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:What can us Canadians do about this?

[Alsee]

First, you must become the 51st state.

Canada is a bit big for one state (it actually has more area than the US). Canada is already divided into 13 provinces, but the population is rather sparse. We might have to consolidate some of them.

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This is news?

[Nick]

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.