Slashdot Mirror
FCC's Powell On Monopolies
A reader writes: "According to this Washington Post article, the FCC's Michael Powell wants to do via rulemaking what Congress wouldn't - give a big wet kiss to the Baby Bells. Proposed rules would exempt future investments in broadband from unbundling requirements that make competitive local exchange carriers like Covad viable, instead considering (pretending?) that cable, satellite, DSL, and whatever future broadband the Bells choose to deploy are sufficient competition. Says Powell: "our greatest challenge in promoting broadband is deciding how best to stimulate enormous private sector investment." Consumer advocates are of course not amused."
I've seen what can happen when there is no competition. Like with cable, defore digital satellite, they charged us out the nose for 50 channels. Now I have 3 times the channels for 1/2 the price.
On the other hand, my DSL provider is a baby bell, and it's the only game in town. However, our prices are actually a little lower than some places that have cable and a couple of DSL providers. They know if they jack the prices up, we won't subscribe.
These baby bells have been a monopoly for a long time, and they know how to make a lot of money, without pissing us off too much. In general, though, competition is usually a big plus.
"Da ist ein Technölüst in mein Unterpanten!"
This is what I've been waiting to see from Bush administration FCC appointees. We've already seen it with his energy policies, and it's only a matter of time before his executive appointments start effecting us in ways we haven't seen in many years.
Despite hanging on to a House and Senate majority throughout the 90's, the Republican party could never sufficiently craft the laws necessary to push their big-money favoritism. The rule of thumb in Congress is always looking at the number of votes necessary to pass the laws that will get you reelected. For many House conservatives, they knew their majorities were too slim to pass laws that would get beyond a Clinton veto, let alone the even-slimmer margins in the Senate.
With the presidency in their back pocket, however, the Republican party placed numerous individuals into prominent Cabinent positions. Their sole goals: protect big-money interests, and get that money to us for use in future elections. It's just that simple. Covad's not going to be contributing a ton of money to Bush's reelection campaign, because they're just barely hanging on. On the other hand, Verizon et al. have hundreds of thousands of employees, who can easily be made party to soft-money contributions.
This is your executive branch. The only way to deal with it is to throw the bums out in 2004.
RW
How is it going to help increase the rollout of broadband if the restrictions on it make it undesireable to build? No one is going to invest money in infrastructure that they're forced to share with the competition at a price determined by someone else. If government wants to handle broadband in this manner, it should just make it a publicly-owned utility instead of pretending that it's a private business.
Having worked with small telecommunications companies over many years, I have seen the "benefits" of deregulation
Trunk carriers should not be able to compete in the domestic market. Although the short term effect for the consumer is deemed "wonderful", the long term effect of subsidising sales in the domestic market by the carrier income to squash the little guy who has to compete without the hugh cash cow that the teleco has standing behind it, is quite devestating.
Not only do they never see fair competition in the carrier market (bringing the cost of calls down), but the consumer ends up subsidising their own domestic product and putting the lil guy outta business. And in the long term this reduction in consumer goods pricing is short lived.
Don't matter where you live, the telecos are making some of the largest profits ever in history.
The telcos have spent the past few years throwing up roadblock after roadblock at the CLEC's, thus keeping them minor players in the broadband game.
The FCC, instead of PUNISHING them for breaking the law, now wants to REWARD them for doing so by allowing them a virtual (pun intended) monopoly on non cable broadband services.
The reason for the FCC's doing this is because the FCC wants access to broadband sped up.
Seems to me that what the FCC SHOULD be doing is forcing the bells to abide by the laws that have been in effect for the past five plus years!
Maybe then the Covads and Rhythms of the world might have a snowball's chance in hell of offering reliable, reasonable broadband service.
But then again, I'm probably all wrong here. After all, I'm not a Republican, which makes surely me wrong....just ask one.
This is one of the key reasons why ISDN died.
And this is one of the key reasons why the CLEC's died. They were constantly harassed by the Telcos, just to protect their profits.
Even today, you can't start an ISP by providing dry-copper lines and DSL modems. In theory, you should be able to. But the Telcos will shut you down REAL quick (as they've done already) and there's nothing you can do unless you have millions for legal fees, and years to wait.
If you want to see broadband increased over phone lines, just spin off the handling of the lines into separate companies, and away from the phone companies.
But it will never happen. It's pretty clear that the Telco's have bought off the Bush Administration, just like Microsoft did.