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FCC Abandons Linesharing, Kills DSL Competition
raygundan writes "According to Reuters, the FCC today decided to greatly curtail the laws that force incumbent phone companies to share their lines with their competition at cost. This does not bode well for companies like Covad Communications who provide DSL using phone lines to bridge their data networks over the "last mile" to customers. The new rules do force line sharing as long as companies are willing to offer voice service, but this essentially states that if you are not already a phone company, you cannot offer DSL. The existing rules will be phased out over three years. There is still some hope, however, that a federal court might strike down the FCC ruling. Oddly, the news agencies seem to be reporting this as a minor change to the rules, rather than an end to all non-ILEC competition in DSL." The FCC's front page has links (luckily PDFs as well as Microsoft Word files) about the decision, including statements from each of the commissioners.
I don't know all the details for sure, but the two folks I know at Covad are saying that it can't be VOIP or VoDSL, it has to be traditional voice service. The way the FCC's crack-addled thinking goes is something along the lines of "why should Covad be allowed to sell only the GOOD half of the phone line? let's force them to pay for the crappy half, too!"
Never mind that the crappy half is already strung to every house everywhere, and the running redundant phone wires is both wasteful and counterproductive.
ATTBI is raising it's prices because it's no longer AT&T, it's now Comcast. I had comcast where I used to live, get ready for worse service for more money....
Blessed are the pessimists, for they have made backups.
If I laid out a serious amount of money to establish COs and copper to (nearly) every house in the United States, I'd be a little pissed at the government for making me open it up to people who are offering competing services.
Technically, the Bells really should be able to lay down the law when it comes to who access their cables. I mean, it's their cables.
I'm all for competition, but this is kind of an awkward situation.
The point you're missing is that the Bells, unlike say McDonald's being forced to let Burger King use their extra grills, have a monopoly in the last-mile telecom arena. What's more, it's a government-sponsored monopoly. That means that the Bells have, as a condition of their monopoly, certain restrictions and responsiblities that other industries don't.
The Bells can stifle any sort of telecom competition simply because they DO control the wires going into your house. Thus, the only way to ensure any sort of telecom competition is to force the Bells, as a condition of their maintaining their utility/monopoly status, to open their networks to competitors at reasonable prices.
Requiring companies to lease their lines at cost is *REGULATION*, not deregulation.
Deregulation is letting those who own their lines lease them at the prices they want to, or not at all. See any regulations there?
Exactly.
Best example is the California power system "deregulation" that caused all those blackouts - what was billed as "deregulation" wasn't deregulation at all - just a different set of regulations that turned out to be much, much worse than the old set.
Point of the matter is you should not trust anyone's opinion on what deregulation will do if they do not even know what deregulation is in the first place.
paintball
I'm sick of re-re-re-posting the exact same thing in response to comments like this, but here's one more go at it:
1. The CLECs pay the ILECs the same for the lines as the ILECs pay themselves, unless local governments change it. In that case, it is stupid. Fair is fair.
2. Those lines are build on public land with tax money. The ILECs are not the only party with money invested there-- you and I paid for that stuff, too.
3. Do you remember there being any DSL BEFORE they were forced to open their lines in 1996? No? Thought so. Remember ISDN and $1500 T1 Lines? DSL is an old tech that could have been deployed back then. Why didn't they? Because with no competition, there was no incentive to upgrade OR lower prices. The fact that we have DSL at all is a direct result of the competition jump-start that act gave the market.
The government may not own it outright, but if the government's going to use my money and public land to benefit the ILECs, I think it's close enough. If you think sinking government money into a private company in return for nothing is a good idea, well, that's bullshit too, junior.