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California Orders SBC to Split Phone, DSL Service
An anonymous reader points to this report at overclockersclub.com which begins "The great state of California has ruled that SBC Communications must sell local phone service and broadband service separately. This gives SBC customers the option to change local phone providers and/or choose any DSL company they wish."
that they were selling the benefits to the customer of only having one bill. I can see it now. "We're splitting your bill in two to better meet your needs."
Drill baby drill - on Mars
I love the "we have no competition so we'll do as we please" comment. You gotta love hubris of this scale. Too bad when competition does come (wireless anyone?) that same mentality will be their downfall.
I could care less who me DSL/local/longdistance carrier is as long as it works reasonably well. If California gets rid of the discount for getting all 3 through SBC it would raise my bill by 40 bucks a month! Sometimes regulation is not worth the taxes we pay for it, and this is one case where I don't think anyone will save money (unless they are willing to put up with a great deal of angst).
While I don't disagree necessarily on the move against SBC.... ...I have to say California is often times a step ahead of the country. A step ahead in mostly wrong, silly, stupid and self destructive ways.
Take the Gmail legislative initiatives here in good old CA. While SBC is for all practical purposes a legal monopoly, Google is not... especially for email. Yet our enlightened legislature still feels the need to regulate it to death. First step in the country, but totaly unnecessary and harmful to a California business known to employ many of the best and brightest.
So a step ahead... yes... we'll go over the cliff before everyone else.
Yes indeed it is one step ahead of every other state when it comes to taxing it's citizens and businesses into oblivion and spending like there's no tomorrow.
Ideally, what should happen, and I think this is what the grandparent is recommending, is that SBC be split into an Incumbent Local Exchange Company (ILEC) and a financially isolated Competative Local Exchange Company (CLEC). Then the ILEC (which would own the wire) can charge the CLEC (who would provide the services) whatever it wants.
The catch would be that the ILEC could not disriminate in either access to facilities or price to any other CLEC (and would really have no incentive to.) This was SNET (Connecticut's phone company) began implementing after the Telecom act of 1996. Then they were bought by SBC and I think that plan was scrapped. Competition is good, and currently, the presently discussed California ruling being a minor exception, we are moving away from that, IMO.
Cheers,
Craig
Corollary to Clarke's Third Law: Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
Would this be the same CPUC that allowed the taxpayers to be royally raped by Enron and associates? Or that "demanded" that Northpoint continue to provide service for 30 days after they decided to unplug their network? The same CPUC that can't be bothered to negotiate with our neighboring states for water rights?
I'm sure they'll be just as effective in this as they were at all of those. Perhaps for their next act, they'll pretend they're King Canute, and order the tide not to come in?
CPUC is a joke. They're among the worst and least-effective agencies in this state, which is known for its bloated and useless government agencies.
Hey, if anyone wants a cushy government job, they're looking for a new executive director.
Why did 'Proposition 13' suddenly spring to mind when I read that?
I don't know. Why? Do you think the state and local governments should be able to tax my grandmother's house at its appraised value of $200,000 rather than the $12,000 she paid for it forty years ago? Jacking up people's taxes based on a something they have no control over (housing prices) is ridiculous. Even when a corporation buys, say, a $1.5 million building and five years later it's worth $5 million, there's no rational justification for taxing them based on the $5M figure. Just because it's worth $5M doesn't mean the owner would be willing or even able to buy it at that price, were he buying it at that time.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Do you think the state and local governments should be able to tax my grandmother's house at its appraised value of $200,000 rather than the $12,000 she paid for it forty years ago? Jacking up people's taxes based on a something they have no control over (housing prices) is ridiculous. Even when a corporation buys, say, a $1.5 million building and five years later it's worth $5 million, there's no rational justification for taxing them based on the $5M figure.
But it's perfectly reasonable to say that they should be taxed on the inflation-adjusted value of the property based on the base year. So your $1.5 million property bought in 1999 should be taxed at about $1.7 million in 2004. However, under Prop 13, it can't go up more than 2% per year, so it's taxed at $1.65 million. That's over five years, with very low inflation... people who have owned their houses since 1978 are paying on tiny fractions of the inflation-adjusted assessed values of their properties.
Meanwhile, the government is still subject to paying cost of living increases to gov't employees, and higher prices for materials, and all that other stuff that happens because of normal rates of inflation. While all the time, their revenues from property taxes can be guaranteed to fall relative to costs. Yeah, that makes all *kinds* of sense...
Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?