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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.
BellSouth, Verizon and SBC Communications hailed the decision as conforming with FCC Chairman Michael Powell's plans for the industry.
Powell's job must be so easy - just let the market decide! Then take a nap. If anything really important comes up ask Dad in the State Dept, he'll know what to do.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
"...troubling news for people who like high-speed internet access at reasonable prices..."
It's also bads news for freedom of speech
Whereas in a competitive environment ISPs can compete for savvy customers by touting their lack of restrictive practices (such as server-side censorship software that eliminates client-side choice), now they'll be more worried about not offending the big-hitters like the Christian lobbying groups who have the Washington-level power to disrupt their cosy monopolies.
Comeptition is reduced, but it is his opinion that progress will occur more rapidly nonetheless. It is certainly true that PacBell was in no rush to distribute new equipment and services that would enrich Covad (hence the "cancellation of Project Pronto).
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?
But the point is - the telecoms own the wiring from the switch to your house. Why should government dictate what the owner of that wire has to do with it? Allowing other DSL providers to use that infrastructure is going to cost the Bells money. So I really feel that the court is correct in this matter.
However, I don't want to pay exhorbitant amounts of money for my DSL line. And I think the way to do this is to offer a true competitor.. maybe it's the cable companies and cable modems, maybe its 802.11 wireless, maybe it's satellite transmission, maybe it's something that hasn't even been thought up yet, but there will be a competitor.
And I don't think this is a monopoly any more then I think DISH Network is after buying Direct TV.. they still have to compete with cable companies.. much the same way DSL is still going to have to compete with cable modems, etc. They're selling broadband access, and there will be multiple ways to get it.
This court decision is not the end of the world, folks.
Now I just have to prepare myself to be modded down.. ;)
You are right. Sept. 11 would have happened but W is taking advantage of his "mental immunity" for everybody trying to be patriotic and so nobody is questioning his policies or politics (Iraq, Enron) when they very well should be scrutinized. But worse yet, it isn't just Bush that is doing this. Congress, RIAA, MPAA, and Microsoft are all using the terrorist attacks as shields of their messed up policies. Everybody is pushing for copyright laws and pro-DMCA because "terrorists" are the ones who crack programs. Also, according to Microsoft, the anti-trust case is taking resources away from the investigation of the attacks. Of course this is all bogus, but nobody of power and influence is saying anything because then the Republicans will label them as anti-American.
Hopefully, this phase of trust in our government will pass and we can get back to criticizing them when they do something stupid.
...And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me." - Martin Niemoeller (1892-1984)
Why should the baby bells have to provide the infrastructure for their competition? This decision is actually better in the long term. In case you haven't noticed, customer service has gone way down since the bells were forced to open their phone lines up. What happens when an entire neighborhood no longer uses a bell? Why shouldn't bell just pull out of that neighborhood and no longer support those lines? Then what happens? Yep, the company leasing the lines can't help the customers because they don't know what they're doing or they don't have the knowledge the bells do of the system in place.
Broadband suffers from the same thing. If you want cheap broadband, wait 20 years. If you want high speed access now, expect (and be willing to pay). And if you want competition, then be willing to pay higher (should be only to begin with) prices while infrastructure is being laid. The baby bells should not be required to lay the infrastructure for their competition. If someone wants to compete, that's fine, but they should also be willing to put down the money required and set up their own infrastructure, instead of trying to build on top of the bells' hard work.
If 76 Trombones really led the big parade, why did they have anyone else in it?
completely failed to consider the relevance of competition in broadband services coming from cable (and to a lesser extent satellite). We agree.
Cable is absolutely NO competition for DSL. My requirement was
1) static IP
2) low price
3) allows servers. I run mail and http servers.
My directtvdsl is $49 a month with a static IP. If they take this away, I'm screwed. I'll have to pay a bundle to get the same service from the phone company.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Wake me up when Ford is the only company that is allowed to provide cars in my area.
--
E_NOSIG
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>
;)
Old age and treachery almost always overcome youth and skill.
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.
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.
How would competition and QOS differ if instead of the phone company owning the wire, the consumer was able to buy that last stretch of cable to your home. Ignoring all bad factors such as having to replace a crappy cable yourself. What would the benefits be? You would be able to dictate what you wanted to run on the cable, who you wanted to run it and a variety of other things. People who want to replace their cables with optics could hire an 3rd party to replace their cable for them. Instead of hasseling with the phone company. Who more than likely won't replace your cable unless your whole neighbor needs replacing. People who want the good stuff can get it and those content with shitty copper can still have it.
Am I off my rocker or is there something to this?
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.
Unless I'm reading this wrong, you don't have to worry unless you have only one pair of telephone wires run to your house/office. The decision says it removes the "line sharing" stuff from a list of services that must be offered to CLECs without bundling. This is that the phone company can deny CLECs access to the loop already providing your voice phone service. They hinted at, but ultimately balked at deciding to throw out the whole unbundled service mandate list. It looks to me that Covad can demand a local loop to your house if there is a dry one available. Go to your box and find out how many pair you have!
--- Nothing clever here: move along now...
I wish we had another "real" party in the USA (the reform party of a few years ago was basically a "vote for me - these guys suck" party).
I feel like I'm stuck in a Douglas Adams novel:
Sleep is just a poor substitute for caffeine, anyway. -Bob Lehmann
what you have here is a "natural monopoly". The thing is that you dont really need to have incentives for others to make their own infrastructure. Making ionfrastructure is very expensive, and doubling would just be an enourmous waste.
You just need companies to compete over the quality and price of services over this infrastructure.
Such an arrangement is not as strange as you say. It often happens with natural monopolies. for example when the electrticity market was being deregulated nobody seriously suggested that different power companies should build different powerlines.
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.
Last mile wire may be owned by Bell Canada, but other ISPs can use it.
End result is I do not have to deal with sympatico to get my DSL.