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.

Comments

Question

[MarkusH]

If a person or group of people wanted to set up their own broadband wiring throughout a small town, what would be necessary?

I'm not talking about the physical components (the wiring, the routers, etc). Are there any legal requirements that have to be met? Do you need to get eminent domain to run over (or under) roads, or simply get permission from the land owners? Is there any way we can bypass the bells entirely?

ILEC -- don't forget the Universal Service fee's

[teambpsi]

This is really troubling. As an ISP in QWEST territory it might spell trouble for us in terms of the Internet service we provide to our clients.

All they have to do is declare us a competitor instead of a client, and poof! there it goes.

Furthermore, lets not forget that the BELLS get huge tax breaks and subsidies to build out the wiring to provide service.

All those Universal Service Fee's we pay on our lines to help make sure that EVERYONE gets phone service.

I think to some extent that this will eventually get challenged and reversed. Much in the same way MCI and Sprint and the cast of THOUSANDS of small long distance providers have the right to serve your LD needs on your ILEC provided lines, so should the physical plant be open as well.

Of course, you're getting this IMHO from a guy that thinks the cable companies should be open as well, given THEIR tax breaks etc.

Then again, this might help force Neighborhood Wireless Access Points to more of a real thing....then again we have other special-interest-group-companies that want to block up the airwaves and control them. Anyone remember XM's challenge to 802.11 that got essentially rejected?

</flame off>

;)

Now if cable wasn't just as bad

[bluGill]

The obvious answer is just move to cable, since cable companies want to provide phone service you should be able to choose who gives better service. Now if cable companies weren't even more evil that the worst baby bell.

Still, it is worth your while to keep checking out the compitition. If the bells see everyone switching to cable modems and cell phones they will respond (eventially). There are local 802.11 (and other licensed band are possible) networks to connect to. Satalite works great for some people.

Remember, you can turn this into a non-issue, but only if you tell everyone you know that there are options and they should check out cell phones (my cell phone is more talk time then I need, free long distance all for what a land line would be.) Cable is trying to get into the phone market. Let everyone blindly use the phone company, and the phone company has won. Tell people to compare service, and the phone company will start losing. Not everyone, but enough to affect the bottom line, and that is what will bring service to your neighborhood.

Re:Dammit

[ivan256]

There's a huge difference though. Kia didn't have to dig up every lawn in the US to start selling cars.

Competitive telecom companies aren't even allowed to dig up your lawn and attach wires to your house (Or to run a cable across your lawn to get to your neighbor's house). If you want competitive local loop access, you need to either force the incumbant providers to lease out their wire, or you need to let competitive telecom providers have access to private property to run cable. Which one of those do you think is more practical? (Consider that you don't need wire from more then one company to your house because you're presumably only going to buy one provider's service at a time).

If the fees are reasonable, and they aren't loosing money on the deal, then the incumbant phone companies should have nothing to complain about. They should be bending over backwards and kissing our asses for letting them exist in the first place. Not everybody gets to be an exception to the rule.

Bad news

[willmc]

I know for a fact that this is really bad news for the city that I live in. Sprint owns all the phone lines here, and are notorious amongst local residents and (especially) businesses for being extraordinarily slow (as long as weeks) making installations and repairs. While Sprint does offer DSL in town, they masquerade IPs and have rather unreliable speeds. A regional telco exists that provides almost flawless service (less than an hour of downtime in the past two years) and gives you real IPs so that us geeks can operate servers and other nonsense on them. Suddenly, it appears as if this telco may no longer be able to service us and we'll have no comparable alternative to it.

When I signed up for their service, they had me a modem at my house and another ready on their end within 24 hours. I then sat for nearly THREE MONTHS waiting for Sprint to get off its ass and turn over the phone line, which as I understand it is a completely computerized process that requires almost no effort on their part. Sprint wouldn't talk to me because I wasn't technically a customer (the other telco was, they said) and all the other telco could do was keep asking them over and over to turn over the line. Finally, after running around in circles for months I had a lawyer friend of mine fax them a letter threatening legal action, whereupon the line was turned over less than 24 hours after sending the fax.

Since then, the wait hasn't been as long, though it's still generally between two and three weeks, which is unreasonably long for a 5-minute (if that) action. I can't imagine what it would be like here if Sprint wasn't even forced into competition with this other telco.

Re:DOES NOT LOCK CLEC OUT OF LOCAL LOOP ACCESS

[aphor]

Sorry, but I'm one of those wealthy people who has SDSL for the sake of taking a loop away from Ameritech. I pay almost out of principle. I installed a 110 block and ran CAT-5 in my house. The install (truck already rolled) should have taken 10 minutes. The Covad line technician had to argue with the Ameritech CO people for 60 minutes about taking bridge clips off, and before that, he had to spend an hour to tone out the subloop because they don't properly tag lines in my neighborhood. Your ILECs and RBOCs can and will still harass the CLECs, but that doesn't stop me from getting my unmetered (not oversold) DSL Internet access.

here's a solution

[mqatrombone]

government should own the landlines. kinda the same way they own the roads. most people would consider telephone/broadband wiring essential infrastructure nowadays. So why don't we have the government treat it as a utility and the different companies compete for repair and lease rights?

Re:The problem is..

[kir]

It is not the end of the world, but it's likely the end of US leading the way.

The U.S. hasn't led the way in broadband for a while - Japan has.

In my area alone (Tokorozawa, which is no megapolis), there exists a ridiculous amount of ADSL providers for me to choose from (ISPs - GOL, BigLobe, SoNet, OCN, YahooBB, etc. "loop" providers" - Eaccess, NTT, ACCA, DION, etc.). Of course, NTT owns the copper to my house, but they get their cut. NTT charges an "access fee" (about 180 yen a month) for the use of the "last mile" copper for something other than telephone service. In total, I pay a little under $40 a month for 8Mb ADSL (<=8Mb down, <=1Mb up).

Then there is cable TV access... oh yeah... and a huge initiative that's coming to my area soon... FTTH - Fiber To The Home. 100Mbs of broadband lovin (too bad about them bottlenecks).

Broadband internet access has become like telephone or cable TV service... it's just something you have. I don't know anyone here, none of my friends, none of my co-workers*, that doesn't have some form of broadband.

From what I read here and from talking with friends in the States, quality broadband is hard to find. It's definitely more expensive. It's sad that I live in arguably the most expensive country in the world, yet I pay less for my broadband than anyone I know in America (does 8Mb ADSL even exist there?).

* Some of my friends live in Yokota AB. That place is NOT Japan. It's little America. The sole ISP there is fully taking advantage of it's monopoly. If you live on the base, you pay $35 a month for 56k dial-up that's limited to 90 hrs a month or you go without, which in today's world, isn't an option when you're thousands of miles away from home. Poor bastards!