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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.
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.
Sure, alot of ISP's still survive. Internet Nebraska in Nebraska has survived for nearly 10 years and provided service across nearly the entire state including DSL and in the face of stiff competition (Alltell, Road Runner, Cox Cable). As a matter of fact they are even rolling out Wireless in some parts of the state.
Of course, they have a different attitude than most ISP's - they don't have the latest and greatest in tech. As a matter of fact the tech desk machines are old Sparc stations (30mhz I believe) and most of their equipment is bought off E-bay. Doesn't make a difference; their uptimes and such are excellent, and they are the largest ISP in Nebraska - and no I don't work for them.
The problem with most of the ISP's you listed is that they expanded too fast, and spent too much buying the latest and greatest equipment with no thought of if they where going to be able to recoup the costs.
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...
I find it hard to believe that retracting this act is going to right the wrongs it created, but I have no idea why. Simply put, the Telecommunications Act of 1996 resulted in the biggest blow to a free market in history. At least, that's my interpretation. The number of entities that control the nations media, from books, to music, to TV and movies, went from somwhere in the hundreds, to the present 6. But if retracting the act now would in any way rectify that, companies like the Bells and Verizon (who have a very hefty interest in preserving the ownership deregulations) would be up in arms protecting it.