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Tauzin-Dingell Up for Vote Soon
An Anonymous Coward writes: "Just received this letter from my ISP, one of the oldest in existence. A study here lays out the basics on the bill and why it's a bad idea. The bill retracts the telecommunications act of '96 which forces the phone giants to share the nation's phone lines (which are in public trust). Looks like it's time to write those pesky congressmen again." Too late to write. Call. Tauzin-Dingell, up for vote on Wednesday, would eliminate all the requirements on the four remaining Baby Bells to play fair with competing telecom providers. "Sure Covad, you can co-locate your DSL equipment in our switching offices - our deregulated rate is only $10,000/day/piece of equipment." It's instant death for all DSL providers except Verizon, SBC, Qwest and BellSouth.
How does this affect Canadians? Is there anything we can do to help this situation?
So, maybe it is time to look at redoing this piece of legislation.
- Covad (fucked from the get-go, but they blame Verizon)
- Northpoint (RIP)
- "DirecTV DSL" (they are taking *huge* losses, just like the rest of
Hughes)
- Tung Communications (who?)
DSL service is an economy of scale, and carving it up amongst a dozen competitors in the same small geographical area will ensure that they will all sell at a loss and die. It's simple Economics 101.Bill
It's not like the Telco act of '96 was of any help. The Telcos don't care and use the loopholes, DSL isn't really available everywhere, no matter what James Earl Jones says, and cable/satellite is just as inexpensive and fast.
I have friends that worked for CLECs that put equipment in ILEC COs. Sure Verizon would let you in the building, but want to use the bathroom? Sorry, can't do that, you'll have to go somewhere else. Want to come back in? Sorry, security isn't here right now and we can't let you in....
Oy, covad is taking a beating from this. My dad owns stock in it and it's being very not good. Granted, it's up a *lot* from where it was this time 3-4 months ago, but a dollar drop in about a week is not that great, especially for a stock whose base seems to go along with news and not product.
My other sig is an import.
It appears to be the norm (or at least through my experience), that when some DSL provider uses a major corporate wire, certain problems are encountered when you sign up:
1. You may be *conveniently* too far away from the 'central office' [They make the restrictions tighter for 3rd-party service: like only up to 10,000 feet, when the real limit is several thousand feet more]
2. The phone company is painfully slow in getting the wires required to your house (ISDN, at least)
3. The phone company and your 3rd-party provider bicker about who's at fault when a problem appears. Nobody admits its their fault, so you (the consumer) is virtually screwed over.
So essentially, they want you to sign up for *their* service (gee, that installation time gets a lot shorter!). So they're already monopolizing. This was the case with Rythms ISDN (spelling?) when we had it. And Rythms went bankrupt as I recall. *cough*
Just some stuff to think about, as they alredy monopolize the wires/equipment to an extent.
This will kill many hard working small and medium ISPs, that provide good service to their customers. After they are dead your DSL prices will rise again.
Verizon, SBC, Qwest and BellSouth have never played fair, and never will play fair no matter what law gets past or repealed. We're screwed one way or the other.
because of the ocnsolidation that has been happening in the industry you cannot expect that there will be much competition between cable and dsl, for a long time. And relying on several large conglomerates to compete is always risky. They will always prefer to put a price fix agreement in. All the bandwidth providers borrowed alot of money to build their networks, which are now mostly dark. Now they have to make the interest payments and they are ready to start robbing the consumer.
If smaller companies can't compete with the prices of larger companies, then they go out of business. Basic capitalism, and why the US economy has always been trending upwards.
Really, forcing companies to do things isn't the best way to improve the economy. Sure things like this, rent control, and minimum wage look good in the short term. Over the long run, however, ther're killers.
Let's be serious, folks.
Our government doesn't seem to give two sh*ts about monopolistic tech corporations. One word: Microsoft.
Apparently, the cool thing now is to cut taxes while spending record amounts on making our country powerful enough to take over the entire world, and possibly the whole Milky Way (just give them time).
I'm not sure how we as Americans can even sleep at night when we have someone with the sophistication of a 4th grader running our country (Duuuhhh-bya).
Unfortunately, I think it's going to be "long live Verizon et al".
Yup, this will wipe out DSL providers, but what about CLECs? I sure like my local CLECs.... I mean.... bellsouth wouldnt know what sdsl is if it bit them in the ass. They don't want to do cheap business internet... they only want to provide the most costly service... and the crappiest response time... sure... lock the end of my t1 loop up in a box... and if the mux dies... take six hours to come reset my damn card so I can get my internet back up.
Several observations by myself
1. They only know what ADSL is... they their reps dont even know what the A stands for. They tend to think the S in sdsl stands for static.
2. They took five and a half hours once to get my t1 loop back up after their mux died a horibble death. They claim that they didnt know about it untill like an hour and a half before they showd up, but i was on the phone to my CLEC with in 10 minutes of my loop going down, and they put me on hold while they called bell south.
3. They only want money, not to provide service. They have become like the cable company. Sprint local services is esp. bad at this, they just expect to sit around and collect cash, and not raise a finger whenever soemthing breaks on their network.
4. They make it hard for anybody to compeate, and they like to get rid of "old" "useless services" that are still used, and are very useful. Bell south in a near bye town is refusing to put more alarm circuits in (a line thats easy to turn into a poor man's t1 or sdsl line, and instead telling people that their circuit will be cut off unless they replace it with some expensive digital alarm circuit.
my 1.02 cents
-LW
The settlement in my opinion clearly isn't strict enough. There's nothing that really prevents MS from continuing to abuse its powers.
Furthermore, the adaptations proposed by the states are very reasonable, if only minimal requirments, to prevent further abuse. MS should be forced to sell OEM's a stripped-down version of Windows, and OEM's should have the right to remove any features they so desire. Furthermore, competitors -- including competing operating systems -- should be given the code to MS Windows so that they can ensure compliance and compatability with Windows. In other words, people making competing products to MS' IE, file-browser, e-mail prog, messenger prog, should have the ability to integrate and mesh those with Windows just as well and easily as MS can/does.
Additionally, restrictions should be placed on MS' use and development of the boot-loader.
Furthermore, provisions should be put into place to ensure that alternate OS' are represented at OEM stores -- such as *Linux, *BSD, BeOS, AmigaSDK, GNUstep, Hurd, etc -- so that the makers of other OS' have the ability to compete. The real reason MS dominates the market is because THEIR OS is installed in MOST OEM PC's, and OEM's WON'T install other OS'. If users had the option to have the OS of their choice installed, MS' dominance would be reduced. So MS should be forced to pay a fee to OEM's to allow them to display alternate OS' on systems in their stores.
Of course, the main thing is that they should force MS to open up the source code for all versions of Windows. That is, if they aren't going to break MS up, which would ALSO solve the problem.
PS -- I'd like to think I have the honor of being the first person to actually post an intelligent comment on this story, other than "First post here" or "Second post here". Some people really need to get a life.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
The bill isn't going to kill the DSL providers. They're already dead. They were killed because the telcos wanted them to die. The letter of the law says that other companies (Covad) have to have access, but it doesn't say anything about the phone companies making life easy for the DSL companies. That's the real problem - the two were never on an equal footing. This bill won't help that at all, but it's not the end of the world either.
It seems like thing were better back in the day when they weren't regulated. Sure it was a monopoly.. but the better rates and such they promised when breaking them up never were realized.
DSL is a kludge, in George Gilder's words "the equivalent of the Pony Express engineering winged horses". It's time to build new fiber-to-the-home nets. Some thoughts on that:
1) Use these in the homes, assuming folks still want to use their 100BaseT copper gear.
2) One could let existing ISPs plug into the "local" net to provide "long distance" Internet service, as well as the usual email/Usenet/personal web pages and customer support. Someone like Earthlink might go for that?
2b) Or just buy the usual backbone feed from the usual suspects.
3) Free peering for local traffic with any networks you can run a cable to, like your local university.
4) Any recommendations for switches and core routers? Ought to be able to turn individual ports on and off from remote.
5) High density developments, like the condo complex I live in, seem like a good place to start. I just don't know how to run the cable with minimum mess. Anyhow, start with the easy targets to build a solid customer base, then let the neighbors beg for network extensions.
Works in theory. If I ever finish reading the obligatory O'Reilly book maybe I'll take a shot at it, but I'd rather a real network engineer did the work. I'm getting tired of waiting, though. It's not like the existing telcos are going to get a clue. 100Mbps fiber-to-the-home with 1Gbps backbone (upgrading to 10Gbps when the gear is ready and semi-economical) seems very doable, just a lot of grunt work.
Also seems like IP multicast would be a neat distribution means for 20Mbps HDTV datastreams, but that can wait.
Ok, this pisses me off. Now that I've turned 18, what's the process for getting in touch with the people who can shoot this down? Where do I find out their info? What should I say?
DSL (and cable) suffer from the last-mile problem: getting that last bit of cable to your hourse is really, really expensive. Every service call they have to make (including turning the thing on in the first place) is a huge loss for them. Right now, smaller competitors are able to get in only because they can piggyback on the big carriers' infrastructure, but this has its own problems. For instance, Sympatico DSL here in Canada has chosen to use this awful PPP-over-Ethernet technology to share the lines. I'd prefer to use Sympatico over Rogers, cause I've mostly gotten better service, but the PPPoE is just too much hassle.
Without having to share the lines, the big companies will be able to give better service. I know Sympatico's losing business over the PPPoE thing. Of course, without competition, there's no incentive to actually improve. But without the option of using the big networks, smaller companies will have to start looking for other solutions - like wireless, for instance. No physical cable = no last mile problem = less overhead = better business for the little guy.
The current DSL situation is a bit of a mess, and not going to get better without a major shakeup. (I don't think it's as bad as a lot of people make out, but I may have just been lucky in my service on the whole.) Think of this as an opportunity...
But why would they want to give up a monopoly on selling 30-mile connections at 20 cents/minute for an opportunity to sell 2000-mile connections at 6 cents/minute?
Because at the time the big price war on long distance hadn't started yet. Most of the profit was in the long distance service - which they were locked out of - and they were stuck with the low-profit local infrastructure monopoly.
So it seemed like a good trade at the time.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Last summer I was in Chicago, staying with a relative, and I saw first-hand some of these shenannigans between AT&T and Earthlink. My relatives had chosen Earthlink DSL over the local AT&T service (probably because it was cheaper and/or faster) and the DSL connection went out every evening from about 7:00pm to 10:00pm.
Earthlink's official response was that AT&T would purposely detect non-AT&T-DSL customers and downgrade their connection somehow. Of course I'm not sure I believe them, because the daily outages only seemed to be happening during peak hours. They probably oversold their service in the area, but how would I have known either way? Well, needless to say nothing got done (at least while I was there).
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
"Democracy just doesn't work."
The scale benefits of providing DSL are not that great. It is nothing like making cars, for example.
Even a small DSL provider can get the software they need to minimize administrative costs, and if bandwidth is a comodity, as it should be, that is more or less all they need.
There are some benefits of scale in the equipment but that is not a big deal.
Smaller ISPs may have benefits of finding a niche market or serving customers better.
In fact before DSL thousands of smaller providers thrived selling basic dialup, and made profit, despite AOl's economy of scale.
This is the kind of argument that is being used by corporate america to monopolize all our communication media. It was used for radio and now it is used for small ISPs.
This argument is utter bullshit.
But suppose it is true. Then why not let those DSL providers die naturaly? Why allow the telecom companies to lock them out? If someone is lobbying for a lock out that means they are affraid of the competition.
Currently many telco's are not making much of a profit. Many of those guys like Verizon, SBC etc.. are not investing in new technology even though they are some of the more healthy telco's out there. This effort is spurred by the FCC to try to encourage regional bells to spend more money and help pull the telecom industry out of depression. Unfortunately the real problem is NOT in regional bells, it is in the wireless and other larger telco providers like AT&T. They are laden with debt and will drag down the telecom industry for the next few years. Such is the hangover of too much spending. Alan
DSL providers need to buy a large amount of bandwidth (to support bursting) and oversell it to maintain a competitive edge. Since bandwidth gets cheaper as you buy more of it, many pieces of an installation (such as a DSLAM and routers) are large one-time costs that serve dozens of users, and you need a *lot* of users to be able to afford a barely minimal (T1) line, the provision of DSL service is most decidedly an economy of scale.
Other points to look at would be: tech support and billing (textbook examples of economies of scale), and geographical risk/load balancing.
-AC (for obvious reasons)
I'm a current QWest customer and hate every minute of it (don't have much choice for BB service) I cringe at the thought of seeing QWest's cesspool grow any larger than it currently is. However, I think there may be a "silver lining" to this cloud (at least depending on your point of view). QWest currently concentrates their DSL equipment in the CO because they have to allow equal access to that equipment. If that equal access went away, they could move the DSL equipment further from the CO to smaller unmanned stations and extend the range of DSL services to areas where coverage isn't currently provided.
While it might push some competition out (what competition is there anyway?) bringing broadband to outlying communities would be a plus...
Just my $.02
It is quite simple
Haiku should not be funny
Try a Senryu
Read the bill, or at least the summary at the top. Unfortunately, the Congress might actually have our (the people's) best interests at heart. Also unfortunately, the telcos and cable company operators just aren't interested in EITHER opening to competition OR giving good service.
What we THOUGHT was that the telecom act of 96 would level the playing field for smaller players. This hasn't happened, for reasons you see in other posts in this thread.
What we THOUGHT was that technology would rapidly get better, yielding higher bandwidth and a greater ability to get beyond the coupla-kilometers limit. There's been progress, but basically we're still stuck with the same technology as in '96 and before.
What we THOUGHT was that other players (power companies, wireless companies and funky stuff like blimps flying around over cities) would provoke telcos & cable companies to do better. But apart from satelite Internet (which is too slow for gaming and most other interactive use), there are not viable alternatives for most people.
Basically, things have moved more slowly than we, the geeks, thought they would, and the cable companies and telcos have been able to have their way: little competition, top price, and little need for good service.
There's still hope for new technologies and other developments (like municipalities' interest in WLANs) that might give hope to competition for xDSL and cable modem service for "broadband" Internet service. But it doesn't look like there's any hope that any sort of regulation will create real improvements for most users (or wannabe users) for today's "broadband" Internet services.
...I don't get it: I don't know anyone who actually uses a "local" phone company... except businesses. This bill, as far as I can tell, doesn't affect someone like me who uses DSL through Qwest with Visi as my ISP. It could only potentially affect me if I used "Joe's Phone Co." for my "DSL line", and Qwest has already made such arrangements all but impossible anyway... our company formerly used an alternative phone co. until they wanted DSL- at which point we returned to Qwest. Or, from the article: "Competitors argue that the Bells haven't held up their end of the bargain, having stymied access to their the networks by delaying the provisioning of networks and failing to meet performance standards for delivering wholesale network services over to its competitors"
To a certain degree, the logic of the regional bells makes good sense to me: DSL was 'nothing' back in 1996. Since when was DSL considered a necessary part of "phone service?"
On the other hand, I think the regional bells have exaggerated the stakes involved. I doubt they are bleeding money to the degree that local bells have. Unless we socialize such utilities, we need to expect cut-throat business ethics of regional bells.
Those that suggest you "dance like no one is watching" really want to see you make a complete fool of yourself.
Fixed wireless huh?
Even advanced systems that help out line of site problems with fixed wireless have mostly lost money. What about Sprint my friend? The largest provider of fixed wireless wouldn't even invest in anything more advanced than upconverting cable-modem signalling/modulation directly and now wants to pull out of the market. This will not happen soon. I speak from personal experience there will be nothing gained from fixed wireless by an evaporation of DSL users. DSL users have already been slighted for some time and have not gone in droves to Sprint, because they could not provide cost effective access.
Alan
Well this surfaces again,
Being from the great State of Louisiana and having attended the same University of congressman Tauzin, and whose father went to the same U with him(Pop has got some funny stories about how the Senator was refused from fraternity parties and wore suits to class, all of this in the 60's).
TO understand why Tauzin came up with this you need to know a little local history.
Billy Tauzin came up with idea in the late 90's just when the dot com boom was at a frenzy. Internet in Louisiana was getting pretty big. I was working for a small ISP called Fastband when it happened. You might remember us, Fastband Global Cast. We were an ISP who also were one of the earlier content providers for online music broadcasting.
Bell in Louisiana had just realized that internet was big money and our loop costs for our points of presence become outrageous, and couple this with our bandwidth costs from UUNET and Qwest it was hard to survive in the dial up game. Bell was a little late to gate into the ISP market....
Louisiana had several large ISP's. The largest being Communique in New Orleans. Bell started offering their services, at a higher cost and lousy customer service. Not enough ISP experience. And people in my neck of the woods stick to what they know, a lotta brand loyalty. In the south we live by the motto if aint broke do not fix it.
So, Bell realizing it could not break into the market that easily got into Tauzin's pockets. He immediately released the proposal and all ISPS in the state signed a petition much like that ISP's. All looked good. Billy was defeated...
But the bad news. Communique the largest ISP in the state, the company with the most to lose, sold out. They were bought out by Verio. Who could care less because they are so large. Communique also provide most of the bandwidth to smaller ISPS in the area and when Verio bought them out they raised the prices on the little guys to get the customers.
But it gets better. I sold out and joined the ranks of the unwashed at Verio. Actually, in those days we had damn good prices and service. Everything worked. Before all support moved to the NOC in Dallas.
BUT I always wondered why Bell never messed with Verio. Sure we used them for many things but they could of taken our business.... Because one day I found out that 80 percent of Bells Webhosting(AT the time) was on Verios servers at Hiway. AND Bell only allowed Verio to resell DSL access in the New Orleans area for a short time when it first become availible.
This is a little long. Moral of the story is that Louisiana lost out to the Telcos due to a Big ISP, a corrupt senator, and just being in the wrong place in the wrong time. The Bells view this as a success and Tauzin who likes his office in Washington and no doubt some official and unofficial perks from the telcos is taking his little proposal on the road.
Puto
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
Regardless of its provisions, any bill on the subject of telecom which is passed by Congress will cause your phone and cable bill to go up.
I'm not sure why they don't use satellites for internet
Satellite Internet access is available, but the speed of light introduces heavy latency. I don't think a 1000ms MINIMUM ping would help the web experience much, and forget about playing online video games.
Will I retire or break 10K?
The point of the bill, as I read it, is to put high-speed Internet access on a par with telephone service, in that it should be available to everyone. The bill requires that high-speed access be available through every bell central office, or CO, within five years; and it requires that every loop from that CO, regardless of distance, be capable of providing high-speed service at the customer's request. If the loop cannot support high-speed access, then the telco must use other technology to deliver the service.
Inter-connection between ISPs and the Bells are changed in nature, but still required. Existing agreements will run their course; new agreements will require that the fee charged to ISPs for access to the loop be the same that the telco charges itself. The Bells must still allow ISPs to inter-connect with them.
Perhaps it is best to think of the new arrangements as being akin to the way long-distance telephone service is handled. Today, when you signup for a telephone you can choose your long-distance carrier and change it at will. When/if this bill passes, it seems that the intent is for you to do the same with your ISP.
One last point that should be clarified: the bill does not trash the unbundling portions of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. It simply says that it doesn't allow for using those unbundled components for anything other than telephone service; consequently, it reverses the interpretations put forward by the FCC that has led to the hodge-podge, bankrupt, trail-and-error solutions to high-speed access we've seen to date.
Some people have a way with words, and some people, um, thingy.
Go ahead and say it: Our government doesn't give two goddam squirty shits about anything but spreading the legs of the Lady of Justice for the highest fucking bidder.
And no, I'm not sorry for the swearing. Let's not be afraid to say what we mean. We have to quit couching our words in trivial obfuscations so we don't offend the perpetually victimized. It won't be long before the rearward penetration reaches our mouths and we are all forced to speak up. But by then it will be too late. Oh well. We're all doomed to whatever fate the AOL/TW's of the world wish for us anyway.
I was just going to moderate the parent comment up, but decided to speak my peace instead. Sometimes I hate America. Its dim-bulb of a leader doesn't help.
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
Well, well, well.
It looks like this may be the *one* time 'Net access in Australia is any better than over the the US and Canada.
Our telco monopoly, Telstra, uses PPPoE for it's ADSL lines. For what reason? I can only ascribe it to their usual complete and utter lack of clue, and general incompetence.
Luckily, some or smaller, regional ISPs (Internode for example[0]), actually do IP directly over ADSL, so you just plug your ethernet card into your ADSL bridge, and that interface is magically part of their network - no PPPoE.
W00t! It's go to see we don't completely suck.
Mike.
[0] - Plug, plug. Discaimer, I use their service, and I used to work for them.
-- "So, what's the deal with Auntie Gerschwitz et all?"
Here's some excerpts from Rep. Billy Tauzin on his telecom bill in a WashingtonPost.com web chat. I'm not sure he really knows what he's talking about.
Pasadena, Tex.: Why are you trying to kill competition for local, regional and national Internet Service Providers by giving the Bells the right to be a monopoly? As a representative from Louisiana, you will be hurting your own Louisiana ISPs. Competition is what makes the American Dream work, when you get rid of it, we might as well be in Russia in the Cold War!
Rep. Tauzin: Rather be in Pasadena than Russia any day. First, our bill will not kill the competition nor make Bell companies monopolies. If you believe that I have some great waterfront property in Russia to sell you. The truth is our bill will create the first FCC authority to hammer the Bells for any violation of their obligations to open up their local markets to competitors. The FCC currently does not have such authority except when a Bell company seeks access into the long distance market. Secondly, our bill will preserve for the competitive carriers full line sharing rights to the legacy copper networks and will additionally give local competitors rights to use the Bell companies new fiber and hybrid fiber systems for broadband competition purposes at terms and rates set not by the Bell company but by the FCC. That is as fair as it gets.
------
Silver Spring, Md.: Rep. Tauzin, I used to work for Verizon (local service) and was perpetually disgusted by how that company treated customers and other CLECs. Poor customer service, shoddy network leasing -- I've heard and seen it all. Competition is very much needed to help Verizon help itself.
Rep. Tauzin: I totally agree. Any monopoly provider as I pointed out earlier is like the single store that gives you bad products, prices, service and occasionally bad attitudes. De-monopolizing the local Bell loops remains a big part of our plans.
this 'consumer hoice' is a very squishy term.
what it means here is that i have to deal with the fairly ignorant support that phone companies give to layer 3 internet services
but more importantly it means that phone conpanies can choose to restrict the service offerings if its more convenient to them. this includes specifying a particular brand of access box, and the services it provides. i'm sorry, we dont provide static addresses, or service without a NAT, or perhaps in the limit the ability to connected without a 'supported' operating system.
a guarenteed monopoly in internet access is going to mean a whole lot of unpleasant technical things aside from the simple matter of cost. prepare to be reamed.
why so glum, buy stock. maybe lucent will get out of the crapper on this deal.
I don't feel a bit bad about this, Here in small town NH we have only one choice for broadband, ATT. If there we had a choice we would upgrade to a faster service but we don't have that option. Years(5) ago we used Mv for dialup service, they were good but what kind of power do they have, they have not produced dsl or t-1 in the rural areas so what is the point? Are they going to just provide service to the inner-city areas?
I would stick up for them if they acually did something other than just survive.
That was no troll, that was a simpsons quote (Kent brockman). I'm sorry, but if you have not seen every simpsons episode at least twice, uncheck 'willing to moderate' ;-)
Free Java games for your phone: Tontie, Sokoban
Join the club guys and gals.
You are about to go through what we here in Australia have been going through since day one.
One company ownz it all and the rest pay through the nose.
" The best Bucket is a SCREAMING one "
For some bleeding heart liberal to whine, "But what about the poor?" in this thread?
LMAO
what is a CLEC and what is an ILEC?
Putting aside rural DSL concerns for the moment, isn't this the same Telecommunications Act of 1996 that made it possible for:
1) Commercial radio as we know it to officially suck,
2) Giant, monolithic corporate entities such as AOL-Time-Warner to exist, and
3) As a result, the quality of programming in those media has drastically declined in direct proportion to the level of competition?
Just wondering -- seems like the hypothetical Slashdotters of 1996 would have been complaining bitterly about the TeleCom Act.
zemus
It's a well known fact that DSL is just second rate to cable. The ill-informed DSL guys will tell you how great it is and all, a nice dedicated connection - but they won't tell you it's dedicated to the switch.
The point being, you've got all these people pirating mp3s, porn, and software and you still are gonna get shitty service. Let's just hope you live across the street from the telco's switching equipment.
The telco's have no reason to maintain their lines either, they have to open it up to other companies which look bad when bell decides to get around to fixing a problem on the lines - they make money by neglecting their equipment.
Cable on the other hand is not regulated meaning they have don't have to open their systems for shit. They generally provide better service anyway.
In a 2001 Newsweek report it stated that the DSL market has shruken nearly a staggering 14% in one year, 9% of that in the last quarter alone. If you own stock in any of the other big DSL companies such as Verizon, Swbell, or @home then you are in for a big surprise. Lets just hope you enough bandwidth to come crying on slashdot when your company leaves your ass hanging in the breeze.
Fuck Ajit Pai
Sometimes I hate America. Its dim-bulb of a leader doesn't help.
Hey, it's a free country. For a start, you're free to leave.
"so you .. is virtually screwed over"
I is screwed? A-hyuck.
Hmmmm, glad I own SBC stock
This bill is actually a *good* thing. Why? Because it will enable the Bells to charge a huge amount of money for DSL connections. This will make it profitable for people to run optical fiber. Instead of getting a measly 768Kbps, you'll get 100Mbps.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
With all due respect to your friends, I really couldn't care less how they're treated by Verizon, as long as they're in business.
What's important to me, the consumer, is that I have a choice in who I get my DSL service from. I don't care if it was a pain in the ass for my ISP to get set up in the local telco, all I care about is that they got set up, and they can give me service. That's what's critical. I'm not interested in paying for DSL service from the only game in town, I want a selection. Right now, I've got it. So yes, the Telco act of '96 did help, and it must not be allowed to be tossed aside.
"Public Trust"! Gee, here we go again, another disaster created by government.
Yes, indeed, by granting this "public trust" monopoly on the deployment of copper, there are vast areas with one (1) established phone company who owns all the infrastructure.
And what to do when the mistake is noticed? Retract the protections on the monopoly? De-regulate? Allow the people who own the copper to use it as they wish? Oh no, cannot do that. That would be "anti-competitive". As if the original monopoly grant wasn't.
So go crying Chicken Little for Government to "fix" the problem they caused in the first place. Prolong the crisis until the whole house of cards comes tumbling down, instead of letting it fail as quickly and painlessly as possible.
Here I thought Enron might wake people up to the abuses that government grants produce.
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
Here's the deal. You guys send over Sale and Pelletier, we'll send in Brian Boitano, and together they'll all kick some major ass and get this thing sorted out. Sound good?
I think it'd be interesting to know if these guys have really experienced dealing with ISPs from a consumer perspective. I don't know anything about what sort of perks politicians get, but I imagine once you hold an office at the state level or above you automatically get some sort of high-bandwidth service to your residence. Besides, half the people voting on this bill have probably been in Washington since before the Internet really took off and their notion of access is their office computer hooked up to some government LAN.
I've been using PPPoE for over 2 years now (with PacBell) and never had an unfixable problem with it. Solaris, Linux or Windos.
IMHO PPPoE is nothing different for DHCP for consumers.
They'll make you change the drinking age to 21.
Bloody wankers.
I know I'm going to hell, I'm just trying to get good seats.
Hey, it's a free country. For a start, you're free to leave.
:-p
Not if you're her!
The future isn't what it used to be.
2.5. The 3rd party provider takes 4 months to finally install the DSL once the phone company has done their part (promising to come every few weeks or so, but never showing up). During that time, you still pay the phone company for the local line which isn't even wired into a jack.
Why is Grand Theft Auto a much more serious crime than Reckless Driving?
2) I'm sure the rest of you guys have a "Montana" too. For example, in the UK it's France...
3) 10,000 of us all living in one place should be able to defray the costs for an OC3 to the main backbone. Plus, the local net will be hella fast.
4) Added bonus: Dominate local politics, allowing at least a few clueful lawmakers into office.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
hahaha you're funny man! :-)
I had the same problem. I actually tried to sign up for DSL from SBC (Ha! Ha!) when this occurred. The installer said that my line was right at the edge of DSL range, but that it should be okay. (The people on the other end of the radio told him not to, but he thought the line was clean, so he installed it anyway.)
... I finally hit upon someone who could figure out the situation. (Hint: Call SBC and say you got cut off while talking to a second-level tech.) Apparently the lines here are switched to a second CO for "maintenance purposes" every night for a period of 3 hours while they reboot their routers and do God-knows-what-else. The DSL went out because I was within range of the first CO (and within the normal recommended range for DSL), but not for the secondary CO. That's why the installer had been told not to install the line even though I was within range.
;)
I got DSL. Everything worked fine but for a period between 10PM-1AM every night where the DSL would go out completely. Fast forward through two weeks of tech support calls
That sort of information probably "conveniently" wasn't handed to your relative's DSL provider. In fact, the idiots at SBC ("Is your modem plugged in?") couldn't even figure it out for over 2 weeks, but their installers knew.
I'm now happy with my AT&T cable modem, which is cheaper and faster. I've also switched long distance and local toll over to Sprint's 7-cent anytime plan, which was better than what SBC offered me anyway. And once I got the NINE HUNDRED DOLLARS of charges on my account (this was for a residential DSL line that never worked!) straightened out, all was right in the world again.
Moral of the story: SBC sucks harder than AOL and Disney combined, and AT&T has gained a good many customers from people I consult with who need broadband.
Simpli - Your source for San Jose dedicated servers and colocation!
Who needs a landline (at least in urban/semiurban areas)?
Want to make the bells feel the pain? Shut it off! Get a cellphone (SprintPCS, free long distance, voicemail, caller ID, 3-way, call waiting) and cable internet.
I'm a student, but I ration my peak rate phone time. You working stiffs wouldn't use that cell during the day anyway.
CUT THE CORD!!!!!
I sent the following to the fax number of my Congresscritter free of charge, I'd like you to do the same with yours. (look them up on your congresmoron's site at http://www.house.gov .) You can construct a fax number that which will relay your e-mail through the Washington, DC mail > faxgate free of charge by simply substituting your Congressidiot's fax number for the one in the following sample letter. Needless to say, the text of your letter should NOT be identical to mine.
To find your congressperson, go to http://www.house.gov/writerep/
The fax number should be somewhere on the congressperson's site entering your zip code and state will get you.
Note: substitute the 10 digit 1 + area code / phone number of your congressperson WITHOUT dashes or spaces for xxxxxxxxxx below. This is sent as a regular e-mail to the To: address.
To: remote-printer.firstname_last name/US_Congress@xxxxxxxxxx.iddd.tpc.int
Subject: HR1542
Dear [insert name of congressperson here]:
Please vote NO on HR1542. The only purpose it is intended to serve is to put independent DSL providers out of business to increase RBOC profits, and I don't see this as serving *any* legitimate policy purpose. Unlike the phone companies, I think that competition is a good thing. Your constituents need *more* choices in broadband, not fewer.
name
address
city,state,zip
(including your address is important because if they don't know you're a constituent, your fax will be tossed into the garbage)
Tech Public Policy stuff
She can't leave the country because she is a child-abusing (not paying support) weiner. The judge knows she is trying to skip the country to avoid paying her fair dues. Read the article you link to next time.
Err this moron does know that Russia has lots of Waterfront properties and that the ones on the Black sea are very nice indeed (do you think that the Big Wigs ate potatoes ?).
Bit off topic but the idea of a bloke who doesn't realise that you should use LAND LOCKED countries for that gag making laws is very scary. Maybe there should be an entry exam for goverment....
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
louisiana was bloody big (bigger than the US at the time anyway)
Large corperations have an unfair advantage in a small environment. I live in a small town. WalMart came in, and the prices were low at first. They drove the competitors out of town and then were able to raise prices higher than any of the competitors used to charge, since they were the only game in town.
Wake up and smell the coffee. If a monopoly gets competition, it can usually cut prices and sell at a loss in order to gain marketshare (and drive competitors out of bussiness). Once it has marketshare, it can charge whatever it wants. Certain companies that are doing this in console gaming right now whom I won't name....
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
I did read the article, thank you very much. She is a licensed attorney, and she wants to go to Mexico to drum up some business, but she "should not be given a passport that would let her ... establish potential business contacts with a Peruvian law firm."
Although she is a flight risk, given the circumstances it is unlikely that she would otherwise be able to gather the $25,000 needed to allow her to get a passport without following client leads.
In another article on the same subject from the San Francisco Chronicle, it is noted that as far back as 1998 "as a struggling lawyer, Eunique tried to go to Peru, where she had a lead on some legal work, but she was denied a passport" because of the large debt she had accumulated to her ex-husband.
This was far from an easy decision to make, on the three judge panel, the ruling was made 2-1. The sole judge who ruled in her favor said "The right to leave is among the most important of all human rights." Apparently even the origins of the law back to the 1950's and it was originally intended to "restrict foreign travel by American communists and alleged subversives."
She is indeed a deadbeat parent, but denying her a basic right that would help enable her to pay off her debt, well, that seems just stupid.
The future isn't what it used to be.
- Before calling, read the bill (or at least the CRS summary - see below) and know if the Congressman is sponsoring the bill.
- Staff members use Thomas, a database by the Congressional Research Service, to find out what the bill actually does. Pick a few specific points from the summary (H.R. 1542 summary) that you have a problem with; be informative and able explain why the bill will harm the Congressman's constituents.
- Call the DC office, not the district office. Make sure the caller id information shows an area code that is in the Congressman's district.
- When calling, be polite and friendly. Ask to speak to the staff member that is working on the Tauzin-Dingell Broadband Deployment Act. It will probably be the staffer that works with technology or communications. Do not just start talking about the bill to whoever answers the phone, he or she is probably not the one with the answers.
- Be short and to the point. Don't expect any direct answers to questions if the answers are likely to conflict with your opinions.
- If your Congressman is one of the 112 co-sponsors of the bill, ask why. Politely.
- No matter what the outcome of the call, thank the staff member for his or her time.
CRS reports are compiled by researchers in the Library of Congress and are the main source of information for Congressional staffers. Most are available from 3rd parties; some are online. Rather dull reading, but it helps to know what information the people making the decisions are using.There may be a real point here.
While it's true that recent world events have changed the way people and commerce flow across the longest undefended boarder in the world, what is the ultimate effect here.
I frequently drive from Canada's capitol into the
"Good Ol' US of A" (just in spring and summer).
Do I now need a passport? My Canadian I.D. was always good enough (except when re-entering my own country!!!).
How are Canadian passports viewed in the US?
Did that little episode involving Mossad operatives and Canadian passports do anything except provide fodder for Canadian comics.
I like travelling through Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and Upstate NY. I hope that nothing makes it anymore troublesome to cross the boarder than it already is.
Ummm... I'm sure that "turbo 911" kicks ass on the streets of Manhattan.
This bill will help in the delivery of Broadband to everyone. It will allow the big Bells to invest more in their network to expanding it therefore allowing for more service providers and more broadband connections.
The Big Bells are constantly bending over for the smaller companies, being forced to provide cheaper access rates in turn allowing the leaser to sell service cheaper directly completing with Big Guy. New York has lowered the maximum that Verizon can charge a local provider for access to their network. This in turn causes that company to compete directly with Verizon using Verizon's own network. Next it causes Verizon to not want to invest in the infrastructure of that part of the network. Why should they build up the network only to have it stolen from them for pennies. This in turn causes degredation of serice in the area in turn causing more maintenance in turn cause a higher phone. Are you telling me like that.
www.fotoforay.com
That's what happened to me. DirecTV service over Bellsouth lines. DirecTV DSL service vanished one day and never returned. DirecTV's tech support made mostly of assclowns kept wanting to know about my lights every time I called. I finally just told them, look, I have no DSL service - no carrier, no nothing - any more and I'm tired of talking to people about my lights! So there was a lot of inertia just getting DirecTV to escalate the problem. Then, there would be no solution and no follow-up. A month and a half later, I had AT&T Broadband up and runninng. I'm plenty POed at them for different reasons but the point is, noether DirecTV nor Bellsouth get any of my Internet connection money.
Disclaimer: I have not decided one way or another on this issue.
Slashdot: Liberal News for Nerds. Liberal Stuff that Matters.
The fallacy of the '96 Telecom Act was that, if forced to allow competitors to have access to the physical plant, the Telcos would just roll over and allow anyone to generate revenue on the physical plant they spent all the investment to build. They did not and will not.
What needs to happen is to rethink the model, and technology is helping out here. Let the RBOCs maintain control over the physical plant, they're good at it thats what they want to do. Let IP technology and the use SIP for session management naturally wrestle control of the network intelligence from RBOCs. This way, the everybody is happy. The RBOCs get to generate revenue on the investment they have made and new service and application providers can make money off of services and applications.
FM
Frank W. Miller
PPPoE is just too much hassle.
- dropped-by-the-provider issue, PPPoE worked flawlessly. Of course, now that I moved and ended up out of range of the CO, I had to switch to Cogeco cable, which is damn fast and so easy a monkey could set it up. Anyways, that's all...
Just out of curiosity, what are some of the problems you've had with PPPoE? I've heard this before, but never experienced it myself. I used Sympatico DSL for just over a year and never had any problems (other than the two weeks of me not being able to connect it took them to figure out that they never turned on my line at their end). I used the Sympatico connection manager from win98 and Roaring Penguin PPPoE with Redhat 7.something. Other than the occasional go-to-use-the-computer-and-my-connection-has-been
do not read this line twice.
Something for Nothing by Duane D. Freese
Tauzin-Dingell guarantees Bells' returns; the public, bigger bills.
Trusting Monopolists by James K. Glassman
FCC proposes rules favoring Bells on broadband; competitors' stocks tumble.
For more complete coverage visit:
"Whatever Happened to Broadband"
In case no one noticed, two weeks ago the FCC issued a Notification of Proposed Rulemaking. The FCC is seeking comments on its proposal to exempt data from the 1996 Telecommunications Act. This will give the RBOCs everything they wanted from Tauzin-Dingell and then some. No longer will the RBOCs have to offer data lines to other carriers.
In retrospect, it's fairly obvious that the Bell System was broken up in the wrong place. Local and long distance service have a rather blurry line between them at this point. With colocation facilities available for CLEC's, the thing everyone needs access to is the 'last mile' local loop. And that's exactly where the split needs to be.
Your local telco should be nothing more than a company that provisions local loops and provides colocation facilities for LEC's. Not ILEC's, not CLEC's, just LEC's. If they provide the local loop, and only the local loop, no one company has an unfair advantage.
At that point, the various LEC's could be completely deregulated. They can provide local dial tone, long distance, Internet service, digital audio/video, whatever... it doesn't matter, because nobody would have this big monster competitor that they also have to buy a piece of their service from.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
Well this surfaces again,
Being from the great State of Louisiana and having attended the same University of congressman Tauzin, and whose father went to the same U with him(Pop has got some funny stories about how the Senator was refused from fraternity parties and wore suits to class, all of this in the 60's).
TO understand why Tauzin came up with this you need to know a little local history.
Billy Tauzin came up with idea in the late 90's just when the dot com boom was at a frenzy. Internet in Louisiana was getting pretty big. I was working for a small ISP called Fastband when it happened. You might remember us, Fastband Global Cast. We were an ISP who also were one of the earlier content providers for online music broadcasting.
Bell in Louisiana had just realized that internet was big money and our loop costs for our points of presence become outrageous, and couple this with our bandwidth costs from UUNET and Qwest it was hard to survive in the dial up game. Bell was a little late to gate into the ISP market....
Louisiana had several large ISP's. The largest being Communique in New Orleans. Bell started offering their services, at a higher cost and lousy customer service. Not enough ISP experience. And people in my neck of the woods stick to what they know, a lotta brand loyalty. In the south we live by the motto if aint broke do not fix it.
So, Bell realizing it could not break into the market that easily got into Tauzin's pockets. He immediately released the proposal and all ISPS in the state signed a petition much like that ISP's. All looked good. Billy was defeated...
But the bad news. Communique the largest ISP in the state, the company with the most to lose, sold out. They were bought out by Verio. Who could care less because they are so large. Communique also provide most of the bandwidth to smaller ISPS in the area and when Verio bought them out they raised the prices on the little guys to get the customers.
But it gets better. I sold out and joined the ranks of the unwashed at Verio. Actually, in those days we had damn good prices and service. Everything worked. Before all support moved to the NOC in Dallas.
BUT I always wondered why Bell never messed with Verio. Sure we used them for many things but they could of taken our business.... Because one day I found out that 80 percent of Bells Webhosting(AT the time) was on Verios servers at Hiway. AND Bell only allowed Verio to resell DSL access in the New Orleans area for a short time when it first become availible.
This is a little long. Moral of the story is that Louisiana lost out to the Telcos due to a Big ISP, a corrupt senator, and just being in the wrong place in the wrong time. The Bells view this as a success and Tauzin who likes his office in Washington and no doubt some official and unofficial perks from the telcos is taking his little proposal on the road
Slashdot Hypocrisy at work?
You can find out which representatives hold the key votes for Tauzin-Dingell and write them online here:
http://broadband.techcentralstation.com
... and it violates some rather deep tabus in the American psyche that are as close to a State Religion as we have over here:
... not by giving up and granting the very perpetrators of dishonest business practices and corporate sabatage (there really is no other term for how the telcos handle third party DSL providors) an unfettered (or even fettered, I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine) monopoly.
Nationalize all of the local copper, indeed all of the "last mile" fibre, copper, and communicaitons infrastructure. Coax cable included.
Treat our communications infrastructure the way we treat highways: a publicly funded transportation system that all users and providors use under the same conditions and restraints.
That is how you foster competition among telcos, cable companies, and internet service providors
The telcos have deliberately sabataged their competitors and done everything legal (and illegal but "unprovable) to undermine the law and its intent. Only a completely incompetent, or corrupt, government would ever reward such behavior. Far better to nationalize their wire and make them just anothre bit player, like everyone else.
And if they try to sabatage the infrastructure being nationalized, jail the bastards. A few years playing bitch to bubba will make even the most arrogant CEO rather compliant.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Black kids are now playing hockey. Within a generation, no Canadian will be able to make a living playing hockey.
Here's a scenario: imagine Wayne Gretzky crossing the blue line & being "greeted" by Ray Lewis. You'd have to scrape him up with a shovel. And no, Gretzky would be too slow to avoid the hit.
Instead of creating an olygopoly environment in the dsl market, why not present a bill that requires cable companies to have open access? This would level the playing field better than doing away with the open access requirement for the bells, eh? Is this "free market" a joke or what?
It appears our current market cannot stand competition, just as code, hardware and video technology has become a commodity, enabling the small guy to become a major player, they want to prevent competition??!!
I'd rather have the markets go down the toilet and live free, than be controlled by olygopoly's getting gouged and having crappy service with no recourse.
The stock market is a SCAM! Congress and it's agencies know who the winners will be as their policies determine the winners and the losers, so unless you are on the "inside", you are better off playing the ponies!
--things such as "free markets" and separation of "church and state"{perverting God's word(kjv) through copyright law} are the two biggest oxymorons EVER!
As opposed to what? Slow death to DSL? We've been over the whole DSL thing before (and many times, I might add): no business anywhere wants to give space, equipment, and reduced-rate service to the competition. That's just dumb. And this time the Bells are right: cable service does have unfair rights to its own lines (at least in comparison with phone lines).
/.er's complain. A guy steals code/illegally distributes other people's IP/steals music: /.er's say "Big deal. It's within my rights to steal." Someone steals a /.er's work: the world might as well have come to an end.
The '96 telco act basically only makes sense for DSL if DSL is prolific enough to necessitate protection. It's not. Almost all of the C-LEC's have gone out of business already, and the service they offer is generally trash. They typically can't afford the larger egresses and charge more to off-set their tremendous over-head.
Good God, can we at least let the service get a foot-hold before we freak out about the control of the corporations? And hey, if it weren't for corporations, who'd provide the service?
/RANT:
I really enjoy reading this site for news. What I can't stand reading, though, is how everyone's "rights" are being trampled. A guy posts treasonous info and gets busted:
Do the rules only apply when we want them to? When they serve an agenda? Is corporate America wholly outside of their rights by conducting business under (inter)national law?
Granted, I dislike some laws, like the DMCA and whatever damned law created ICANN, but breaking the law doesn't prove anything. Oh, sure: call your congressman to prevent something that might actually make DSL available and affordable, but just break the law when you don't like what's being done to your "rights".
Sorry. I just get so sick of hearing about "rights" this and "rights" that. You have no digitally protected rights. Everything you are doing can be and is being logged by someone. And that someone's TOS says they're damned well within their limits. And nobody has the "right" to lawlessness. Change the laws through protest: you have the right to do that.
/END RANT
Thank you and have a very nice day
Do we want Ford, Chrystler, and Toyota owning roads? It is after all the countries infrastructure.
I say, let the state/goverment/ dig the fiber, give local companies the chance to run the switches, and give a lot of companies the chance to compete with telephone, mobile phones, DSL, ether, services, blah, blah. This will create jobs, competition, new blood, better choice, etc, etc. That is what we like to see, world wide, not this *crap*...
Really. I was very anti-T-D. Then I read the bill. It grandfathers in all the agreements already in place with the Bells for co-lo-ing and access to infrastructure, and requires the Bells to continue to offer these things on slightly different, but not ridiculous terms.
It requires that everyone in the USA have access to broadband within 5 years, subject to serious penalties, requires the FCC to monitor and enforce the laws (contrary to a very deceiving ad run locally in DC by voicesforchoices), and makes special provisions for under served communities.
I understand the arguments against letting the Bells be the ones to deploy this service, but consider the following with an open mind. It is an enormous undertaking to connect 275M+ people (something like 175M households) to this highspeed service. Those many of you who live in Urban and Suburban areas, remember that this includes people who live in places where people are outnumbered by cattle and sheep. Those of you who decry the government, realize that this is the government reigning in rules it forced on the Bells in 1996, and enforcing what may be called more reasonable requirements, calling on the Bells to provide the guarentee of service for all, rather than just forcing the Bells to share their equipment bought with their capital and effectively nationalized in 1996. Democrats should like that it is eqalitarian, with a little extra help for the underserved, Republicans should like that it sets the balance back to a capitlaist one where the Bells can better determine their own fate, and Libertarians should like that the government is stepping out of a forced deregulation of what was not deemed to be a monopoly.
I applaud the efforts of Covad et. al. to bring more DSL out to the public -- certainly they've hurried along the progress. But they are corporations designed to be profitable, just like the Bells, and aren't any more interested in losing money trying to serve sparsely populated areas than the Bells are. They aren't any more interested in losing money, either, except that they have had to bite the bullet to gain customers. But the entire business is built around using someone else's stuff. This is somewhat like some small hardware or software company getting the government to mandate to computer makers that they save a PCI slot for their product because the PC makers weren't including their piece of hardware fast enough. It might speed adoption of the hardware if there is demand, but the PC makers will wise up and include it themselves, and they'll built the part themselves to boot.
The real competition for the Bells in this area comes from the cable companies, maybe wireless, maybe the power utilities. Consumers have a much better shot at making sure we keep the big players from getting in bed. The AOL/TW -- Verizon merger is the one we really need to watch out for.
You mean you still give $$$ to those dino-tech land line (and cable) fscks to help fund their political maniplulation?
With wireless from SprintPCS, MesaNetworks and DirectTV, the copper and coax feeds running into my house are dead dead dead.
I'm going to do my damndest to make sure I'll never need them again - it's called voting with my wallet.
I was reading the bill and it turns out that there is a requirement that the local Bells have 100% broadband coverage within 5 years of the bill being passed. A snip from the bill below:
This came right from Section 7 of the bill. The requirements are as follows:
-
`(A) Within one year after the date of enactment of this section, such company or affiliate shall attain high speed data capability in not less than 20 percent of such central offices in such State.
IANAL, but there are definitely some portions of this bill that are in there to help consumers - but then also shaft CLECs in the process. Very strange piece of legislation, if you ask me.`(B) Within 2 years after the date of enactment of this section, such company or affiliate shall attain high speed data capability in not less than 40 percent of such central offices in such State.
`(C) Within 3 years after the date of enactment of this section, such company or affiliate shall attain high speed data capability in not less than 70 percent of such central offices in such State.
`(D) Within 5 years after the date of enactment of this section, such company or affiliate shall attain high speed data capability in not less than 100 percent of such central offices in such State.
I'm a 2000 man.
Where I am, all these so-called CLECs never once provided service to me, and that was after this so called deregulation BS. Not one made any investment to wire up anyone who could not get DSL already. Maybe if some of these companies had not wasted their resources trying to compete with Ma Bell (which you will never win), they should have taken some of their venture capital and actually ran some wires out to underserved, but wealthy areas. This way, they would actually have a useful commodity (a "last-mile" link which they could rent out to the phone/cable companies if they wanted to) and people like me.
But, since these businesses didn't do that, they are gone now. I'm all for this bill, anything that hastens my access to broadband is a good thing. At this point, I really don't give a rat's ass from whom I get it (Verizon, Comcast, etc.), just as long as I eventually get it.
I also don't understand why CLECs think they should be entitled to use Ma Bell's Central Offices, wires, boxes, and other equipment. Ma Bell paid for it, installed it, ran it, set it up, maintained it, etc. Ma Bell should be allowed to charge for it what it wants to. These CLECs can do the same thing if they wanted to.
In case of fire, do not use elevator. Use water!
That would be broadband capability in all COs within 5 years. The coverage at that point would be assumed to be at 100% for whoever is in range for DSL.
I'm a 2000 man.
... we'd get to retract that damned daylight speed limit law they recently enacted in Montana. Geeks like to drive fast, ya know.
The parent post worries me. If you don't know how to hit Google and type in "House of Representatives", how can you be so sure of your position on this bill?
I am seeing way too many kneejerk "Monopolies stink! More regulation!" posts on this story, and they remind me of the soccer moms who will vote for anyone who says "Think of the children!"
Please at least try to see both sides of an issue before you get involved in the political arena. All the information and opinions are online for those who want to read them.
grep -ri 'should work'
I'm on PPPOE w/SWB. I set up the Linksys to use PPPOE, did nothing on the linux boxen, and it works just fine.
this is getting old and so are you
blog
After the numerous problems I've had with just initiating Earthlink's service, I'd welcome them being cut out of the market, thereby getting me out of the deal I've made with them. Being a former Verizon DSL customer from near the beginning of their service roll out, I experienced my share of problems with them but Earthlink has been much worse.
/rant on
First, when trying to initiate the account with their sales rep., their systems were down so they had to call me back (I should have dropped it then but the deal seemed much better then Verizon's and on the surface, it was). Eventually, we got past that point and then they were going to ship me my self-installation kit. I had to call them up three separate times to order the kit and then they shipped it to the wrong address. On top of that, they started charging me the day I called them for the service. I still don't have the self-install kit. I would have cancelled but they charge 149 bucks with no grace period on satisfaction so serves me right. Sounds more like a favor is being done for earthlink and their suffering customers by putting them out of their misery.
/rant off
Anyway, I apologize for the rant and I'm all for competition but this bill, coupled with the FCC's proposed ruling on the use of telecom lines (you can find it at their website, comment period still ongoing, which brings telephone service into parity with cable companies who don't have to share their lines either) spells the death of competition in local markets for high speed internet access.
If it's up for a vote tommorrow, then most likely they are debating it today? Why watch congress piss your future away, when you can watch enron, eh?
Tauzin-Dingell, while likely to pass the House, faces a difficult road in the Senate. Senator Hollings, who chairs the committee of jurisdiction(commerce,science and trans) i believe has sworn up and down that he would kill this bill. I would not truly get upset about this turkey of a bill until the Senate thinks about debating it.(even though bashing the bells, verizon in particular, is a favorite pasttime of mine)
That bill will clear the house, where the republican party dominates, but it will NOT clear the senate. So don't get all wrapped on a bundle about it. This bill is D.O.A.
~~~Please pass the salt, I hate unsalted MD5s
You say you don't like PPPoE. Well, neither do I. But, right now it's my ILEC (SBC-Ameritech) that uses PPPoE, where my 3rd party provider (Speakeasy/Covad) does not.
SBC doesn't offer any packages anywhere near what I get through Speakeasy, with multiple static IPs, SDSL, a TOS that allows me to run servers, no PPPoE, and a reasonable price.
If the ILECs aren't even going to offer the services I want, I certainly don't want them as the only DSL provider in my area.
How difficult is it to understand that competition benefits the consumer? It's only one of the most basic principles in economics.
I don't care who gets a monopoly out of it - the current system doesn't create competition anyway, unless you think Covad really is a threat to SBC.
(wife works for a senator)
For legislative issues, call your congressman or senator's DC office as they deal in the political/legislative work. Their local/state offices deal mostly with constituant services, and would only forward your comments up to the DC office. Asking for a call back will ensure that they actually examine your comments, and hopefully you'll get more than a form letter. Remember that mail to DC is extremely backlogged after the 9/11 incident while it was all sitting in semi trucks waiting for irradiation. Instead, use their fax number.
And no.. they don't have 1-800 numbers.
For mitigating the knee-jerk idiocy so rampant on this site.
I live in Louisiana (Tauzin's state) and called his office to oppose the bill. When I called Tauzin's office, the staffer didn't take any information down and didn't seem terribly interested in hearing my opposition. I voiced it anyway, then put a call in to my representative. When I called Jim McCrery's office, the staffer was very interested in hearing what I had to say and took down a ton of information. I'm surprised considering the lukewarm reception my infrequent calls usually get. I'm pretty left-field politically-speaking. Anyway, on to the call:
Questions and answers:
---SNIP---
How is this going to affect you?
I'm going to have to replace my hardware with BellSouth hardware, adding $200. And my monthly fee will increase by $40 a month for a static IP that is already included in my current ISP's service. It's going to bring my choice for broadband down from 2 to 1 company. I won't be able to run a web server from my home anymore, which means an increase of $100 or more per month to replace that service.
So this is going to kill your current ISP?
Yes, mine and a lot of others. My ISP is bayou.com, by the way. You can get the address information from their web site. I telecommute to work at least once a week and being forced to switch is going to cause some issues there too. I'm the IT Director for my company and I'm not happy about this. I have branch offices set up on DSL and our company is going to have to go through this too. And it's going to cause problems for our employees.
What company do you work for? Are you in Louisiana? How will this affect your business?
Yes, we're [company name] based in [rural town], Louisiana. We install [major brand satellite] systems for [major brand satellite company] in [multistate market] and have about 250 employees and contractors. [Major brand satellite] also competes with BellSouth in the DSL market. We've been looking into providing a wireless/DSL installation service. If this bill passes - well, it shuts everyone out except BellSouth.
---SNIP---
Anyway, this screws a lot of the little guys and a couple of the big guys too. The Mom & Pop ISP that we use will be SOL, we'll be screwed, and it will hurt everyone except BellSouth and other baby bells. This on the heels of the HDTV debacle has put a major dark cloud over my week.
The staffer wouldn't tell me what the congressman's position was on this bill (big surprise) but assured me I'd be hearing from them and that my opposition would be passed along to the congressman - not a big surprise considering that it's election season and we're a business in his congressional district. Hopefully he'll do the right thing on this score - I can only hope...and call...and vote... :)
Its well known inside the beltway that this bill will die in the Senate. No need to get up in arms about it now. Realistically is a big PR move by Tauzin, nothing more.
Tauzin: "The United States Senate will no longer be of any concern to us. I've just received word that the President has dissolved the council permanently."
More to the point, this is of little import to the ILEC's. They all planned to roll out DSL service to all their CO's within 5 years anyways. Why wouldn't they? It's just the old Tom Sawyer trick "please don't force us to to roll out these nice lucrative services".
The "helps consumers" parts are either bait-and-switch, things that they would have done anyways, or (wait for it) provisions the ILEC lawyers are certain they can get thrown out or ignored, just like they did with the 1996 act. And it gets rid of any credible competition for good.
The closest thing to a "helps consumers" part is this:
So it seems that they at least interpret the bill as applying to new ISPs, not existing ones such as Covad, and ISPName (my ISP). What do you guys think about that interpretation?
Also, what about the optimism that 'the bill will never pass both houses anyway'? Should I be more worried than my ISP suggests?
-rp
ILEC-Incumbent Local Exchange Carrier
CLEC-Competitive Local Exchange Carrier
Why wasn't this discussed ealier, I've seen all the commercials on TV talking about this bill on both sides of the fence and I was really waiting for a discussion to start on slashdot so I could a fair understanding of the bill. Why wait a day before the bill will be up for vote to talk about this when this can effect so many people with DSL who actually prefer they service (speakeasy.com) over the baby bells crappy service?
...is what this bill is. Welfare for SBC/Verizon and welfare for poor little children who live in impoverished areas and DON'T EVEN OWN COMPUTERS!
www.voicesforchoices.com
That is all.
I moved to Westerly, and Cable here is $109.00/mo. for 256/256, 1 static, on an independant segment (no shared bandwidth with the "neighbors"). When I moved in two weeks ago, cable was all there was.
10 minutes ago, I called and found out DSL was just made available, and I'm 3,200 feet from the CO! They want $119.00/mo. for 128k SDSL, $139.00/mo. for 256k SDSL, and $399.00/mo. for 1.0M SDSL, all through "Choice One Communications".
It's a complete rape job out here. Save me. A full T1 to the house (minus CSU/DSU and router) is $512.00/mo. I'm thinking about getting one, slapping up a helical 7802.11 antenna and selling wireless to the neighbors at $50.00/mo.
I called my congressman this morning. Pete Sessions from Texas. I requested that he voted against this bill, due to it reducing competition, and the fact that if could affect area jobs (lots of telecom companys and IP telephony development done in the dallas area). Anyway I was told by his person who took the call that he will be voting for it. He is doing a meeting on saturday and I suggest that others show up and ask him to explain himself as I plan on doing.
My girlfriend works on Capitol Hill. Her congressman is a co-sponsor of this bill (he's a good guy, dem, and thinks that it will bring more services to his rural district). It's going to pass the House, but probably not the Senate, at least not any time soon.
So, this is mostly mass hysteria.
One very important thing to remember about Members of Congress: the vast, vast majority of them have already made their minds up the day before a vote. You can call, email, and write all you want the day before a vote, but unless you're someone important, it's not going to make a difference. If you want to make a difference, get involved earlier in the process.
Jon
She is indeed a deadbeat parent, but denying her a basic right that would help enable her to pay off her debt, well, that seems just stupid
So-called "Family Courts" do this all the time to deadbeat dads. Not paying child support? Put em in jail, that'll make sure they can't pay the $500/mo + arrears. Surprising that in this case, it cuts the other way. I know someone who was arrested and thrown in jail 3 times in seven months because he was behind in his child-support payments. Note that, at the time, the children were married and over the age of 21. This was because of a "paperwork mixup" that occurred some years earlier, but apparently couldn't get fixed by the family court, because they only support the mother. The poor guy couldn't afford a decent lawyer, and finally got assigned a competent lawyer the third time around.
This bill, and Tauzin, was bought and paid for by the Bells. If you believe him, I have some waterfront property in the Sahara to sell you!
Dear Mr. Dyas,
Due to the continual evolution of SBC/Pacific Bell as the leading (and now only) carrier of DSL services in the region, it is necessary to adjust your rate to the current market standard (which we now set) to retain profitability (the definition of which is controlled by our board).
Your new rate, as of June 2002 will be *insert whatever I pay now, doubled*. Rest assured that through our attempts to fleece you for all you're worth now that we're the only game in town, you can *ahem* rely *ahem* on SBC's current standard of *ahem* service *ahem*.
Yours Sincerely,
Ben Dover
Vice President of Broadband Services
SBC / Pacific Bell, Inc.
The only tool you've got against psychosis is experience.
Nice to read a high modded comment with some actual intelligence behind it!
For the record, here is the part about 100% of lines being DSL capable within 5 years. And here is the part protecting unbundling and choice of ISPs.
Cheers,
BKR
My point is that the "umbrella of guaranteed profits and privileged freedom from competiton" should be completely removed!
In fact, it probably should never have been there to begin with, but that's another subject - and quite possibly irrelevant now. (Obviously, we can't go back and change the past.)
Whenever a govt. regulated monopoly is granted/allowed, then yes - the business should have a certain level of "public responsibility". It's not really operating as anything other than a branch of govt. itself in that situation. (The post office makes a profit too, but it's still govt. owned and controlled.)
I'm completely opposed to restrictions on competitors running their own copper "without permission from the ILECs". The problem I have is with the current system of allowing new companies to form which do nothing more than provide an alternate billing dept. to the regional Bell company. "Hello! We're JoeSchmoe, your new alternative long distance provider. We'll just use Bell's circuits and switches here to put your calls through, and collect a profit from it."
Hello? That's a complete reversal of your previous statement, that the CLECs are "leeches" for using the existing infrastructure.
All those copper lines run by ILECs during the monopoly era (around 1900 through the present), by your own analysis, might as well be government resources. Why is it okay for the ILECs to use those resources but the CLECs are parasites?
The leeches are the ones who've had windfall profits funneled to them by government for a hundred years on the understanding that they were creating a semi-public, regulated resource. And who now use every available tactic, legal or not, to maintain their exclusive use of that resource.
Did *your* representative sell out? Check the voting record here .
Lose the die_spammer_die for email
Not really.... I'm talking about what should be going on now, in the year 2002. I don't think there should be any more extensions of any kind on laws that allow CLECs to use the ILEC's copper or switching equipment.
Back when "Ma Bell" was a regulated monopoly (no such thing as MCI, Sprint, etc. - and you rented your phone), the copper was theirs, and theirs only - but that's what you'd expect, since they did have monopoly status.
Now, you have this weird philosophy that to "break up" the monopoly, you have to let "companies" form (that don't really do anything on their own besides run a billing dept. and advertisements for themselves), and proceed to use the existing "Ma Bell" resources as though they owned them.
I'm simply saying that the "right" way to phase out the monopoly status of the telcos is to completely deregulate them, but set them free to do business as a private company - still in full control of the assets (copper wire, etc.) that they've accumulated. Competitors shouldn't be allowed to use those resources for themselves - but *should* be allowed to use any other methods they like to transfer voice and/or data.
If this was done, the public would benefit (wow - real innovation happening, instead of "hack" technologies like ADSL that try to squeeze as much as possible over old copper), and the competition would be forced to have a good business plan in place. (Not just the ".com" type B.S. like Covad and others started out with - because hey, you actually have to buy your own infrastructure to get started!)
Not "as though they [the CLECs] owned them." How about as though Ma Bell would acknowledge the assets she holds are a unique product of that might-as-well-be-the-government circumstance that you claimed. Acquiring the wires and CO assets over decades, out of an ongoing competition-free windfall, and then hoarding the use of those assets that everyone had to pay for--now that is imposing on everyone.
We didn't give the ILECs a monopoly because it was somehow the moral thing to do. We did so because of a tradeoff between private profit and public service. That balance should be maintained, because without it the ILECs are given billions of dollars of infrastructure just because... well, just because they were there to take it.
Otherwise we're left in the absurd situation of changing the rules in mid-game while forcing all but one player to start over from the beginning.
I have a great idea. Let's you and me and everyone else sit down for a game of Monopoly[tm]. I'll start the game with all the money and property I had left over from my last game (which I won), and the rest of you just start at the beginning, okay? That's fair, isn't it?
Your "game of Monopoly" metaphor would be much more fitting if you pointed out that the rules of the new game would be modified to include some new methods of monopolizing squares on the board.
That's the situation we're in today. Bell's copper wires aren't essential for transferring data (unlike Monopoly money, which is essential for buying properties in the game).
Just like a business full of old IBM XT computers, they might have been worth millions of dollars and been state of the art when they were first installed - but now, what value is left in them? Next to nothing....
That's rather like Bell in today's marketplace.
They've got all of this legacy equipment that works reliably (and sure, there's something to be said for that!), but is no longer the best way to accomplish the tasks they're paid to perform.
All things being equal, 99% of the people out there would prefer having a single phone number that works no matter where they go. They don't want to worry about disconnect orders and reconnect orders, number changes, new area codes, and DSL that's only fast on download speed, not upload speed. They like wireless.
Which is why all the CLECs are begging for access to those wires? And why the Bells are using blatant tactics to deny that access?
Not that it matters if you're arguing property rights. But it's hard to tell what your argument is now.
For what definition of "best"? Surely it's still cheaper to run voice and data over existing copper. If it weren't, the ILECs would have changed over already.
I find that to be a weird argument from someone who claims to want deregulation. Why not let the market decide? Right now the market says that even the artificially inflated price of access to those copper wires is a better deal than the corresponding, and lightly regulated, wireless products.
How many companies have hardwired T1s? Okay, now how many are using wireless T1 equivalents? Tell me copper is obsolete.
How many residences are using copper circuits? How many have gone fully wireless? Why is that?
The sunken cost of that copper last-mile network is in the billions of dollars if not tens of billions. It isn't the newest thing going, and it's not glamorous, but it's still more profitable to run than the alternatives. Which explains why the ILECs are so reluctant to share the network. That's what market forces do when you have a natural monopoly situation controlled by one of the players.
I find your position... baffling. If the last-mile network is so devoid of value, what's the harm in opening it to all users? Who's being cheated of their private investment if it's worth "next to nothing"? And in any case, you yourself claimed (I didn't) that the network might as well be considered government-owned considering the protected monopoly status it had for a hundred years.
*sigh*
If you're driving at a point, I'm afraid I don't follow your path nor can I see your destination. All I'm saying is that equal access to last-mile facilities is the bare minimum for a competitive market in telecom services, and that the ILECs have a hell of a nerve complaining about finally having to share the physical plant they built with money that was funneled to them over the decades by state and federal legislation.
Ok, let me try one last time to clarify some things about my position. Maybe then, you won't find it quite so "baffling" (or maybe you will?).
1. I, first of all, don't believe it was wise to grant the telco a monopoly status in the first place. It created a big mess that we're still trying to sort out. If this was "nipped in the bud" by letting the free market work itself out, we'd probably have a system in place where several competitors *willingly* paid usage fees to use their share of the copper. Perhaps, a business would have spawned off that did nothing but maintain and run the copper wire itself?
2. As best I understand it, the telco was granted a monopoly status only after people complained about the mess of wires being strung all over on poles from competitors, all trying to have their own circuits.
3. 100 years + later, I feel confident we have little to fear about becoming overrun with unsightly copper wires everywhere if we deregulate the telco.
4. Since we really screwed things up a long time ago and needlessly restricted a thriving industry, it's time we take a fresh look at everything.
5. The companies that want so badly to share the existing copper infrastructure are just trying to take the "easy road" to some quick cash - rather than taking a long-term approach which would be far superior and benefit both them and the consumers.
6. Yes, the existing copper is profitable, to an extent - but only if you place a number of limitations on what types of services you'll be providing, and at what costs. As you point out, plenty of people use copper for T1 lines - but look at the pricing! Close to $1000 per month!?
7. If you just let the ILECs keep what they've got to themselves, but take an "anything else goes" attitude towards new communications technologies - I think you'll be surprised with what happens. If you give CLEC's free use of the lines, then you stiffle innovation. (What's the incentive to innovate, when you can use this "status-quo" stuff at no cost to you?)
8. Regarding the argument that "everyone should be able to use the network because it was essentially govt. owned for all these years".... That's sort of like saying I should be able to break into the homes of welfare recipients and eat food out of their fridge. (After all, I work and pay taxes into the system, right?)