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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."
Because when I had SBC's DSL in Michigan, it was way oversold and sucked.
They sign contracts with new apartment complexes, new housing developers, even new business centers and offer them a package deal. The providers come out and install only their equipment, phone lines, cable (very cheaply, or even free I might add) and that is the ONLY service you can sign up for. Of course the developers and landlords will make a profit on the customers that sign up. Plus the customer sometimes does get a savings when compared to the cost of each package had you had a choice in the matter. Want COX Cable, but Qwest telephone? Sorry... But we only offer Qwest here. This is more prevalent in newer apartment complexes.
Hmmm.
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.
I had this option when I used Verizon in Bowling Green, OH for DSL. It was nothing but a hassle compared to getting DSL+ISP through Epix in NEPA or cable through Roadrunner or Comcast/ATTBI. Any issue that would come up with the Internet connection would result in fingerpointing at either the ISP or the line provider.
At least with cable there is only one person to blame. Slow speeds? It could be my computer but I doubt it. It's likely an issue w/the local lines or the ISP. I don't have to pay two separate bills. I don't have to call two separate companies when I want to cancel (signing up amazingly enough is dealt with through a central location in my experience).
I find DSL to be nothing but an overly expensive hassle at least in the areas I have lived (I realize that out west they seem comparable to Cable, if not better). I despise Comcast and what they have to done to dominate the local market but at least I can hate one company w/o a doubt rather than having to play catch the monkey if you can w/DSL.
A bit longer article is here at ZDnet from 6/14/2004.
Go Pistons.
Even though they are evil, SBC's DSL service is relatively affordable. It would be nice if California would also require that they not discriminate on the pricing side. This will be a moot law when SBC offers DSL for $150/month. It'll be cheaper to get the phone line and DSL bundle.
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
But doesn't this infringe on the company's constituional right to screw over their customers?
I recently tried to get DSL from Verizon and was told that I could get it, BUT since I am not a Verizon customer I would have to pay an outrageous fee on top of the monthly DSL charge. I prefer not to have a home phone since my cell phone is superior in value, performance and usability for my needs. Hopefully, this will make these types of fees disappear and anyone will be able to get DSL whether or not the have a landline through the company or not.
Please do not let scientific accuracy interfere with the intended humourous/interesting/insightful value of this comment
I personally know 7 or 8 people who only have a land line because they need DSL. I know several more [myself included] who went for cable because there was no 'naked' DSL option. In San Francisco cable internet has been very slow to spread because the cable system is so old and hacked together.
That said, I'm never giving SBC a dime of my money again if I can help it.
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
You only use 2% of your DNA
Once again, California is one step ahead of the rest of the country.
You can say *that* again
Beauty is in the eye of the beerholder.
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.
Does this allow you to have a DSL connection without a local land line?
I disconnected my phone and DSL when I moved recently, and the DSL stayed up after they had transferred the phone line. Something like this just makes me curious. Not that I'd want to disconnect my land line in favour of one of those cancer inducing cell phones, but you know...
I'm not sure if that was meant sarcastically...
I kinda think it was.
This side up.
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).
At first thought, it sounds like something of this magnitude (atleast in CA) might cause consumers to end up paying more in the long run, but I don't think that will be the case. I just cancelled my ADSL a month ago (but kept local phone service) through SBC because another company just finished running fiber to my neighborhood (offering phone, television, and internet). I think once the DSL side of SBC is required to compete on fair grounds with everyone, they will not only introduce new services (maybe through something OTHER than copper?), but I think it will give companies - not only DSL competition - but other service providers a fair chance to compete.
PS - Company I am getting fiber through is Surewest Broadband. They do have bandwidth caps, but they are not enforced very stricly, and they actually post what their monthly limits are. When you get 10Mbps both ways, you have to expect this. But with the Television service as well as Internet, Surewest so far has been great, and I am glad I made the switch from SBC Internet (and Comcast for television).
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.
I wish Adelphia woulkd be forced to follow suit. I don't really want cable TV but am forced to get it just to have the broadband cable access.
I used to have SBC until April of this year.
For $49 a month (which they say was discounted because I signed up for a year with Yahoo) plus $34 for local service, I had ISDN speed that they claim was 348kbps. I NEVER saw any speed faster than 100kbps. Their website test said the speed was 340kbps, but DSL reports.com and manually clocking my downloads told a different story.
I cancelled their service and ate the $200 cancellation fee for not using their service for a year. I'll never use SBC again.
I now use Wide Open West cable for my cable and broadband.
It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. -Frederick Douglass
Wasn't this supposed to be the age of convergence? Getting everything from one provider? I now get my telephone service from cellular. Television service from Time Warner Cable. And might get my internet service from SBC.
The only way to create a level playing field is for the people who own the wires (SBC) to not be the ones selling DSL. There are a million subtle ways SBC can make life difficult for Covad (and any other third-party DSL providers that enter the market). As long as SBC sells its own DSL service they will have an incentive to do so.
I know this first hand from being in the middle of a he-said-she-said argument between Covad and SBC, with me and Speakeasy in the middle. I tried really hard to make it work, since I genuinely *like* Speakeasy and their customer support so much.
Now I use Comcast internet service. I'm no fan of our local cable monopoly, but they do run a cheap, fast pipe to my house. Even when its clogged up w/ traffic, its twice as fast as my DSL line was. After learning their internet service worked so well for me, I disconnected my phone line and use Vonage for voice service. I can assure you, I was filled with tremendous geek joy when I called SBC and asked them to shut my service off.
The state of California has also ruled that SBC has an unfair adventage versus competition in the accidental severing of network backbones. The government of California has ordered SBC to let passers by operate their equipment so that all unskilled people who wish accidentally sever buried lines have an equal chance.
"A man talking sense to himself is no madder than a man talking nonsense not to himself."
This is similar to all those 'frequent customer' cards at stores today. If you don't have the card, you can still buy a 2 liter bottle of soda, but it will cost you $1.78 instead of $0.99. In return, they get valuable marketing/demographic information.
Making you give up choice or information in return for a discount is not an incentive to buy, only a disincentive to buy from somebody else.
LETS DECOMPOSE & ENJOY ASSEMBLING
Comcast sells their cable and their internet separately. As a result, they have to keep their systems separate. When you call Comcast cable to inquire about your bill, they can't help you with anything related to the Internet charges - and vice versa. Maybe it's just how they have it set up (badly) or maybe it's a consequence of having the two areas split.
In a similar vein, but unrelated to these industries: My car/home insurance is through GMAC. I bought my insurance through their website. My fiancee bought hers through GMAC over the phone. Our accounts are completely different, are not accessible to each other, and the GMAC web reps cannot access phone-created accounts and vice versa.
Is it just me, or do these companies run their systems badly?
The current big issue in California telecom regulation is the "Telecommuncations User's Bill of Rights", a very mild set of consumer protection rules the industry is fighting.
The CPUC has announced its intent to regulate some DSL-related issues, mainly in the service quality area.
I lived through the Pacific Telesis split-up that birthed AT&T, Pacific Bell, etc. Now we have Verizon buying up all the small guys... GTE, Airtouch, NorthPoint, etc. I applaud the decision to reign SBC back in a bit, but when is someone going to put a smack down on Verizon. They're international, doing local, long distance, cellular, wireless, and DSL. They are exactly what everyone feared Pacific Telesis would be which is why they were split and deregulated. If we're not careful, the world will soon be SBC and Verizon only.
I live in the Bay area and have had great SBC internet service for many years. My same account, and email address have followed me without a hitch to residences in SF, Oakland and Berkeley. There was zero downtime in my internet service when I made my last move. It was on as soon as my telephone line was on, which was the day I moved in.
While choice is nice, I really doubt that having separate phone line and DSL providers will be able to take an existing account and transfer it to a new number in a new city with zero downtime.
And also I'm not sure what they mean by allowing people to "choose any DSL company they wish". My neighbor has DSL through SpeakEasy and my workplace has it through EarthLink.
"Verizon and QWest is already ahead of the game since they are already offer "Naked DSL" options that allows users to buy broadband services alone." Verizon does not offer the option of naked DSL in California. I know, because I just tried to order it and was told it is not available. I know they plan to test the concept in some eastern states. I'm now wondering if this decision would force Verizon to begin offering naked DSL here as well.
Huh? When I moved from carlisle, pa to elizabethtown, pa, I was able to stay with my (SMALL!) ISP, planet cable, even though I have sprint phone service, and sprint has their own DSL offering.
Regulation is the only way a small ISP can even stay in business now. My ISP is called "planetcable" because they USED to be a cable provider. Guess what? When comcast took over the local cable, they forced planetcable to become a DSL provider, because they weren't about to let a local company instead of themselves offer cable Internet access.
A few years ago I signed up for residential DSL with Covad. Since I already had two phone lines into the residence, it was fine to just make one of them the dedicated DSL line.
Unfortunately when the situation changed and I needed to use DSL and voice on the same line, SBC told me it was impossible to do so unless I switched my DSL over to SBC. Needless to say, this pissed me off to no end, because I had three static IP addresses with Covad and their service had been fantastic.
After several hours of screwing around, mistakes, and general incompetence on the part of SBC, I finally got my new account set up. This was immediately prior to SBC's rollout of their wonderful goat rodeo known as SBC/Yahoo service, so at least I avoided that nightmare.
So last year I move to a new house. There is no broadband cable here, and I can't use another DSL provider with my SBC land line service, so I have to go with SBC. SBC is so incompetent that it takes me six weeks to get DSL installed, because their billing system doesn't think that I'm a customer with them. After over a half-dozen lengthy phone calls with tech support, billing, et. al., I finally get them to realize the problem and initiate my service. Needless to say, all of the time I wasted during my work day with this crap is essentially money down a hole.
SBC is a classic example of a local monopoly that is flourishing simply because of a tilted playing field. In the early days of DSL they buried Covad in the residential market by overpromising so that customers would sign up for service with SBC, then wait for months before SBC had the capacity to initiate service.
Splitting phone and DSL service is going to help shake at least some of their complacence in the DSL market, and hopefully real competition from Comcast cable broadband will help as well. SBC is badly in need of a wake up call, and consumers should really benefit from this, provided SBC's competition takes advantage of it.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
I had to switch local carriers to get the DSL product from them - it was required by my ISP/Phone company.
I see why - Internet and Phone service is so competitive that many CLECs lose money on the DSL product but make up for it on the voice services.
SBC blows - I was glad to dump them for my current ISP. But I wonder if the CLECs are held to the same ruling if we'll see naked DSL prices skyrocket?
So a step ahead... yes... we'll go over the cliff before everyone else.
Have you figured out yet that the rest of us are standing behind you with a pointy stick?
KFG
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.
I switched local phone providers away from SBC a year or two ago. Service just as good, and $10-$15/month cheaper.
Then I dropped cable internet in favor of DSL (from the same alternate provider). Their DSL normal rate is the same as SBCs "introductory" three-month rate (I didn't even look at what the SBC "normal" rate would be, and it certainly wan't obvious).
What's most funny is the commercials that SBC was running for awhile, picturing burly linemen putting up telephone poles, complaining that their competitors were operating "over OUR lines, over OUR networks". Uh, you bought the baby bell like a couple of years ago. I doubt you've wired 0.5% of the damn network.
Wow, it must suck to be you.
I have SBC DSL (I'm in St. Louis County) and I pay $50 a month for it. I get 1.5/384. One thing to note, DSL reports is dog slow in this area.
dslreports.com consistently reports that I'm getting 128k down, yet all my downloads are in the 160K range (no, k isn't the same as K). Based on the conversion from k to K and the expected packet loss (they told me when I signed up to expect 30% at worst), it comes out right. I'm guessing the problem lies with dslreports.com's distinct lack of a midwest test server (at least the last time I checked).
On top of this, I have the benefit of good service (YMMV, of course. Look at all the problems other people have with them!), a stable connection (only 3 outages in 3.5 years, and one of those was a power-surge-toasted modem), and they let you run servers! Yes, web servers. Port 80. And I don't have to give my money to Charter Cable. Compared to them, SBC is fricking Mother Theresa.
I just don't see why SBC is evil. To be honest, the government needs to declare their stuff to be "infrastructure" and make it all government property, make SBC itself a department (think Department of Transportation here... roads are infrastructure too), and make telephones a proper monopoly instead of a total clusterfuck of capitalism where none belongs.
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.
Google news finally picked this up- interestingly the first link is to overclocker.com, instead of this one which has much better coverage of what actually happened :-/
Humpty Dumpty was pushed.
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.
Or this story this article. about Georgia Public Service Commission ordering BellSouth to offer naked DSL back in October 2003.
And of course, let's not forget this article.
Veritas patesco per quaestio questio. Truth is revealed through questions.
Back in February I switched my DSL service from SBC to Sonic.net. SBC was charging way too much for a static connection ($65/month) that was too slow (128k upload cap) while at the same time dramatically dropping the cost of the dynamic service and increasing the bandwidth.
Sonic had a special. Up to 6meg download and 600k upload for $45/month. I signed up immediately. I'm getting about 5Meg/500k and the service is great. During the signup process they asked what OS I was using. Gritting my teeth I said "Linux". Instead of the usual "we don't support that", the guy said, "cool, which distro?".
When I saw some funny stuff (IIS targeting viral infection) from sonic netspace in my apache log I emailed sonic's abuse department. The next morning I had this reply, "We tried to call the customer but were unable to contact him, so we disconnected his service until he resolves this problem." Yep, they actually disconnected a customer because his system was infected with a virus that was attempting to infect other systems.
The only problem I have remaining is with SBC. They still insist I have DSL service with them and keep billing me. I even received a nasty payment demand from them on the same day their marketing department called to sell me DSL service. I've contacted the CPUC to get this resolved since SBC refuses to fix the problem.
-- Will program for bandwidth
Anyone who uses Vonage, has thought about using Vonage, or currently uses Vonage should think again. I only say this because people leaving comments have suggested abandoning POTS and going with Vonage:
p
Their terms of service are horrid and do not give you any of the rights and/or protections afforded to POTS users. Behold, the terms of service that read more like an EULA:
http://www.vonage.com/features_terms_service.ph
"1.3.1 Prohibited Uses
You agree to use the Service and Device only for lawful purposes. This means that you agree not to use them for transmitting or receiving any communication or material of any kind when in Vonage's sole judgment the transmission, receipt or possession of such communication or material (i) would constitute a criminal offense, give rise to a civil liability, or otherwise violate any applicable local, state, national or international law or (ii) encourages conduct that would constitute a criminal offense, give rise to a civil liability, or otherwise violate any applicable local, state, national or international law. Vonage reserves the right to terminate your service immediately and without advance notice if Vonage, in its sole discretion, believes that you have violated the above restrictions, leaving you responsible for the full month's charges to the end of the current term, including without limitation unbilled charges, plus a disconnect fee, all of which immediately become due and payable and may at Vonage's discretion be immediately charged to your credit card. You are liable for any and all use of the Service and/or Device by yourself and by any person making use of the Service or Device provided to you and agree to indemnify and hold harmless Vonage against any and all liability for any such use. If Vonage, in its sole discretion believes that you have violated the above restrictions, Vonage may forward the objectionable material, as well as your communications with Vonage and your personally identifiable information to the appropriate authorities for investigation and prosecution and you hereby consent to such forwarding.
Yes, that's right folks: They reserve the right to monitor your phone calls, make a judgement as to whether or not what you say on the phone is OK, then forward copies of your phone calls and your personal information to police/FBI/etc. There ain't no wiretapping order required here.
I don't use my phone service to do anything illegal, but I don't want the boys in the Vonage NOC listening in on my phone calls either, nor recording them (which the language implies that they do both.)
But it gets even better:
"3. CHANGES TO THIS AGREEMENT
Vonage may change the terms and conditions of this Agreement from time to time. Notices will be considered given and effective on the date posted on to the "Service Announcements" section of Vonage's website (currently located at http://www.vonage.com/features_terms_service.php ). Such changes will become binding on Customer, on the date posted to the Vonage website and no further notice by Vonage is required. This Agreement as posted supersedes all previously agreed to electronic and written terms of service, including without limitation any terms included with the packaging of the Device and also supersedes any written terms provided to Retail Customers in connection with retail distribution, including without limitation any written terms enclosed within the packaging of the Device.. "
Ah, wonderful. They want the right to post copies of your phone calls on their website? All they need to do is mofify their "terms of service" and give themselves that right.
I don't put up with this kind of crap in EULAs for software, and I sure as hell won't put up with it from my phone company!
Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
If it costs you 5 bucks a kilowatt hour to buy the power, you can only charge your customers 1 buck per kilowatt hour!
:
.008275 = $8.275.
I suspect you're illustrating a point, but let's pretend you aren't. Sorry if this is offtopic, but sometimes I need to respond to an inaccurate post with real data. Either either your numbers are off, or your units are.
Here in Illinois, we get power from Commonwealth Edison. The summer rates are (direct link HERE):
Summer Months (June 15th to Sept. 15th):
For all kilowatt-hours: 8.275 cents
Other Months
For the first 400 kilowatt-hours: 8.275 cents
For all over 400 kilowatt-hours: 6.208 cents
SO: 5 BUCKS per kilowatt hour is a bit steep, as is 1 buck.
But, a Megawatt hour is 1000 *
A $1 / MWh rate is way-way-way cheap !
I heard on NPR that the Enron fscks were charging Calif. consumers up to $250 per megawatt hour. That's about 25 times more expensive than here in Illinois.
This is a strong argument for well-managed deregulation; let some real economists work on this. I believe The Economist might have some good opinions about how to make this regulatory mess work. Regulation of monopolies (like power and SBC DSL / Voice) is always an exercise in big-dog-fight scepticism.
So, California: Good luck with that. I hope you succeed, since we have SBC Ameritech here in Illinois, too, and I hate the fsckers monopolistic arguably anti-competitive practices here just as much as y'all probably do.
Unitarian Church: Freethinkers Congregate!
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?