Slashdot Mirror
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."
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
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.
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 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.
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."
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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?