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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."
If I recall correctly, the local carrier for the Northwest United States, Qwest, has been opening their lines to competitors willing to provide DSL service. Qwest then would sign them up as re-sellers of the service, and after that the "Screw Your Friends(r)" program would take place.
First, Qwest would charge the competitive ISP a sign-up charge for each customer, so basically when signing up for DSL service, you would have the option of (a) monthly payment + sign up fee from an ISP or (b) the same monthly payment and no sign up fee from Qwest.
Second, the phone lines are opened to competitors, but they are still owned by the phone company. Meaning that whenever your DSL goes down, if you've signed up with an independent ISP, your support would be pretty much useless. "Ehh, yeah, it shows the service as down, but it's Qwest problem, we can't do anything with it, it's not our server". Meaning the only time the tech support would be really helpful is when their server goes down and they are actually in control. Hardly an incentive.
Perhaps a better solution is building dark fiber on government money and then having counties charge any phone company lease access fees. But government historically has been inefficient on managing any kind of infrastructure, just look at its state in the former Soviet Union countries.
Im not happy about the closing off of competition, but in the case of infrastructure services does it make sense ? Telco services are something that need to be there everyday rain or shine and the companies that provide them need to be healthy enough to provide that certainty.
In my local market several discount providers have gone bankrupt. This has resulted in large scale disruption of the businesses that relied on their services.
You have to ask is it worth it to risk a vital service just to provide an opportunity for undercapitalized, newcomers. Look at worldcom, quest etc etc. At least when I pick up my phone I get a dial tone.
This, folks, is called Capitalism.
No, it's not. It's a parody thereof.
Capitalism has nothing to do with the government being corrupt
Of course it has to do with Capitalism. Capitalism relies on Government regulation to ensure companies play fair (for example, anti-trust regulations). It's an oppositional system, just like the legal system; the corporations have the dollar, the people have the government.
The problem is that capitalism seems to overlook the fact that the people who compose the government want to make money just as much as anyone else. How this works out in practice is that the dollar trumps the government. If you want to make capitalism work, you've got to find some way of constructing a government to whome money doesn't matter.
Communist and socialist countries have corrupt governments too So what? The grandparent said that capitalism makes corrupt government (capitalism implies corruption). He didn't say corruption implies capitalism, which is what you are arguing against.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
Consider this:
The first change concerns the role of state regulators will have in deciding which elements of incumbent telcos' networks will be available to competitors on an unbundled basis at regulated wholesale rates. Originally, switching equipment wasn't going to be part of the menu of unbundled network elements (UNEs). However, yesterday's released order gives state officials authority to decide whether switching equipment should remain on the list of UNEs.
Reading this, I conclude that Baby Bell local exchange switches may become available for leasing by competitors based on the whim of state regulators. This is an improvement for competitors, who before had no access to these switches, because they weren't "part of the menu". The last sentence throws a wrench in my interpretation by using the word "remain", which indicates that these local exchange switches are already available for leasing. Which is it?
The second change involves the broadband market. In February, the FCC freed the ILECs from a requirement that they lease at regulated discounted rates the portion of their networks that competitors use to provide Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) (i.e., broadband) service. The released version of the FCC's order retains a provision that allows competitors to lease complete ILEC lines for the provision of voice and DSL service, or to partner with other carriers that are the lines.
My read of this is; back in February the FCC allowed the Baby Bells to stop leasing the equipment needed by competitors to provide DSL. Now, however, the FCC says the Baby Bells must allow competitors to lease these lines. That looks like a good thing. Is my interpretation correct?
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
Can Bell South justify the cost to rework for the network load increase made by MCI and others to customers. This is not flame bait it is a realistic question. My take is that this forced access is not good. How can you force telcos to increase their small town infrastructure at unreasonable rates of return. You are looking to bankrupt them and then have communication kaos. Telcos were deregulated already it seems now ironic that AT&T is about to exact revenge! This is not healthy business practice it is war and will damage the American economy more than any simple deregulation.
Beginrant Not to worry though if the baby bells go bankrupt. You can count on some Microsoft .NET buyout scheme to jump at the chance to serve us better!Endrant
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
You forget that it is basically impossible for CLEC's to install DSLAMs at all POP's because there is "insufficient room" yet when the ILEC wants to expand their equipment there is plenty of rack space. While I agree that the ILEC should not be required to provide networking services for less than the cost of deployment I DO think they should be required to provide undundled access to the DSLAM. Also every expert that isn't employed by the ILECs has stated that this will do NOTHING to speed up broadband rollout and will result in higher prices.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
You forget that it is basically impossible for CLEC's to install DSLAMs at all POP's because there is "insufficient room" yet when the ILEC wants to expand their equipment there is plenty of rack space.
And when there isn't "sufficient room" for a CLEC's equipment the ILEC will be required either to MAKE more room or to rent their own equipment at the regulated price. Want to bet whether there will be room? B-)
The key is to make it possible for the ILEC to make money on leasing and expanding the legacy (and former-monopoly subsidized) wiring for broadband last-mile, without giving them a competitive advantage on their own uses of it. That's what the FCC is trying to arrange - in the same way the courts pulled it off with long-distance service while leaving the local service as a monopoly. It's a tough act to pull off. But the approach they've chosen looks right.
(Note that they're ALSO trying to break the local POTS service monopoly in half on similar lines. But for that service the switching equipment is ALSO a subsidized legacy, so they're mantaining the requirement that the ILECs share it. But broadband equipment is NOT legacy, so they're instead requiring the CLECs to buy their own, and only requiring the ILECs to share the legacy wire and fiber.)
If the ILECs had their way the FCC would have just assumed that CLECs were dead forever and dropped the sharing requirements completely. Instead the FCC is effectively splitting the ILECs' broadband operation into two businesses - dry/dark wiring and providing services over it - and making the latter half play on an equal footing with the (now mostly hypothetical) CLECs as a customer of the former half. So the FCC isn't giving up on CLECs even now that they're effectively dead.
While I agree that the ILEC should not be required to provide networking services for less than the cost of deployment I DO think they should be required to provide undundled access to the DSLAM.
Which brings us back to the situation before the regulation change - where the ILEC drags its feet on installing DSLAMs, until just about every CLEC is dead and customers only get DSL where it's convenient for the ILEC.
Also every expert that isn't employed by the ILECs has stated that this will do NOTHING to speed up broadband rollout and will result in higher prices.
Please note that I'm a system architect for an independent equipment-manufacturing company, making two kinds of the boxes used by both the ILECs and the CLECs to provide broadband service.
The president of said company made exactly the same case I just did (I'm virtually quoting him) and spent a bunch of time in Washington pushing the FCC toward exactly this ruling - in the hope that the darned Tellcos will get off the dime and start rolling out (and buying more of our equipment) before we go under.
He and I have occasional differences of opinion on some subjects, but we're of one mind on this one. I would hope that we both would qualify as "experts" on this subject. And we're DEFINITELY not employed by ILECs. B-)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way