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Baby Bells Victorious Over Sharing Rules
An Anonymous Coward sent in somewhat troubling news for people who like high-speed internet access at reasonable prices: the Baby Bells have won their legal challenge of FCC rules requiring them to accomodate competitors providing high-speed internet access. The FCC has already been moving toward this on its own (the FCC is headed by political appointees appointed by the President), but this court decision will accelerate it: neither the current FCC nor the courts are going to stop the Bells from squeezing out their competition. There's a CNet story and the decision is online.
Try Qwest. They lie about everything, make you wait forever for anything to get accomplished, and their billing department has to rival the IRS when it comes to complexity of an organization.
I've had Verizon (DSL, home phone, still have Verizon Wireless). I've had Qwest (DSL, home phone). I had good service from Verizon, and most definately did NOT from Qwest.
As soon as AT&T digital cable is rolled out in my area, I'm dumping my landline and going with AT&T phone service over cable. Qwest will not get another cent from me, ever again.
It's a shame Qwest won't have to share their lines... Anything to make those bastards work for their money is fine with me.
I can't believe the communist crap I am reading on this board.
What makes America great is that we arn't a pure capitalistic society... if we were, we would quicly slide into a dictatorship as companies gobble up smaller companies in order to form monopolies, etc. Further, we are not a pure socialistic society, private ownership is essential. What we are is a pretty-good ballence between the two extremes. Unfortunately, for the last 10-20 years the power has been getting out of ballence, with capitalistic forces now having more control then the democratic forces. This is clearly seen by the acquisations of congress people doign the bidding of companies instead of people.
Have you read Adam Smith's title called The Wealth of Nations? It rests on a principle of a competitive or free market economy; a competitive market being defined by many economists as one where no single supplier holds more than 20% of the marketspace, having 7 or more distinct direct competitors. Only under these circumstances will capitalistic markets bring the highest value to society. In marginalized situations, where a single company holds a large share of the marketplace there isn't a choice, it is called monopolistic.
Monopolies in general arn't bad, but a special class of monpoplies which provide for essential services are problematic. Telephone is essential in our day and age (ever try to get a job without a telephone number?) and the baby bells have a huge part of the marketshare for telephone and related land-line services.
So. What do we do with essential monopolies? There are two extremes forms of control; Democratic (one customer one vote) or Dictatorship. The latter choice is usually bad since, if left to its own devices, it will maximize profits by overcharing the customer, causing huge distortions in the economic system and undermining other markets and thus our free market economy. The former choice is not great, but variations of it are important to consider.
One form is to have government operate the smallest, most essential service of the business which cause it to be a monopoly. Our roads are good examples. The government owns them, but services to maintain the road (which can be competitive) are all farmed out to various companies who can bid. The government need not create the road signs, for example. The other form is to let a private dictatorship run it, but regulate the dictatorship. Unfortunately... there just arn't any other options!
As for the phone systems themselves, a bulk of the funding for these systems were initally provided by the government (the people) since setting up a phone infrastructure is a huge operation... thus to say that private enterprise has done this is just not true. Private funding for stuff is usually not long-term. More often than not, public funding for bring projects is the only way to get them done.
Your black and white charactization is just dead wrong. It isn't iorn grip of Washington that is the issue. Washington is just the government controlled by either Democratic or Capitalistic forces. In this case, we have yet another victory for the capitalistic force; which already has the bulk of the power. The more we allow this to happen the closer we come to having a pure dictatorship. By the way, if we were shifting to be totally socialist (everything decided by the people with equal weight), then I'd be arguing on the other side of the fence. This is a delicate ballence, not a black vs white issue. Becarefull for what you wish... you may just get it.
That technically the Bells own the wiring.
There are two strong mitigating factors. First, they were granted the special privilege of being a monopoly, and two, they were granted the special privilege of mandated right of way.
If they wish to be freed of the special conditions that went with those two valuable grants, they should be freed of the grants as well.
Imagine if they had to pay property owners if they needed to dig up the yard for repairs! For that matter, if they were forced to pay yearly rent for the right to bury wires on people's private property!
Yes, they would go bankrupt overnight, and yes, that would be bad for everyone.
So perhaps a compromise is in order? They get to leave their lines buried on my property and I won't shoot them as trespassers if they have to do some digging for repairs, BUT I get to use a portion of them (one pair to be specific) to connect to someone elses DSLAM if I want to. Just to sweeten the deal, I will pay them a reasonable monthly fee to be my telephone provider.
Otherwise, they should come and get their wires out of my yard before I declare them to be abandoned and remove them myself.
In other words, the people have cut them slack (through the government) since day 1, they could at least do the same in return.