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Baby Bells Promise Broadband Stagnation
twitter writes "According to this NYT article the Baby Bells will not be developing their 'high-speed networks' despite their recently granted DSL monopoly because they were not granted local phone monopolies. 'Here is a lot of crying crybaby reaction to the decision.' says Mr. Powell."
FGL!
h tml?ex=1046926800&en=669a995afe95f3f3&ei=5062&part ner=GOOGLE
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/27/business/27FCC.
Here's a look at the Bells' work to tax VoIP in a similar move to the ones they made in the early days of DSL. The eventual goal of moves like this would be to push non-Bells out of VoIP so they can then have yet another monopoly.
Government "watched" corporations are never going to provided the services users want
when they want them, how they want them.
The only way we are going to get broadband across the board is if the government mandates
it, and takes it upon themselves to install and run it. As soon as it's left up to
a corporation todo, they're going to not provide services to the customers that are expensive.
Why? Because thats the point of a corporation. They want to make a profit. Period.
Private corporations are not the ideal method of provided uniform services, because not
everyone can be served at uniform cost.
The sooner we realize this, and stop trying to privatize everything, we'll be better off
I've heard too many cases where cities and counties are taking matters into their own hands. Just like city cable, take over your control of broadband and build it out yourself. Screw the phone companies.
I've been dealing with the Baby Bells' general stagnation for quite a while now.
DSL is still not available in my area, and I live near two major California cities. You'd think that with all the major universities and Silicon Valley in California that they'd have little trouble creating good quality DSL home subscriber lines. But, alas, they have yet to deliver.
I really wish cable modems weren't my only option because they have outages a lot from what I hear, but it's my only choice. Hey, it's either that or a dial-up modem.
What would you do?
Join my Slashdot clan
Background: 28/M/Bi-Sexual; Owner of a Linux company; MBA Harvard 2003; B.S. Comp Sci MIT 2000
Looks like theres a flaw in the market.
They were handed a monopoly on a product, but refuse to develop it due to corporate greed. Im sorry, but this is bullshit. Theres a demand and the ONLY reason the supply isnt being filled is due to some perverted hyper-greed. Give people bandwidth dammit. It should be like gas, electricity, and water. A new utility.
Can the gvt just say "fine, were revoking your monopoly then." ?
Would they do it?
This pisses me off.
no
Gotta love the flip-flop action from Tauzin. It's not just the lawyers who'll get rich from these protracted legal battles - by tying this process up in Washington for years on end, the incumbents assure themselves lots of attention (and donations) from the parties on both sides of the issue. I have a feeling that we'll be hearing about this issue for only, say, another decade or so at this rate!
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
to love verizon.
"hey, my dsl line went down two weeks ago. i opened up seventeen trouble tickets, and they were each mysteriously closed, but here's the number of the most recent --"
"would you like a new cell phone?"
"no, the ticket number is 131-"
"400 anytime minutes! nationwide long distance!"
"--055. er, you guys said --"
"oh, like call waiting?"
"-- that you'd send someone out yest --"
"i can add call waiting from here, sir!"
"-- erday to -- er, no --"
"ok, your line is activated for call waiting!"
"um, this is a data line. i have a --"
"the surcharge will be added to your monthly bill. and i'll go ahead and close up that trouble ticket for you. Thanks for using Verizon!"
*gunshot*
-fren
"Where are we going, and why am I in this handbasket?"
If another stable technically advanced country like Canada or Australia or New Zealand or the UK would like a lot of sophisticated IT talent, get your telcos to offer good network services and set up an American-targeted H1-B-type visa program targeted at American talent.
You'll be able to pick and choose and will soon have a nice fat booming economy.
We're pissed about the limits on research being imposed by the asshats in office now anyway, so there's an opportunity here for the taking.
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
But I digress; The real point here is the simple mathematics. If they build more DSL capacity, they have to resell more DSL capacity, and they lose more money. Thank you, FCC. First you made it so that most people couldn't get DSL because you imposed nasty penalties for downtime. This led to pacific bell shortening their supported range from 17,000 feet to 14,000 feet. I don't know the formula for measuring area assuming that every wire was straight which it isn't, but that's a serious drop in coverage. Now, you continue to force them to resell capacity, which leads to further inability for people to get DSL. Without all this overregulation, Pacific Bell would have been able to implement "Fasttrack" DSL (Now called Project Pronto, it's the DSL on fiber infrastructure project which was supposed to put DSL in every pac bell home by 2002) already and everyone would be able to get DSL. THAT would be the point to start talking about forcing them to resell capacity, not now, and certainly not when you forced the issue in the first place.
Then again, since when does the FCC act in the interest of the american people? They act only in their own best interest. It behooves them to keep control of everything they can, and they do.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It's not even really their equipment. Before the "deregulation" of telephone services, much of the infrastructure was built on taxpayer dollars.
God forbid we try and have a little bit of say in what we paid for. I for one am not okay with the Bells having control of the copper. They have historically proven to suck at properly managing it.
Overrated Moderation: This posts sucks... because.
Oh wait. The telco's aren't making a profit. And my stock isn't worth enough for me to spend the transaction fee to sell it. Telco's are bleeding like there is no tomorrow because they are investing in all this high-tech internet stuff that didn't make them any money.
Are you sure the telco's aren't really an internet charity?
My guess is that you are sitting on a nice fat pipe there at your school. If you were one of the unfortunate ones that is stuck with dial-up because a giant conglomerate refuses to develop the technology in one monopoly because the government won't hand them another, I'm sure you would be calling foul on the Baby Bells as well.
These companies have a responsibility to the public. It would be one thing if they did not have the infrastructure to support broadband or develop it. But to have it and not develop it simply because they want to be the only player on the block seems very irresponsible to me. And yet, they find it surprising that many people are dropping their Baby Bell-owned lines in favor of cellular phones and cable modem. If they're going to oust other broadband development out of business, it becomes their responsibility to develop the technology for the consumer. Sure they're out to turn a profit - but what profit do they make just sitting in the corner like little children throwing temper tantrums over not having all the cookies in the cookie jar?
If the Bells were doing their job, there would be far fewer of your crybabys yelling about lack of broadband access, and the broadband access would likely be higher quality to boot. That would allow you to download your mp3s even faster.
Here's to hoping that you get stuck on an old dial-up connection when the lustre and safety of academia wear off....
----
Wyntermute, resident psychopath
"Remember that you're unique - just like everyone else!"
I have come to the conclusion that the most beneficial situation would be for the local government to own the actual cable plant for its municipality. With current technology the gov't could easily create a situation where competition occurs because *everyone* has equal access to the cable plant. If one company can deliver a service over the last mile then all can.
The only other option would be to forcefully divest the monopolies of their cable plants ala the breakup of the Bell empire in '84. The cable plant operators would then have an incentive to sell access to as many people as possible. In fact this option may be best as some services (ptp T1 for example) don't really need any hardware connected to them other than what would naturally exist to operate the network.
I really get the feeling that phone companies don't actually want anything to do with DSL. A friend mentioned that Phone Companies tend to like virtual circuits so they impose the totally unnecessarry and (at least in the beginning) buggy-as-hell PPP Over Ethernet instead of just running it as a bridge.
I've helped a few folks get their DSL connections running and in every case, the phone companies have managed to seriously screw something up.
I had one guy ask them to put it on the line he used for modem and fax, (cuz the wiring for that was already in his office), but when I got to his house they had put it on the wrong line - I had to rearrange a bunch of his inside wiring to get things set the way he wanted it.
Another time, the Phone Co had not bothered to test the person's line to make sure it didn't have any bridging or repeaters in it. (I'm not an expert on DSL, but I understand that the line needs to be clear of repeaters and other active components or the DSL doesn't work right) it took a couple weeks after their supposed "on" date to get an appointment to have a tech clear the line.
My own experience was one of frustration as the installer (this was early on - back when they wouldn't LET you do your own install) refused to proceed when he saw I was running NT4.0 instead of Win 9x.
The Digital Sorceress
Sounds like the 'crybabys' are those folks complaining about their lack of broadband Internet access.
You heard him folks, it's time for us slashdotters to get off our backsides, stop whining, and invest a couple of billion dollars into building telecommunications infrastructure.
This puts a fairly heavy damper on line-shared ADSL services, but you know what? The incumbants still CAN NOT provided end user dsl services.
But what about services like Qwest DSL you ask? Qwest does NOT provide the internet bound portion of the service, they simply handle the local loop, then hand off the connection to another partnered ISP. It's called their MegaHost service. The so-called Qwest direct dsl is provided through MSN.
I really, really hate this mentalitly of complaining about prices, always wanting cheaper! cheaper! But at the same time calling for Better! Better! I should be able to have a 1 mbit up and down dsl connection, guaranteed speeds, guaranteed 24x7 for 5 dollars a month! Blah I say
The ILECs have only themselves to blame for losing money on each DSL line. The terms of the original deregulation agreement were that the ILECs had to lease capacity to CLECs at the same rates as they leased them to their own broadband subsidiaries. Since they lease to their subsidiaries at below cost rates in an effort to make them appear more profitable, they are forced to offer the same artificially low price to their competitors. If they would stop whining about this situation and raise the rates for themselves as well as their competitors, maybe they wouldn't be in such a fix... but they'd rather cry to the government, hoping Uncle Sam will make the big bad Earthlinks of the world go away and leave them alone. Sean
We have vast armies of wildlife to carry the TCP and UDP packets from point to point (once in a while they miss the wide funnel mouths and a packet is lost, but what are ya gonna do?). The reason we can do this cheaply is because of our single-payer healthcare system for wildlife, so our beavers and deer work more cheaply than US animals would.
We're such freaking communists.
So here's what I don't get. How much do the Bells, AOL-Time-Warners, and other people "owe" the public for the resources they use?
It seems to me that if I have to look at ugly utility polls, have land all carved up for right-of-ways, and otherwise make the infrastructure these folks depend on possible, they ought to be somewhat accountable to the public.
I'm certainly not saying I'd rather not have heat, light, and cable, but since they require such a tight intergration with the everyday life of the public, what does the public get out of it?
My parents don't have cable, but I can't count the times the linemen from TW have crashed down their driveway, tromped through my mom's garden, and generally made a mess to fix the lines which run along the back edge of the property. TW should be allowed to do this, but shouldn't they be forced to be just as accessable to the public?
"Baby Bells Promise Broadband Stagnation"
So glad to hear that they have finally found a promise they can keep. They've missed two DSL install dates so far at my place.
and it's instant messaging... until they start to tax that as well. I spend a lot less time on the phone now that my family and friends are hooked up via cable modem or satellite.
...if we hadn't granted Ma Bell a monopoly on rights-of-way a long time ago.
As a libertarian, the concept of a regulated, government-granted monopoly is anathemic to me; however, what is the alternative here? Do we give the Baby Bells free reign to do whatever they want with the existing copper, and refuse other companies the ability to add lines to those rights-of-way?
I'm all for deregulation, but not unless the entire thing is deregulated: it must be possible for new companies to lay their own copper or run their own wireless WAN's without government regulating what lines can go where or handing out wireless spectrum as campaign donation quid pro quos. Don't do a California-style partial deregulation in which some parties are forced out of business due to the government's stepping on some necks but not others.
Also, where are all these goddamned leftist posters all coming from? If the government suddenly owned all the copper and ran all the DSL lines, we'd be stuck with lowest-common-denominator access. I wouldn't be able run a server with a static IP (as I do with speakeasy.net today); and I'd pay LOW, LOW advertised prices while Uncle Sam reaches into my wallet for some extra cash to subsidize access for people unwilling to pay the cost of it. Fuck them: I did well in school and work hard and should get something extra for that. DSL IS NOT A RIGHT!
Cheers,
Kyle
[ home ]
It is the government's job to force companies to act in a legal and socially moral way through regulation and to slap down those companies that get out of line. It is the job of the people to get the government to do so in the way they want.
Of course, having said that, corporations have far more power these days in determining what goes into regulations than the people, because the lawmakers have been bribed with fat donations, and nobody ever gets slapped down for breaking the rules.
Don't get upset with the corporations for acting like greedy little piggies. Get upset with the system that allows them to get away with it, and try to change it.
I ain't evil, I'm just good looking.
umm.. it's called granting a monopoly. They face no competition and rake in the bucks. That's how consumers paid. There were also other things, such as granting them free access to public and private land in order to allow lines to be run, and various fees that the government lets them charge consumers.
If the local government owned the poles and charged compaines rent to hang lines on them but allowed more than 1 company to string lines, prices on cable/telephone/internet/power would plummet.
You are getting screwed on all 4, make no mistake (and two of those are basic requirements to live in the modern world).
Murphy was an optimist.
It's entirely up to them what they do with their equipment.
Actually it's not entirely up to them. They were, and in many regards still are, government regulated monopolies. Lot of effort has been put in deregulation and sparking competition in the industry and services they provide, some of them successful, some of them not because of various "special" big-money interests involved.
They are the crybabies against competition. I want competition. I don't agree with FCC's decision to allow them to be monopolies (in their respective areas) for DSL services; especially if you consider that in order to convince the FCC to make this decision in their favor, these companies "promised" in return to start upgrading their equipment and provide better and faster service.
From the article:
The committee, which is generally sympathetic to the Baby Bells, also criticized the local phone companies for their failure to invest. Several congressmen noted that the Baby Bells had received a lot of what they had asked for since the 1996 Telecommunications Act but were still not making the investments that they had promised they would make.
And now they even refuse to do that, but they get to keep the monopoly and high prices. What's their incentive to invest? There is no competition.
Dude, before you post something, maybe you should have some insight into what you are posting...
First, last week the FCC took away linesharing for broadband (but kept it in place for telephone service). So your argument that they have no incentive to roll out more DSL capacity is crap... In order for a company to lease DSL space NOW is for them to also offer phone service. The point of the post is that the Bells are pissed that the FCC didn't take away linesharing completely. Since they didn't get their way completely, they are going to balk on the promises they made when lobbying for the FCC to take action.
Second, your argument that other people lay their own cable is both not possible and ridiculous. It is ILLEGAL for a company to just lay fibre... The government has granted this monopoly to the phone company (try to dig for a line and see what your local telco says about it). Laying your own cable like the cable companies is ridiculously expensive (note that my father still can't get cable to his house because it's not economically reasonable for the cable co... but he can get phone service fine). It is also not smart... we already have three sets of wires to each living space (phone, cable, electricity), why lay a third or a fourth for competing internet providers?
Third, they aren't losing money to their competition. They leased the line to the CLEC at exactly the same cost as they lease it to their own DSL subsidiary. Not only that, but the CLECs have their own equipment and enormous networks for DSL, they just need access to the last mile.
The more they built before the FCC took away linesharing for broadband, the more money they made (linesharers paid the same cost as the Bells to use the new lines); but they didn't make AS MUCH as they would without competition... Now they have no competition and are still balking at using the government granted power just so they can make even more money than they already do.
IANAL, but I play one on
The privately owned Union Springs Telephone company in (dirt poor, rural) Bullock County, Alabama, recently announced an expansion of Fiber-to-home internet, cable, and phone service over the next few years.
Here's a link to a news story about it.
If a mom-n-pop telco can make a profit selling FIBER connections to one of the poorest rural counties in the US, certainly the big telcos could make a profit if they wanted. "Let's get the government to do it for us" is NOT the right answer for everything.
The requested URL
competitve markets have price wars. funny T-1 connection prices barely changed...in how many years? a couple of decades now?
;-)
bandwidth costs money. but dark fiber doesn't compute.
for a $40 phone line, I pay over $10 in taxes (not including sales tax!)
FCC regulations to the resuce? come on, greased palms are faster than my dialup
THERE'S ONLY ONE WAY OUT FOLKS: TAKE THE AIRWAVES BACK!
Start: http://www.sputnik.com/
Think, "Communication Frogs". Think: "Lillypad Revolution".
For "When law begins to break you, it's time to break the law." -tsunami
:T:R:A:N:S:
Here's what Verizon had to say... From an email, and from their website
Please respond to Employee Communication/EMPL/NY/Bell-Atl@VZNotes
To: All Employees
cc:
Subject: Seidenberg, Barr Comment on FCC Ruling
CEO Ivan Seidenberg and Executive Vice President and General Counsel Bill Barr provided additional public comment Monday regarding last week's controversial FCC rulings on telecom competition.
Speaking at a Merrill Lynch analysts' conference, Seidenberg said Verizon will take legal action against the FCC ruling, declaring that the Commission's policies are legally flawed and fail as a means of creating sustainable competition in the industry.
Verizon had hoped for regulatory relief from having to provide deep discounts to competitors for network elements, also known as UNE-P. The FCC ruled instead that the decision would be left up to each individual state and the District of Columbia, through the jurisdiction's public service commission.
"You cannot take a national market like this and have 51 jurisdictions make a study and come up with any pattern that will drive consistency in the industry," Seidenberg said.
Seidenberg predicted that the FCC - as it has twice before - would lose again when the courts ultimately rule on the new policies.
"Our view is that (UNE Interconnection)...would eventually die anyway," Seidenberg said. "Because in the long term, technology would displace the bootstrapping of other people connecting to our network."
Seidenberg said that the FCC's ruling theoretically left some upside potential for Verizon in broadband markets, but added that the company needs to see the written order before assessing the practical impacts in this area. For example, the FCC's press release indicates that phone companies "may not retire any copper loops...without first receiving approval from the relevant state commission."
Barr further addressed the broadband issue in a statement to the media. He said that while the language in the ruling is unclear, if the intent is to give the states a veto over whether we can replace obsolete copper facilities as we install broadband facilities, then "the FCC will have done precious little to deregulate broadband."
Barr said that with such a veto, regulators could require that local phone companies deploying broadband facilities maintain two parallel networks, burdening new investment with massive additional costs. Likewise, regulators could impose onerous rules on new broadband facilities in return for their consent to retire the old.
"Either way, such an approach does not give phone companies any assurance that their opportunity to earn a return on massive and risky investments in broadband will not be thwarted by regulators," Barr said. "Unless this issue is clarified in the Commission's upcoming order, the FCC's effort to free broadband from regulation will be illusory."
"Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech."--Benjamin Franklin
What the hell did that comittee think? That they'd wave thier magic wand and the baby bells would suddenly turn into good little boys and girls? Were these guys drug tested before they ruled on this?
The simple fact of the matter is that the bells proved the smarter of the two sides here. There are numerous agreements dating back to the early part of the 1900s between phone companies and the government, but most of these were good faith actions, surprisingly, at least on the part of the government. When faced with the dilemna of providing stable, reliable communications for the new century across the country, the government realized that private companies would not only be best suited for this, but they would also willingly support the absolutely enormous initial investment, as long as they were allowed to play by different rules than other industries.
Due to this, so called baby bells have had a virtual monopoly ever since. And they're not stupid. Phone companies are some of the most intelligently planned companies in the world, at least as far as long term strategy is concerned.
When they realized how much capital was to be gained, my local bell, Bellsouth, aggresively entered into long distance, after first spearheading the charge to get legislation passed that would let them play the long distance game with the other kids. And now, I'm employed in the sales department of their cellular branch, Cingular, which is one of their smarter moves to date.
Simply put, more and more people are doing what I do, and using my cell phone as my home phone. Rather than pay two bills, one for a landline and the other for the cell, I just enjoy the benefit of having my home phone with me at all times. Also, much like the earlier incarnations of the phone companies, cellular companies have massive agreements in place where they all use each others towers and relay points, and aggressively discourage, through lobbying and downright ugly business practices, the entry into the market of any new, radical companyies.
For example, take Cricket. Cricket allows unlimited local calls in your home service area, with an aggressive long distance plan. Only one problem: once outside your home footprint, Cricket no longer works, because it cannot receive a signal. This is because the larger cellular companies have unsigned agreements in place that prevent the sharing of resources, like signal towers and receivers, to anyone who is not already in the game. Competition? Ha!!
So, faced with the threat of their precious landlines and preferential zoning laws and permits being rendered obsolete by cellular technology, they simply all rushed in, then closed the doors, thus maintaining survivability, as well as the status quo.
The Government never stood a chance, they've been either outflanked or happily prison-raped by the phone companies at every turn.
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