Slashdot Mirror
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.
It's times like this I thank GOD I'm a a secret agent man.
Erm, I mean, a Canadian.
I'll start dusting more places on the bench off
for the inevitable flood of layed off tech
workers.
The most important thing any republican needs to know.
What else is for sale?
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
Bottom line is if they do this they'll have a Jolt crazed tech geek attacking their office with a Nerf(tm) crotch bat. I need my Speakeasy DSL service.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
It is all done over the phonelines, but there many many DSL companies competing (although only a few get mainstream attention). The competition gives the 'hardcore' internet users much choice, but in the end the DSL network is all owned by BT.
ok, so what did line-sharing do for me anyway? I am in, what I consider to be, a large suburb of Minneapolis. We have about 60k people. I was unable to get QWest DSL b/c I am over 8 miles from the CO (don't ask me how).
My two other options were (ATTBI which is now over $60 w/o CATV, or IDSL through IIRC Covad for $90).
So what did it do for me? Nothing. I am still stuck with a service I am not entirely pleased with (the speeds are fine, it's the price increases and the conversion to Comcast that I am not happy about).
If I understand correctly, all Covad (or whoever) would have to do is offer voice and it wouldn't be a problem. Surely they could slap together some kind of VoIP thing and offer it to their DSL customers, then BellSouth would still have to share.
Hey kids, there's only 5 days left 'til Yak Shaving Day!
This ruling is extra notable because Powell, the FCC Chairman, publicly disagrees 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.
Let's see: Qwest won't service my line for DSL, but Covad does. That's the only broadband I can get. Guess I'm screwed.
The phone companies have been pushing for this for a while - it means they don't have to share and can basically charge what they want. I've heard rumors that some phone companies have been holding subscribers "hostage" to try to force the FCC to change the laws - they're refusing to upgrade their networks until they can be assured that they'll be the only ones to profit.
It's time for the phone company monopoly to end - it's obviously not working for the interest of the consumer.
Kiss it goodbye and place a call for a cable modem. With this ruling, the owners of the lines (the Baby Bell's) do not HAVE to lease their line's to any other companies. Thus removing the thing that STARTED the proliferation of DSL in the first place, and eliminating any competition to the Telecoms. You want DSL, get it through a Baby Bell. No other options.
This of course means that DSL can have the same restrictions put on it that cable does (no incoming requests, no servers, no static ips), which I'm sure will benefit "fighting terrorism", 'cuz we all know that terrorists run their own web servers from home via DSL.
*sigh* Anyone in the Michigan area want to share-lease a T1?
El riesgo vive siempre!
Where I live, I am 150 yrds from a box containing DSL equipment. I have thus far been unable to use it because SBC refuses to power it up as long as they are forced to resell service to other companies. Maybe now, they will turn it on and allow me to get decent broadband service. While it is bad for competitors, I *the consumer* will probably be able to get DSL now.
Then fuck the FCC! I hereby call upon all slashdotters to boycott those worthless...wait a minute...oh shit...
--
"God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh." -Voltaire
Perhaps because the Bell's infrastructure was paid for by the public, not by the Bells?
Black and grey are both shades of white.
Basically, the Big Phone companies have fabricated the argument that they're getting their clock cleaned by the Cable TV companies, and that regulations are stifling their ability to compete with CATV companies.
Cable modems currently dominate in market share.
Basically, they say, "There won't be any competition in broadband access because we can't compete with Big CableTV".
This is a joke, unfortunately, many people see it their way.
The thinking is... "We don't have enough time to do what is right, we just want to make sure we at least get an Oligopoly out of this."
The whole thing is a joke, and I'm actaully kind of happy that Cable will rule the day. I consider them the lesser of two evils. Also, I like the way cable franchises are granted much better than the original consent decree that split up AT&T.
The little companies get hurt. Ma Bell is just too powerful, end of discussion.
AT&T ought to hold onto their cable a little longer. But, they've got just too much debt.
Too bad.
From the article:
The Federal Communications Commission on Thursday voted to exempt new high-speed communications networks from requirements that they be shared with competitors, a move aimed at encouraging investment in bringing fast Internet access to consumers.
Right. Big time investment. Just around the corner. We just need to know it won't all get snapped up by our competition. But we're planning. Yes we are. Big Time Investment. Promise. Even though the economy's in the crapper. Investment. In the future. Of the internet. For Consumers. Investment.
Horseshit!
This is such complete and total doublespeak. Every telecom network in this country was built with public assistence. That's the way to "encourage investment." This is simply a move to allow the established Bells (and neo-bells, like SBC) reap more profit off of existing (publicly subsidised) infrastructure.
Where am I going, and how did I get in this handbasket!
Howard Dean for president
When I was a small business systems consultant I frequently encountered a problem with SMTP. The DSL lines for a certain baby bell would not pass outgoing email if the "from:" field did not contain the approved domain. I likened it to the post office refusing to deliver mail that was placed in a box with a return address not on the block where the box resides.
If these companies can lock down these networks, then average users (those not interested/willing to manipulate email fields) are going to be "forced" to use the email domain of the provider as a return address. This provides these baby bell ISP's with a MSoft-ish method for bullying users into using their products (as opposed to just competing on the basis of quality).
This is anti-competitive, un-American and anti-capitalist.
The best way to do is to be.
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.
.. oh .. a year. When phone companies jack their DSL rates, and the competition gets locked out of the copper ... guess who they're going to turn to?
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.
On the other hand -- all ya'll who are hot to trot with wireless Internet access: hop on the venture capital wagon, and start your roll out in about
I've been puzzling over something, lately. If AT&T was such a terrible beast that it needed to be broken up into (what, 11?) baby-bells, how is it acceptable that these things are pulling a T2, gathering themselves together so only 3 baby bells exist? Seems the whole anti-competitive issue begins there, not with the FCC yanking the rug out from under non-bell DSL providers.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Yes I work for a Non-Bell ILEC and frankly why should "my" infrastructure be used for someone elses profit. I wouldn't like it if Bell tried to bully their way into one of our markets, why should I be allowed to steal from them.
Yeah, the problem is though that the government subsidized the creation of Bell's infrastructure in the first place.
From a linked Yahoo article: "Essentially, the majority of the FCC opposed the deregulation plan set forth by agency chairman Michael Powell."
Excuse my ignorance (I'm Canadian), but if the majority of the FCC is opposing it, how did the plan get decided upon?
DId you read the FCC desicion? I guess not, because on the FIRST PAGE of powell's DISSENT, he disagrees with the ending of line sharing. Next time, RTFA(read the fsck artical)
/sarcasm on
/sarcasm off
Dammit, thats so unfair. The government should force companies to sell their property to other companies at cheap rates. Why should companies benefit from investing in infrastructure? The big companies should just buy lines for other small companies to use for free because they have more money. Damn capitalist pigs.
Seriously? Anyone here believe in private property? I mean, would it be fair to for the government to force you to fix your relatives computers whenever they wanted because you have more knowledge then them? Or you to lone your car to the homeless guy down the street because you have more resources then them? I mean, if you want to, then sure. But to force you??
The government should Nationalize the lines that run from the central office to homes, and rent those lines out to anyone for cost of maintenance.
Too bad most consumers are so scared of socialism, even though it has a place in situations like this. Ironic, that socialism could give us a truely free market.
The lines run through public property. They cross millions of private property boundries. They should be a public resource.
Then the Phone Companies could compete on products and service. And the Baby Bells would probably all go under in less than a year after exposing their actual incompetance in a suddenly open market.
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.
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.
ILECs have not been forced to share their lines at cost. That is a myth invented by the baby Bells to convince lawmakers that linesharing makes them lose money. Actually what the 1996 Telecom Act says is that they have to rent their lines to outside customers and they must charge everybody the same rate, including internal customers.
A popular stunt among the ILECs is to rent lines to their own internet divisions at way below cost, thus making their internet business seem more profitable than it is. The 1996 Telecom Act just evens the playing field in that respect and prevents the Bells from using their local loop monopoly to prop up other corporate divisions.
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.
This is actually not as bad as it sounds when you consider that FCC Chairman Michael Powell *spit* wanted to completely sweep away ALL the regulations that require the ILECs to share lines. His proposal was defeated with respect to local phone service because Republican commissioner Kevin J. Martin jumped the fence and sided with the Democrats. So while this may suck for Covad, Speakeasy, etc., at least it won't totally eliminate DSL competition for now.
Probably both sides are going to be unhappy about this. Expect this battle to go to the courts next.
This article has more good info.
Never approach a vast undertaking with a half-vast plan.
I gave up DSL and got a T-1 a little over a year ago. $400/month and I share it (and the cost) with my neighbors (802.11b). All the IP's I want (within reason) and it has never once gone down. Money well spent.
My understanding is that Bell has X cost invested in a mile of copper, but they had to lease at Y cost to Covad, actually losing money in the process.
09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0
Finally the bells can use their *property*
Who bought the initial infrastructure? Was it entirely Bell's investment, or did the local governments pitch in some funds as well?
Will I retire or break 10K?
If it's just the cost of maintaining the line, then where's the incentive to put in new lines and roll out new services?
Best Slashdot Co
So the phone companies have monopolies on the wires running to your house, and you have no alternative but to use them... Exactly whose fault is it?
* The phone companies who own the wires running to your location?
* The local governments, who regulate how many wires can be put up, and extort plenty of cash from anyone who wishes to emplace new ones?
* The state governments, who already charge heavy tariffs on current communications methods (hey, it's a monopoly, we can milk it as much as we want), and also put more tariffs and more barriers on newcomers to the business?
* The federal government, which severely limits anyone who wants to try a wireless solution?
And now, there is STILL no incentive for them to upgrade their networks, since they roughly match the performance of cable modems. What they gain is freedom from direct competition. The only thing holding their prices down at all now is the cable companies. And the cable companies already creep their price up every few months.
Is it "socialist" to ask for fair access and competition on lines my tax dollars helped pay for? The ONLY portion of the network Covad uses is the high-frequency part of the local loop. They have their own data backbones and switches. All they want is a way to connect that to your house, on a part of the phone line (which you already pay the phone company for) that they are not using unless you already have DSL. And they have to pay the same amount the phone companies charge their own DSL divisions for each line.
Maybe it's retaliation against the growth of VoIP, and the fact that regulation of it is still pending (if not shot down already).
Hey, that's an idea! Demonstrate VoIP for the dingbats at the FCC, to reinforce the idea that any ISP (owner of the lines or not) can do voice service!
All I want is a kind word, a warm bed and unlimited power.
I signed up for USWest's DSL service. They were extremely prompt about installing everything so they could start collecting money from me.
After it was up and running, I called USWest and changed ISP's. They had no wiggle-room for fucking up the line, since it had obviously been working fine for the two months that USWest was my ISP.
I reccomend this tactic highly.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Oh sure, let's all get 20 companies to lay their own pipes. Make sure they all work in your street. Oh all the tarmac-and-dirt-flinging-fun that would be caused.
The real big problem with broadband is that you can't know whether you are allowed to have it until you try to get it. This has kept me from moving! I would rather stay in my apartment where I have 1.2 megabit dsl, static routing, etc., (costs $109/mo from the ISP + $65/mo from Qwest!), than to try to move without knowing in advance whether I can get the same service. The telco would expect me to move first, close a real estate deal, get a phone line and THEN find out whether or not DSL is available.
If I were to try to move, I would have to do two things. 1. Stay at the current address until the deal is setup at the new one, phone line is installed, DSL is working, THEN cancel the old service and move. This will increase the cost of moving substantially. 2. Ensure that the real estate agent or landlord understands that it's a deal-breaker (escrow money is refunded, deposits returned) if it turns out DSL is not available, and that it might be a month after closing before this is discovered. I'd need that explicitly written into the contract, and absolutely clearly understood by everyone involved.
If I'm looking at a piece of real estate, I want to know what utilities are available, as the very first items to evaluate. I want to know if it has running water, electrical service, natural gas, if there's garbage collection, telephone service, cable tv, and, DSL. Since my career depends on the internet access, it's actually on the same list as running water and electricity. And I can actually work around the lack of water and electricity, but if there's no DSL I'm stuck.
So, why can't I find out BEFORE getting involved with a piece of real estate, whether it has this service available? Also, what kind of approach can I take to force the issue? I don't want to sign a contract or a lease without knowing in advance whether I can get DSL, what signal rate it will support, and what providers will offer the service.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
The market was oversupplied because for comparatively little capital outlay any Joe and his brother could form an CLEC and "offer DSL" resold off the ILEC's network as mandated by the FCC.
It's competition, and it's good. Changing the rules like this is nothing more than protectionism for these companies
What the hell is "competitive" about forcing companies to share their networks with some low risk/low capital Johnny-come-lately after they had to risk billions in capital to build their broadband infrastructure?
It's nothing but socialism and government meddling in the private marketplace.
But seriously, we could spend all day blaming one party or the other for this, or we could discuss the merits and problems of this new decision. Particularly interesting, to me, would be a description of the good things accomplished by the existing regulations. I was under the impression that the whole partial-deregulation quagmire was universally perceived as a disaster. Apparently you don't think it was. Why?
Yeah, the problem is though that the government subsidized the creation of Bell's infrastructure in the first place.
Just because the government handed out some money to someone, does that give everyone else the right to share their assets? The government subsidizes farmers, but if I wander onto a farm and pick a few apples, I'll get arrested for theft. Or a better example, I wouldn't be able to walk onto the farm and plant a few sq. yards of my own crop. Or at least I shouldn't be able to.
_______
2B1ASK1
Nope, it's your cable. They built it on public easments with monopoly protection. Keeping others off those lines is about as bogus as keeping others from being able to run their own last mile network, but that seems to be the way it was and is. Now demands have been made that others can use those lines AT COST and offer services that the Bells were unwilling to offer.
I'm hoping that Powel plays this well. As someone else pointed out, he does not agree. This is just the kind of thing that will turn Powel into a houshold word, if he can pull it off.
If he can't, I expect the Bells to start pushing their high priced and highly restrictive service. Woot, I might get to chose between two really lame monoply servers who own the internet.
Screw them. Build your chunk of the wireless mesh today.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
This whole thing could backfire in the long run.
I seriously considered turning off all of my landline services last year. The only thing that stopped me was the announcement that DSL was finally available in my area.
If no competition in the DSL market causes me to turn off my DSL service, I'll likely turn off my landline phone as well, and go strictly cellular.
What we could see happen, with wireless technologies becoming more and more viable, is the elimination of any wired communications to the home.
Eliminate the "last mile" of copper and you eliminate the Baby Bells.
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.
Those lines were heavily subsidized by tax money, and the phone companies have priceless right-of-way for their lines. (Try calling your government and asking if you can put up some poles to run an ethernet cable to your ISP)
It's hardly "private property" when public money built it.
And to top it off, it's not "free," either. The CLECs (like Covad) must pay the phone companies the *same* rates they charge to their own DSL divisions. Covad pays SBC the same as SBC's DSL division pays SBC. And on top of that, SBC (or whoever your ILEC is) gets paid for the damn phone line in the first place.
So, they get paid for the line, AND paid AGAIN for the line by Covad, AND tax money, tax breaks, government assistance, and right-of-way to build the lines in the first place, and you think that keeping the lines open for competition isn't fair?
Screw that.
The phone company will start gouging and the wireless networks will really start to grow...
Got Code?
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
Why is it "lucky" that they provide PDF's as well as Microsoft Word files? What office suite do you use? I use OpenOffice and it opens Microsoft Word documents just fine for me. Perhaps your experience has differed. Or maybe it was just another one of the snide jabs at Microsoft that is all too common in the story headlines on slashdot.
-Matt
Duke '05
When I moved into my new place last May, I was able to determine availability of DSL with a little bit of detective work. The problem is that everything on the phone company's end is linked to a telephone number, not necessarily an address. :)
I found out the phone number of the guys living in the place at the time and checked online for availability using their phone number and address, and was able to find out that BellSouth offered DSL in that area and Covad didn't.
However, if you don't have a phone number for the place, odds are bad that you can find out what local loop it's on and thus whether that loop has DSL.
If the phone companies really maintained an exacting database of addresses corresponding to local loops, it would be simple, but their systems tend to be so patchwork and arbitrary that they don't. Plus, they probably never needed to know this before. All local loops are roughly equal for voice.
While technically feasible, the concept of line sharing IS stupid. The physical infrastructure is the monopoly issue, and should be treated as such: DSL service providers should be leasing the physical copper wires (to the extend that they are physical copper wires, anyway) from the customer to the CO.
I don't want POTS on my DSL line! I have no need for POTS! My cell phone is my primary phone number.
The market should embrace novelty, and if the cost of doing that is a second pair of wires to your home to accommodate POTS, so be it! (With the important market caveat that other people must feel the same way...) Splitting hairs over the incramental cost for DSL above POTS service is not productive.
Make the 3rd parties offer "full service" for them thar copper wires!
/reality on
/reality off
Most of the lines that are being leased were paid for by the public by means of government subsidies to the Bell(s). Not only were they subsidized by the public, but they have been paid for many times over; so they aren't losing any money. And they are definitely NOT private property. Even so, the CLECs ARE paying for the use of the lines (and the lower cost is not any lower than what the ILECs pay).
Covad has an enormous network of hardware and cable, they are only needing the last mile of wire to the home. Now they can no longer lease that small segment of the line that's ALREADY there.
Now, there was some sort of provision for new networks that were deployed to newly developed communities, and I can see the Bells being a bit ticked off about that...
"The Bells also won't have to let rivals lease access to new fiber lines that they lay down to connect new housing developments or businesses. Even that decision, however, is bound to cause confusion in cases in which portions of the Bells' networks are composed of both copper and fiber."
but that is only an issue with them selling their new network to phone carriers since Covad uses their own equipment and is just leasing a section of the line (as opposed to the CLECs phone guys who lease every bit of the line and the hardware that connects it).
Powell actually wanted full deregulation EXCEPT in the DSL market. What happened was the opposite. While this will help keep phone costs down, there's no reason at all that this will help lower DSL costs (it might, however, help DSL availability since the Bells have more incentive to offer it).
The other big issue is what is the point of having multiple phone lines going to the same building? Powell said ending the leasing of lines would encourage AT&T et.al. to run their own lines to offer competitive service. Does he realize how expensive AND wasteful that is?
IANAL, but I play one on
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?
This regulation of forcing the baby bells to share their networks at cost is killing the large telecom companies. You know, the ones that laid the fiber in the first place, invested all that money, and employ many more people.
These "virtual" phone companies that ride the carriers _at_cost_ have been largely responsible for part of the telecom bust. It's the same model as Enron. Selling things that you don't actually own or maintain. If something goes wrong, you have to pay the carrier $$$ to get it fixed.
A few months ago slashdot was bitching about why cable was clobbering DSL and was taking over broadband, and there would be no more competition. Do you want to know why? The reason is that SBC (in my area of the country) is forced to give up their lines ANY TIME SOMEONE WANTS TO USE THEM, for free (at cost, but that bandwith is lost to SBC).
If you want real broadband competition you cannot cripple the companies doing the investment into the network of DSL.
Cable companies do not have to share their lines. The telecom deregulation act did some good, some bad. (We got worldcom and a bust, but attributing everything to that is not the best idea.)
I get long distance for 5cents a minute, and may soon switch to MCI for unlimited local and long distance calling.
Don't whine about access to a network you never built!
Suppose I live close enough to the CO to get DSL in the first place. Could I rent a bare copper line (the "alarm" scheme) to the CO and have them tie that into my preferred ISP's DSLAM?
The SCO lawsuit makes me wish my company were in Utah. We need a new building.
Sorry, but ALGX (Allegience Telecom) is a joke. Their internet services go down at least once a week, apparently due to mis-configured routers. We had them as our ISP (dual T1's) here at work for about 2 years, and just got fed up with the lousy service. We've since switched to another provider and haven't had any downtime whatsoever.
Their tech support is a joke as well. Call them and ask them why your internet is down.. they'll tell you they "are working on it, ETA unknown."
Not All Who Wander Are Lost
See what happens when you take state governments out of the loop? I swear, repealing the Seventeenth Amendment just keeps on seeming like a better and better idea...
The government only subsidized the building of phone networks in the 1930s as part of the "New Deal" to get phone lines and electricity to the rural areas. Everything to that point was built by private investment.
There has never been a spending bill or investment like that since.
I honestly dont know where you get this:
Yeah, the problem is though that the government subsidized the creation of Bell's infrastructure in the first place.
because it's just not true. This parent should be modded wayyy down. Right of way is purchased, not given freely. The government did not subsidize, at least not in the scale you and so many other slashdot posters seem to believe.
As if your company PAYED for the bloody lines in the first place !!!!!! NO I THINK NOT. They got HUGE government subsidies, and enormous amounts of tax dollars in the way of "recovery" surcharges, not to mention the government arranged, read forced the right of ways needed using emminent domain, and THEN PAYED for the Fair Market Value of the access property. All the Bells have EVER HAD to do was maintain the lines and grow FAT on the profit, and they can't even do that.
"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!"
NOT, they are just bloody existing copper lines. If a responsible entity had DONE ANY sort of decent upkeep over the last 40 years, there would be no issue, but instead they sucked up the profit, blew it on useless expansions in areas that were NOT their field, now they want us to pay for their mistakes...I say we nationalize the infrastructure, it is after all a BUSINESS REQUIRMENT these days, and then appoint someone to operate it and let the bells become tenants just like everyone else.
Note, I don't mean this as a personal attack, it just sounds like you are leaping to the defense of your employer....Archfeld
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
You guys fail to realize that municipalities control exactly what wire, where, and when flows over their easements. Most municipalities have already decided that only one cable company may run wires in the community, and only one telephone company can run wires. All others are screwed, the best the municipality will do is let others bid when the 99 year telephone services contract is up in the city before they renew the contract for that lucky one company to run the wires. So there is NO chance any other company can come along and run their own wires/cable. In this scenario, therefore, there is no way to have a choice because the municipality decided who the monopoly is for you.
If you really want competition and still preserve the 'you run your own cable, you're the only one who gets to use it' mentality, then get the federal government to superscede local municipalities authority to limit who can run wires, and make the easements available to all. Until then, linesharing is all there is to keep competition.
I would like to thank Chairman Powell, who discented to the majority opinion with rather strong language. If you read the opinions from all five commissioners it becomes obvious that Powell is the only one with a seat on the clue train. Commissioner Adelstein spends most of the brief talking about how late they all stayed up, and how this was his first decision as a new Commissioner, rather than the merits of the Mojority Opinion.
Powell suggests that the Majority Opinion is in dire legal peril since it is almost exactly like the previous telco rulemaking proposal which was swatted down by the supreme court. For them to pass the same, obviously flawed, argument all over again is idiotic.
Powell must be saying to himself: "I am surrounded by fools and peasants."
Since now the DSL vendors have to string something for the last mile, how about fiber? They can use the extra bandwidth to outsell the monopoly telcos by providing higher bandwidth Internet service, digital phone service and video on demand. Since they don't have to worry about carrying the overhead for the obsolete stuff, the cost of doing this can be quite reasonable. Using VOIP for the phone service they could offer services that the POTS telcos could not! Use the video on demand to sell the Internet portion. Since there is plenty of bandwidth, provide a complete package to tie in multiple computers, multiple TVs, multiple phones and wireless. Since they are no longer telcos (as defined by the FCC rules) they don't have to worry about the regulations.
If the DSL providers compete on a different level they can win this. This decision was a result of the FCC being bought by the telcos. Plain and simple.
Quit playing Monopoly with Bill.
Linux - of the people, by the people, and for the people.
Right now the Phone company must provide lines to the independents for super discounted rates - and they still have to maintain them. I have heard from employees that upgrades to the network have been held off because they didn't want to offer it to the competitors but they are forced to by law. Hopefully we will see cheaper DSL and more coverage by this.
The first Baby Bell breakup had everything to do with deregulating long distance, and that did wonders for the American consumer.
However, with the modern approaches to communication, the Baby Bells need to be broken up in another way I have not yet seen mentioned:
Separate the dial provider from the infrastructure provider.
Check this out: You RBOCs would be split into two separate entities, your dialtone providers, and your cable-line providers.
Unfortunately, the infrastructure generally lends itself to a natural monopoly, similar to electrical service...but in most places, we can choose our energy provider...but still need to pay the distributor.
This could work well with phone service. Once company would own and maintain the infrastructure, and provide the physical path for anyone who make service available on it. Then the costs of the line would have to be paid by the service providers you choose, be it Covad, Verizon, or AT&T.
It would be nice then, because any companies could provide competing service if they all have to cover essentially the same wireline costs to reach the consumer. However, if the bells get to keep the whole ball of wax, then there'll never be any good service.
I've got my Covad IDSL line because I have no restrictions on what I can do with it...and I have a block of IPs. Compare that to the "business-class" Verizon DSL and cable modem service, and I get one IP...no routable netblock...and a ton of service restrictions (i.e. no servers).
In short, unless the physical plant is made into a separate operating company, we will never truly have competition for telephone service.
// Agent Green (Ian / IU7 / KB1JQO)
// IEEE 802.3: All 10base Are Belong To Us
I commented on this in a post previously regarding telecommunications. But I can't remember what the topic was and I'm too laszy to search.
Basically, and this is only my opinion, of course, but the only real solution that I see is to remove services from infrastructure. Let a single recognized monopoly exist that does one thing: owns the copper. Thats it, nothing more, and never allowed to provide service.
Then bill access out to any and all comers from Sprint and AT&T to Billy-Jim's Telephone and Crab Shack to provide the actual voice and/or data. If there is ever a new technology that needs to roll out, let the cost of the system be shared between the infrastructure company and those service companies that see themselves as providers of that service.
But that is an even more drastic change to the telecommunications industry than was the Bell breakup.
It would be nice, but so much for my well-supported Earthlink/Covad DSL...
What?
In some sense, I think this was inevitable. When one company is responsible for the infrastructure and is required to allow other companies to use that infrastructure to compete with it, it's too easy to make an argument that that's not a fair situation. That argument is incorrect in this case (see various posts above), but that's not the point. The point is that sooner or later, the local telcos were going to muscle out the competing ISPs.
So what happens now? Once the rules get fully phased in, the rates will rise as the telcos milk their monopolies on internet service. At some point, someone will complain, the government will step in, and internet service will become a regulated monopoly.
In the end, I don't think that'll be a bad thing. Local telephone service is a regulated monopoly, and it's been pretty good so far. But it might take awhile to get there.
If you say "I'll probably get modded down for this..." then I will mod you down.
By "That Guy", do you mean Chris Rock or myself? Personally, I kinda like Chris Rock in movies, but I haven't seen much of his stage stuff. Dogma was fun. I'm more of a George Carlin fan for standup comedy, though.
... but that's OK. Only a loser with no life gets two first posts in a row. :)
You're just bitter because you've never got two first posts in a row
OK so here's my thing: Tax money was used to subsidize laying down the copper for the telcos, but wasn't it also used to help the cable companies run cable to my house? In my neighborhood the phone lines and cable tv lines run off the same poles. This reasons that the cable companies should also be forced to allow competition on those lines. (Or maybe not anymore, as in this ruling). Why treat the 2 any differently anymore?
This is why someday wireless is going to be king. Can't wait.
Have you looked at Teletruth's filings which explicitely point out how Verizon specifically got taxpayers to pay for upgrades which haven't even happened, yet are still being paid for? Read the rest of the stuff on that site, too... it's very educational.
Besides, why would you say the ILECs is doing so poorly right now? They're certainly not tanking like some industries, and although the general telecom isn't doing so well, that's also counting in things like the paging market (flying downward) and all the third-party DSL providers.
Yes, they're laying people off... they're also paying huge bonuses to their CEOs.
But I guess the slashdot editors would rather bitch about it in retrospect than do something about it beforehand.
Build stuff. Stuff that walks, stuff that rolls, whatever.
The internet is dangerous to a lot of people. Traditional media companies don't like it because it provides "unwantedly democratic" alternatives to the traditional mass media. It allows free trade of digital media (i.e. P2P), threatening the publishing/retail trusts. Internet radio is nipping (ever so delicately, just now) at the heels of traditional radio. Heck, it even threatens the phone company's monopoly on voice calls (i.e. VoIP, which is growing exponentially).
Clearly it must be stopped.
Their goal is to reduce the ownership of all user-facing internet services to a managably small set of large owners. Coincidentally, these will be the big media and phone companies that are threatened by the internet in the first place. When all the independents and smaller players have been eliminated, and less than a dozen RBOCs and cable operators control all broadband (and thus almost all internet access) in the U.S., they will kill what threatens them by simply raising the price.
Some number of months from now, users will find that their ISP has suddenly renegotiated their deal. The new choices will be cheap but brutally capped broadband that is useless for P2P, streaming media, and VoIP... pay-per-K offerings that ensure these things are prohibitively expensive... and classic, "business class" $1,500+ T1-style service.
Surveillance of users will become not only more pervasive but more standardized, as the Internet trust announces trade groups and landmark deals that support both police and "private" law enforcement efforts.
Of course, in addition to prices going up, this guarantees that investments in new infrastructure (to provide better services) will now entirely cease. Without competition to threaten offering anything better, the bells and cable companies will do what they have always done (before TA96). Absolutely nothing.
Oh, you thought the cable companies and bells would compete with each other? This one really slays me. Why spend billions competing when you can just form a trust and price-fix instead? This is capitalism 101. And when the number of players is that small, it's virtually guaranteed to happen.
I know, I'm a paranoid lunatic. None of this could really happen here, right? I mean, just because it's already happening in Australia, Canada, and England... pure coincidence.
Of course, this tragedy will cause lots of collateral damage. The first victim that comes to mind is the video game industry, which has lots of innovative, "harmless" uses for massive, cheap bandwidth. There are many others as well.
But for all you folks watching in amusement as the big players stumbled trying to crush P2P, VoIP, etc. with lawsuits and bribed-legislation, this is the other shoe dropping.
On the bright side, the market for wireless technology might be looking up... that is, until the FCC turns out to be less than forthcoming with licenses, rules, and considerations necessary to allow wireless broadband alternatives. Watch for it.
Want to Know How to Cheat the GPL? Read On!
Bah, you all just need dedicated unbundled loops and SDSL connections. Line-Shared ADSL? Blah I say. Not to mention this does not effect ILEC provided Line-Shared services (Like Qwest DSL). The ILECs are required to provided these services, and the times coming when they better have it, or pay the price, thanks to that fiasco of a '96 telco act. What does this do? It forces CLEC's to get their acts together. Very few CLEC's that exist do what they were originally intended to do, compete against the incumbents! Compete with, not have the incumbents subsidise their existance... God I love my 1.1mbit SDSL connection, I love my 30-40 ms away from such sites as yahoo and google, my 99.99%+ uptimes. I think my ISP did it right, they are fairly small fish in the world, but they are a PSC regulated, Tier 2, CLEC, that creates it's own private infrastructures (FTTH, FTTB, CTTH) or uses dedicated unbundled loops from the ILEC, are triple-redundant, ds3 and oc3 connections, and all of this where? Montana of all places. Rural broadband? How about a dark fiber loop to your home?
Well how about Wi-Fi? Bridging the last mile with wi-fi sounds like a great way to give the finger to Ma Bell.
Damn I hate that bitch.
There is a group mentioned on slashdot a while ago that has finished work on mesh-AP routing. Locustworld Has also got hardware pre-built, and software to D/L. Ma Bell dosn't want compitition huh? How about no customers as well.
Damn I hate that bitch. A Lot.
Free market disobediance? hmmm.... Sorry if I sound a little crude in this post, but I am so damn mad I could just *censored*!!!
It wasn't government granted monopoly either. Bell & AT&T existed because they were the biggest, and existed long before anti-trust laws.
That's partly right. But the AC had the bulk of it right, too.
Early in the history of telephony -when it was still local - there was competition. And the competing companies refused to interconnect and complete each other's calls. (In particular, Bell, the big gorilla, refused.) So businesses (like hotels, banks, legal firms, newspapers, telegraph offices, and cab companies) had to have phones from two or three companies to be sure all their customers could get to them.
Bell used their own reluctance to aid the competition to convince the government that telephony was a "natural monopoly" and thus needed to be regulated. (At the time gas and water distribution were considered to be "natural monopolies" because it would cost N times as much to install pipes for N companies, so supposedly a monopoly under price regulation could deliver the service for less than the cost of multiple copies of the infrastructure.)
So the regulators set up a system where "franchises" - regional monopolies - were given to various companies. Of course where a local phone company already existed it got the franchise, and where multiple companies existed the big guy typically got it and the little guys had to sell him their equipment (or trade it for equipment in a less-lucrative market they also shared).
If I recall correctly, Bell was the big gorilla at the time because it had had selective access to Bell's patents, another government monopoly. (Bell made it to the patent office a half hour ahead of another inventer with a virtually identical device.) So in the early days Bell had the best equipment and others had to work-around, and once the patents expired Bell was the big kid on the block.
Under regulation the prices were set at levels that guaranteed Bell about a 6% return on investment - and whenever it dropped below that they could petition for and receive a price hike.
(Bell Labs actually existed to spend as much money as possible on research vuagely connected with telephony, because for every dollar spent there Bell could bill customers $1.06. It was the biggest failure of the system, because basic research pays off big. Virtually from the start they made more money licensing Bell Labs inventions than the lab cost.)
As long distance became possible, Bell (who had by then bought out most of the little guys, except for some rural co-ops and small towns wired by the likes of General Telephone) became the regulated monopoly for interconnecting the cities.
Bell continued to be a government-mandated monopoly until a series of court decisions.
First the Carterphone decision led to the "foreign attachments" tariff - and you could stop renting a phone built by Western Electric (Bell's manufacturing subsidary) and hook up one bought from an independent manufacturer. Phones went from a paper cost of hundreds of bux to cheap disposables over a few years.
Then Microwave Communications Inc. (MCI) took advantage of that tariff and inflated long distance charges by setting up their own inter-city microwave hops, renting local lines, and bypassing Bell. Bell sued, MCI counter-sued for antitrust, and the fallout was that not only was MCI (and others) allowed to continue, but Bell was required to let them hook up on the same basis as Bell's own long-distance operation. And to keep Bell from playing accounting games to subsidize unregulated long distance from monopoly local bills, Bell was split up into AT&T (long distance), Lucent (Western Electric & Bell Labs), and a handfull of "Baby Bell" RBOCs (Regional Bell Operating Companies) to continue the monopoly local/short-range long distance service.
Meanwhile, virtually all the local copper was installed by Bell Telephone or the Baby Bells while they were regulated monopolies, with government-mandated monopoly pricing for their service subsidizing the cost. A new competitor in a deregulated local phone business would have to wire a whole city and then pay for it with money made while charging less than the established RBOC, which is sitting on paid-for subsidized copper and can cut prices to the bone. Can't be done.
Eventually the RBOCs were allowed back into the long distance business - at a price. They had to provide DSL service and rent their local copper to upstart competitors at a wholesale price. It seemed like a good idea at the time, because the long-distance service was where the money was. Players there were mostly AT&T, MCI, and SPRINT. (The Southern Pacific Railroad had strung fiber along their right-of-way for their own communication. Fiber has a LOT of bandwidth, so they rented out the surplus bandwidth by becoming a long-distance phone and long-haul data carrier.)
But about the time that deal was cut, several upstart long-distance companies completed THEIR long-haul fiber loops, and the price war started. Suddenly the Baby Bells had no revenue from the shiny new long-distance operations. So they started dragging their feet on the DSL deployment. As for installing more copper to expand their own service and rent to their competitors, it no longer makes ANY sense with the only revenue coming form local service. So they won't do it until the ruling is reversed.
Meanwhile the competitive local phone carriers never really materialized (except for the cable operators, who also had existing copper installed). And the little DSL ISPs - except Covad which re-organized out of bankruptcy, dumping ITS startup costs - are pretty much dead, from their own price war (and from the local Bells' tendency to raise their service costs by screwing up their local copper). So from the regulators' point of view the competitive market they're trying to protect hasn't, and won't appear. Thus the release of the Baby Bells from the wholesale price controls, in the hope they'll start installing more cable.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
WE DON'T NEED TO INVEST IN COPPER NETWORKS
Let's get this straight. Line sharing doesn't create a disincentive to invest, because the network ALREADY exists. Secondly, We need to stop pouring our money in copper networks. Cutting line sharing was the worse thing the FCC could have done for the deployment of broadband. This will effectively kill the competition (Covad), who has played a key role in deploying broadband where the Bells didn't want to. This was a retarded move.
WE NEED TO INVEST IN FIBER NETWORKS.
We do this by forcing entrant competition to build thier own facilities and fiber networks (THESE ARE THE NETWORKS YOUR DON'T WANT TO SHARE). Facilitiy based competition will truely help in lowering costs, create new jobs, build a redudancies in our important communications network, and lastly give Lucent, Nortel, and the shot in the arm they need by giving them new business.
The Bells and Democrats just used your own conservative zealotry against you, and turned slashdotters against thier best ally, Michael Powell, who would have kept line sharing.
That's how dichotomies are played...
"Communism is like having one [local] phone company " - Lenny Bruce
Thanks for putting some sense into the discussion. The phone companies were protected by the government for years. Sure, Bell did some nice research, but they didn't provide very good service. They charged huge amounts of money ($60-$100) for telephones! You weren't allowed to hook up your own phone.
Competition in long distance has worked. It can work for the local telcos too.
Why can't we just change the local telcos into line-lease companies. The actual phone service and "high frequency" service portions of the company could be split off to compete fairly with Covad and other DSL providers.
By definition:
1) The CLEC provider must collocate their own equipment with the ILEC/Bell/Evil Empire; therefore, the CLEC must pay recurrring collocation fees, a one time "setup fee", and additional application-for-space fees to the ILEC (and that shit ain't cheap!!! $5000 just to apply; multiply that by 2,000 offices!!!)
These fees are in addition to purchasing the equipment in the first place (DSLAM's, ATM switches, and DS3 multiplexors are not small or cheap), hiring/paying their own technicians to install/maintain it (technicians that can't access that equipment without jumping through "building access authorization" hoops), and paying for support contracts with the vendors of that equipment (ever bought a Cisco support contract? that ain't cheap either.)
2) The line-shared service must be provisioned over a line with existing POTS service; this means that the loop/pair/last mile was ALREADY delivered to the end user's premises and the end user is ALREADY paying the ILEC for their POTS service (note that POTS service recurring revenue is supposed to pay for any premises dispatches by ILEC technicians for loop quality issues related to voice services)
3) The CLEC still has to PAY the ILEC to connect the DSL equipment (which they ALREADY pay to keep in the ILEC office) to the end user's phone line (for which the end user is paying already)
4) The ILEC charges a monthly fee to the CLEC for providing a simple set of equipment cross connects in the Central Office; remember that this is over and above what the end user is already paying them for POTS service
5) UNE DSL lines are not cheap either, but CLEC's still pay more then end user's for the "privilege" to lease a dry copper pair. Most ILEC's will lease an "alarm pair" for under $20 month to an end user; many CLEC's pay nearly twice that for a pair with nothing on it!!!
Forgive me for saying "below cost my ass!!!" If the Bell monopolies weren't so uber-bloated w/r/t their business practices, human resources, logistics, etc..., perhaps they'd be making money hand over fist instead of bitching about not having any money or incentive to buildout in rural areas or extend buildout further into urban/suburban areas. I wish I could get the government to subsidize my business; then I could screw my customers every which way I could think of in order to lure shareholders in to giving me even more money.