Slashdot Mirror
SBC Planning 15-25Mbps DSL Networks
Tuxedo Jack writes "The Register reports that SBC has begun planning a massive network upgrade which will push fiber connections deeper into subdivisions and neighborhoods than before, resulting in incredibly fast DSL speeds for home users. Their current estimate for down/up speeds are 15-25mb/s down and 1-3mb/s up (mega_bits_, not bytes). SBC's press release goes into depth about this."
The MPAA is going to love this, NOT. I can imagine the day already where they will convince ISP's (or lobby the right people) to slow down network speeds in order to curb piracy (just like most cars have speed governors, eventho it is mostly for safety reasons).
With all those zombies mailing out spam, I have to wince at the possibility of removing the 128k upload bottleneck. Stay in your seats, more spam is on the way. On the good side, with a static IP address you can now host an (amateur) radio/video site from home, thats important to me and my band.
Just because there isn't a need now doesn't mean there won't be in the future. If they have the money to upgrade their networks, let them! Let them plan for the future. What harm can it do?
Bundling broadband is a travesty
I don't disagree. However, the FCC decision was aimed at not forcing service companies to unbundle broadband from their other offerings.
Sigs cause cancer.
If you think Michael Powell is deregulating to benefit the consumer, you're drinking too much of the Koo-aid...
That same FCC decision, IIRC, also allowed the local baby-Bells to charge whatever they want for access to their networks by other carriers. That effectively *destroys* competition for last-mile service.
I have yet to see a decrease in consumer prices in any such circumstance...
I have something in common with Stephen Hawking...
I mean, it's great that we are making progress in bandwidth and reducing cost to get from the phone office to the house, but with connectivity to the backbone still costing as much as it does, do we honestly believe that the effective bandwidth to what we now call "the Internet" backbone will be so cheap that we can ignore it?
I see this as just a way for the phone companies to become another media company and sell the usualy junk on commercial and cable TV, with the phone company now getting some of the profits (where some == "as much as they can gouge the user for").
Just me being cynical.
Actually, if history has proven anything it's that deregulation in a telecommunications industry decreases overall expansion.
The idea is that, outside of regulation, telecommunications tend to settle on "safe" levels of service, where margins are highest but R&D suffers. With regulation, that same level becomes unsafe as margins decrease and competition on the regulated low-end service becomes stagnant. The thought process goes something like this: We are regulated. We have to charge a specific price for baseline service, where both the price and the baseline are mandated. Therefore, if we want to raise revenues, we will need to create a demand for a more expensive service ABOVE baseline, and we will need to push our boundaries into new territories. The cable industry developed cable broadband, digital cable, addressable cable and on-demand pay-per-view as means to maximize profits during their strong regulation period (from 1992 on).
Of course, if you're in a regulated industry it's hard to see the forest for the trees. It looks like the government is forcing you to do what you don't want to do, and that's lose money on a cheap baseline service (many cable companies broke even on regulated "basic" cable). Therefore, when you exit regulation the natural reaction is to raise prices, let service fall off and enjoy your freedom. Some say this is what killed various airlines after THEY became dereg'd.
Anyhow, it's good to see SBC upping their network. But I'd say that deregulation of fiber had little to do with the decision. I'd also like to point out that regulating all broadband providers to offer 512/128 service at $30 would create a ton of very profitable high speed options at the same price we pay now for that speed. Prices stay the same, but service goes up...or did you think SBC's new supercoolfast DSL was gonna be $50?
Hey freaks: now you're ju
I have yet to see a decrease in consumer prices
What planet have you been living on? I used to pay $90 for what now costs me $29/mo. And who cares what Powell's motives are. As long as it *does* benefit the consumers, isn't that the most important thing?
I think parent is a tiny part flamebait.
Bundling is *not* the antithesis of a free market. Not being able to offer bundled services is.
Now, that one can't find what they're looking for like unbundled and cheaper services, as in this case, that suggests that the market is young and not enough competition has moved into town. Also, keep in mind for these larger providers that providing someone with one service in addition to the other, both of which they are mass providers, may not add much to their overhead; so to debundle and offer something at half the price might narrow their profit margin.
So, if you think there are enough people like you who are getting the shaft and that there is demand for what you want, start your own ISP or whatever and tap that market yourself. If you do and you don't make money, well, it looks like the ISPs were making the right business decision regarding their pricing models for their services.
It's the same bogus promises the telcos have been making for years. If only they were given unregulated monopoly power, they'd provide more bandwidth.
Here's SBC's announcement of fibre to the home in 2002. Where is that now?
Horsepucky.
California did something they called "deregulation," but it was actually screwed-up re-regulation. They actually forbade local power companies from entering into long-term contracts. This forced them into the spot market, where prices rise fast. Enron took advantage of that -- they were under no long-term contracts for that power, so let the buyer beware. Negotiated, long-term contracts would have saved the CA public $Billions, but the legislature said "no,"
The government set the rules in a way that ensured somebody would get rich off the taxpayers. Isn't that how it always works?
Don't blame "deregulation" when real deregulation had nothing to do with it.
READ the US Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the other amendments! http://lcweb2.loc.gov/const/const.html
"I'd also like to point out that regulating all broadband providers to offer 512/128 service at $30 would create a ton of very profitable high speed options at the same price we pay now for that speed." That's a joke right? As I CLEC I know 1st hand what the costs are involved with delivering DSL. $30 for 512/128 might work for the ILECS, but we're charged $28/mo per copper loop to deliver DSL, now that the FCC has taken Line-sharing out of our hands the telso's won't provide it (because the no longet have to). Think about it all but $2 of your proposed price point just cover loop charges. $2/mo isn't a lot of money to cover bandwith/staff/co-location facilities. Now before the FCC stepped in and diluted the 1996 telco act we could get loops for ~$9/mo and lineshare at $0/mo and would have been happy to provide DSL at damn near dial-up prices, instead we're locked into 256/1500 @ $40/mo with slim margins (dial-up is more profitable at $15/mo) The only way we can increase margins now is to bundle it with our local phone service. Too bad we just got a letter from the ILEC saying that they will no longer allow that practice in 6 months, we can however resell their service for a (substansially) higher cost. Bottom line, if you're not Verizon,SBC, other ILECs, the FCC has made it so you can't play ball only 8 years after making it look like you could.
Pacific Bell (well, SBC but I still like to call them by their old name) was forced to offer their services to wholesalers at giveaway rates to produce "competition". Considering that the same network was being used, I'm unsure as to what kind of benefits this really provides; it's still SBC's lines and network no matter who you use, and lower rates for the free-riders like MCI make it harder for Pac Bell to invest and maintain their network. The only real consequence of this "competition" is marginally lower prices and annoying telephone calls asking you to switch your local service.
If there was some way we could encourage parallel networks to be built and create real competition, I'd encourage it - and in fact, we have this with telephone and cable companies fighting for our business with separate networks.
This massive investment proposed by Pacific Bell gives me real hope for huge speeds right to my door, letting me run a serious web server farm or whatever else I wanted to do. (And yes, that's permitted under their DSL contract for my $79.95 a month static IP, 1.5/256 service). If I could get 25mb/3mb service instead, you can bet I'd be pleased as punch. And you bet I'd be grateful for the suspension of this "competition" rule that allowed SBC to make this enormous investment.
Although I know SBC is a wretched monopoly, I've always thought it as best of the Bells. Their DSL technical support may be abysmal, but service and speeds are a heck of a lot better and cheaper than I got with Covad.
At least from my point of view, Hurrah for the Evil Monopoly - sometimes, even thought we may hate to admit it, they're better than their competition!
D
AT&T was given a government mandated monopoly. They were given access to public ways often for free. They were given all sorts of benefits with the aim to provide telephone service to every last house in the nation. I find it difficult to feel that it is 'their' network.
Today, the network built over the last century belongs to the dwindling number of Baby Bell (RBOC) descendants of AT&T. The public deserves to get something back in return for all the benefits accrued to the RBOCs over nearly a century. Mandating that that network be shared in order to promote the public interest is an insignificant price to pay.
Agreed, however, PUC mandated rates are sometimes too low, sometimes too high. Public commissions deciding tariff rates is a problem.
An infinitely better solution would have been structural separation years ago: force the Bells to separate into multiple companies. One which manages the physical network infrastructure and charges all competitors the EXACT SAME rate for access to that network, and other company(ies) that provide services to business and consumer customers.
The fact is that for a long, long time, competition was ILLEGAL. RBOCs had a protected monopoly. Forcing other companies to build parallel networks rather than forcing the sharing of the existing network built with public legal protection and often public funds along the limited public right-of-way in our alleys, along our railroads, and beneath our roads is just wrong. It is a viewpoint which is oblivious to the history of the regulated and subsidized telecommunitions history of this nation. The Bells were given those protections because it is terribly expensive to build those networks. Same for the monopolies given to cable companies. Yet now we expect new entrants to the market to incur those network costs, sans the decades of monopoly protection to recoup the investment?
The only saving grace is that wireless technologies will be able to provide competition without needing to string wires all across the nation again. Hopefully it will be true competition, among multiple nimble local/regional competitors, not national goliaths like Comcast or SBC, which will be only too happy to stamp out all other competition and maintain a duopoly.
And one last comment. SBC in Illinois claimed that the POTS line (UNE-P) lease rate of about $12/mo paid by CLECs was *FAR* below their cost, and they lost big money every month on that. Looking at my SBC bill, I pay $5.61 for my line charge, and $4.50 for my "federal access charge" which is actually money SBC gets but they get to call it that. Everything else on my bill is option and tax (though some of that goes to SBC too).
Yet, did SBC lobby the PUC to raise the tariffs for what they charge me? No. They're apparently at least content with my $10.11 a month. I'm sure they make most profit on the extra optional services, but I'm also sure they squeak out at least a little from my $10.11.
So what did SBC attempt to get the CLEC UNE-P lease rate set to? Nearly TWENTY FIVE DOLLARS per month. Well over twice what SBC charges me, the consumer. My total phone bill, for TWO lines, including local long distance, with caller id, name display, second ring tone, taxes and fees is less than $35 a month from SBC. With SBC's proposed rate hike, a competitor would have had to charge me nearly $50/mo, BEFORE extras, taxes, fees and so on to provide the same.
In the end, the rate hike was to $19/mo. Meaning that a competitor would have to charge a bare profitless minimum of $38/mo to pay SBC for what SBC gives me for $35/mo total.
Yes, I feel so sorry for poor, poor SBC.
Larry