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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.