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DSL Amidst Phone Wars
DrewCapu writes "The SF Chronicle has an article which talks about the battles between SBC and AT&T & MCI over supposed unfair practices concerning DSL and switching phone companies. All sides have their own spin on it. Can't we all just get along? Things have been heating up ever since SBC got closer to offering LD in CA."
I live in Alameda (near SF), and I can tell you that the article is not stretching the truth at ALL. I personally have DSL thru a small local ISP who partners with Covad, but when I moved to my new apartment, I still had to get a landline from SBC (as they've apparently cut off the likes of Covad from getting dry pairs with no phone account associated for DSL). More on topic, several of my customers have switched to other local carriers, and either had to give up DSL (for cable, which in Alameda is run by the very excellent Alameda Power & Telecom, but I digress), or keep one SBC line.
I guess having AT&T and MCI on "our" side is a good thing, though with the Yahoo!/SBC DSL crap SBC is giving out now, I don't know why anyone would want to stay with 'em.
Couldn't the same be said of SBC? I mean, if SBC continued to provide DSL service to those customers, then they too would "generate more revenue" than if they were to just hand it over to AT&T or MCI. Is it greed? Or do they just want to control our means of communication? They can't have it both ways.
The whole idea of requiring phone company A to allow phone company B to sell "service" over phone company A's lines is ludicrous. Just let them both run their own lines.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
If I recall, the US is the only place that still has this. What if you're someone whose main phone is a cell phone, why should one have to get a redundant land line just to simply get DSL, whether it be the main carrier or an alternative? DSL is expensive as it is (contract, connection, no dissatisfaction guarantee), but one must also pay for deposit, connection fee and service on a land line as well? This is the main reason cable has more customers: the price is lower, they don't charge connection fees, they don't make you sign a contract, they don't make you buy the modem or NIC (hell the NIC is yours to keep after service is terminated), and you sure as hell don't have to pay for simply having a signal line to connect on.
SCB here in Memphis charges $50 a month for service. They make you buy the modem, they charge a connection fee, they require a contract. This on top of having to have a land line. All of a sudden this overpriced DSL now in reality costs $82, at the very least.
I'll stick to my $30 a month cable connection.
While this tactic might seem counter-productive, serving mainly to make SBC look bad while rival services gear up to implement their own DSL offerings, it would be helpful to take a look at SBC's situation from the company's standpoint.
SBC's third quarter earning report show the company getting absolutely hammered on the earnings front, with revenues off 14 percent, down over a billion dollars from a year ago. This drop can be attributed to competition between phone services, and more importantly, the rise of alternative communications technology. While DSL subscribers are increasing steadily, the added inflow of dollars is being more than offset by the hemmorhaging in the phone services sector.
Thus it can be seen that big phone companies relying primarily on local and long distance phone service are seeing their traditional market being eroded away, and are panicking. Look for more tricks like the DSL service hostage stunt in the near future as lumbering Old Economy companies try anything to shore up their shrinking incomes.
Hopefully, companies like SBC will soon be willing to implement the kind of out-of-the-box thinking needed to restructure their companies for the (gradually...) emerging New Economy, and will leave these kind of lame tricks in the past. Until then, there's always cable.
I moved to in with two of my not so computer savvy friends, who insisted on the microsoft name, well, after struggeling with delayed shipping, and a whole list of other hassels, we got it hooked up, but, the my computer doesn't get a -REAL- ip address, my modem gets the IP, then it does NAT/firewall, but with a 255.255.255.252 subnet, so it will only assign one computer, which pisses me off to no end, after less than 20 minutes of fitzing around and RTFM'ing i call MSN, i can't turn the feature off, they apologize, i arrange to have my ISP switched, call back in 20 minutes and cancel service, good thing there wasn't a contract, whew! i still have to pay $50 for internet for less than a day, i'm irked
--fetch daddy's blue fright wig, i must be handsome when i release my rage
Just an overworked HSD installer's thoughts...
I disable sigs...do you?
Why do I need a voice line in order to get DSL service in the first place? I don't want a voice line and I can't be the only one.
Because of this, anyone who wants DSL must also pay (Verizon, in Los Angeles) $26/month for a voice line they have no intention of using.
Is it like that everywhere or just here?
This is just one of their latest ploys. They're also trying to get rid of the Unbundled Network Elements that let their competitors offer local service in the first place. They're fighting tooth and nail against any competition at all.
What sickens me the most is how SBC uses the cloud of smoke to its advantage. In blazenly pays for commercials to be aired which says how they support competition in the telephone industry and they're working towards it. At the exact same time they're active sabotaging it. Remember that unfriendly, uncooperative monopoly of ten years ago? Same people. Never think for a moment that they are working in your interest. They are NOT.
In my mind, this is all an anachronism - you have cable-TV, phone and electric wiring going out to every household in pretty much all of the civilized world these days. Is it just me, or doesn't this strike you as being two companies in the wire business too many?
;-)
In many places in the world, you can today choose your provider of electrons to power your gadgets, but you typically have a lot less options when it comes to wires that provide a little more structure to the very same electrons (beyond the 50/60 Hz).
It would seem to me that in the future, we'll see a local "wiring company" that pretty much only provides the wires (electric and data), while power generation, cable-TV, telephony, Internet will all be provided by separate companies. (I hope the last three will actually be rolled into one service, but never mind that.)
I'm personally just waiting for the cell phone providers to wake up and realize that if they were to drop their outrageous charges for air time in the cells covering people's homes (call it the "home area"), then a lot of people would completely give up on the concept of land line phones and opt for just having personal mobile phones.
It would kill the market for cordless phones, though.
BUT... phone companies, like public utilities and most cable companies, are natural monopolies. That is, the initial investment required for buildout is so high that it more or less excludes competitors from building their own infrastructure. Requiring these phone companies to sell the usage of their lines to other companies that provide other services makes perfect sense in my mind. It opens up those services to more competition through the lower financial barrier to entry.
--sdem
I originally had Ameritech (now SBC) DSL installed at both the office and home. 1.5M sDSL @ the office and 768/168K aDSL @ home.
Garbage service and _reliability_. Lasted a month at the office before being replaced with a T1 with another provider.
Kept it at home as it was the _only_ choice in town. Was. Due to ongoing poor service and a sudden speed to 384/128K for no apparent reason -- yet their billing and website for me have is at the already gotten 768K speed.
They asked me if somebody else in the neighborhood recently got DSL. I hung up the phone laughing...
Current trend in this area is 5Ghz wireless with the ISP currently _easily_ giving you 2Mbs/768K bandwidth for the same cost.
This is my _only_ option as I refuse to get a phone line to try and get DSL with another provider. They all say SBC *requires* a POTS line even though I do have my backup/voice ISDN line with them. Not for long -- that's going to ANYBODY else for that service due to their games.
Not to mention I'm in charge of the office lines covering a couple of T1's, PRI's and a few dozen POTS and BRI lines peppered about. All about to be changed to other providers over their DSL games.
Obviously I'm not the only one... How ironic.
They've been calling. They've been mailing letters. SBC has really really tried to get me to switch back from Worldcom ("The Neighborhood") as my local carrier with unmetered long distance... oh... and unmetered "local long distance" in my own area code. Here is their latest attempt to convince me to switch back.
They don't have anything close to what I'm getting now. In fact, SBC just got through dropping the plan I had with them, "Local Plus", which was unlimited "local long distance" (again, calls inside your area code that are long distance) so they've moved even further away from what I want.
I figure they're probably going to harrass me for an eternity or until I switch back. I'm more than happy to them to be spending money to pursue me. I'm tired of giving my money to them.
I have identified only two companies that I have dealt with which I believe actually hate their customers and work against them. The first was TCI, the second was SBC. Even at a state level, we have people working with/against SBC (your PUC... public utilities commission, where they go to make their rate and service changes) to prevent them from completely screwing everyone over. Doesn't that tell you something if your own state is protecting you against this company?
DSL is more suited to people who are content producers...
Substantiate that argument.
I agree with you in sentiment.
Here in San Francisco at mi casa, if you want high speed internet for any kind of reasonable price, you have to get DSL.
If you get DSL, SBC will receive $40 US per month. When DSL was getting started, it was perceived that Pacbell (now SBC) would monopolize it rapidly, b/c they own all the lines. So, they HAVE to allow any ISP to use the line for DSL, provided SBC receives $40/month.
Now, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that SBC will take in 80% of all revenue associated with high speed internet here. No matter who the ISP is.
What is worse, you can't get rid of the land line. SBC claims the $40/month is only supplemental to phone service (which is, ironically, less expensive for line charges than DSL). So unless you spend at least $25 or so per month for minimal phone service, and $40 for the DSL line, you can't get a line for DSL. Add another $10 for minimal PPPoE ISP service, and you are pretty close to an $80 monthly bill.
Now, you might think cable is cheaper, but the AT&T cable internet offered in town is between $40 and $50 per month. If you don't pay for cable also, it costs $60/month (they cannot turn off basic cable if you get cable high speed internet - so you pay for minimal cable whether you want it or not).
My house can't even get the cable. I am thinking seriously about colluding with my neighbors to have 4-5 houses using my DSL line.
This is all a deck of cards that should come crashing down mightily if someone gets set up to offer wireless internet in town in any sort of reasonable fashion.
The whole argument revolves around how DSL is defined. To most of us Slashdotters (and consumers in general), we see DSL as a seperate entity from local phone service. This probably stems from dial-up being seperate from the local phone service. However, one can make the argument (and it seems SBC has) that DSL is a service add-on, therefore cannot by transferred when you switch local carriers. So, think of it as Caller ID... you lose caller id if you switch to a carrier that doesn't offere caller ID. The technology is there for SBC to still offer caller id to you, but, you don't have their local service anymore.
I think my principles are reachin' an all time low
The washington think-tank CATO held a conference on 11/14 called "Telecom and Broadband Policy After the Market Meltdown" where they invited industry analysts to debate the effectiveness of industry and government to solve the complete fuck-up that is home broadband in our time.
here's the link to the page, scroll down for the four-part, two-day real-video webcasts. put yourself in the know.In Japan you can get DSL without voice service which will save you about 600-700 dollars in the "line rights."
The phone company is happy to provide the copper line for you (or activate your current voice line into a DSL only line) because they get their share of "carry-DSL-fee" (about 20 dollars a month) regardless. ISPs (you pick one) who actually provide you with the DSL service charges around 30 dollars for between 8Mbit-12Mbit service.
I heard that CA is the only place that can't do the no-voice line thing, though; but don't quote me on this one.
My life in the land of the rising sun.
My own personal SF Bay Area DSL horror story:
I went with Earthlink, who (in my area) gets their DSL service through Covad.
I had fine service for a long time. Then, one day, it stopped working. Completely. Dead line.
After many calls in to Earthlink, I finally got them to escalate it to the network level (and then, to Covad). I get a phone message saying "my problem has been fixed." It isn't fixed. It hasn't changed at all. Repeat process.
Eventually I am told that my line tests to the same levels it was at when Covad first turned it up. In other words, there's nothing wrong. Earthlink would not roll a truck to see what was wrong -- it wasn't worth the expense to them. When I asked what I should do -- "Do I cancel my Earthlink and get cable?" -- they said that, yes, that was an option, or I could investigate their satellite service. BTW, because I had been a customer for so long (over a year), there would "of course" be no cancellation charge on my "service."
I was about to go completely fscking ballistic when one guy at the Earthlink NOC made a little suggestion. I decided to take his advice.
I took my DSL modem out to my demarc box in the side yard with an extension cord and a "red box" cable (basically, a phone cable with the red and green pair stripped and attached to alligator clips). I plugged the modem into each pair at the box and cycled the power, until I got a circuit that looped up. Sure enough, my DSL line was, in fact, active.
What was the trouble? The wires had been cut.
I'm not kidding here -- the ends of the red and green wires were absolutely clean, and they were about an inch shorter than the other wires in the cable. It was quite plain that somebody had snipped them. I pulled out a wire tool, stripped the ends, tied them down to the pair I traced back to my DSL jack, went back into the house, and plugged in the DSL. Voila! It looped up right away. I "dialed out" with my PPPoE username/password, and I was online again at full speed, as if nothing had ever happened.
Thinking about this, I realized that my DSL outage had coincided with my new upstairs neighbors moving in. They would have ordered new phones with SBC Pac Bell. A little too much of a fscking coincidence for my likes.
I asked a few people about it, and a couple of them told me they'd heard the same thing: SBC techs don't like seeing Covad lines in the field, and they're fond of disabling them -- apparently, to achieve the same results I got (Covad, Earthlink, or whomever else telling the customer that they'd have to switch service.)
Of course, this is all hearsay (from me to you).
Breakfast served all day!
The government already paid for the laying of those lines. So, I imagine, the government should have a say.
Don't like it? Tough tits, that's capitalism. He who has the bucks gets the rights.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
You shouldn't, and I'm piss off about paying for a land line that I never use. I pay $40/month for my cell phone, with free long distance and (US, where there is service) roaming. I then pay $30/month for a measured line land line phone (Pay per minute, a normal unlimited local calls line would be $45/month) plus $50/month for my 720k DSL line (I could go to the slower 256k DSL and save $10/month).
I'm mad, I wrote the local PUC and they said "We are sorry, but we have no interest in helping you". I'm waiting for something else to come along that will work.