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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.
hahahaha dsl sucks and so do you hahahahaha
Slashdot is so censored and can be soooooo stupid. Modifiers are a fucking joke. Your not funny dude. Suck my dick if you disagree !
The half a million that were layed off from SBC BECAUSE of these rules don't count as tech workers?
It drives me nuts that people never look at what these rules of forcing a company to sell at BELOW cost does to a company.
I mean hell if they were allowed to sell DSL AT COST you people would still throw a shit fit because DSL lines ARE EXPENSIVE!
Let them run their own fiber. Just don't expect it to work with anything else. *roll eyes* Do some BASIC research into the damage you people have done to the phone companies since DSL came out. By going to third party DSL providers who buy DSL from the phone companies at below cost you have forced them to constantly lay off and put off any form of DSL expansion because not only is it not proffitable IT COSTS THEM MORE.
And idiots wonder why DSL isn't available across the country yet.
This ruling is extra notable because Powell, the FCC Chairman, publicly disagrees [yahoo.com] with their decision: "An FCC chairman has not dissented from a high-profile FCC ruling for roughly 15 years." Powell was a very strong proponent for deregulation, and it seems this time around, state regulators and Bell want the status quo.
Keep in mind though, powell wanted to deregulate it even more, as in no line sharing discounts for anyone. As it is, this change only fucks DSL competitiors. If powell had his way, they would've fucked local telco competitors too (which actually do exist in many markets now). Powell is Colon's son, btw (I wonder if that whole family is evil oreo motherfuckers?).
The "local" competitors that this change doesn't fuck over, though, are largly made up of big corporations anyway. MCI, att, etc, all offer local phone service in my area now. And PacBell (now SBC), who has been our longtime local carrier, is offering long distance too. It's all very strange.
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The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason. --Ben Franklin
take their money and don't provide service. It works for SBC/Verizon...