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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.
What you all must realize is that the ILEC's have been given HUGE tax relief on behalf of the federal government in exchange for their responsibility to deploy and upgrade next generation networks. Theoreticly, the last mile option these ILEC's are fighting for are owned by US taxpayers. There has been much relief and many writeoffs done by ILECs for years on this infrastructure, however they have neglected to fullfill their promises in a timely manner.
/early 90's. It wasnt until deregulation in 1996 that we started to see DSL.
You must realize that before deregulation, the telco's were selling us $1,500/month T1's and per-minute ISDN service. DSL technology is old and could have been deployed in the
Wait five years from now after deregulation occurs and we are still paying $50/month for 1.5Mbps ADSL when the rest of the world will have fiber strung to their doorsteps. The Bells have a history of stagnation and emtpy promises, thats why the telco act of 96 was created in the first place.
In Canada the local phone company basically has a monopoly over the last mile, and we're known to have some of the best DSL and Cable internet access available in the world.
The problem isn't lack of competition, quite the opposite, more competition means more companies each with redundant staff and bureaucracies. The solution is to actually have the FCC mandate service quality. DSL service sucks down there because the phone companies are free to do whatever the hell they please.
If you had a government regulating body which looked out for the best interest of the consumer and dictated that the Bells must meet these service levels for customers things would be rosey.
But ooooh no, regulation is bad for business. BS! In natural monopolies like this it's the only way to go. You simply TELL the company they must provide quality service, no excuses.
Until this happens we're going to continue to see the weekly story on slashdot of people whining that their DSL is too slow or they can't get service.
I love it when people who don't understand the history of the present situation try to act like they know something.
:)
Finally the bells can use their *property* without subsidising their competitors.
Property that was paid for via a government protected, anticompetitive monopoly with tariffed rates that kept costs high and federal laws that prevented competition. Line sharing simply recognized the reality of how those lines were paid for and how the law kept others from competing. We payed artificially high prices for decades to finance that property with the stated purpose of developing a public infrastructure...not as an act of "corporate welfare" for the Bell system.
This will be a good thing in the long term 3-5 years.
No better than what happened when the cable companies kept increasing rates and not improving service when THEY didn't have any competition. Think about how bad the cable is now...even WITH the competition from satellite services. With most consumers having only one, perhaps two broadband options left to them you can expect the costs to rise, bandwidth to get metered, and content to be prioritized via PPPoE. Fewer choices is NOT a good thing. Don't believe me? Ask any economist. And note that the non-Bell ISPs *consistently* beat the service ratings of Bell ISPs...see Broadband Reports.
As for comparing us to South Korea...? Do you really think our situation in the U.S. is even remotely similar to that of South Korea???
With previous rules there was no incentive to upgrade their systems because then their competitors would be able to use it too. Now we can have: cable, phone, satelite, wireless, and (perhaps) power line all competing.
With the previous rules the Bells simply followed the strategy of deliberately keeping their equipment primitive and broken to block competition long enough to put them out of business. They knew they were the choke point for the CLECs, and that if they could deny them revenue long enough they could put them out of business. And with most of the CLECs the strategy worked...most of the CLECs went under. Here in California Pacific Bell/SBC had a whole host of tricks to make it difficult for CLECs like Covad to get wire pairs for DSL installs...but remarkably had no problem at all when it came to handing out those same pairs to companies installing home alarms.
This is a good thing even if it is not the socialist position.
Drop the stupid rhetoric. The old, regulated Bell system was clearly more like socialism than what we have now. The US government protected them from competition for the better part of a century to allow them to build up their infrastructure. Ensuring competition by allowing competing providers to use the existing infrastructure just makes sense. Would you require each trucking company to build its own highway to transport your frozen chickens to market?