Independent ISPs vs the Bells: DSL Outrage

Blowit writes: "The American ISP Association has been assisting independent ISPs with a battle to help regulate the DSL market for fair competition. Yesterday, the FCC Slapped SBC with a $100,000 fine due to "its willful violation of an order to produce information about its provisioning of DSL to ISPs." Across up in Canada, Independent Members of CAIP is also battling Bell Canada's DSL monopoly by filing a claim with the CRTC. ISPs on both sides of the border feel the DSL pinch and is looking for some relief/compensation to be able to offer competitive DSL solutions."

Comments

It's the CLEC's fault

[Dark Coder]

Simply put... The U.S. Telecom Act of 1999 is a joke.

You've got Rep. Billy Tauzin (R-La) sitting on the Telecommunication committee with the fattest wad of unspent baby bell money in his pocket.

If it wasn't for Mr. Tauzin, I'm pretty sure that the CLEC would have a more favorable competitive environment.

Sorry, CLEC, you are going to have to setup a Political Action Committee (PAC) to counter the already swayed Telecom committee members of the House.

Until the CLEC get their collective duffus act together, Baby Bell will win this one: lock, stock and barrel.

No fine is too big for Baby Bell: it is just the cost of doing dirty business (equates with marketing budget).

I'm ashame that I voted for that fat cat. I'll contribute heavily to see him gone by next election.

Re:Bell Canada is not a DSL monopoly

[hearingaid]

For the foreigners: Telus is a merged company. There used to be two different telcos in Alberta and BC.

During my time in BC, I thought Telus was wonderful. However, I only dealt with them as a telco, as I was electronically deprived then. (My computers were in New Brunswick. Long story. :)

But it's also possible that the Alberta/BC Telus is a split. I know this happened with Aliant, which is the merged company of the four Atlantic province telcos. New Brunswick, which historically had a great telco (NBTel), still gets better service from Aliant than Nova Scotia customers.

Nova Scotia used to be served by MT&T, before the Aliant merger and subsequent Bell buyout. You want bad phone service, move to Halifax. Glack.

I used to lose my _dialtone_ for an hour or two, at least once every month and sometimes three or four times a week.

This is not New Technology. Dialtones have been around for a while. MT&T never quite got the knack of delivering them consistently.

It did get better when I moved out of the south end. But it didn't get completely better, ever. Haligonians still lose their dial tones sometimes. Unless they switch to getting their telephone service from the local cable co, which is what my mother did. :) (I moved to New Brunswick before this became possible.) However, in New Brunswick, the story is still very different: everybody I know there loves their telco, even though it's legally the same company.

Now, in Ontario (where I am now), the situation is deeply strange. Bell's a deranged bureaucracy: it loses things. In many ways the technology side of Bell is pretty good; they usually make things work pretty well. But in customer service and billing... hah. they're nuts.

It's not that they're unfriendly. They'll generally be nice enough to you but they mess up processing absolutely everything. Sometimes they'll process it correctly, sometimes they'll lose the billing, sometimes they'll overbill. It's very random.