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Courts Overturn FCC - Return of the Monopoly?
An anonymous reader writes "The DC Circuit Court of Appeals today threw out FCC restrictions which previously forced large regional phone companies to allow companies such as AT&T and MCI the ability to offer local phone service. The court also upheld FCC rules that no longer require large phone companies to share their advanced broadband networks of the future with competitors. The USTA response:
'This is a decisive victory for consumers, for innovation and for free markets.' The AT&T response: 'At a time when consumers and small business owners are just beginning to realize the benefits of competition, the D.C. Circuit today held up a stop sign and halted eight years of progress.' Enough about the Baby Bells already -- how is this going to effect my VoIP phone from VoicePulse (similar to Vonage)? Did I switch to VoIP so I can pay $15/month for my phone bill, but will have to pay $80/month for FTTH or some other form of broadband?"
Did I switch to VoIP so I can pay $15/month for my phone bill, but will have to pay $80/month for FTTH or some other form of broadband?"
Yes.
If anyone thinks for a minute that the telco behemoth will lie down and let the "free" internet eat its lunch, you are mistaken.
"...all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness..." yada yada
Actually, no.
AT&T and MCI are national companies. The large companies are large local (ie state-wide) companies which were forced by the federal government to allow other companies to use their lines to "enhance" competition. The other companies which were allowed in had very little presence in the local market (hence were "small" companies), even while they were giants in the national long distance markets.
i'm moving off campus, and i'd be happy to pay speakeasy's 100/month for 3M/756kbps dsl. complaining about 80 bucks for fiber is like complaining about premium gas(93+) at a buck fifty.
"'This is a decisive victory for consumers, for innovation and for free markets.' "
How? How? Damn it. How?
Anyone want to take a shot at it, because I don't see it?
umm, no, ATT and MCI did not have local service before this.
the big problem is that the local phone companies had to give the competition leases on the lines that could not even pay for the mantinence of the lines. what sucks is that I am on Talk America, so if this holds, I might lose my service and get stuck with SBC.,....on the upside, this ruling will give the baby bells incentive to start expanding their DSL networks again.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Not only will the removal of competition drive prices up, there will be nothing left but mediocre at best ILEC service with no incentive to improve it.
The thing that gets to me is that the RBOCs agreed to open up their networks to local competition and, in return, would be able to go into the long distance business.
Now that this comprimise has been made, they want to not be required to open up their networks. But do they have to get out of the long distance business? Of course not.
Cake and eat it, anyone?
The real solution would be to have the phone companies divest the part of them that manages the wiring between your house and the CO.
Gentoo Sucks
Are there even any Baby Bells left? Last time I checked there were something like four big companies controlling telecommunitations nationwide. So much for the regional bells...
At the end of the artical it implies the it will be many years befor ehte appeals avenue is exhausted. But at that stage will anybody care. Broadband will more likely be wireless based and most people will probably have mobile phones.
Why is it when I hear 'This is a decisive victory for consumers, for innovation and for free markets.' come out of the mouths of large firms like AT&T, I begin to cringe?
I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.
What precisely is it that you think you own? The wire you put under the street between CO's and people's houses? OK, maybe you own that. What about the street itself, and the tunnels under them? I don't know about the case where you're a municipality, but you certainly don't own the street if you're a regional phone company. And yet, you've been given some kind of monopoly access to under-street cable tunnels and for that matter, residential termination points. If you claim I'm wrong about that, well, say I run an ISP with a downtown office--I'd like to run my own fiber through your city's streets and then up your city's utility poles just like the phone companies do, so I can drop Ethernet cable to the homes of my subscribers, and give them moby bandwidth without having to pay an RBOC to transport data for me. Where do I sign up to do that? I can't? Didn't think so--there's a monopoly like I said.
Given that the RBOC's are getting exclusive access to a public resource, I don't see any reason why they shouldn't have to share that access for the public's benefit. If they want to own their own network, let them build their own streets to run the cables under. If they want exclusive rights to put cabling under public streets, they better be willing to give the public access to the bandwidth.
Maybe there's some part of this that I'm missing, since I generally assume that anything Michael Powell's FCC does is bad, and when the courts smack the FCC it's a good thing. But this seems to me like a case where if the FCC has mandated more access to last-mile wiring, it's done the right thing.
I wonder what "rates set by the market" means when you own the market?
kidn't this same ruling that forced the bells to share, allow them to be Long Distance carriers
I believe so.
and if that law has been repealed, doesn't that mean they can no longer be long distance carriers? as in- no more verizon long distance?
Nope.
1) It wasn't a "law". It was a regulation.
2) It wasn't "repealed". A part of it was "struck down" by the courts.
3) Only the part that required the baby bells to open their local lines at regulated cost was struck. The rest of the reg - letting them go into the long distance market - is still there.
It's a "victory for competition" only in the sense that it deregulates more of the market. Net result (if this holds) is that everybody is playing equally in the future.
Which means that the people with government-subsidized copper already in the ground and the people who have to bury new stuff and wire a city are "on an equal footing".
I guess some are more equal than others. B-(
Fortunately, if you have to dig up the streets to wire a town in order to reach your customers, you might as well wire it with glass fiber. 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
For one thing, the local wires were run to my house back in the late 19th century (yes, 19th) at a subsidized cost - subsidized by taxpayers. (I know the dating because the Verizon tech told me what a pain it is to wire my house to the 1890-s era copper)
Why should an infrastructure built by an illegal (well, eventually ruled illegal) monopoly be left completely in control of, in my case, Verizon?
Why shouldn't I be allowed to ask MCI to provide me service over 100-year-old copper?
Should MCI or AT&T have to run copper to every house in my town that wants to use their services?
Plus, if fiber isn't shared, then more will have to be put down (more for everyone). The largest problem I foresee is if is if the applies to power lines as well (which would kill many beneficial deregulation efforts all over the country).
Open Source Sushi
You can get fiber you your home for $80 a month?? Where do I sign up?!
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
" In a 3-0 ruling by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, the judges wrote that the FCC [...]lacks the authority to delegate responsibility for setting those rates to the states. The court also ruled the FCC had failed to prove that competitors in the local phone market are 'impaired' without government-regulated access to critical parts of the phone network controlled by the regional giants."
Sounds like Verizon is paying off more than just Supremes Scalia and Rhenquist. What could possibly convince them that telcos charging markups and delays to carried competitors isn't a decisive advantage? And since the FCC delegated its tariffs to the states, wouldn't a more appropriate remedy be to force the FCC to merely use the state tariffs as the (determinant) basis for a federal tariff structure, tailored for different conditions regionally, rather than throw out any tariff or authority at all? This is a corporate coup that kills everyone but incumbent carriers and paid-off judges.
--
make install -not war
I don't think this is the free advertising you take it as. Rather, it's something consumers have learned to do in order to survive. Phone companies are not always very forthcoming about their prices, but it's unlikely that a customer of theirs would lie to make them look better. So, people talk to one another about their phone service, and for those who have spent time shopping around for a good provider, perhaps their own service seems like an obvious thing to bring up in a conversation about phone companies.
I found the meaning of life the other day, but I had write-only access.
The USA applies the golden rule: He who has the gold rules.,/p>
Did you think I was going to say something about do unto others as you would have them do unto you. This country is headed to the corporatist state (and the ruling party doesn't matter -- they both give in to BIG business). This is just another step down that path.
Does anyone realize that in order to "allow" competition this forces Verizon to sub-lease out their phone lines at BELOW cost?
This is a return to Monopoly? Ridiculous. Verizon was being forced by the FCC to basically hand out cash to any telecom company that wanted it. This has obvious results, Verizon won't invest in those lines, since it is LOSING MONEY.
The only realm left to Verizon (other than wireless) is the broadband market. Verizon has invested billions of dollars in DSL and in fiber to expand the reach of broadband to 80% of the homes in the US. Now they are deploying FTTP which will give us data rates in the 100s of megabits.
So there are two options, either regulate them into non-existance and force them to sell bandwidth to competitors who have invested NOTHING, or to let them reap the rewards of the capital they have invested and to keep the muddling hands of the government out of broadband regulation.
Drinking habits can be dangerous. You can choke on the cloth and the nuns will wonder where their clothes are.
Too late for Lucent, these discounts made it impossible for RBOCs to invest in new technology as they had to resell at a loss and Lucent died with no product orders. Now with the opportunity to make a profit they can put some great technology in place! Once the court order has settled down we should see some real growth in the technology sector!