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Cable Equal Access Case Goes to Supreme Court
DCTooTall writes "The FCC has ruled that Cable High-Speed Internet is an Information Service, and therefore not subject to the same equal access regulations that govern DSL. Brand-X Networks sued the FCC for equal access to the Cable Networks and won. The FCC appealed the decision and next Tuesday the case goes to the Supreme Court. The Telco's have repeatedly used the current FCC stance on Cable Broadband in their fight to get the same monopoly on DSL. This case has the potential to not only open the Cable networks to competition, but also prevent the Telco's from further attempts on limiting DSL options."
If cable companies paid to put in their infrastructure, why should they be required to share it? Or, worded differently, did the govt. help pay to put in their system?
Could someone please explain this "regulations" thing to non-americans?
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is the FCC. They started this new philosophy of "let's deregulate, and all our problems will go away," and look what happened. The media sources are consolidating, and the telcos are consolidating. Did the FCC WANT this to happen? Sometimes I think so, since it seems so damn obvious that it would. Why would you EVER want to monopolise the cable and telephone lines? How is DSL NOT an information service? The FCC has to recognise that whether it's IP over coax or fibre or phone line or WHATEVER, it's still internet service. They've just really turned the wrong way in the last few years, and it's hurting us all.
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If the cable companies are forced to open their networks, it would hopefully allow one to eventually obtain "naked cable." I'd like cable internet access, but the price for non-subscribers is $20 over their already inflated price.
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I hope it happens. It'd be nice to finally be able to get better than 2mbit down and 256kbit up.
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The Technology exists for the Telco's to improve DSL, such as ADSL2 and ADSL2+... not to mention Reach Extended ADSL.... The big problem is the Telco's have been slow to upgrade or really take full advantage of the available technology. They have repeatedly gone to the FCC crying that Cable doesn't need to share their lines, and that being forced to abide by the Equal Access rules it is holding them back. As a result, there have been many cases (such as the recent Anti-muni FCC ruling, or even Bellsouth's recent "Naked DSL" victory) in which a Bell has used the fact that Cable doesn't have to share in order to have a ruling in their favor, allowing them more in the way of monopoly control over DSL technology.
While this could be a good thing for customers there are several technical considerations to look at. 1. There is not enough upstream bandwidth in a typical cable plant for several providers to provide their own service over a seperate cmts. 2. If multiple service providers try to offer their brand of "service" over the same cmts there wouldn't be a difference in service from what there is today (Except content) If one provider tried to sell a higher bandwidth package it would affect customers from all different providers on the same cmts. 3. Who pay's to maintain, power, and house the cmts ? The way that dsl ir provided (Each ISP installing their own DSLAM) works great because there is a seperation of where the last mile to the customer terminates - The only leased telco facilty is the copper from the service address to the CO. If service providers had to share the same DSLAM and had a limit of bandwidth that could be provided dsl would be a huge disaster.
I'm going to break up your argument into two issues. That of sharing the lines and that of having two different companies playing under different rules.
Sharing the lines is something most are in favor of but I am not going to get into that.
Right now Telecos are forced by regulation to share their lines that they laid down and maintain for a fee that is around cost. That gives no one a reason to upgrade the networks. And BTW they are working to upgrading to fibre not measley ADSL2+. Having full control of their own lines meand that they can make a profit sooner and have more incentive to do so. They need to compete with cable, afterall.
Cable, on the other hand, supplies internet as well and is under no compulsion to share in either the internet of TV market. This gives them great reason to expand as they have a captive market on their lines and with a few small upgrades can drive the phone companies out of the business.
Cable offers TV and internet and is looking at doing phone. Telcos do phone and internet and are looking at doing TV. Why should one be forced to open up their lines and not the other for the same service? As for competition, they are already competing with each other (or the Telcos are trying but the forced line issue is incentive to not try) so why not have a level playing field to expand the competition?
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I always hate how aprtment complexs always try to tell people that only one type of broadband service is available in their buildings. Liek where I live now, they told me I would have to go through Qwest. Meaning I would have to have Qwest phone service plus shitty Qwest DSL. Instead I called Speakeasy, had Covad come out and install some sort of bypass so I dont' need a phone line, and now i have 6mbit down 768 up with tons of extras for $100 a month, and I can resell the bandwidth on a wireless access point. Screw telcos.
The deal with a common carrier is that a common carrier has to accept anyone's traffic. ie. If the railroad ships wheat for company X then they can not refuse to ship wheat for company Y.
Cable did not start as a common carrier. It started with small providers grabbing signals off the air and stuffing them into the cable to sell to their subscribers. Since they weren't charging the TV stations to get their signals to the subscribers, they weren't acting as common carriers. They weren't charging people to get their signals somewhere.
Telegraph started out as common carrier in that if they sent messages for company X, they had to send messages for company Y.
Telephone is a common carrier because they were forced to be one. I think that will happen to the cable companies too. The minute they started dabbling in internet services and telephone, they opened the gate and they won't be able to shut it.
This case has the potential to not only open the Cable networks to competition, but also prevent the Telco's from further attempts on limiting DSL options."
Or, it could allow the Court to redress what it may see as a fact no longer in existence. They could decide that equal access is unenforceable regardless, in which case the telcos would be allow to prevent competitors from using their equipment.
You can never tell in these cases because the SC can be thinking anything. But I do agree, it will have an impact.
The FCC is supposedly there to help the public out by regulating phones, internet, RF, etc ... Why would they appeal this sort of thing? It should be blatently obvious to anyone that opening up cable lines to outside companies is in the public interest (even if the cable companies gripe and do a half-ass job at it). I mean, sure, they can defend themselves in the first suit just to defend themselves. But why appeal it? This is ridiculous. The operation of the cable companies as monopolies is obvious ... with their erroneous fees here and there, their slow service, the whole "wait 60 days until you get service again", bundling services so you can't get internet unless you have cable, etc, etc. None of this stuff would be as bad as it currently is if there was true competition, because they would be out of business at the drop of a hat! I think the FCC positions need to be elected or something, so at least there is SOME pressure to serve the public interest.
I'd like whatever you're smoking, please.
The FCC is going to give them a monopoly so they can grow and increase the size of their network? When has that ever happened? In every case of a monopoly all that happens is that progress stagnates and prices go up.
Examples?
Intel: if it weren't for AMD we'd all still be using PII 500's and paying out the nose for them.
Microsoft: we have Apple and Linux to thank for MS even acknowledging that Windows might have flaws that need fixing.
Comcast is the monopoly where I live (Tallahassee, FL), and all that means is that they can afford to do rediculous things like charge an extra $15 for naked cable (more than just getting bare bones local channels + high speed), having crappy service, and inflated prices.
Where's their incentive to improve? I'd love to have other options.
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Having both, I can say that they both have their advantages.
DSL - static IP address, more upstream bandwidth, liberal use policy
Cable modem - more downstream bandwidth, and in a few cases about 2 hops closer to key backbones
Would I give up either? Not unless I can no longer afford to. They're both down up to 3 days a month, and thankfully those 3 days haven't overlapped yet. Plus, since I use a real linux router, and not some lameass linksys piece of shit, I can make use of both simultaneously. Not just failover, mind you, but round-robin connection marking through both. Can I download a single large file, making use of both? Not yet...
But supposing I scrape together enough talent to patch wget, I might be able to download a piece of the file over each, simultaneously.
So, let's just stop with the cable vs. dsl bullshit already, folks. Whichever you can get, or if both, whichever suits you, is best. It wasn't so long ago that we were all struggling along on 28.8k modems anyway.
This is silly.. if you don't like the cable company, work to change it.
EVERY cable company must have a contract with the local city/town to operate.
I worked at a public access TV station in a small town during this. They are usually 3-7 year contracts, the cable comittee is usually made up of people from the town/city.
Our managed to get MediaOne (at the time) to give free cable modems to all the schools, as well as free cable service, on top of what they were required to give the public access TV station. They also had to agree to offer high speed access across the entire town in 2 years or less.
It came VERY close to dumping them and going with Adelphia.. if that happened then everybody in the the town would switch to Adelphia and MediaOne (now Comcast) would have been OUT.
Also, you can get Earthlink service over cable via Comcast..
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To me, an information service sends data one way, from provider to consumer. A telecommunications service allows two-way communication.
The Internet's most popular service is e-mail.
What if the Postal Service was (privatized and) declared an information service? Would I no longer be able to send letters to some addresses because they belong to a different carrier service? Would I have to pay extra postage for cross-carrier service?
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ILECs complain that they can't make any money. They all want in the long distance and wireless business, not the margin challenged local business and whine about how legislation prevents that and they do their best to use passive aggressive behaviour like dragging their feet on third party DSL installations.
Unlike the post office, telcos don't have to provide service to remote locations, so they don't. Residents of remote areas usually set up co-ops to run their local phone service. The strange thing is that they typically have much better service because of it even though their physical costs are higher.
Putting these two observations together, here's what I propose:
Force all ILECs to sell their local exchanges to the residents of that exchange who run them as co-ops. Allow the ILECs to change their business model to compete with long distance providers. Allow individual residents to choose from any long distance provider who's willing to hook up to their local exchange.
Do the same thing with cable providers. The local cable 'exchange' runs cables to the neighbourhood, and individual users get to choose, which cable content providers they get hooked up to with video, radio and ISP service being independently selectable.
This system allows for competition on content and services, while putting the part of the system that needs to be a monopoly in the hands of the people who are most interested in and affected by the actions of the monopoly.
There are lots of details left out here, but this should get the germ of the idea across.
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The problem is that the Telco's originally promised Fiber several years ago, and they keep going to the FCC trying to change their plans...using the Cable situation as their reasons. For instance, many Telcos originally said they would do fiber to the house... then they said to the curb.... and now I think Verizon has said they will only run Fiber to the remote terminal. If nothing more, this will remove the Telco's ability to blame things on the cable company's ability to play by different rules. And it will prevent a Duo-opoly between the telco and the cable company.
I thought cable was already opened for broadband competition. Here in Central Florida, there is only one cable provider in most areas (Bright House Netorks, with a bit of overbuild with Adelphia and or Cox in some areas), but where broadband ISPs are concerned, everywhere that Bright House Networks offers service, you have the choice of any of 4 ISPs.
Bright House themselves doesn't have a 'house brand' (Road Runner is considered by some to be the house brand, but Bright House owns no stake in Road Runner as far as I know), but I thought this was exactly the thing that caused them to add other providers 2-3 years ago.
What did I miss? Is it the case with Bright Hosue that they didn't necessarily have to allow competition but decided to anyway?
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