a huge conspiracy against the English language, brought to you by the same folks who called NAFTA a "free trade" agreement.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
so true, the free market is survival of the fittest. Fitness for a corporation means having the ability to survive dry spells (low earnings) through securing lines of credit with a bank. Or undercutting competetors at a loss to drive them out of business at which point you can raise your prices to regain lost profits. these are key strategies for any big business or market leader and have been used by the bells (ny times link) to great effect on competing DSL providers. and when competetors lobbies government to intervene in an unequal marketplace the government declares 'market rule.'
there is currently a de facto monopoly on DSL in many areas and as much as i hate to see more laws i think some sort of regulation (though i'm open to suggestions) may be necessary.
fear is the mind killer
Somehow I have trouble seeing the Bells as so naive. Do you really think that they believe they can keep broadband from becoming a reality? I don't think so. Rather, it seems much more likely that the current slow move towards broadband is a strategy to keep competitors away. Would you spend millions, or billions even, on infrastructure if you thought there was a good change the government would then force you to open it to your competitors? Instead, why not allow them to try it on their own (which doesn't seem to be working very well) and do what you can to hinder them? If one of these startups actually survived to the point of challenging a baby bell, I have no doubt we would see remarkable improvements in service from them. Till then, though, who can blame them for dragging their feet? If they drag long enough, they just might outlast everyone (hey, that's what a monopoly is all about, right?) and then they can make as much as they want on broadband.
If you would like to be a leader with a large following...drive slowly down a windy two-lane road
So instead of a monopoly we have a ... monopoly?
The issue is company owership of the last mile. If it can only be owned by a single company, it is a monopoly.
Unless the infrastructure is rebuilt to allow the ownership of the last mile to change hands, at the request of the end user, we're screwed. The alternative is something similar to the natural gas market, except with a physical wire, it is a little more difficult.
The real reason posting as an AC sucks is because it shows a lack of dedication to the trolling cause. Sure, anyone can toss off an AC troll, but by creating a nick to do your trolling it shows that you are willing to go the "extra mile" in trolling Slashdot, the floating turd in the toilet called the Internet!
C - A language that combines the speed of assembly with the ease of use of assembly.
If you're going to completely deregulate and "let the market work its will" (which even the author admits the Bells haven't allowed) the only thing to do is break up the Bells. Separate the retail and wholesaling arms, have the wholesale arm own the infrastructure and then force the Bells to play even-steven against voice and data CLECs in a truly free market
There's a bill in Congress to that effect, S. 1364 from South Carolina Democrat Fritz Hollings. The Bells will fight that tooth-and-nail. They'll even hire college juniors (not just sophomores) to write diatribes against it...
And if you've ever encountered the average loser working in a municipal IT dept, you'll shelve the "nationalization" idea right there....
Because they make a fortune with a guaranteed rate of return on analog service and they make an even bigger fortune selling or reselling T1, Frame Relay and similar service to businesses. Why else do you think that the 'business rate' for ADSL is 3x what the residential rate. Because customers would pay for it as long as it's cheaper than ~$1,500/month. Since even the business ADSL really has no associated SLA they can market it as a loss leader and entry point to their 'real' business services such as FracT1 and Frame Relay circuits. They know they can't stop cable. They simply don't care. All they worry about is preserving their own stranglehold on their own customers. The only going broadband businesses run by phone companies ARE cable companies like the cash cow that ATT just spun off. They knew they couldn't do any better so they might as well milk it for a huge bag of cash.
BTs ADSL roll-out is a joke. I live 1000ft away from BT Tower, but DSL is not yet available in my area. Where the fuck are they rolling-out from? i also think that BT "package" pricing regime should be a criminal offence. Surf Together, anyone? Even they don't understand it.
Rather than repost everything I just said in the thread above this one, let me just simply remind you that GOVERNMENT BUILT THE INTERNET in the first place.
Now that they want to control it simply means that we all have to abide by those controls or find something new (I2 anyone?)
- JoeShmoe
-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
Well the author forgets that in order for there to be one Internet and many networks there has to be some connectivity between those varius networks. At some size, it starts to make economic sense to start not connecting to other networks, unless they pay you a lot of money (much more than the real value of the connectivity). So internet fracture is a real concern.
Government intervention should be very broad. Just say you have to provide connectivity to any network that asks at cost and in a reasonable time frame. At least connectivity to all users connected to your network, not transit across your network. For transit providers should be able to charge a premium.
This probably shouldn't be a government requirement, but rather a contractual agreement in order to get valid IP addresses.
> Where I live you can only get cable access for $60
> with out another cable subscription.
That you can get cable internet for this low is astonishing, not something to be lamented. If you're rural, you should be ecstatic you have anything at all, much less for the cheap $60. If you're in a city, well, the lack of competition, as the article points out, is probably more due to local regulations, or possibly deliberate "starvation" in cahoots between both companies to force you to get angry enough that politicians may capitalize on your outrage and pass laws favoring those particluar giant providers (which is another thing the article warns against.)
The thought process people have goes something like this:
"Hmm, an unbelievably good service is provided for an unbelievably cheap price ($60) yet I can envision it lower, so I must be getting ripped off, so I am getting ripped off, hey, politicians, do something about these greedy SOB's who have provided me crappy service for an incredible sum of $60/month.)
Sorry, no.
I am for the complete Trantorization of Earth.
grep -ri 'should work'
As a counter example, consider broadcast TV. There is effectively a common network defined by the allocated bandwidth and the broadcast standards. The providors built technology to put signals into that defined space and the consumers bought hardware to get them out.
While broadcast TV _is_ conservative, it hasn't stuck with the lest common denominator. Thre have been 2 major jumps in the UK (vhf to UHF and B&W to colour) and another is in progress (analogue to digital). I don't know if the US missed the first of those by being a late adopter:-).
The road connection to my flat is a lot more reliable than the cable IP connection, dispite the cable not having to cope with multi ton trucks etc.
To continue the transport analogy, consider railways. It is places where the state has shown an interest in railways that have moved with the technology. France and Japan have high speed rail networks. No UK private rail operator would think of investing in such a thing, the closest is the government backed link to the chunnel which may actually happen sometime.
I'm not saying public is best or private is best, just that life is more complex than the pure free marketeers or the pure public provision addicts would like to believe.
_O_
.|< The named which can be named is not the true named
Long distance rates took years longer to drop than they should have, local service is getting progressively more expensive, and cable (as in TV) just generally stinks. Broadband connections however... you'd have to pay me about 4x what I'm making here to move to the US.
While this goes against everything I believe in, I'll still say it again and again and again: sometimes, LESS choice can mean BETTER service. Of course, this assumes that your #1 priority is your bandwidth. Like me :)
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
There are some DSL companies out there that are making it besides the Baby Bells, but I'm not naive. I know the Bells are the only ones who control the lines and they are making life really difficult for DSL providers. But would forcing the Bells to open up access cure the problem of accessibility and "the hard sell", that is, the fact that many consumers don't see an advantage to broadband yet?
Geez, most average Joes would rather plunk down their money on a new HDTV for clearer R-rated movies than get a broadband line they won't use (even if it is because they don't know what to do with it).
I would like to see the Bells have their grip loosened on the lines, even if it does mean more government intervention. But I would actually see that intervention on behalf of the well being of the consumer, so it wouldn't be that bad. Even given that, though, I still don't think it's going to cure the core of the problem unless this kind of government action actually results in DSL prices dive-bombing to levels that appeal to the consumer in a monetary sense (i.e. less than the cost of AOL).
My sigs always suck.
Yes, that was parody.
Female Prison Rape in NY
bull.
there's no mention of NASA and a space program in the constitution either. in fact, you'll find nothing about WANs, broadband, or even personal computers. the people who wrote it were NOT perfect (see 3/5s compromise), and even though it's excellently thought through, the original writers could not see the future, either. they even anticipated that it wouldn't be perfect or complete, and left a framework for creating new laws, and extrapolating the constitution to cover anything they missed. it involves the supreme court, and the legislative branch. legislative branch can make ANY law they want. they can prohibit left handed people from going to the bathroom under penalty of death. the balance is that it must pass constitutional muster in the eyes of the supreme court, which would look at the constitution, and strike down the law. if the legislative branch hates this so much, they can CHANGE the constitution, and the supreme court would have to analyze the new law in that light.
anyway, i'm sure you're aware of all this. but it's suprising then that you consider the absence of permission in the verbage of the constitution is implied prohibition. do a search of strict vs. loose interpretationalists on google, and i'm sure that you'll get something on the long standing philosophical differences between the 2 schools of thought (original bank of the united states provides a nice example of this conflict)
A: None. The Universe spins the bulb, and the Zen master merely stays out of the way.
I agree completely with everything you said, but this line made me LOL! Thanks :-)
P.S. Well, I disagree with one thing, your comment about "maximizing license auction revenues" -- if the FCC (rather, Congress) wanted to maximize the revenues, they'd lease the spectrum rather than sell it.
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
This piece pretty much ignores the fact that in most states DSL services were already pretty much unregulated which is what allowed the babybells to run roughshod over Covad, Northpoint and Rhythms. There is simply no consumer recourse for being hosed over by the telco on data services once you cross into the realm of the unregulated services. Sticking to T1s and ISDN at least holds things in the realm of tariffed and therefore state regulated services. This has to date been the only reason that these services haven't been totally consumed by the telcos as DSL has been.
The consumer has already spoken in the marketplace only to find their DSL providers driven into bankruptcy at least in part due to predatory practices by the telcos. Predatory monopolies are bad, mkay.
While I can't cite the existance of a totally free market, because like everything else in the real world we deal in shades of grey I can cite many markets that should have been free that have been completely destroyed by government regulation. Example, Phone service, Electricity Generation, Cable TV, Railroad, etc.
Unfortunately few consumers are willing to put up with a free market. Like social security, medicare, etc. government regulation of the telcos is an unfortunate and unnecesarry intrusion that seems conviennient at the time, even though its absence would be even better.
Si vis pacem, para bellum
The only thing more annoying than a Libertarian is an (un|mis)informed Libertarian
Only two things will prevent a monopoly and create the kind of free market that will actually evolve towards providing better services:
1) The network is publically administered, giving everyone an
equal opportunity to sell services using it (I think ALL utility
networks should have a public base).
2) Every provider has their own network
There isn't any other way. We made a half-hearted stab at #1, requiring telcos to sell use of their networks to those who wanted to start up, but things haven't been administered fairly enough to bring about the desired results. What the market is sortof lurching towards is #2 -- a cable network, perhaps a few wireless networks, and phone wires.
So our friend is right in the sense that the free market will eventually come up with alternatives down the line of #2. I'm not sure about his treatment of the phone lines. Arguing that the local phone cos have exclusive property rights to the phone networks falls somewhere between semi-reasonable and dubious. For one thing, the networks fly
over or run through public lands and private lands not owned by the phone company. For another, the concept of property is given out by the people/law/government/social contract/shared fiction that we all agree is good and useful to live by in general... but we also have a history of regulating anything that becomes a public utility. With good reason.
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
Oh cripes, another 14-year-old libertarian. Stick to your Rush and Rand and leave Slashdot alone.
In a truely free market economy, being able to afford powerful lobbyists wouldn't help a company keep its customers because the gov't couldn't use regulation to restrain the companies competitors or to force the companies customers to stay. Instead, even established companies would have to worry that some small start up could come along and kick their @$$ if it could provide better service for less money.
You say that the regulations haven't stopped them from upgrading their network and training technicians in your area, then you go on to say how frustrated you are that you can't get DSL installed. You also mention that their billing system is a mess, more infrastructure problems. It sounds like Qwest is definately not investing enough in their infrastructure. It took over 5 months of harrassing Ameritech for me to get my DSL installed, and without that harrassment I doubt it ever would have happened. I feel your pain.
Our rights as consumers are limited in that if one company isn't providing a service well enough, we are free to switch to another provider. However in this instance, and in many other instances, there's no place else to go. Some situations require government intervention, and most likely DSL is going to end up having to be something that is regulated.
The phone network is going to remain a monopoly because there's no good way to split it up. Therefore it's going to have to be regulated to some extent. The regulators and legislators just have to make sure they don't make matters worse by trying to force competition into the market where it doesn't make sense. DSL providers like COVAD don't really have a chance of competing on equal ground with the Phone company's DSL offering, because they bosth rely on the Phone company providing and installing the line. Competition is going to come from other sources, such as cable, wireless, and satalite.
Maybe use it under some incarnation of the GPL?
Huh? Unless you have some actual way GPL might have some relation to DSL, quit throwing out buzzwords out of context.
There is no perfect solution, except the best available solution.
Wrong. California law (read: regulation) prevented the two big "providers" from making long-term supply contracts. They were forced to buy on the spot market, renegotiating delay. Meanwhile, California law (read: regulation) fixed the maximum amount they could charge back to their customers. So, the providers were at the mercy of the market, yet they couldn't recover their costs. Luckily, our oh-so-sensitive Californian consumers wallowed in low prices, forcing the providers to buy more and more at prices they could never recoup. Summary: Davis and Friends put stupid regulation on the market and coached it as "deregulation". Halfway never works, friend.
I wish I had mod points to mod this up. This has often seemed to me to be an ideal solution, and not just for telecom. Imagine if natural gas was split into a regulated monopoly local delivery mechanism, and unregulated suppliers. Or what about power? A locally controlled monopoly regulates the local lines, and people can buy power from whomever they want.
So many of our problems seem to come from combining a free market product and a monopoly delivery mechanism within a single company.
I think your idea may work at first, but once the standards are in place, it won't evolve. The sticking point would be the "anything else..." part.
For instance, if your system had gone into place when ISDN was "the leading edge", right now they would still be working with standardized boxes to make ISDN ubiquitous and nobody would have broadband.
I just think that these kind of things always end up tailored for the least common denominator and don't allow you to throw everything out and try a new technology.
But maybe I'm just taking exception to the "standardized hardware boxes thing". It would be interesting to "own" my own strand(s) of fiber to some public office and sign something to say that "I choose registered service provider 0020043 to connect to the other end".
The unionized telco workers with mgmt blessing delay DSL orders for CLECs into oblivion - hell, even if you get DSL FORM the telco it can take weeks and tons of hassles - it shouldn't be this complex.
In my experience, the workers weren't delaying the process. The phone company just didn't hire and train enough of them in areas where they weren't offering DSL yet, but competing CLECs were. Getting telephone service working for people is much more important than installing DSL, so those calls got put off over and over again. Howevr, they are hiring and training more technicians, in areas where they are beginning to provide DSL.
Thie ONLY saving grace is cross technology competition. The only thing keeping cable modem prices down is DSL - If DLS disappears, all you cable modem user can rest assured your rates will go up FASTER than your normal cable bill - count on it. But with DSL out there, its a threat.
I'm sure there's some truth to this, but there's a lot of places you just can't get DSL. It's limited by line quality and the distance to the CO. So there really isn't any competition to cable modems in a large percentage of their market. The price is most likely limited to what they think customers are willing to pay, not the price of the competition. Cable modems just became available in my area, and I'm signing up for the most basic cable (mainly broadcast stations) and internet access. The total monthly price is about the same as what I'm currently paying for my 144k IDSL line, which is my only other choice. The cable company also lets me self install the software, and are even selling me good quality cable TV cable at $0.10 a foot, so I can run outlets where I need them. Did I mention that they have an on time gaurentee for their service calls. They miss a serivce call, they give you a credit on your bill. I think the amount was about $20. I'd rather they pay me cash if they make me wait around and don't show up, but it's still incredibly better than dealing with the phone company.
I can understand your confusion.
I am sporkraper
Others ignore the conditions when free markets provide sub-optimal results, and push free markets as an ideology, rather than a practical matter.
"Free Markets! No regulation!" leave business free to dump their garbage into the air or the water or the ground, where it will poison others. "Free Markets" provided inter-city shippers with cheap rail rates, but those in small towns served by only one line faced exhorbitant prices. "Free Markets" left towns with competing disconnected telephone services.
The pragmatic approach is to favor free markets when they provide optimal results, and to favor other structures (such as regulation) for conditions when free markets would fail.
Tell me then, how do you unleash the "spirit of innovation and creativity"? By taxing and regulating the balls out of an industry so that the little guy can't ever get ahead and compete with Big Company X? Yeah, I bet that will help out the consumer alot.
Daniel J. Kelly
Umm... no. Corporations are, legally, people. Okay, make the law take advantage of that. When a corporation engages in monopoly practices, it is killing another corporation, presumably premeditated. Make this a capital murder case instead. Maximum fine, depending on your state of course, is the death penalty or life imprisonment.
Of course, you have some problems with how this will be handled. (Okay, major problems.) And you'd get some great arguments over what is and is not fair competition. Plus, if a corporation gets a death penalty, what happens? Execute the corp president, CEO, and Chairman of the Board? That could get messy *really* fast. Or does the corporation just have to go out of business?
Which raises an interesting question here... Is it legal for a corporation to go out of business? Most states have laws against suicide... Why aren't these laws applied to corporations?
Or, look at it from the reverse viewpoint... Corporations (legal person) dump poisons into rivers and lakes with serious harm (up to death) to people living in those areas. They get fines in the area of 1-30% of yearly revenue...
I'm a legal person... Why can't I kill people for a simple fine of 1-30% of my yearly revenue? >:)
Some equality under the law would be rather nice here.
No, this isn't serious, but it makes for an interesting argument if you're bored.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is... Oops. Frank, I've got your sig again! Where's mine?
You're a moron. AC's get it all the time. The only way you could change it is if you were CmdrTaco.
spork t raper
From the Libertarian tract (which some may call the article):
The politicians are missing something in their proposals: faith in the human spirit of innovation and creativity. Where there is a demand the market tends to supply.
Tendency is all well and good ... except when you live in an area
where the you wind up either ponying up a lot of money or do without.
Our family was living in a rural area where the only residential high
speed internet options were ISDN at $120/month or some sort of of
dedicated line (the telco wasn't clear on this) at $400/month. One
other option was one way cable modem; upstream used a modem. DSL
service was not available.
Now we live in a major metro area. Not only is DSL available, we have ... well, did ... have a choice of DSL providers. We orginally
signed up with Flashcom which was an ISP using NorthPoint networks.
NorthPoint and Flashcom parted ways so we got transfered to Telocity
(with a rate increase and change of email address). Then we all know
what happened to NorthPoint. Our service was disconnected for about
two months before Verizon (nee ATT&T/Bell Atlantic) became our
network provider. Then Telocity was bought out by Direct TV which is
now it seems going to be bought out by either Murdoc's News Corp or
EchoStar.
We've been DSL customers for less than one year. Without lifting a finger we've bcome subject to the whims of five different coporations. Excuse me if I'm less than thrilled with the power of the market.
The best way to foster this type of innovation is to get the government out and let the free market work its magic.
Sorry, but I don't believe in magic. It's difficult to tell before hand whether regulation will help or hinder in any given situation. I have no reason to believe that the author's crystal ball is better than my raisin bran reading.
Weakening the property rights of existing networks and requiring them to share their systems with competitors will quash innovation.
Unsupported assertion. It may or may not. Just as nature abhors a vacuum, business craves monoply.
"Where's my other sock?" - A. Einstein
"against the "public education monopoly"
Don't blame them.
Public educational system is nothing but a disaster, concentrating on producing PC kids instead of simply taking care of basic education.
analog cable TV service is inherently monopolistic, due to physical limitations in the media. It is not feasible to make companies pay for laying multiple cables. It is not really feasible for a municipality to make, say, Cox and Time Warner provide analog cable service on one wire, since there is a very finite amount of channelage you can have.
Digital cable TV may not be, as long as the signal is realized to be like net traffic, i.e., anyone could be able to provide digital cable signal down one digital cable wire.
But then here we are with the dilemma. The cable co's are essentially local VERTICAL monopolies. They own the road, essentially, and dictate who can drive on it. Separate the network from the service provider part of it, the way electric deregulation essentially does it, and it might work. Too bad it won't work for the phone cos, or that no one will try it.
The only way for telco (and cable) deregulation will ever work is to force the ILECs to divest of their physical network infrastructure. The service part of it, well, then they can compete with whoever else starts a CLEC.
The telco market is much like the oil market of the '20s in the US: Standard Oil owned 90% of the wells, 90% of the refineries, 90% of the distribution network, and 90% of the gas stations.
Standard Oil could buy competitors after forcing them out of business.
Kinda hard to compete in that market, no?
Since you'll never have open source oil, there was no chance for a GPOL (Gnu Public Oil License) movement...
haha, good one monkey-boy.
yet just barely smart enough to click the SUBMIT button
Yeah...just like those fucking shit-for-brained pricks who can't figure out how to use the 'preview' button.
That's an interesting idea.... would municipalities then connect into the telco backbones? Or would the county create its own backbone(s), and those would connect to the state backbone(s), and then to nationwide backbones.....
The other problem.... I think in general that having public networks for ANY vital utility (and then letting lots of companies compete to provide services via that network) is a wise thing. I'm just not sure how the networks get built in the first place... I am a little worried about private expertise vs. public expertise in such things. Then again, cities do it with sewers....
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
...how "The Free Market" somehow doesn't include those at the top. If you're some start-up company that isn't making a profit and giving your service away for much less than it's worth, you're revered as a "pioneer" in the modern economy. However, if you happen to be an established company that is making money and has been for years, you're a faceless, monopolistic corporation and have no place in the "Free Market". Perhaps the RBOCs are at the top because they know how to do it right. And yes, I do work for SWBell
-Man cannot survive except through his mind. --Ayn Rand
Of course cost is part of it. That was my point. That costs (not to mention time to install, and other things) are artificially raised (cost of production (line leasing) is the example in this case) for companies that are not the telephone company by that telephone company. The end result being that the teleco does not have to produce a better product, they can just raise the cost for other companies to do business in their territory. Even though we are simplifing the issue and making generalizations, I believe that this argument is still valid.
As for what I addressed, I addressed the question that he/she posed. I went on the premise that Broadband and dsl are not equivalent. I should have explicitly stated that.
In my area I have two (residential) broadband choices. A cable modem (Time Werner) With the bandwidth shared, I have heard reports that it is equivilent to a 56k modem. That is not equivalent (at least in this area) to dsl. The other option is DSL from one of many providers, either bellsouth or going through bellsouth. In this case I have chosen to address the specific situation pertaining to the teleco and the question that he/she poised.
-CrackElf
"Blake is an idealist, Jenna. He cannot afford to think." - Kerr Avon, Star One, Blakes 7
Most of the posts sounds like sour grapes to me, dinky little companies go up against titans like PacBell and Qwest, they over extend themselves and they rely upon those titans and then they get plowed over when those titans wake up and start to actually compete. What do you want or expect? Are they supposed to disallow phone companies from the DSL market? Covad, Northpoint and Rhythms are where they are for a very good reason, they weren't bringing anything to the table, they were simply middlemen. Now if they were cutting deals with cable companies and microwave providers and phone companies and they were building their own infrastructure they might have a chance. The analog is wireless, how come those wireless companies can compete? Because they aren't relying upon their competitor's infrastructure. This has nothing to do with regulation or not, I'm a covad customer and very happy with their service but it's really qwest's service that Covad undercharges for. In 6 months, I'll probably have to start dealing with qwest more. I'm a happy customer but I rely on my DSL lines for business and Covad hasn't provided me with an escape route or done a lot to sure up their position.
I don't see how you can bitch about the resources a big company has. When you go up against giants they have more stuff, can last longer and will win unless you are on top of your game like nothing else and you bring value to the table. These DSL companies haven't been doing either. If they were good they would have got their hands in to different parts of broadband.
Don't give me shit about TOS either, that's a different matter all together. Lousy TOS doesn't mean you can't get broadband or cheap broadband. It's the area that these DSL providers should have really pushed the envelope to compete against the RBOCs who have strict rules, it's what shows that there is room to compete and do things better provided they protect themselves and secured infrastructure.
In the US, at least, I thought that it was illegal to have a "human spirit of innovation and creativity" unless you were a large corporation with a crack legal department.
I'm convinced that this is the ideal solution. No company should be allowed to own critical infrastructure. Only the people should be able to dictate what services they want hooked up to their network.
I suggest you take a good look at the first case one would probably see in first year law, Marbury v Madison.
The U.S. Constitution is "the fundamental and paramount law of the nation" and that "any act of the legislature, repugnant to the constitution, is void."
The legislature has taken an oath to uphold the constitution and may pass no law outside of the power granted to them by the constitution without first going through the formal process of amending the constitution. Any other course of action is a direct violation of their office. This general benchmark for constitutional government is carved in stone. There is no 'loose interpertation' of this concept; without it constitutional government does not exist.
The so-called 'loose interpertation' of the consitution is nothing more then a statist excuse for the government to act with absolute unchecked power. We all know the amendment process is not easily performed, exactly for the purpose of limiting any additional powers the government extends to itself. 'Bypassing' that destroys the most fundimental check on the governments power. Government can and does now act with impunity.
Further more the federal constitution is quite clear that it is a document of negative force, granting the federal government very limited powers. (Art1$8 $9, Amendments 9 and 10)
So you're right, MOST of the functions it performs today are not constitutionally authorized and would have been prevented had this country had a supreme court that was not derelict in it's function!
This in the grand scope of things is moot. As you mentioned the 'founding fathers' were not without fault. Had they been, no constitution would have been adopted, any federal government disbanded, and the formal governments of the states scrapped.
Now back to the point of this whole thread....
The same intitution that used force to created the artificial (non-freemarket based) arena for communications monopolies to exist, is now being pointed at to fix that problem. Stupid. Eliminate the institution, and the options for the problem to fix itself are limitless. It WILL fix itself to the extent that the free market demands it. Guaranteed.
It is time for the governments of the world to step aside and let people live free.
The trouble is, those savvy enough to do something like this, are spread too thin. I'm actually learning how to make fibreglass parabolic dishes (not so hard, once you've built a decent mold) and how to set up the gunnplexor arrays (pretty much buy them pre-fab). Hooks into an AUI port more or less without any other work, and if you can place the dish high enough, a 10mps link can go upwards of 30 miles, or so I read. Something like this for a backbone, with 802.11 for node access, and it just might be doable. Trouble is, the microwave backbone is illegal... since it's directional, can it escape FCC notice?
Also, what protocol would be best for this? Allocating private IP subnets would seem particularly troublesome, especially were it to become relatively popular. IPv4 tunneled over IPv6 maybe? I'm not sure if thaat is forward thinking, or just plain dumb...
Acceleriter, I really would like to continue this conversation in private, if you wouldn't mind.
jojo4@mediaone.net
Again, if anyone would like to contact me to discuss the creation of a pro-user/anti-corporate private network in the greater Richmond VA area, please do.
I say we nationalize the network infrastructure and get rid of these assholes once and for all. I for one am sick of Bell South or Time Warner digging up my property without compensation. Every time someone else put a house in this area, I get another "public-use easement" attached to my deed so they can come in and charge these people monopolistic rates for access to a network that has been bought and paid for and buried on their own property.
...ISPs stop bundling services that people don't want don't need to offset higher costs.
If I want a webhost, then I can contract for the best webhosting provider. My ISP shouldn't matter. Right now I have four, count them four, webspaces that I am basically being taxed for by my various ISPs, but would never dare use because I have zero faith in their reliability. I'm paying for news servers that have speed-limited connections and don't carry any binaries groups. I'm paying for seven e-mail accounts that i have to throw away if I ever change ISPs, get filled with spam on a regular basis, and are POP3 only.
Why is my $40/50 going towards crap like this? I don't want any of it. I understand that the ISP is a cutthroat business but to me it still constitutes illegal bundling of services.
I want a basic IP dialtone. I think it should be provided as infrastructure by local government. It makes no sense to have four providers of high speed internet service running four lines to every neighborhood when for the same piece the city could run fiber and then lease it to any ISP that wanted to offer service. I am willing to see my taxes go towards that.
As far as webhosting/e-mail/etc I will run those myself. For anything I lack the experience to run, I'll sign up on my own. Everything is a la carte, that is the best way to foster competition and a healthy selection of services in a market where everyone pays based on their actual use of shared resources.
- JoeShmoe
-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
a gov't with no ability to pass regulation?
so you mean a gov't with no power?
corporations don't want that. Think about copyrights & patents laws.
the citizenry doesn't want that. Think about safety regulations.
a truly free market economy exists only in an economist's thought experiment.
Anonymous posts are filtered.
History shows that there have always been players with lots of power and players with little power. Those with the power have always been able to keep the those with less power down and have by and large controlled them. Whether it be the Catholic Church, German Nazis, Spanish Conquistadors, or global corporations, there has always been some kind of ruling class. Look at modern-day Russia, for example. It's a land of where a handful of captitalists were able to grossly tilt the odds in their favor by any means necessary. They have a very weak government with little regulation but a whole lot of corruption and depression. No society can prosper in such a lawless system.
This world has always been a "free" market. But tt's free only in the sense that anyone who wants power bad enough can seize it by any means necessary, without regard to what's right or good for the whole. Thankfully, we live in one of those rare societies in human history with many checks and balances so that the powerful don't get too powerful. Yet, as good as our sytem is, we still have many, many injustices and inequities that need to be addressed. I see absolutely no validity to the argument that "free" market capitalism is about to reverse selfish and greedy motives that the human race has had to put up with for the past 3,000,000 years.
A "may-the-greediest-corporation-win" laissez faire capitalist approach to running a complex society lacks any checks and balances and is ultimately destructive. A "free" market solution is just one big giant fucking pipe dream. Want a great society? You mix one part capitalism, one part regulation, and a hefty dose of democracy and hopefully, maybe, if we're really lucky, everything will turn out OK.
You would do well to pay no attention to any overly simplistic way of thinking such as "deregulation is the answer". It's plain, straight-up bullshit. This is a complex world and requires complex solutions. Sure it would be nice to find some formulaic answer to our problems, but I think most of you reading this are too smart to think such a solution exists.
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
As a UKian with ADSL [whoohoo!] because I work for a small business ISP I'm well aware of the problems.
We can't match BT's Openworld service on price for home connections because only we'd break even before we've actually included any of our costs. It is cheaper for us to send customers who we want to have ADSL to Openworld - BT's reseller than it is to sell them the service ourselves.
The business connections make a profit [512k - 2Mbit with ethernet] but the home connection is pure loss. That's why we don't sell it, we only buy those connections for staff members.
Oh, we also get the same allocation of DSL lines as Freeserve. That's comedy since we only have 40 customers.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. (Einstein)
too long to read... sorry
Right now DSL providers are havig serious problems with the phone companies. The phone compaines have been told by law that they have to open up their networks. This has discouraged the phone companies from spending the money to upgrade their networks. They also haven't been hired and trained enough people to install all the lines that are required for DSL in many areas. The result is that DSL providers like Covad can't get the resources they need to get customers set up on DSL. My experience was that it took 5 months of the phone company making excuses and telling me outright lies to get my line installed. Covad was our a few days later to set things up, and in the last 8 months I've experienced about 1 hour where I couldn't use my connection when I tried. Another friend of mine was told by Covad that they couldn't give him DSL because there was too much line tap on the line (about 1000 ft of unused wire that was left to make it easier to hook up future customers. COvad couldn't remove the line tap themselves, and Ameritech wanted a prohibitive amount to do it. Not to mention that in other cases they considered it a non-esential service, so it would likely take many months for them to get around to it. The solution to his problem? Ameritech started offering DSL in his area. They were happy to remove the line tap as part of the install, no extra charge.
Government stepping in and opening up these companies networks doesn't seem to work. Regulations can be bent. Loopholes can be found. The competition will never be on equal footing with the owners of the network. The penalties the govenment regulators apply are never enough of a deterrant to discourage uncompetitive or simply incompetent behavior. The utilities are in no real danger of losing their monopoly, and the people making the decisions will never go to jail. As an example. Ameritech in Ohio has done a miserable job of fixing problems with their phone system in recent years. There's a huge backlog of service calls. Their technicians regularly miss severall appointments in a row while the customers sit at home waiting for someone to show up to fix their phone. Even if you give them a cell phone number to call, they won't let you know that they are running behind and won't make it. The government has found several times that they are not providing an acceptable level of service, and that they aren't even showing significan improvement. The result was a couple settlements in which I received on two occasions a phone card with a small number of minuites on it. Of course the phone card can only be used for Ameritech services like Ameritech pay phones.
The government steping into a regulated market and "fixing" it with a bunch of new regulations rarely works. The California energy market "deregulation" is a prime example of this. Just because some politician lables it deregulations, doesn't mean that there's going to be less government regulations involved. It's just a buzzword they often like to use when they decide to regulate the market in a new way. Remember, truth in advertising laws don't apply to politicians.
Back in the 1960s, the U.S. government was essentially transformed into a jobs program for minorities. This necessitated removing skill as a job requirement, as requiring skill was deemed discriminatory. The politics have always been there.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Sir, your caps key is stuck. Err. If I recall correctly, the Government had to break up ma bell. Then they forced 'competition' by requiring that other services (be started ... allow to be started ? IANAL, and I do not recall the exact language anyway). If that had not happened, it would still be one big bell with no competition. And, not only would they still have a distinct advantage in the dsl market, but they would be able to present a united front.
Currently I can only get dsl through either bellsouth or someone who rents from bellsouth. Those that rent from bellsouth are at a disadvantage, and thus are more likely to go under, and thus fewer people subscribe to it, and thus bellsouth has the advantage (that does not even get into the whole marketing to everyone that get gets a phone thing, again using their monopoly in one area to bolster another, thereby bypassing the whole competition thing that is supposed to make service better for the consumer.) Bellsouth also puts an artificial wait time to allow other dsl providers to install on their lines.
How can you claim that the situation will get better by itself? The only people that I have met in person who seriously propose that are employees of Bellsouth.
-CrackElf
"Blake is an idealist, Jenna. He cannot afford to think." - Kerr Avon, Star One, Blakes 7
The problem is the "last mile," so isn't gov't ownership of those lines more like the gov't owning everyone's driveway instead of it owning the Interstate Highways. I can see the national defense justification for fed gov't owned interstate fiber the same way I can see it for interstate roads, but not the "last mile". City owned makes a little more sense, especially compared to having a large company that owns everyones driveway; but I don't think I'd be happy with the service a gov't run broadband service would provide or the idea of my ISP rates going up because some city councilmen want money to build a sports stadium. City owned, run by private contracters would be preferable. What about a completely private co op? I suspect that like other utilities, different areas will ultimately use different solutions; with a few solutions "winning out" and being adopted by most areas.
Now thats an oxymoron if I've ever heard one. I used to have Roadrunner (AOL/Timewarner cable ISP) and sure while it was working I loved it, but for the first three months (incidently all free) I ended up without an internet connection about 2-3 times a week....sometimes for over 2 days. The tech-support sucked (then again, whose ever experienced decent tech-support for a problem that a chimp couldn't figure out?). For some reason after my free trial period it began to work properly (what a coincidence)......eventually I got sick of the "service" when I was without an internet connection for more than a week (the only response from tech-support being "We don't know whats wrong, no we won't just replace the cable modem....it can't be faulty even though we've tried everything else 3 times, no we won't give you a free month, yes we are still charging you, if you don't like it go back to 56k"). Then I started to look into maybe getting DSL, but of course it wasn't available in my area (well technically it was available in my area...just not at my address). What do I use now? A 56k modem on the second worst ISP ever (MSN, only AOL is worse, damn 4 year subscription computer deals). Which brings me to some sort of point (if you can call it one)......all services suck, whether it's high prices, unreliability, or the speed of a Sloth, everyone gets shafted somehow, the whole industry needs a swift painful kick in the ass.
BTW, does anyone know if AOL/Timewarner give half-price service if you use your own cable modem (I remember seeing on their site that part of the monthly fee was the cable modem rental, but when I asked them about it I was given the "duh, I don't know" and told to E-mail so and so (who never e-mailed me back), recently I went back to their site and couldn't find any mention of the cable-modem rental being part of the fee)? I could definately save myself some time, money, and trouble if I install the damn thing myself and just pay them for service.
"
Well look at what happened in the OS market with microsoft
Yes, I can run MacOS, Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, BeOS, and about a thousand other OS's.
Currently, I can only get DSL, and it is a toss-up between Covad (who will probably go under soon), or Verizon.
Keep in mind GOVERNMENT REGULATION GOT US TO WHERE WE ARE TODAY WITH BROADBAND. Specifically, the granting of local monopoly telecommunication franchises. Our government created little Microsofts back in the 30's. Thanks guys!
That is assuming that the cost of a T1 (> $1000/month) is fair market value - remember, T1s are regulated and tarriffed meaning they generally are more expensive and competitors can't easily provide them. So in this case its apples to oranges.
No, it's not; because those oranges are the costs that provider has to pay to get YOU your bandwidth out to the Internet.
Remember, he doesn't just have to pay to provision you; he has to pay to have enough capacity out to the Internet so that you won't get 1,000ms pings and 1KB/s transfer rates, or you'll go somewhere else.
And he's not paying DSL rates for that bandwidth to the rest of the 'net; he's paying tarriffed telco DSx rates.
That pretty much covers the situation. DLECs (Data Competitive Local Exchange Carriers) like NorthPoint and Rhythms got pummelled by the RBOCs (in my case, PacBell, a subsidiary of SBC). NorthPoint blamed their demise on their failed merger with Verizon, one of those crummy ILECs (Incumbent Local Exchange Carriers), but they really had been beaten into pulp before then.
A couple years after DSL was touted to the masses, the number of ISPs who offer it have pretty much dwindled down to the RBOC (PacBell) and EarthLink (if the ISP search at places like DSLreports.com and 2Wire.com are accurate).
At least in the State of California, the phone company has won. Innovation and creativity do not count in the dog-eat-dog world of unregulated data services.
> And since the DSL marketplace is precisely the
> sort of marketplace that is manipulated by
> politicians and hurge multinational monopolistic
> corporations, what say you now?
Don't confuse the police and army-backed politicians deciding how things will be, and the heavy-competition of the "huge multinationals".
Last time I checked, 56k access was about $15/month, hardly an arm and a leg.
And broadband for on the order of $50-$100/month, when only a few years ago it was thousands a month? And people feel this is a giant ripoff scam?!?!?!? Does any buffoon out there actually think that getting the government involved will lower prices and increase quality and choice? If 56K was $5/month and broadband $20/month, you guys would still be screaming ripoff!!!
Greed is good. Greed works. It works as long as you keep people with guns away from the workings of society, and that means politicians. Greed has bought you the incredibly cheap broadband that exists today.
As for rural, I have just moved to a rural area 2 months ago. They may have cable, maybe not, I've been without home internet for over two months now, and I used to have broadband. Do I want the government providing three billion dollars as "incentive" to provide this? Heck, no. That money will be eaten up by the giant telcos overextending standard DSL, etc. into the wild. Then they'll bleat for an ongoing subsidy because it's still too much for day-to-day operations. The government will grant that, and their business model will operate around sucking on the government rather than on getting a profit out of the actual rural consumers, the way it belongs. Cost-reducing innovation will be stifled lest it cause their subsidy to be taken away.
I am for the complete Trantorization of Earth.
"Please cite one example where large scale government intrusion in the form of regulation has helped any market."
Consider the banking reforms in 1932, 1933 after the stock market crash of 1929. Among other things, these new gov't regulations forced more open disclosure of public company info. Once investors had a clearer idea of what was really going on in individual companies, investors could shift money from inefficient companies to more efficient companies. In addition, these laws built investor confidence in the market (i.e., it was not as much of an insider game as it once was) so that more money could flow into it in general.
Of course, given what's happened in the boom of the late 90's and the bear market of the 2000s, you may be skeptical about how effective these laws are. But I'd bet that as bad as things may seem on Wall Street (insiders and institutions still having the advantage over individual investors, research analysts rating terrible stocks "Strong Buys", etc.) it's *nothing* like what happened in the boom of the 1920's and the bust of the 30's.
I don't have time now, but maybe other people can give more detail on how these other gov't regulations might have improved markets, the public good, or both: food safety regulations, environmental regulations, public health regulations, etc...
Jeff Hwang
jh600@yahoo.com
I use MTS Internet for my DSL services.
One thing I have noticed is that they are stable.
I've been constantly reading about ThisDSL Co. and ThatDSL Co., being bought out, or going out of business in the states at a fairly regular pace. Granted, the major Telcos (Stentor) in Canada more or less have the monopoly on DSL services, but then again, were paying about $40.00/month CDN, with no fears of going offline. Network has been stable, service efficient, customer service satisfactory.
For myself, going with a telco for service is the best buy there is, keep cable in the market to keep costs low/competition high. Must be a different world on the other side of the 49th... NexesBBS MajorMUD Realm: http://nexesbbs.dynip.com
Check out the Nexes : telnet://nexesbbs.dynip.com - MajorMUD 60 player...
If you wanted a simple standard Telephone line in the late 70's early 80's then you would be put on a waiting list, I had to wait 18 months, bare in mind I wasn't out in the sticks and no special cables had to be put in, it just took them that long to get anything done. I knew somebody who was 'lucky' and manage to get a line within 7 months. By my standards this is not the hallmarks of a successful company.
The problem was obviously they had no competition, nobody to keep them on their toes, so no matter how well intentioned they were, they inevitably just wallowed into an environment of inefficiencies and incompetence. You used to literally see five to six workmen arrive to do a simple job, one did the job, a few watched, one made the tea and the other went to buy some biscuits, you think I'm joking too, it was seriously like that! And if they didn't manage to fix your phone then so what? Where else could you go, and you couldn't claim compensation like today.
This was not limited to BT either, basically all the utilities had this 'working environment'. It was easy to see why the phone charges were so expensive, you had to pay for all these people. I'm not a Thatcherite by any means, but you can credit the lady with one thing, she got things moving, and finally got rid of the union's deadlock on this country, it had got to a point where they were holding the country back, which was of no benefit to anyone, including the working man.
Even with today's incompetence you can certainly get a line installed within a month at the very most, they have under half the number of employees compared to way back when. Indeed, and this is hardly a virtue. People didn't use BT, they used us! Having to put up with 18 month waiting lists with no alternatives? Having to pay whatever charges they demanded? Having to suffer ridiculous outages? Then no competition for technical innovation. Indeed... it's an alien environment for them, they can't shaft people and get away with it like before, people will just walk, like I and yourself. Having suffered their ignorance and indigence in the past I have absolutely no sympathy, good riddance, I hope something more worthy rises from their ashes.
Any company that treats its customers with so much contempt doesn't deserve to survive, and evidentally they wont.
This is a great point that the best antidote to ill-gotten monopolies is swift retribution, but you _don't_ want to regulate them. That just replaces a monopoly with another monopoly - the state. And the State has guns :)
Or how about Charter with whatever they want to charge. Here is the problem with monopolies, esp. those granted by government. I've had a Charter cable connection for over a year now. I've not had a /DAY/ by without some sort of interruptions. The last two months they've had a router that has been puking on itself. I've submitted nearly daily traceroutes and the best they are willing to do is send a tech out to my house to diagnose a problem between two internal routers in their DC.
Two months.
Why can they do this and why do I put up with it?
No other alternative exists. DSL is too limited and cable companies are generally granted monopolies by local government.
-- Grey d'Miyu, not just another pretty color.
"The best way to foster this type of innovation is to get the government out and let the free market work its magic."
... the free market and its magic. Now we have an OS that costs more than a new hard drive. I happen to get my dsl here in the states from a baby bell (bellsouth), because they make it 'easy' for you to get it from them, and hard to get it from their competitors. The result - cheap service, horrible support (i refuse to legitimize it by using the word technical, because they are about as technical as my grandmother, who is afraid of email), lots of gratuitous outages, no static ip, and lots of technical errors (I am going to change over, which, again, bs makes overly complex and difficult). My point is that when a single powerful entity that is funded from another source (in this case telephone revenue) where they have a stranglehold on the transportation medium, the free market fails. The service does not get better through competition.
Well look at what happened in the OS market with microsoft
-CrackElf
"Blake is an idealist, Jenna. He cannot afford to think." - Kerr Avon, Star One, Blakes 7
I was doing my daily tech reading at work today and came across this tech article about the fight over the "last mile" in California.
In a synopsis, this article basically describes the fight that the ILEC's are facing against the Baby Bell's everywhere. To the point where this group of ISP's has filed a complaint with the California Public Utilities Commission on July 26 that charges SBC's Pacific Bell with favoring its own broadband service over competitors' services and trying to make ISPs sign an unfair contract that limits their rights to phone lines they lease.
And if this doesn't solve the problem - to pursue further court litigation.
I get my Telephones and Broadband from my CableCo, I haven't had any dealings with BT for at least the last five years or so, my life has been much more pleasant.
For years I wondered how they could continue with such incompetence, it seems my question has been answered over the last year with their share price continually tanking, their debt burden is actually higher than their market cap! Quite an achievement, can't say I'm surprised, I wonder why it took them so long?
BT is the epitome of incompetence, ineptitude, inefficiency and excess, all the wonderful hallmarks from the nationalised era.
The author never addresses the fact implicit in his argument in favor of "returning property rights" associated with the lines to the telcos, and allowing competitors to build out their own competing infrastructure -- that homeowners will have a portion of their property subject to a "taking" in order to provide right-of-ways to every broadband competitor that wants to string a line across their front yard (or back pasture).
And hell, if we're going to allow telco's to do that, can we really tell nascent utilities that they can't dig up your yard to provide a new "free-market" water service? What about the new highway that RoadCo, Inc. wants to put on your land?
Face it, there are some things -- mostly those dealing with basic infrastructure which directly supports some aspect of the very act of living in a modern community (where there is real scarcity of things like natural resources and open space) -- that need to be born by the community.
SBC wants to charge me and additional $40/month, if I go through and ISP other than swbell.
You want competition in the DSL market you separate the ISP from the DSL service. And you Separate the DSL service from the LEC. Otherwise the phone company will jack up their rates, unless you get the bundeled deal. That kills the competition.
Fortunately cable provides competition, but how long will it be before SBC buys the cable system as well.
They own the phone lines, they own the ISP, they own your ass.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
Sorry.
If a T1 gets all of 768Kb/s transfer speeds, then yes, DSL is great. The comment above has a valid complaint about paying $60 a month though, especially if he's paying $40-45 for the same thing today. Inflation is one thing, but a 20% increase (which is what we're speculating) over 2 years is a huge jump when you consider there will not (presumably) be any difference in service speed/reliability over what we get now.
Linux: The world's best text-adventure game.
Seriously. Letting the market choose "decent" broadband won't work simply out of the fact that once the government leaves the big corporations alone, they're not going to do anything but screw us over. Deregulation caused the power crisis in California, so logically, if the broadband market is deregulated, it's going to get so brutal in the market that the Mom-and-Pop DSL providers won't stand a chance.
"... and leave Slashdot alone." Why? Is Slashdot not an open forum for debate? You imply that it is not.
"I don't mean those crappy socialist Soviet/Chicom style rights like "the right to a job" and "the right to a place to live." I mean the good old fashion Western Civilization* idea of rights like "the right peaceably assemble" and, "the right to be secure against unreasonable searches and seizures" and, to be honest I'd like "the right to the product of my own labor." A gov't which takes stuff away from one person and gives it to another to satisfy some politician's sense of "cosmic justice" is not respecting what I would argue are man's basic Rights. "
:)
I agree with you here, especially about the right to the product of one's own labor. In the modern capitalist system though, this right is especially lacking. In fact, that was the basis of one of Marx's complaint on capitalism- alienation from the product of one's labor. If you and I work in a widget factory, at the end of the day we don't take home the widgets we produced that day to sell on our own. We don't even get (directly) paid according to how many widgets we produced that day. We're paid according to selling our labor, not according to the value of what we produce, which we get a fraction of.
Now, many people would argue that people sell their labor according to the laws of supply and demand, but it gets a little fuzzy here. This is getting away from the right to the product of one's own labor though. The "rules" of selling labor may not be the same as selling widgets, and there are many more factors to consider. I think a lot of the reason everyone thinks it's OK to make minimum wage while others are getting fat off your labor is that it's something that has been ingrained in us since birth, so at this point it seems "normal" and there also appears to be a lack of other options.
Another thing is, modern combined labor american capitalism is a relatively recent system. The economic system around the time of the founding fathers was quite different. I think most people were working for themselves, or at least in very small businesses. There were no megacorps back then employing thousands of workers. Back then, one really wasnt that far removed from one's labor. Now if you work in manufacturing, you're turning one screw, instead of building the whole thing.
I think what I wrote before was a bit of an oversimplification, and it has been interpreted as "I think everyone should all have exactly the same amount of stuff", which is not what I was trying to say. It was more of a notion that most people should be able to prosper in the economic system of a country.
That's about enough rambling for now
-J5K
The libertarian solution to the failures of capitalism is to apply more capitalism til the failures are fixed.
If your measure of "good" is based on relative levels of freedom as opposed to everyone being equal then the free market, even if it results in pockets of wealth and poverty (as it must) is still better than a society without freedom where everyone is equally poor.
Of course if your measure of "good" is that everyone has the same amount of stuff no matter how much or little they work, and have no control over their own destinies then by this standard China is the most prosperous nation in the world.
Liberals are always quick resort to the "human impact" argument when they can't come up with a real argument. What about the human impact of social wealfare? Have government aid programs rid us of poverty? Did it work in the USSR? In the moderately socialist countries that exist today, how blissful is it to pay 70% of what you earn in taxes? What is the human impact of telling people they are all equal and deserve all the same things no matter what they do to earn them?
Si vis pacem, para bellum
The only thing more annoying than a Libertarian is an (un|mis)informed Libertarian
You are welcome!
Absolutly wrong! You can sue a corporation. TRY sueing the GOVERNMENT!!! 6 of one, Half-a-dozen of the other.
The interstate highway system, the time system (i.e., time zones), air traffic, medical and scientific research. Do you even realize that almost all the research that subsumes the "internet" was done on government money? Duh! You actually think we'd all be better off if all email was handled by Exchange Server (product of entrepreneurial "innovation") instead of by sendmail (produced on the gov't dime)! You are on the wrong web site, buddy!
While I can't cite the existance of a totally free market, because like everything else in the real world we deal in shades of grey I can cite many markets that should have been free that have been completely destroyed by government regulation. Example, Phone service, Electricity Generation, Cable TV, Railroad, etc.
Well, then you don't have an argument, you have idle speculation. Your statements are functionally equivalent to the statement, "I believe in God, and therefore he exists."
mp
"The secret to strong security: less reliance on secrets." -- Whitfield Diffie
"the human spirit of innovation and creativity"
...I guess they with this mean that people should be allowed to take other peoples work without paying.
Thats what usually is called innovation and creativity here on slashdot.
Oh you're so butch, posting comments on a >400K account, then flaming AC's.
Any prick can create a 'troll' account and post shite all day complaining about 'gay' AC's not posting logged-in.
AC's can't fp
Yes they can, and they do. Live with it - (posting AC to annoy CmdrTaco).
Does anyone else find it sadly amusing that the world's biggest monopolist is whining about the limiting effects about other big monopolies? However the fact that Bill Gates is finally admitting that monopolies do indeed hinder the high-tech economy is a step in the right direction. :)
But guess what? Now that the Baby Bells have nearly killed all their DSL competition, and raised their rates, they are now targetting the independent ISPs! "ISPs in California are accusing SBC Communications of trying to run them out of the broadband business." See this article at techtv.com.
So the ISP's are next, and they may go down just like the CLEC's did. Unless the Justice Department steps in and breaks up the Baby Bell monopolies. Knowing how long this takes, it makes me wonder if the independent ISPs will survive.
They just started here. Charter@home. My logs aren't filling up any more but I'm not really happy about that fact
Maybe we shouldn't own the info infrastructure forever. There are private entities that are much better equipped to manage it than the government. I think that this would be a good starting point, though.
The railways, by the way, were well on their way out before the Interstates. The Interstates were a response to the millions of cars on the road already. People loved the independence they provided, unlike trains. The Interstates were a late response to a growing problem.
Also, think back to the late 1800's, and the monopolies the railroads had. They wrote the book on predatory practices!
- Bill
That being said, you need to accept the consequences. I used to own an ISP, and I'll tell you, the "spirit of the consumer" is (to put it bluntly) DOA. The market reflects the will of the people, and the will of the people is to accept crappy service if it's $.50 cheaper.
So, let the people decide, and live with the consequnces. It sucks, but it's the right thing to do.
And incidentally, how is California "deregulation" relevent? That's "newspeak" Price fixing is not degregulation.
If no one were faulted, anarchy would be the ideal.
yes... and if my farts smelled like flowers, i'd have bees flying up my ass. but i don't.
somewhat more seriously, the same can be said for communism. in fact, they become very similar under the assumption that no one is faulted. but everyone on earth was no more faulted than the least faulted person ever, we'd probably all be too faulted for either to work...
A: None. The Universe spins the bulb, and the Zen master merely stays out of the way.
He seems to think that allowing huge, monopolistic companies to do whatever they want is the same thing as "unleashing the spirit of innovation and creativity."
Then Later...
And thats when the strong animals become huge multinational monopolistic corporations...
Anonymous posts are filtered.
If you're going to threaten their franchise, do it in writing, and to someone who might care (say, the listed contact for service of process typically available from the Secretary of State's office in the state in which the company is incorporated). Bending a customer service rep's ear, or whichever rep is pretending to be a supervisor that day's ear, is a waste of your time and just makes you look like exactly the kind of customer (a demanding one that's costly to service) any mass-market company wants to be rid of.
That said, I hope you have some success with your locals, but if I were you, I'd decide now whether I wanted to go back to dialup for principle's sake or suck it up and change the port number on my http server.
CEE5210S The signal SIGHUP was received.
What you are faililng to realize is that this has already happened. My father works for SBC, and is dealing with this. Sometime in '99, the state governments around here insisted that the owners of the wire couldn't provide data services. Thus, SBC took the DSL providing out of Pac Bell, Nevada Bell, Southwestern Bell, and all the other Bells they own, and put it into a new company called ASI (Advanced Systems Inc I think). ASI is responsible for the ISP, while Pac Bell is responsible for the wires. This is why getting DSL straight from the TelCo doesn't speed up install times, because it still goes through 2 companies and takes forever.
The stakes are different in one midwestern state (Kansas or Nebraska), where the state gov. wouldn't let them own the ISP side of DSL. So what happened? They decided not to roll out DSL at all. Why? Because SBC is forced to sell the wires _AT COST_ and make no money at all if Covad or some other company leases the wire. As such, SBC has no way of making any money by rolling out DSL to that state.
One more thing. Currently SBC loses around $100 per DSL customer per year. They hope to make their money back once they can roll out extra services such as voice over IP, video networking, or other services. Selling just the data over DSL doesn't even come close to making enough money to justify the enormous costs of rolling out DSL.
Situations where companies can dump pollutants and kill people are NOT free markets. In a free market the companies must pay 100% of the costs associated with their production, which includes any medical expenses or imaginary pain, suffering, or death costs.
So you believe that laws of nature and logic are definable, but morality is always an opinion?
Go beyond that level, and you can even get to the service side of things that suck... ie, @Home...
what will regulation do for that?, eh yeah... right!
If anything I fully expect my DSL to cost nearly $60 a month within 2 years.
So what?
Is it really that horrible a thought that we might all have to pay 1/16th of the cost of a T1 for T1 speeds?
Everybody wants legislators to impose restrictions on the behavior of other people that they wouldn't tolerate if imposed on themselves.
If it cost you $2 in materials and time to bake a pie, and you held a pie sale, would you tolerate the government requiring you to charge no more than $2.25 for the pie?
It's not like broadband is a right or a necessity; it's a luxury, and one that's expensive to provide. But we're all demanding better service and lower prices. High speed, good service, low price; pick at most two, folks, you can't have all three.
When you use government force to fund something, you're inevitably hurting something else that would otherwise compete with it. I want a TRULY free market governing my broadband, not a different set of reregulations every year that grant monopolies to campaign contributors.
grep -ri 'should work'
Can someone please tell my why us Brits can't get proper broadband from more than one supplier (BT) yet?
I suppose this is how we wound up with VHS, Windows and the bubonic plague... but don't let that hold anything up.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Imaging if the ILECs who own all of the copper running down the street and into everyone's house could charge the CLEC's any rate they wanted for them to use that copper. Essentially you let the LEC's set their competetors prices. The only CLEC's left would be the ones who can provide their own access (read: cable companies and wireless providers). Sprint is attempting to do this with ION, and AT&T is doing this with "Digital Phone Service" but both of these services are only available in limited areas.
Now take it a step further, the LEC's aren't required to allow access to the cable plant, or the CO. If you want to be an IXC and service the LEC's customers you have to pay UNREGULATED rent in the LEC's wire centers. Bye bye competative long distance.
You can see how with complete deregulation it would be trivial for the LEC's to put all of their competition out of buisiness and just keep raising prices. Well at some point in the price raising it will be feasable for a competitor to enter the market again because by raising prices to consumers, the LEC has raised the profit potential for the competitor.
For an example of this type of market behavior look at the energy crisis in CA. They deregulated power, and worsend the situation by not allowing new power plants to be built. Essentially they gave the already existing monopoly free reign. Consequently prices skyrocket. If the government enforces price caps it will never be profitable for competition, they need to let energy prices keep climbing (sorry Silicon Valley) until someone else can afford to break the existing monopoly and restore competion.
This is probably what will happen with DSL. You will notice in most areas that as companies go out of business DSL prices will go up. Once they reach a certain level it will once again be profitable for these companies to get back in the game and the cycle will repeat. Until a competitor enters the arena that can tolerate the down cycle there will be no true competition.
Si vis pacem, para bellum
The only thing more annoying than a Libertarian is an (un|mis)informed Libertarian
But eventually the big strong animal becomes fat and lazy.
None of the lean and mean animals can do anything about it because the fat and lazy animal can afford powerful lobbyists that keep the animal fat and lazy...
using your tax money.
Anonymous posts are filtered.
Others have covered all the bases on the article's content, I thought I'd just shed some light on the source's identity. After reading the article, I start digging around for info, as a lot of the phrases ('The best way to foster this type of innovation is to get the government out and let the free market work its magic.') smell like Cato.
'Spintech, a thrice-weekly critique of state and culture, is dedicated to defending the rights of the individual against all threats. The contributors are libertarians, anarchists, leftists, conservatives, and liberals. What they agree upon is that the role of the individual in American culture - and in global culture as well - should constantly be examined. Looking for ways in which government and society threaten individual freedom, the writers here review politics, culture, literature, and the arts.'
Hmm. Ok. Sounds like "libertarian sheet."
'Jason Miller is a sophomore at Michigan State University and a visiting policy analyst at the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty.'
Go to www.acton.org. 'The Mission of the Acton Institute is to promote a free and virtuous society characterized by individual liberty and sustained by religious principles.'
If you dig around further on the site, you find that they're against the "public education monopoly," for "character education," and this:
'The development of the intellect and of moral character are intimately related. Just as there is an order in nature (the laws of science), in reason (the laws of logic), and in the realm of numbers, so too is there a moral order. One thing we need to do is recover the belief that there is a transcendent, unchanging moral order, and restore it once more to a central place in the educational process.'
Uh huh. Whatever.
The author of the article says he supports the free market, but then says he supports the federal government giving billions of dollars to companies who agree to provide access in rural areas. That's the kind of horseshit that liberals always temper "deregulation" with, and that's why we only every get half-regulation. In a free market, if it isn't profitable big companies won't do it. That is why we have government enitities that do things like build roads, deliver mail, etc. Proving this point the author points out that in Canada DSL has a much higher penetration than in the US, but he ignores the fact that the Canadian government mandated that everyone be able to get DSL.
Government Intervention != Free Market
If you are really in favor of a free market then you must accept that sometimes that will lead to monopolies, and sometimes it will lead to a service that you want not being provided to you. In some markets there is room for lots of companies, in some there isn't.
Si vis pacem, para bellum
The only thing more annoying than a Libertarian is an (un|mis)informed Libertarian
The solution is being lauched in November, 2001. It is being made available in North America and Europe. The company doing it is EMS with these products through an open standard called DBV-RCS
Remembering your name in the morning is already a good start...
I've got to say that the way a company handles problems with its service is the most important thing to me, secondary to both speed and price.
I have AT&T @Home Cable and Verizon DSL. The DSL usually gets me about 750/100 Kbits. With cable I sometimes get over 3 MEGA bits per second. However, given a choice I'd ditch the cable before DSL. Here's why: In two months of service I have had two extended outages with AT&T. Both have been the result of AT&T Cable's stupidity. When the TV cable folks come by every month or so to do an audit, they invariably disconnect my internet connection because I'm not also a Cable TV subscriber.
This means I have to call AT&T @home, who have to schedule a service call, usually more than a week later, and I have to be at home ALL FREAKING DAY waiting for the tech to arrive. I'm serious. The hours they gave me were "sometime between 8AM and 6PM." It means I have to take an entire day off work just to get my service reconnected when the imbecils should not have even disconnected it in the first place! It's a case of AT&T's right hand not knowing what the left one is doing.
Say what you want about Verizon. I'll admit that their DSL speed sucks compared to cable, but I'd much rather have a crappy connection that WORKS, even if I have to pay $80 a month for mediocre DSL, which is what I pay now through Verizon. I'm considering complaining to the Public Utilities Commission about AT&T.
That's why I say that the technology does not matter, as long as they can deliver the service and treat their customers decently.
That is assuming that the cost of a T1 (> $1000/month) is fair market value - remember, T1s are regulated and tarriffed meaning they generally are more expensive and competitors can't easily provide them. So in this case its apples to oranges.
The idea here is not to regulate cheap prices. Its to avoid being gouged by a monopoly - the whole basis for anti-trust laws. If one company has complete or almost complete control over a market, the price of their product or service is not likely set by market forces/competition.
And of course monoploies rarely behave themselves. The most obvious example, tools the telco sgave the CLEC to pre qualify people for service (ie are you close enough, is yoru CO wired, etc, etc) Often, the CLEC got rejections from this sytsem only to have the telco send a DSL postcard to the users a week later offering them the telco DSL. Talk about shady!
Top Most Bizarre/Disturbing Error Messages
If you want to leave it to the market, why not also leave it up to the market to determine the correct level and rate of broadband deployment? Overinvestment in capital can be a bad thing as the decline of many of the fiber optic companies will attest. If broadband is really a "good thing" for consumers and business, then the market will find a way to make it happen. Being "behind Canada" or any other such reason is not a sufficient reason to set up a public policy in favor of increasing the rate of broadband rollout. Just as with analog high definition television, it could be that those who move first actually end up moving wrong and that a slower pace of deployment could actually end up being better and more efficient. How much money has been destroyed and how much consumer pain caused through the rollout of DSL by companies with poor business plans?
I agree that a "free market" should be a means to an end, but I disagree on what that end has to be.
You seem to think the end should be some kind of equitable distribution of worldly possessions (i.e. "prosperity... for the majority").
I think that the end should be the protection of human rights.
I don't mean those crappy socialist Soviet/Chicom style rights like "the right to a job" and "the right to a place to live." I mean the good old fashion Western Civilization* idea of rights like "the right peaceably assemble" and, "the right to be secure against unreasonable searches and seizures" and, to be honest I'd like "the right to the product of my own labor." A gov't which takes stuff away from one person and gives it to another to satisfy some politician's sense of "cosmic justice" is not respecting what I would argue are man's basic Rights.
Sure, I like stuff as much as the next guy. I want surround sound and a big TV and a fast computer and a new car. But, how can you suggest that bringing "prosperity and economic growth to a majority of people" can be more important than a person's right to keep what they have legitimately earned, even if that right is only taken from a minority of the people? Ourselves, and therefore our labor, and therefore the fruits of our labor should belong to us as individuals, not to society as a whole, certainly not to the government or to political leaders**. Gov't should worry about protecting the rights of its citizens first and foremost; if that means some people get screwed over economically, that is unfortunate***; but not as unfortunate as the tyranny that would result if the gov't tried to control the economy to prevent it. And who really belives the politicians would actually control the economy for the benfit of the "little man" anyway; they would eventually control it for the benifit of themselves and/or their most powerful constituents.
I don't think that any gov't regulation is automatically evil... as long as the levels of gov't stay within their areas of authority, and regulation is minimized so that it does not, as Thomas Jeffeson said "take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned." (for you Europeans, "labor" here does NOT refer to a socialist political party or to just the "working poor" or the underclass). For publically traded companies, anti-trust laws I think CAN be done in a reasonable way that does respect the rights of citizens. But if they can't, which should we sacrifice: Cheap long distance telephone calls, or human rights? Thankfully we live an a society where what is RIGHT almost always works out to what will also create general prosperity, so compromise is not necessary. But when some politician tries to offer you a choice between the two, be careful which one you pick.
*of course I mean Enlightenment era old fashioned, not the sort of "that person acts a little different, so lets call her an agent of Satan and burn her at the stake" Middle Ages sort of old fashoned.
** Not that I think we should have NO taxes, I don't know how to pay for a gov't without taxees. It's just that they only should be used for legitimate gov't purposes. Of course, my idea of legitimate is a very American, _Federalist_Papers_ sort of thing ( http://www.mcs.net/~knautzr/fed/fedpaper.html ), not at all what many Eurocentric or Eastern thinkers might call "legitimate."
*** Not that I think that society should not help the economically unfortunate, just that help for economic problems should come from economic sources and NGOs not through the forcible confiscation of wealth for redistribution according to the preferences of the political leaders.
And since the DSL marketplace is precisely the sort of marketplace that is manipulated by politicians and hurge multinational monopolistic corporations, what say you now?
The free market is great for the telcos -- they get to violate the law and screw the consumer, paying piddling fines along the way, until all their competition is crushed and we are forced back into their arms. Yup, just the way I like my free market to operate!
My solution? Not sure. How about fines with bite for a start so that when telcos break the law in their thuggish manner they get discouraged from doing it a second time by the fine?
________________
Private Essayist
It is because no one is faulted, that anarchism is the only moral option.
The current US DSL regulatory structure sucks for a number of reasons. But they're not the ones that sophomore mentioned.
Unlicensed networks like Ricochet aren't allowed enough power/range to be profitable -- that's the idea! Metricom was caught between having enough base stations to meet needs and having enough customers to finance them. The numbers never converged. Unlicensed wireless works best in rural areas, especially flat ones.
The money for sky-borne relays has dried up with the rest of the industry. Don't hold you breath for those airships. Even if the FCC were to grant spectrum to them.
And it has been illegal for a municipality to grant exclusivity to a cable franchise since 1992. States grant telco franchises, which have been non-exclusive since 1996. There are overbuilders, but the economics aren't great. Check out RCN's quarterlies. From a financial perspective, access to existing ILEC loops is the most viable competitive solution.
I agree that rural areas get too much of a subsidy. But even then, the subsidy mechanism should be made available to competitive providers. That's *theoretically* possible but CLECs have a very hard time getting it. Western Wireless and McLeodUSA may have qualified.
"the human spirit of innovation and creativity"
Just like we let Microsoft innovate? It's all they talk about, and look where that got us. I hate to say it, but I think I trust the government more then big business. At least with the government you can hold a person responsible for their actions. When it comes to big business, it's just a faceless corporation that can take a hit (such as a fine) and keep on chugging.
I posted to
And then there's Copyright legislation that prevents me to share even buster keaton movies. For me movies would be one interesting use of broadband (and a obvious use of "interactive" TV), but if I have to pay for every time I see one, I'll keep using normal TV and going to a cinema from time to time, it's a lot cheaper.
Aw dude, you must have missed this one..
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/08/15 /183723 2&mode=nested
Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. -- Carl Sagan
Actually, in Denver (or at least in Lakewood) garbage collection is privatized and we have a choice of three or four different companies. It's actually rather nice, yes they do come on different days but they come just a bit after most people leave for work so it's really not a problem.
That really doesn't address the other points at all, I just wanted to note that private garbage companies work out just fine.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Take all of the wires in the street, and all of the telco switch facilities and give them back to the people. Make the whole infrastructure of monopoly regulated telcos belong to the people who have paid for them. They are too valuable a resource to allow to remain in the hands of a few unscrupulous companies any longer. These companies were paid a GUARANTEED profit for decades. They actually made more money because they over-built their systems. Since we already paid for it, it is righfully ours.
A cool idea! I'm all for keeping government out of our lives, but, there are times when it's necessary. We own most of the roads, most of the water and sewage distribution and treatment facilities in the U.S., why not information distribution? Look at the Interstate highway System. That was a long-term project designed to enhance our infrastructure. This sounds pretty close, if not identical, to the digital information distribution troubles we're having now. A far-sighted approach to wider bandwidth distribution to the masses might be something that the government needs to get in on.
- Bill
The bogosity meter pegs every time I hear this kind of verbiage. "Freedom", "innovation", endless faith in markets to fix everything. Here's some countering verbiage: "Democracy likes markets but markets don't like democracy." This kind of American-flag-wrapped faux-populist deregulationism is nothing but an expression of the will to power of dominant corporations.
Ben "You have your mind on computers, it seems."
Freedom is more important as a concept than democracy. Democracy is no guarantee of freedom for everyone. On the contrary, unlimited majority rule has produced some of the most evil governments in history, even as late as the 20th century. (say in the 30's and 40's)
Free markets work because they are free in principle, not necessarily because they are democratically ruled.
No it doesn't. The state exists whether or not it regulates monopolies. And state regulation of competition is different to the state actually providing services monopolistically. In fact they're practically opposites.
No matter how many times you libertarians say it, "the state has guns" isn't a valid argument against regulation.
Female Prison Rape in NY
Yeah, let's go around destroying all the greatest and most successful companies in the states. That will teach those small businesses never to grow. Punishing people for being successful is a GREAT idea!!
I've worked as a contractor for the government before. There were a considerable number of civil servants who's job it was to to oversee us and to make sure we were doing our jobs well. They were nice people, who tried to do their jobs well, but they rarely had much of an idea what was going on. They weren't very technical people. If you require highly technical people, then someone will sue because they felt they were competent enough, and that they were being discriminated against. Their jobs ended up being to try and guess if they could believe us when we told them we were doing a good job. They would investigate complaints, but it's it's easy to provide doubt that you did something wrong, even if you did. No one likes someone going around pointing fingers, and there people have to work with you wether they like it or not.
In the end you have ineffectual oversight, that costs a lot of money. The costs of that oversight are passed on to consumers either through a direct tax on the service, or some other tax. In the end consumers get less for more.
Needless to say I got out of government contracting. The politics were frustrating, and there was just too little of an incentive to do a good job. There were some people who continued to do exelent work in that environment, but it was burning me out, so I left.
That's just it though. They've already made it clear their policy is "no servers" period. Changing the port number only works until some smartass tech realizes it, and blocks more ports, or even cancels my service.
They have no intention of letting me be anything other than a consumer of their intolerable garbage. If it isn't that way yet, it just means they haven't finished all their plans at this point.
What other kind of business except an arrogant monopoly would refuse to give you answers, then refuse to escalate it up to the people who can give you answers? This is unheard of for me. When I can't help the customer or client, I always know who to refer them to, and I've been told more than once that it would be a big no-no to even hesitate, should they ask. If I were as impolite as the tech I chatted with, I would think I could be fired for it... and if I were, I wouldn't complain. It's wrong. The only thing less profitable than a needy customer, is a former customer.
I've tried every way I can think of to contact someone at AT&T, but they seem to have every intention of not recieving any criticism, comments, or questions. I guess they don't feel the need to listen to their customers at all.
My local goverment in this case, will not be very sympathetic I'm afraid. AT&T buying Mediaone, and refusing to allow other ISP's to use the cable was big news last year, but at the moment there are no elections in the near future, and those in office are the same that kissed AT&T ass. I'm considering calling the local TV station, which does one of those "On your side" type pieces every other day, but again I can't imagine not sounding like the fool. There is simply no one to turn to. Even in a best case scenario, where politicians were really for the people, they still couldn't fix this quickly enough for it to matter? What, 5 years from now, they punish AT&T? Much good that will do me. By that time, likely there will be no internet at all, it will BE MSN/AOLnet or something.
Worse, I think I know enough people in my area that would be interested in co-opping a fractional T1, or maybe some other decent pipe. At least a dozen coworkers and friends, with maybe even half of them seriously concerned with the rape that AT&T is pulling on us. But we live too far from each other... it would mean doing wireless microwave links (homemade, roughly $150 per station, luckily no big buildings in the way, and elevation id very encouraging). Only 2 or 3 people live close enough to each other to make 802.11 practical. But the FCC, whore to big business, basically has stolen the airwaves that are partly mine (or at least mine to use just as much as they are anyone elses), and auctioned them off to corps. It's illegal for me to build my own solution to this problem.
Thanks for pointing me to the state gov stuff, I'll into that also. But I don't think there is a solution. We're all fucked.
Those who live in Richmond VA, using AT&T cable modems (or for that matter using Comcast@Home in the Chesterfield areas) please contact me at jojo4@mediaone.net (please include subject of "slashdot"). I can't promise any magical fixes, but if you'd like to try and see if we could together come up with a solution, you're welcome to send me a note. Maybe we could get the 802.11 going, with enough relays.
the bells and cable companies are both monopolies in separate markets. now that a new market (broadband) overlaps with their domains, they start pointing fingers at each other. i don't have a solution to the problem here. the government treated them too well for too long. i honestly think that the wire owners might need to be split from the service providers in both industries in order to benefit the consumer. it will end up being similar to the electric power industry. but we saw what a mess that was in Cali. i have to admit that as long as i can get 1.5Mbps from someone for $50/month, i will be a happy man.
Ummm, Jon, aren't you supposed to be dead...? - Otter(3800)
- DHCP + fixed IP
- Linux friendly (including Linux installation guidelines for their kit in the manual)
- Geek friendly - they explicitly allow you to run servers of any kind, as long as you're not doing anything "commercial"
- Very reasonable downtime (it's only been down once in 4 months)
- The one time I needed support, I spent less than a minute on hold, and it took them less than 5 minutes to solve my problem.
My OTHER choice was Verizon. Guess which one I chose.I don't know how successful Telocity has been. All I know is they got bought out by Directv and now they're known as Directv Internet. I haven't noticed any difference in service yet, but given that Directv is considerably bigger than the former Telocity, it's probably going to start getting worse after they complete the assimilation. Bottom line is, as far as I can see Telocity was a competitive company, offering way better service than any other DSL provider in the area, but the market didn't help them much. Maybe the market *was* the reason they decided to sell out. Maybe deregulation can only help the big sharks...
so if someone says something new, all by his/her little lonesome self, then you would call them an idiot. If it is backed up by a think tank, then you call it rhetoric. Basically, just admit that you are full of hate and pride and want to push your views onto others by ANY means necessary. Then you can get back to your communist or ne0-nazi crap
Will I be able to install the cable modem and software myself? This level of service is not currently available. However, in the near future we will be initiating a "do it yourself" program, which will allow those subscribers who are technically inclined to install their own modem and software.
However, in the past when I was debating cable vs. dsl I am very positive that I saw that you could get a significant savings if you self installed. I managed to get this info by further digging. Before you purchase and install a cable modem yourself, be sure to contact Time Warner Cable Customer Care to ensure that the cable modem is compatible with Road Runner systems. Click here for information about retail installation. Which will essentially tell you that you just need a DOCSIS compliant model. An example of this is the Motorola Surfboard modem - this is an external model - and in most cases is the one that RR uses themselves.
Unfortunately, after recently making a phone call about getting cable [my DSL provider is going up the creek (this is the 2nd time now)] I found that they no longer offer discounts on the monthly charge for those who provide their own modems.
On the install issue- this is what I came up with:
- Installation if Road Runner does not supply NIC or USB adaptor $79.95
- Installation if Road Runner supplies NIC or USB adaptor $99.95
It seems as though they no longer give a discount even for your own self install [ie- I plug the modem into a RG-58 coax jack] This used to drop the install to like 29.95. The one plus I did find was However, even prior to termination of cable service, we allow our customers to remove, replace, rearrange, repair or maintain any cable wiring located within the interior space of the customer's dwelling unit so long as such actions do not interfere with our ability to meet FCC technical standards or to provide services to you or your neighbors at time warner's site.Is it really that horrible a thought that we might all have to pay 1/16th of the cost of a T1 for T1 speeds?
It is when there is no justified reason for doing so other than to prevent T1 sales from being destroyed by a cheaper alternative. DSL prices don't have to be so high, they're only high because the telephones are a local monopoly and don't want the more profitable T1 sales to be hurt.
You're forgetting that you're using bandwidth not just over your DSL connection, but over the far more expensive connection out to the rest of the Internet.
DSL prices are too low to make a profit. They're loss-leaders right now, and the only people who can afford to charge $40 or $50 a month for it are those who can absorb the losses for now in the hopes of building a brand identity that they can sustain later when they charge a profitable price.
But, in any event, since when is "because I want to charge this much for my product" not a "justified" reason for pricing? It's their circuit, their hardware, their bandwidth; what right do you have to it? None.
If I have a used car with a blue book value of $2,000, and you want to purchase it, and I refuse to sell it for less than $3,000, have I done something wrong? No; it's my damn property, and you're free to not buy it.
You're free to not buy DSL. If it's too expensive, don't buy it. Nobody's putting a gun to your head.
On the contrary. In a capitalist system, customers who want better service would be free to tell a provider to "shove it" and go with a competitor who may charge more but give better service.
For example, I choose to give my money to smaller Internet providers than to larger ISPs like AOL and MSN. They offer me services I want (usenet, a UNIX shell, no proprietary client). Recently, my ISP decided to go SSH-only on their shell box, which makes it impossible for other box, a souped-up Commodore 128, to connect (it only recently got PPP and telnet). Guess what? My new ISP service should be ready to go this weekend and I'll start the process of redirecting web & mail traffic and eventually closing my current account.
The only reason I cannot reasonably do that with my phone service is that the government, in the interests of "the people", allowed Bell to have a monopoly on the infrastructure in exchange for requiring them to do things such as lay cable to the "last mile", rather than allowing the free market to demand it of them. Think of what sort of solutions a free market could have come up with to meet the "last mile" problem on its own! How about wireless telephones in rural areas, which transmit and receive radio waves to/from centrally-located bases which are patched into the phone network (with Bell getting a small cut for each call they allow in, of course). Yes, we might have had a primative version of the cellular phone way back then had the free market been allowed to say "we will gladly give our money to whomever will give us phone service out here" and someone had an idea of how they could do it. Instead, the government told Bell to lay costly cable to every rural resident and eliminated the chance for a competitor to be innovative in finding a way to meet those customers' demand for phone service at affordable prices.
I, for one, see nothing wrong with a monopoly, except when such a monopoly is created or maintained with the assistance of the government. A regular monopoly can be felled by anyone who can beat them at their own game by being better and/or more affordable. A monopoly like my local phone and cable providers can't, as the government has made it so that they're the only game in town.
Outta here,
Compton Q. Groundhog
I noticed that the new york times is reporting that in addition to the PC, AIDS is also celebrating it's 20'th birthday. There must be a link.
I'm amazed that /. wastes its front page space pointing to junk like this. It's just some undergraduate practicing his P.R. flak skills by rewriting some tired Bell company propaganda, washed liberally with conservative ideology.
But where's the free market when the Bells (and ohter ILECs) were granted their monopolies, which prevented anybody else, until 1996, from putting in competing facilities at all?
But where's the free market for "innovation" when the "wireless" options cited by the college kid author are, indeed, virtually nonexistent, under a government spectrum policy (remember, the airwaves are REGULATED) that is now aimed at maximizing license auction revenues? That results in high cost-per-bit cellular clones and ever-more-concentrated commercial broadcast groups. Wireless unlicensed options are very limited, by design. Satellite is limited by both spectrum availablity and the speed of light -- "innovation" isn't going to change the value of c.
Where's the free market when an incumbent monopolist is allowed to use their monopoly power (the stuff John D Rockefeller was notorious for) to crush any competition? Where's the free market when the Bell companies use every trick in the book to prevent living up to their legal obligations?
There are, of course, two different views of "free market". One is that the government shouldn't interfere with monopolies. The other is that the government has to limit monopoly power in order to let market forces work. Clearly the undergrad author is in the former camp, the "let's bend over and let the monopolies rule us" camp.
Some background first. I've had my cable modem approx. a year, since before AT&T bought Mediaone. At that time, only bandwidth hogging and illegal activities were restricted. While their official policies were more restrictive, the person I talked to on the phone while ordering service was quite happy, even enthusiastic about me running linux. Their only concern was that I understand that such things were completely unsupported, and I'd be on my own if something got screwed up. I can't think of a single complaint, while it was Mediaone, they even lowered the price shortly before AT&T gobbled them up.
However, since the port 80 thing, my small private website is now inaccessible. There is no real option, this thing isn't worth an extra $50 a month, especially when I'd have less than 30 hits per month, once you excluded the testing I performed on it. One a day. AT&T home pages do not offer any of the services necessary for this page, such as storaage space, mysql and cgi-bin, proper dns services, or my freedom to say off the wall things, or things others would consider tasteless (but hardly obscene). Even just the freedom to learn to admin this stuff, and to have control over my own content... it's somewhat hypocritical to have anti-corporate essays on a page plastered with banner ads.
AT&T is the only broadband provider in my part of Richmond, VA. I suppose you guys know the rates for T1's and stuff better than I do. Saying that I need to buy that, because www is a commercial service is not fair or accurate. Nor the free "services" even close to adequate. I'm sorry but I refuse to hand my content over to a banner ad whore.
They at first told me it was temporary. They used every dumb excuse they could. When I'd shoot these down, they'd do everything they could to end the chat. The latest chat follows...
w-Miles H says, Thank you for contacting AT&T Broadband Cable Internet Service, my name is Miles.
w-Miles H says, How can I help you?
You say, Hi Miles.
You say, I'm wondering when you guys will lift the block on port 80
w-Miles H says, At this time AT&T has no plans to unblock incoming requests on port 80.
You say, has no plans?
You say, its permanent then, i take it
w-Miles H says, Yes.
You say, may i speak with your supervisor?
w-Miles H says, may I ask why?
You say, because I'm going to ask questions that you can't answer
You say, no offense
w-Miles H says, My supervisor will need to know what kind of questions they are before he will let me transfer you to him.
You say, does your customer service training include running defense for the supervisor, when a customer asks to speak with him?
You say, you see, I've got this week off work, and I've been doing alot of research into our local goverment today
w-Miles H says, When I contact my supervisor, he will ask me what the issue is
. If he does not feel that this is something that needs to be escalated he will not accept it.
You say, seems the people in charge of overseeing the contract you have with the city of Richmond might be interested in some things i have to say
You say, especially if i can get enough of my friends to raise a rucus
w-Miles H says, You mean about port 80 being blocked?
You say, yeh
You say, for which there are no good technical reaasons to block port 80
You say, you guys havent even started to contact infected users, near as i can tell
You say, I tell you what...
w-Miles H says, I'm just talking with my supervisor right now.
You say, instead of your supervisor, how bout you provide me with the contact info for his supervisor
w-Miles H says, I'll transfer you to him right now. Sorry about all this.
You are being transferred to another Agent. Please stand by...
w-Miles H has left this session!
w-Will Mned this session!
w-Will M says, Hello, and thank you for contacting AT&T Broadband Cable Internet Services. My name is Will. May I please have your name and your home address, phone number and your city, state, and Zip Code please?
w-Will M says, Hello, and thank you for contacting AT&T Broadband Cable Internet Services. My name is Will. May I please have your name and your home address, phone number and your city, state, and Zip Code please?
You say, Hi Will
w-Will M says, I am the supervisor on duty at this time, how can i help you?
You say, Will, I consider the block on port 80 to be an unfair restriction w-Will M says, How so Sir?
You say, You gave no advance warning, no warning at all in fact
You say, There is no DSL in my area either
w-Will M says, We did place the information on our website.
You say, so I have very few alternatives
You say, you placed it how many links deep?
w-Will M says, I do apologize for the inconvenience.
You say, I'm supposed to check that daily, I suppose
You say, else you pull another stunt
w-Will M says, That is where we would place those updates.
You say, Will, the tech informed me that there are no plans to unblock port 80
You say, is that true?
w-Will M says, Correct as a security precaution we will not be unblocking that port.
You say, It's going to be almost 2 months before I get to talk to the people aat City Council
You say, and I'm sure theyll be interested in all of this, as soon as I explain why
there is no valid technical reason for the block
w-Will M says, At&T considers that port to be a security risk and with a residential service we have decided to close it off.
You say, Will, how technical are you?
You say, your users reached saturation long before you blocked
You say, theres no one left to infect, for gods sake
You say, now, if you were using this time to get it cleaned up, that would be one
thing
w-Will M says, The broadband service offering is a consumer product designed for your personal use of the Internet. Customers must ensure that their actit improperly restrict, inhibit, or degrade any other user's use of the Services,
You say, but you arent doing that, as near as i can tell
You say, Will, how will my tiny website, do any of that?
w-Will M says, nor represent (in the sole judgement of broadband) an unusually large burden on the network itself
You say, the first 3 months, i had less than 100 hits
You say, please tell me why you are switching tactics by the way
w-Will M says, As I stated we have deemed it a risk that we are not willing to take and have shut down that port.
You say, is it a security thing, or a bandwidth thing?
You say, its hardly a risk
w-Will M says, Its a combination of both.
You say, haha, do you know that infected users continue to attempt to infect non-AT&T computers?
w-Will M says, Due to the code red virus we had major latency issues on our network.
w-Will M says, This was caused by users running web servers such as IIS getting infected and not properly securing trier systems.
w-Will M says, We are aware of that however we can only resolve the issue on our network.
You say, Will, how upset do you think the local gov will be, when I inform them that my SMALL website, that never interfered with bandwidth constraints, had messages of a political nature, and I believe that AT&T is trying to squash such
sites?
w-Will M says, We have blocked port 80 as a precaution of this sort of thing occurring on our network again.
You say, Will, that's not a precaution, this is way too after the fact to do any good
w-Will M says, As you are paying for a residential service they most likely will not be concerned but I can say for certain.
w-Will M says, I do apologize but we will not be removing that block.
You say, precaution, would be suspending the accounts of users who fail to secure their computers
w-Will M says, Sorry for the inconvenience.
You say, thats ok
w-Will M says, Is there anything else we can do for you today?
You say, I'll be talking to people who have the authority, to take the local cable franchise away from AT&ays, Thank you for contacting AT&T BroadBand Cable Internet Services.
You say, if you can tell me who I'd escalate this to, since you don't have the authority to do anything
w-Will M says, Have a nice day.
You say, i would appreciate thta
w-Will M says, If you voice your concern further you can write to corp.
customercare@broadband.att.com.
You say, no, I'd need a phone number
You say, all those emails do, is send you a form letter
w-Will M says, Sorry we do not have a phone number to provide you for corporate escalations.
w-Will M says, You would need to contact them via email.
You say, can you look it up for me?
w-Will M says, Sorry we do not have one for customer use.
You say, then you do have one
You say, call the person up for me, please
w-Will M says, Not for customer use we don't.
You say, ask their permission to give me the phone number
w-Will M says, Sorry we can not do that.
w-Will M says, If you wish to escalate this higher you will need to email in your concerns.
You say, Will, can I have your full name and dept, so when I finally do get that number, I can complain properly?
w-Will M says, My full name is William Wallace and I am a supervisor with technical support.
w-Will M says, Is there anything else we can do for you today?
You say, cool, thank you
w-Will M says, Thank you for contacting AT&T BroadBand Cable Internet Services.
You say, no, thats about it, you guys cant answer any of my questions apparently
Cost is part of the free market as well. Often more important than quality. Nice of you to ignore his main point, there are other technologies and there isn't really any excuse for not investing in them.
This is my signature. There are many signatures like it but this one is mine..
It seems to me that telephone service (and thus internet service that runs over the telephone network) ought to be regarded as a public utility. It is clearly necessary for living in America, and something like 97% or more households have a phone.
So why doesn't the state just force the bells to sell them the lines, and then lease management responsiblity for the lines back to the bells? It would be a zero-sum transaction, but having the state own the lines would force them to play by fair rules. As long as the bells control the lines, they can play all sorts of games to keep others off. If the state controls them, and leases management back to the bells, suddenly the state can effectively police the lines to ensure everyone has a chance.
Why hasn't something like this been done already?
I tried to get DSL, from the local baby bell even, for months. They never came out and told me "you are just too far from the CO". It was always, "we need to send a technician out, to see if there are any problems with your line. You'll need to be at home, in case you need to unplug phones." Finally, I had to go to DSL Reports to get the real scoop - I was borderline, and probably wouldn't like it if I got it.
So, I decided to try cable. The NEXT DAY they were at my house installing it, ignoring their own contract to install it in an inside wall, going through the attic. This was a snow day too, that many decided was too bad to go into work. I've had two outages since then, and I'm a very happy customer. That's Cox Cable of Tulsa, BTW.
I can see what they are doing, though. The Bell is dragging it's feet, while Cox is agressivly upgrading it's equipment, partially with Cable Modem subscriber's money. Soon, they will be the only game in town, and then, if they can do it, they'll offer phone over cable for a similar rate. If it was cheaper, I may have to go that way, or take the plunge, drop my land line altogether, and get a cell phone.
And that's why I'm a suppporter of deregulation - not because I think the slow-as-molassas Bell will suddenly pull themselves into the 21st Century, but because the evil merging cable companies should get a shot at the telephone market in a few years. Now THAT would be some true competition.
Yeah its funny how "the human spirit of innovation and creativity" tend to sell out. Its is painfully obvious that most people abandon their idelogical positions just as soon as it becomes convenient for them.
In fact, people who take ideological positions are the worst kind of hypocrites and it just takes a very simple turn of events to expose them. The degree to which this happens, when tech wannabe's think their shit is better than someone else's (insert big company here) shit, is trully mammoth in proportion.
Take this personaility test.
Ma Bell struck the original agreement with the government in the 30's They gave access to everyhouse in the country, but they were the only one's who were allowed to do it; no "cherry picking" of dense concentrations of businesses by competitors. So those profitable segments subsidised the unprofitable ones. We had universal, expensive coverage; anyone remember how expensive long distance phone calls were in the late 60's early 70's? The question is do we want a regulated monopoly were everyone everywhere can get high speed connections, or is it free choice and pay for what you use? I live less than a mile from a major city CO so I don't want to subsidize high speed access to your lakefront mansion
Free cell phone tracking
It amazes me how some people can oversimplify a complex economic issue, such as in this quote by the author:
But cut through the abstraction and the debate really comes down to a philosophical question: What is the best way to solve problems, more government or less?
But I suppose I really shouldn't be surprised when I look at the byline:
Jason Miller is a sophomore at Michigan State University.
Do you want quality Internat access? Rid yourself of the layers of government that control it.
The federal U.S. govt never had the constitutional authoritity to create the FCC in the first place. (Art 1$8..the power to regulate communications in anyway just ain't there, and the commerce clause only applies in a lawyer's wet dream.)
Our level of communications access will change by an order of magnitude for the better when the freemarket can offer technlogies without the obsticle of an expensive licence and burearocratic hurdles.
Could you tack up a wire on the poles and offer you neighbors some sort of service without being a multi-million dollar quasi-governmental corp? No. Imagine if you could...
It is time for the governments of the world to step aside and let peope live free.
BTW, will you offer an upgrade to Wigwag, the faster flag technology (TM) ?
120 characters?! Who do they think they are, telling me I only get 120 characters? This will never do. I must have mor
In Columbus, OH, the Baby Bell (Ameritech/SBC) owns both the phone wire and one of the cable systems. The other cable system is owned by Time Warner AOL. Any regulatory action should require the Bell's to divest themselves of their cable systems. If one company owns more than one set of wires into the home, there will never be competition.
I am personally for the market deciding as long as that market is not manipulated by politicians or huge multinational monopolistic corporations. The Free Market is like an ecosystem, the strong animals will thrive and the weak ones will die. The job of the consumer is to know which animal to bet on. Buyer beware!
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
British Telecom has a pretty strong grip on the market
Actually, they have the monopoly on the infrastructure (local loop). OFTEL have been limp-wristedly attempting to unbundle the local loop for what seems like eons, but other telcos are still unable to access BT's exchanges.
This has resulted in an very slow and patchy roll-out of DSL
True, however, there are much more attractive looking services available/soon to become available. For example, NTL/Telewest's £25 ($35US) / month cable modem offering looks pretty good. Later this year, when the local loop is finally unbundled, you can expect to see prices dropping as the telcos start to compete for our custom.
I've been waiting for affordable broadband internet in the UK since 1997. Four years later it's just starting to become available.
-----------------------
Moderator's essentials
How long does it take PacHell to setup DSL as opposed to another company, that must wait on PacHell? Or, @home blocking port 80 because some people are stupid enough to run Windows servers, but not unblocking.
Since the wires are already in place, the playing field is not level.
Fight Spammers!
It works both ways.
The local paper ran an article showing that BellSouth changed their charge for a dsl line to ISPs to $33.00. This was done so as to "standardize our rate plan" or some other hogwash.
This means that my $49.00 a month DSL is most likely never to go down, as my ISP makes $16.00 over the cost of leasing the DSL line from BellSouth. If anything I fully expect my DSL to cost nearly $60 a month within 2 years.
Until their is a 2-way BB solution that does not require telco cooperation we are going to get jacked.
As far as cable goes, hey, more power to them, while they are available in my local area I can only hope it keeps BellSouth and my ISP from upping my rates.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I enjoy reading how so many people believe we are a "capitalistic" system here in the US. Sorry, it just isn't so. We are foremost, a republic based upon democracy...meaning that some of the basic tenets of capitalism are voided. Therefore, government regulation can be a "Good Thing". For instance, our current telecommunications infrastructure (as well as our electrical grid) would not be nearly as complete or usable today if they were both NOT regulated. Companies, especially ones that succeed to the level of near monopoly, follow a basic tenet of capitalism--increase profits. The opposite of that is provide your customer with the best service...as that is an expense which affects profit. So by doing the math, you find that captalism says to do as little as possible to make as much money. That is quite adverse to creating a working, complete, and expandable infrastructure.
What so many people who beat the drum of "free market" seem to miss is that most of these companies were handed this infrastructure AND customers. That is hardly free market. And now, we expect these near-monopolistic cash cows to share? You'd have to be on drugs (and really bad ones) to not be able to see the insanity of that!
The reason there exists a telecom "infrastructure" is because the government, in one of the rare moments of "doing things right for the people", forced the hand of Ma Bell--saying that every American should have a telephone. That, again, was a "Good Thing". If you argue against that, then you surely do not belong in this discussion. The reason that long distance rates were so high during the 70s and early 80s was because the government began to step back from regulation, being lobbied like crazy from AT&T, and stopped watching what was happening...mostly because they were AT&T's biggest customer (what a conflict of interest, eh?) Technology for digital packet switching was in the works, but AT&T wanted nothing to do with it, instead sticking to the "old", but highly profitable, way. That was the impetus behind de-regulation..and since the gov't had forced AT&T's hand, and since it was granted a monopoly (meaning it got EVERYONE'S money), that essentially translated into the network belongs to the people, not simply AT&T.
Which brings us to deregulation...and our current situation. Since both the baby bells and cable companies have inherited a system that was primarily built-out on the citizen's dollar (again, they were granted a monopoly--they asked for it!) they cannot now claim that the network does not belong to all comers. The problem is that since deregulation, we have this sticky issue whereby gov't wasn't officially saying these guys were a monopoly, so they now are saying "Hey, we built into that "old" network with all new equipment, so it now belongs to us!" Stupid government. But one thing that we all must keep in mind, is that the baby bells and cable companies, even though de-regulated, are still treated as a monopoly and would, for all purposes, look like ones in the eyes of a court (hey, compare to Microsoft if you disagree). They DO NOT ENJOY a "free market"! The network they have was built with funds gained through an EXCLUSIVE agreement with the citizens. In a capitalistic sense, I agree you could argue that they do in fact own their network, regardless of inheritance...but from a republic standpoint, that infrastructure is valuable to both the citizens and national security and rightfully belongs to the citizens.
So, it is painfully obvious to any saavy technologist that we are back to where we were before the breakup of AT&T...the monopolies are making mad cash off a system that uses reliable and profitable circuit switching, a method that works for voice, but doesn't scale very well. The new guys are showing off packet-switching and new digital services, but are finding it hard to get to the consumer. The baby bells must either reinvest in new equipment (hurting their bottom end), which would also force them to compete at this new level (which they probably wouldn't be able to because their own infrastructure is geared the other way), or they lobby and stall and try to kill the technology until they, as a company, are able to strategically compete in that new market. That is were we are.
The question now becomes, what is best for the people? Do we allow a monopoly, which by all evidence has allowed itself to grow fat on complacency (c'mon, how much do you think caller id and its buddies really cost?), continue and position itself for continued dominance? All the while using the diversion of "free market" and capitalism? Look at the profits of these companies! They are NOT in line with a good capitalistic company attempting to bring costs and services in line! We, as consumers, are not playing with these guys on a fair playing field, and they know it...only we can't seem to figure it out. The alternative? We force them to open their lines, like the Telcom Act was SUPPOSED to do, and let in true competition. If they are as "good" as they say (and their profits indicate) then they will prosper. Either way, the consumer wins.
Make no mistake--this latest telecom insurgence was not true "free market" at work. Covad and the others (including wireless and the like) were forced to play in a dangerous market with some pretty tough fellows who had far too much control of their destinies.
Oh, and I won't even BEGIN to talk about collusion! Anyone notice how rates in DSL never seem to go down? They just seem to go up! How does a baby bell, who already has all the infrastructure in place to handle services (I mean, how different is DSL? It is NOT rocket science), jump into a market and continue to raise prices? [But never too high, always "competitive".]
Look, as consumers we are getting screwed. Our parents and grandparents have put their money into building an infrastructure that is being usurped from us by greedy companies under the veil of capitalism. Government regulation, done correctly, is OUR backlash to retain that infrastructure. Mere capitalistic campaigns (say NOT signing up for DSL with Verizon) may hurt the companies in the short run, but hurt the consumers more in the long run as choices DO NOT EXIST AND WILL NOT EXIST! I do not care to regulate what servcies Verizon decides to offer. I do not care to regulate their pricing structure to end customers. What I do care to regulate is fair access to OUR network...repair and expansion of our network...and exisitence of our network.
Scott
"Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid."
The reason why business is so anti regulation, is because it makes them have to behave better. Regulation is good !
Nowadays, everything beyond the local loop has been opened up to competition, and I'm enjoying much cheaper phone bills thanks to NTL/Cable&Wireless, while BT is acting worse than ever (over priced, poor quality service [it took them a week to un-block calls thru Cable & Wireless from my phone line after they blocked it without any warning]) - acting with all the worst points of it's old days, none of the better points, and simply grasping desperately at any immediate profit.
And last I heard they were in about £30 billion debt. They don't seem to know how to compete, as though the management can't get out of the monopoly mind-set. And, IMHO, that's why BT sucks.
"What do you want or expect? Are they supposed to disallow phone companies from the DSL market?"
Yes. They have a monopoly on the phone lines, and thus can give themselves a 'better deal' on renting/ using them. That gives them an advantage that is not tied to the better quality that is the heart of the touted free market. And yes, when it comes down to it, it is hurting me, the consumer. And no, I do not want that. That should seem self evident to me.
-CrackElf
"Blake is an idealist, Jenna. He cannot afford to think." - Kerr Avon, Star One, Blakes 7
In Stockholm, Sweden, the city ran fibre everywhere in rings around the city, and then set up Stokab A/B to run the infrastructure, and sell access to it on a non-discriminatory basis. It is important to note that this is in no way related to the Swedish telephone company, Telia which can buy transit across this fibre, but also has to compete with other telecomm companies that use this fibre.
That's how it is supposed to be done: a separate, disinterested company running and selling acess to the infrastructure, with service companies competing with each other on top of that.
The frustrating thing for me is watching the City of Palo Alto, California (a neighboring city), which also has a fibre infrastructure, but they keep arguing over what to do with it, and thus do nothing!
Pac Bell started digging up downtown San Jose a few years back to lay fiber for high speed connections direct to the home and then SBC bought them out and halted the project. Sometimes its just Dilberts boss and the monopolists stopping things and not those mean old govt regulaters.
While I admit my conservative slants agree with much he has to say, there has to be reality that steps in when dealing with the business aspects of the telecom industry.
1st: Yes the Bell System was/is a monopoly. It was government supported for most of the 20th century. Thus, regulation is used to combat this.
2nd: Does he know what it costs to be a facilities based provider of services? These local loops have cost the Bell System/other telcos Billions to install. In today's world, it is so expensive to gain easement to build a metro/ city network. The Bell system did it when it was acceptable and relatively inexpensive to build. This is where unbundling facilties comes in. Hopefully, the playing field comes level when the Bells must share their access.
3rd: While capitalism is a wonderful thing, it has its downsides. The rural market is underserved by the Bells (and will continue to be underserved) because of the return of investment. Metro markets are the low hanging fruit: very dense, high take rates etc. The rural is very costly to build, and often has lower take rates. I believe that the rural markets will be built by independent companies, or if the Bells sell off their less favorable assets.
Of course, selling assets has become passee as of late, look at the now failed sale of local telephone from Qwest(USWest) to Citizens Communications.
I don't like regulation as much as the next guy, when these companies are able to leverage their assets to such a high degree, there has to be some involvement. These Bells are able to slow down every competitor by simply holding them in court. It costs them millions in court fees before getting a single customer.
Two last things:
First, I agree wholeheartedly that the government should stay out of operating telephone networks. If this is through federal state governments, or through municipalities. This crushes the only true competition that might occur. Especially in the form of municipalities. The consumer faces the consequences of higher taxes to subsidize the city's local telephone. So if they do not take it, they end up paying for service twice. Second, muni's are beasts, that once created can never be killed, and often get their hands into other seemingly "common good" items. When it comes to this, ask yourself a simple question, do you want the government starting a business that competes with your job? Hits a little closer to home then....your tax dollars are used to run you out of business.
Lastly, its not the cable providers that are making tons of money. Its the content providers...they essentially can charge whatever they want. Think about ESPN...how can you compete with anyone if you don't provide it? That allows Disney to set whatever rate they want for it...
Anyway...enough ranting..
K
You're a moron.
Good one. This coming from someone who is named after a spork.
Come on. Spork T. Raper is my real name. You may remember my account name sporkraper. I posted the password on trolltalk because it was shot (I'm too lazy to whore my way up from -9). Vladinator changed the password and the sig.
AC's get it all the time.
Oh, I'm sure they do. Just tell me one thing: do you get it from your dad, or does your mom put a strap-on on?
At first I thought that was irrelevant flamebait. But I realised what it meant while I was typing HTML tags (which were correct the first time btw). But since I am not a true AC, and just without an account for the moment (email box down), I must survive without.
The only way you could change it is if you were CmdrTaco.
You should have quit while you were ahead. Tell me one more thing. Do all you AC's share a brain? From the quality of your posts it seems so.
Well, I think even you'd agree that a brain powerful enough to multitask the thousands of ACs on slashdot and generate semicoherent posts would be similar in size and appearance to Krang from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon show. I doubt such a thing exists. As before, I know you weren't refering to me because I am not an AC, I am sporkraper.
If I start a company right now where I string some line or something across America, then it would be unjust and unfair to rip that away from me. If you don't want my service, then don't get it. Don't confuse need with want then steal from me. However, what if it is around a century later and various levels of government have paid me through direct liscenses, tax breaks or grants for wiring the lines? Well, then it is not 'my' line as much as it is 'ours'. Most aggreements gave exclusive acess for a limited time to companies that build infrastructures that required (through logistics or economics) the assistance and bullying power of the gov't. I believe the time has run out on phone lines
What I see here is a bunch of people who pay lip service to the goodness of a free market, but eagerly advocate use of government force to take something that doesn't belong to them when it's something they REALLY REALLY WANT (in this case, broadband delivery infrastructure).
Remind me never to build my business up so well that it becomes the target of mob greed. I don't relish the idea of having my life's work stolen from me at gunpoint for redistribution to "the people". I can't imagine that anyone is going to want to risk investing capital in America much longer, if you fuzzy-headed communists succeed in making things go your way. I hate that America is becoming yet another socialist shithole, and I don't know if I should leave the country and let you fuck it up entirely, or take the country back, one
Thanks for revealing the lie of the so-called "internet libertarians". You're really just thinly-disguised fascists.
DSL like its ISDN ancestor are simply bullshit smokescreens that Bells pretend to offer so that they can claim unfair advantage of OTHERS in order to get rate protection. Don't you get it? Bells have no serious intention of offering broadband because they make too much money from low bandwidth analog phone lines. If they dick around for a 10 years or so putting up some fake DSL then they can claim that the reason it's all so hosed is because of the evil CLECs, ILX's and cable companies getting some bogus unfair advantage. Ergo the Bells, since they are the corporate underwriters of many Congresspersons, get to pressure their legislative suppliers with better rates and terms.
I'll agree with that. Verizon delayed running a trunk to the local cable company for several months. Most likely so they can decide whether they wanted to bother deploying DSL before the cable modems arive.
How did companies such as Covad and others that do not have their own lines expect to survive? To me it seems, if a company built an infastructure, (i.e. phone network/cable network), then it should be able to do with it as it pleases. If it wants to resell, then let it resell. If it doesn't, don't make them, and let them do it on their own terms. If they want to screw everyone, then people will dump their service in favor of something else.
Competition can exist, in the form of alternate high speed internet connections. For example, if I don't like my Cable Service, I could switch to DSL. If I didn't like my DSL Service, I could get Sprint Wireless, If I didn't like that, then I could get Satelitte.
While the Cable/DSL provider may have a monopoly over the business that travels over THEIR lines, they do not control other forms of access.
I realize that this is quite the ideal scenerio, and it doesn't work like that in practice as often as it should, services aren't available in all areas.
However, I believe that this system does work. I had horrible experience here with my Ameritech (SBC) phone service. High bills, poor service, all together lousy. So I switched to AT&T Digital Phone. It has proven to be cheaper and include more features. Ameritech, who has a monopoly over local phone service on their lines lost out to AT&T. Ameritech will notice that their lousy service is causing others to leave, then they will have to improve their service.
In areas where there are no alternatives, well, I have no solution. I guess if you don't like the DSL service, cancel it and go back to dial up. As much as you may hate it, no one is forcing you to buy DSL service.
-- Dave
"We shall show mercy, but we shall not ask for it" -- Winston Churchill
Once a company becomes a monopoly, they use their power to wipe out the playing field. They do this by failing to provide services to small competitors, or by giving away free products that competitors are charging money for. They know this is anti-competitive when the perform these actions. They know that the end result could be litigation and end in regulation. But the decisions are made, knowing full well that regulation would come only after a couple years in the courts. In the mean time, the monopoly is flourishing, the execs are making a fortune by patting themselves on the backs with bonuses, and if it comes down to being dragged into court and it looks as though the money may stop rolling in, the execs resign. The people that made the decisions got rich, and they're going to keep the money, so what do they care?
The only way to stop this kind of behavior is to provide a fast way of monopolistic evaluation and possible regulation. If the execs knew that they wouldn't have time to screw everybody over for their own personal benefit, then they most likely wouldn't. Personally, I'd like to see regulation over any behavior involving a monopoly. A government official that works onsite, that can immediately ask the question "Why's it taking so long to respond to your competitors request", would be a good thing.
Of course, that's just my opinion, I could be right.
This brief article (http://www.econ.wayne.edu/~agoodman/2010/week9/CA BLE.HTM) from the NY Times comments briefly on the out-of-control inflation in cable services thanks to deregulatory actions dating back to 1996. It seems the government expected satellite and telecoms to be a bit more competitive with cable (though this article pertains mainly to cable television, I believe the same to hold true with broadband as well).
------------------------------
While there is SOME competition, as BT hold so much of the infrastructure, most rival companies seem to be renting it off BT and selling it on. This is clearly not too good for the consumer. I dearly want DSL, but like so many in this country, my 56k modem is an example of what the consumer ends up with when privatising a public service goes as badly as it has done here.
Add to that rumours and allegations of stuff like BT giving it's own (not particularly big) ISP the lion's share of DSL connections while the two biggest ISPs in the country get a pathetic fraction of the broadband lines (AOL and Freeserve), and I guess a lot of people are going to be waiting a long time for broadband on this side of the Atlantic too. And seeing as I live in a fairly rural area (as rural as anywhere in the West Yorkshire conurbation gets anyway), I guess I'm not going to see any high speeds at a reasonable price for my home machine for several months yet.
What am I talking about? Have you ever heard of an "old boy's network"? What would stop the "split off company" from giving preferential treatment to one customer?
"Oh. Sorry, we have no record of that request. Please submit it again, and we'll get right on it. You say that you have submitted this request three times this month? Huh. We've changed our data entry format. Didn't you get the memo?"*
Somedays I just feel jaded.
*This is a fictitious conversation based on real experiences with working for a CLEC.
From what I can see, regulation could only directly affect prices. While they might try to order the bells to provide a more reliable service, I don't really think it would happen. If the bells are trying to kill out all other competition so they can jack prices in the future, that is a "Bad Thing", but I don't think that government regulation will help what plagues DSL most, reliability.
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But, in the end, I don't see any other way - regulation won't work. The unionized telco workers with mgmt blessing delay DSL orders for CLECs into oblivion - hell, even if you get DSL FORM the telco it can take weeks and tons of hassles - it shouldn't be this complex. No regulation will change this. Unfortunately, we are unlikely to ever see serious DSL competition - same thing applies to cable modems. The only reason cable modems blew ahead of DSL is the cable companies planned their deployment and save for network bottlenecks which got worked out, they've executed. The telcos are still driving blind.
As much as I hate monopolies (*cough*Micro$oft*cough*), in this case I doubt there are other feasible options. Competing techs (Satellite, wireless, etc) are to immature and cost too much.
Thie ONLY saving grace is cross technology competition. The only thing keeping cable modem prices down is DSL - If DLS disappears, all you cable modem user can rest assured your rates will go up FASTER than your normal cable bill - count on it. But with DSL out there, its a threat.
DSL is to cable modems what satellite is to cable TV - it provides enough competition to keep the cable prices somewhat lower. Without Satellite TV competition, cable prices would be much higher because they are still a monopoly. Its amazing to think that combined, Echostar and DirectTV would be on par with AT&T in terms of the # of customers for 'cable' service. Like #2 nationwide.
So he's right, regulation probably won't work, but if we do give the telcos free reign over DSL, they better not screw it up or we'll all be stuck with RoadRUnner paying whatever AOL wants to charge!
Personally, I love my DSL connection - offered by a Mom & Pop phone company. Prompt service, installs happen quicklyt, upgrades are a phone call away - love it. :)
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Right now, it costs an arm and a leg for the broadband ISPs to get that last mile in. I say, let em finish eating the cost and *then* deregulate. This helps prevent more Covads from going under.
When I ordered AT&T cable internet, they sent a tech to my house for the *entire* day since I did not have cable to the house at all in the first place. I'm sure that AT&T still has not recovered the cost of this with their $40/month service. I'm not sure that things are much better for DSL. The Ameritechs out there can eat the cost for now as they have other bread and butter to play with.
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
I recall there was an article on how broadband is overcrowded and slowing down to a crawl... http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY/publicfeature /jun01/cmode.html
Who cares if they regulate it, unregulate it... We'll be all back to 53K Modems anyway!
They can hang themselves with the cable for all I care !
That's also probably why the shares are going down.
Actually its funny that this article about "reforms" came up. When you do get to broadband you will find that the earth has already been scorched. Slashdot, like most major media refuses to run stories on how the major broadband ISPs are blocking random ports at random times. In particular lately there have been tons of stories on code red, but nothing about BY FAR its biggest fallout. AT & T has blocked incoming port 80, completely refusing to justify and widely advertise its action.
Those of use that remember, are starting to have painful flashbacks to the times when you had very little choice in phone services. The breakup really did nothing to improve that. It merely replaced regional monopolies with slightly smaller monopolies, while at the same time providing political cover to say something was actually done.
As usual, slashdot, prints random tidbits that some monkey stumbled on, but the only real editor we have is the emotionally unstable John Katz, who helps no-one.
What this article is really talking about is the fact that the REAL plan is to first co-opt broadband to remove interactivity from it, and only then to actually let the public have it. They let a few lab-rat areas have it. Once they figured out how the public will screw them, they have to close off the holes and THEN screw the customer.
Take this personaility test.
Obviously you can't compare to Canada, because they don't have the evil Verizon killing off the competition.
Verizon's favorite four-letter word
Regulation, deragulation, whatever... All I know is my DSL was unreliable, and my cable service while faster, is bogged down with Code Red infected Windows boxes.
:)
I think I'm going to start the first Aldus Lamp internet. Perhaps with a redundant semiphore backbone.
Yeah... I'll be rich
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As Cringley said a few months ago, the bells got the advantage of offering long distance in their region if they opened up their lines for broadband. Given the drop in long distance prices, the bells have no incentive to open their lines to competition.
Having a fully open market would be a nice idea, but that's just it - an idea. The Bells have no incentive to open their lines, thus all the DSL companies fall flat on their face (with a bit of help from the Bells) and the Bells can then offer their DSL service. The Bells own the wires, the Bells ran the wires, the Bells can do whatever they want with them. If you want anything different, you either have to buy service from the Bells, which is happening now and obviously failing, or regulate the Bells and force them to open their lines.
I'm within 3 miles of one oh the high-tech centers of the universe - rt 128 in boston. I am about 3 miles (officially, 18k feet) from the CO, thus DSL will not be available. Verizon probably won't be building a new CO to get me DSL service. I'm stuck with the "name of the month" cable service that used to be MediaOne, then AT&T, now AT&T Broadband, soon to be ??. Remind me how deregulation will change my situation...
that the government should get more involved with the cable industry. Where I live you can only get cable access for $60 with out another cable subscription. I think the market needs a little competition to drive that price down. That's where the government actually forces time warner to open it's cable networks to other ISPs. DSL is non-existent here for whatever reason, so AOL/Timewarner has a monopoly on this market. Personally, I think it stinks.
Make it such that the companies that own the COs and the last mile, and parents/subsideraries thereof, cannot offer the consumer any services and are only there to lease the use of their lines to phone, data, or other potental companies. I'd further extend it to cable lines where that is appropriate.
This would require the bells to split off a company to manage those last miles, and they would never be able to merge it back in the future. But this would also prevent a company like Covad (if they had the cash) to buy the last mile out and reverse the tables in order to screw the telcos. Including the cable lines and any future 'electronic transfer lines' that may come about in the future would also possibly open the door for more competition in the cable industry.
Of course, this isn't an overnight thing, and there must be some initial regulation as such that the cost of the 'extra' company beyond the telcos does not impact the fees that consumers already pay. I'm sure the baby bells would whine as well, since that last mile is their current money maker. But this would force a level playing field in that anyone wanting to offer consumer services would not have to worry about ownership of the last mile.
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