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FCC's Triennial Review Released
rednaxela writes "The FCC, after six months of deliberation, released the Triennial Review order on the evening of August 21. The Order makes substantial changes to the rules governing the obligations of the regional bell operating companies (i.e., SBC, BellSouth, Verizon and Qwest) to lease their networks to the competitive local exchange carriers (e.g., MCI, AT&T) for the provision of local phone service and, perhaps more interestingly to this audience, broadband. Brief summary here, link to the order and the FCC Commissioners' statements at www.fcc.gov."
This, folks, is called Capitalism. The government is corrupt and controlled by the big corporations. The government does what they say, no questions asked, even if it screws us (the population) over.
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Woohoo, hahaa, heehehehe
Robert Quinn, AT&T's [T] vice president of regulatory affairs, said the FCC's released order "ensures competitors access to essential network elements as long as impairments to competition continue and thus guarantees consumers a choice of local service providers
Whaha - who else does he write comedy for? Hehehe.
Verizon completely gates MY access to DSL, and has said "NO", even thoough I'm less than 2 miles from a big urban co.
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Some of your points have a touch of validity, but there are some flaws in your thinking that I wanted to address.
First, Qwest would charge the competitive ISP a sign-up charge for each customer,
The first thing you should think about here is that Qwest probably leases to resellers using a different strategy than what they use to market to their own customers.
If you were a telephone company, and you were required to lease service to a competitor, wouldn't you hit them with every cost as that cost was incurred? When you sign up a new DSL customer, you have to perform some amount of work to get that customer set up with DSL service. It is logical to bill the reseller for that work, and to proceed billing him monthly an amount that reflects your maintenance.
Either way, the DSL provider (Qwest or the reseller) eats money at install-time. Qwest may "waive" that setup fee for a 1- or 2-year contract, figuring they would recoup those costs as the user's service continues. Your DSL reseller is also perfectly free to eat that cost for the same contractual arrangement. They just may not choose to. This isn't Qwest being evil, it's your reseller choosing to sell their service differently.
Meaning that whenever your DSL goes down, if you've signed up with an independent ISP, your support would be pretty much useless.
Don't confuse your ISP service with your DSL service! The phone company is there soley to provide physical-layer (DSL) and/or link-layer (ATM) service. The ISP is usually on an ATM end-point and provides IP service. Even with the ILECs, the ISP is a separate entity, and while they may work harder to keep the appearance of one smoothly-running operation, the ISP side of the house has no more control over the DSL side than your independent ISP does.
In both cases, the ISP will tell you that a DSL problem has to be resolved by the telco. The telco will tell you IP service issues will need to be resolved by the ISP.
Perhaps a better solution is building dark fiber on government money and then having counties charge any phone company lease access fees.
I agree with you here. I'd like to see some thought given to running that "last mile copper" like any other public utility, like water and sewer lines. Let that utility sell service on those lines to whoever wants to use them.
Congress will smile in your face while sticking it to you. What makes you think that if someone was willing to coyly place a couple of hundred thousand in the pocket of some congress*person*, that congress*person* (male/female) is not going to either take it, or seriously contemplate taking it. This is not to say that every last one of those in congress are schemers, but you have to understand, there is no guarantee that anyone will be in office the next term, so many times this feeds into the minds of those who take it.
Besides what do you think is really going to happen to them? Jail... Rarely. Look at the case of Torricelli Jersey, walked away scott-free, iisshhtt happens whether people like it or not, and making it illegal will only make *contributors* find other methods of getting people money. Offshore accounts, business trips, et. al. Congress*people* are human (I think) and as animals, humans do what they can to survive. Some methods might be more shallow than others.
MoFscker
followed by this:
So at least some of the commissioners there know and realize just what this new ruling has the potential to do, and who it will hurt. Too bad they appear to have been overruled in the process, either that or they were somehow 'encouraged' to go along with the ruling.
Too bad most of the general populace has absolutely no interest in and no concern with things like this. Even worse, it seems more and more evident every day that most people seem to not be able to think for themselves.
. 62,400 repetitions make one truth -- Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
Where I live there's a DSLAM 8 miles away and the fucking phone company - and the local ISPs - STILL don't offer DSL because no one will spend the money to spec the ancient crappy lines for service. I doubt being able to charge a bit more for a hundred potential customers is going to help that any. But the more wireless is used and developed, the faster it evolves. And wireless IS a potentially viable option out here - but it ain't there yet.
Yeah, it sucks for people who live in the city and have to pay another ten bucks a month for DSL. Whoopdeefucking doo, at least you have service and the money to pay for it. When I lived in LA I still payed $80 a month to pacbell for shit service, which is likely more than most of you pay now. We don't need cheap DSL, because much of the country won't ever get it at ANY price - we need NEW INFRASTRUCTURE. It takes money to develop that infrastructure, and this decision will help provide it.
Google on the history of the Tennessee Valley Authority. Look into how South Korea managed to get broadband into the majority of its homes and businesses. How about the examples of municipal power companies opening up their fiber optic networks to consumers? Or the Federal Interstate network?
Just because the government runs it doesn't mean it's bad, just because it's privatized doesn't mean it's good.
Personally, I think the idea of using public money to build dark fiber infrastructure and leasing it to private companies is a good one.
One thing it is reasonable for government to spend our money on is something that'll improve the economy for everybody, even for people who don't directly use the service in question.
Tech Public Policy stuff
...and Communism makes EVERYBODY corrupt. Ask any former resident of a former communist country.
The key is to deligate only enough power for the government to make sure everybody is playing by the rules.
"Communism is like having one [local] phone company " - Lenny Bruce
It;s about time someone that understands the actual system speaks out. Most every comment about this subject normally comes from misinformed people or agents of the CLECs. No company should be forced to sell a product or service for less than it costs to provide(no matter what business they are in).
Now the RBOCs can add DSLAMs and fiber where they want without having to give it below cost to to anyone for less than it cost to provide.