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.

Comments

Re:They already monopolize, in a way

[Ungrounded Lightning]

4. When the ILEC goes to install a new DSL line for one of their OWN customers, and there aren't enough good pair in the cable, their installers have been known to just steal the pair from a working line. Amazingly enough, it's usually a CLEC's line.

So the CLEC gets a trouble call. And has to debug it. And when they figure out the line's gone dead, they report it to the ILEC, which sends a lineman out to fix it. And there are STILL no spare high-quality pair in the cable. So the ILEC lineman steals ANOTHER in-use pair to replace the first stolen one. (Guess whether it's from the ILEC or a CLEC.)

Loop forever.

Re:How?

[alexjp]

Visit the U.S. House representative list. Find your representative, and call. When I call, I usally do the following:

• Say my name, and what city I live in.
• Ask how Representative So-And-So plans to vote on the bill in question.
• If the person you're speaking to indicates that your rep is voting for the position you agree with, say "Great - that's what I was hoping".
• If you're told that your rep is voting the other way, say that you would urge them to support (or vote against, in this case) the bill in question, and give a sentence or two explaining why.
• If the person you're speaking to doesn't know how your rep is going to vote, say "I'd like to urge Representative So-And-So to support (or vote against) this bill" and explain why.

Basically, what you're trying for is to come across as a reasonable voter who has an opinion. Your call will be logged, and your rep will get a report that 5 people called today urging him (or her) to vote against a bill, and 1 person called urging him to support another bill, etc. If enough people voice disapproval of the rep's planned vote, he may investigate further. If he doesn't know much about the issue, he may just go with the suggestion of the 20 people who bothered to call.

Rep. Billy Tauzin's own words on his bill

[alcohollins]

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.

What SBC told me regarding those outages.

[SlashChick]

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 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 ... 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.

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. ;)

being heard.

[minerva_ks]

Having interned at a Congressional office, I may be a little cynical at estimating the probablility of actually influencing a Congressman's vote by calling him/her (slim to none). But, here are some tricks I learned while I was there:

• 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.