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."

Comments

That'll learn 'em.

[Anonymous Coward]

DSL is theft anyway. I don't know what insane trickery is involved in allowing voice AND data go over the same medium, but I don't like it. It smacks of devil-worship.

Re:That'll learn 'em.

[charon69]

Well, time for like my 3rd comment on Slashdot ever...

I realize you were joking, but, just in case nobody knows, here's how DSL works in a nut shell.

Your typical POTS line (Plain Old Telephone System) is just an analog connection to the phone company (yes, this is a generalization). The human voice and ear can only cover certain ranges of frequencies, so there's really no point in attempting to do voice communication beyond a frequency limit. But the higher frequencies can still go across the line just fine. As such, a DSL modem just modulates the data to correspond to frequencies higher than anything that you can say or hear and puts it on the same line as your voice traffic. To further ensure that there's no overlap between your voice traffic and the data modulations, you put a low pass filter on all your analog phone lines to make sure that they can't interfere with the data portion. At the phone company, they just strip the frequencies back into two separate systems and demodulate the data to get the 1s and 0s back.

Yes, actually, I do work at a company that makes this stuff. Why do you ask?

Re:That'll learn 'em.

[grub]

Well, time for like my 3rd comment on Slashdot ever...
Liar! That was your 6th comment on Slashdot! I demand the mod strip of you of all karma! You will be taken outside the city walls at dawn where you shall be buried up to your shoulders when you will then be stoned until dead!

Or maybe not.

Competition

[mfh]

What cable competition really means:

• Better prices
• Better service
• More jobs
• Alternative services
• Fresh thinking
• Offspring markets

Re:Competition

[Mercano]

What cable companies want you to think competition really means:

• Communism

Re:Competition

[thinkliberty]

Look at the contract your cable company has with your town or county (depending on where you live.)

They prohibit another cable company from laying cable. So no one can compete, even if they wanted to lay their own cable.

Re:Competition

[AK Marc]

Communism CANNOT COEXIST with competition.

That's only if you use the correct definition. What the word has apparently come to mean is that the goverment regulating businesses in any way (even forcing the very un-communism quality of competition) is communism. That is a modern trick. Take a word with negative connotations, assign it to something you don't like even if not appropriate, then watch as everyone begins to associate the word and the thing.

government involvement?

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Re:government involvement?

[NormalVisual]

In almost all cases, yes, there was some form of government subsidy, whether it be by allowing only one cable company for a given locality, or giving free right-of-way for the lines to be run, or other such consideration.

Re:government involvement?

[cyngus]

Telco's, utilties, etc have what is called a natural monopoly. These are services with little or no differentiation(1), high barriers to entry(2), and a market winner determined solely based on number of customers (due to high fixed costs)(3). Take electric utilities as an example.
(1)Electricity is pretty much the same, there's not a way to sell Enchanced Electricity(TM).
(2)The cost of every company that wanted to provide electricity building power lines would be ridiculous, there is no way that an new comer could displace an incumbent.
(3)Due to the fixed cost nature of a network infrastructure, the guy with the most customers has the highest margins. The problem then is that even vastly inefficient incumbents will continue to be the only players in the market. Forcing companies to allow competitors to their distribution infrastructure allows competition and lower costs.

However, setting the rent the competitor pays to the distribution network's owner is hard. What is this access really worth? In most questions of price "the market" determines the price, but in this case there is no market, since your customer is your competitor and therefore you would charge prices sufficient to drive your competitor/customer out of business. Therefore gov't has to set these prices and gov't sucks at this. People in general suck at setting prices, but without "the market" its what you have to do.

the real problem

[eobanb]

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.

Re:the real problem

[igjeff]

Unfortunately, you're suffering from, apparently, the same lack of understanding that the FCC is.

There are two services in play, here.

The first is DSL or cable modem service, which are clearly telecommunications services. These are the actual DSL or cable modem signalling over the wire.

Then there's the Internet Access overtop of the DSL or cable modem service. This is correctly classified by the FCC as an information service. Their problem (and apparently yours as well) is that they/you don't realize that DSL and cable modem service isn't *inherently* Internet service. DSL has, quite successfully, been used for non-Internet services, and cable modems could easily be used in the same ways. The FCC's stance on DSL and cable modem service, however, has made most of these uses uneconomical. A more reasonable stance, that takes into consideration of the layered nature of networking technologies, would much more realistically align the regulatory environment with the real world...both technically, and wrt competitiveness. (Internet service is competitive, DSL transport service is notsomuch).

Jeff

"Naked Cable"

[jm92956n]

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.

Re:"Naked Cable"

[justforaday]

Doesn't your cable provider offer Cinemax?

Competetion is good

[Junior J. Junior III]

I hope it happens. It'd be nice to finally be able to get better than 2mbit down and 256kbit up.

Re:Competition is good

[DCTooTall]

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.

Re:In Plain English?

[Ironsides]

Local telephone companies (who own the wires) are required by law to sell allow other companies access to their wires (whereby the other company can supply local service) at below market costs. Sometimes around or below how much it costs them to maintain the wires as well. This way we can have competition between multiple local phone companies on the same set of wires. This was extended to DSL some years ago.

Now, Cable companies (who sometimes own the wires and sometimes don't, in my are the county officially owns the wires and we still only have one cable company) are not required to open up their cable lines to competing companies.

Techinal Problems

[steve6534]

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.

Re:Techinal Problems

[BumbaCLot]

Wrong, they actually do.
Not all ISPs have to supply DSLAMs to share DSL with telcos. I work for an ISP and we sell Verizon and SBC DSL. We are charged for lineshares by both companies. With Verizon we provide them with DLCI numbers and have static IPs for our customers. With SBC, their Redback routers look at the username and route to our system based on that.

Re:Techinal Problems

[silas_moeckel]

OK I actualy do this for a living every now and then and your pretty far off. There is a limit to the number of channels avalible past the fiber. 188 of them last I checked but not all cable co's have upgraded there physical plant to support them all. Each provider would need a minimum of 2 channels to hook there head ends into (for practial purposes they whould need space in the CO or very near it)

And as to DSL your incorrect again, everybody does not have to put in there own dslams to make it work. Many get an ATM feed from the incumbents DSLAM and that is the first shared bandwith and ATM can and does provide garentee's as to bandwith use per virtual circut. Often the incumbent changes as much for this service as they do for DSL as to avoid competition.

Am I missing the point here?

[BigZee]

As far as I can see, the issue here whether the cable network should be opened in the same was as the phone network. However, isn't it the case that the phone network is considered to be a public asset whereas the cable network is a private one? This is certainly the case in the UK where the phone network is a public network that is gradually being made open to any internet supplier. However, there's no reason that I can see that Telewest or NTL should be expected to open a network that they put there own private money into. Is this not exactly the same thing? If it is, although one might like the cable company to open it's networks, it doesn't seem to me that there is any obligation or regulation that should expect it.

Interesting trade-off...

[Giant Space Hamster]

The FCC is basically offering the cable companies a de facto monopoly on cable internet in order to ensure that more people can get connected and the size of the network is increased. After all, if the cable company has a monopoly, the only way it can really grow is to hook up more people.

But if, on the other hand, other companies are permitted to use the network, the cable companies may feel that expanding their network is not worth the cost, thus preventing people from ever getting high-speed internet.

Personally, I think it's a relatively hard decision to make. Allowing the monopoly screws over those people who already can get cable internet, but offers the greatest incentive to extend access to more people. Not allowing the monopoly gives cheaper prices to those with cable internet, but pretty much ensures that the networks won't get expanded, especially to more rural areas.

Perhaps a compromise of a limited-time monopoly would be best. Cable companies get a 5-year monopoly on new networks, and afterwards must open them up to competition.

Re:Interesting trade-off...

[newdamage]

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.

Re:In Plain English?

[mamladm]

With Cable Internet services the Cable TV operator is the only internet service provider on the cable network and no other provider has any right to gain access to that network providing their own service.

With DSL services the situation is different. Internel service providers have the right to get access to the telco's network to provide their own service over DSL in competition with the telco that owns the wires.

The telcos would like to get the same monopoly status that cable operators have. Internet service providers would like to get the same access right to cable networks that they have to telco's DSL networks.

The FCC has tried to argue that there is a difference between cable and DSL that justifies the difference in access rights. Not everybody agrees with that view and so the issue went to the courts.

DSL was guaranteed in the Constitution

[WillAffleckUW]

Here, let me download you a copy.

I don't know about you...

[Rude Turnip]

but I've never gotten "information" from my cable modem provider. All they sell is a pipe and the information comes from elsewhere. It's not that much different than using the telephone, in which case the "information" comes from the people I call, not the phone company.

Re:Competition is good

[Ironsides]

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?

I hate subjects

[weavermatic]

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.

Is the cable company a common carrier?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Another Option

[Kefaa]

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.

I Don't Get It

[bleckywelcky]

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.

Re:Competition is good

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

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.

Re:In Plain English?

[Ironsides]

Interestingly enough, the telcos getting monopoly status over their lines may lead to an increase in competition:

Telcos upgrade to fibre to the home to compete with cable (Verizon is doing this).
Cable operators drop price/increase bandwidth to compete with Telcos.
Telcos offer Video services.
Cable offers better deals to compete.
Cable offers phone service to compete with Telcos.
Telcos offer better deals to compete.

At this point in technology the two are evolving into natural competitors on multiple fronts.

If the cable corps have to open the lines, it can mean more competition on that front. Either way so long as the status quo is not maintained consumers come out ahead.

Sillyness

[Sc00ter]

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..

Re:Sillyness

[jandrese]

Yeah I was an idealist too. Then I went to the meeting and realized that everybody on the board was actually employed by the cable company they were supposed to be regulating! Apparently nobody had heard of the concept of Conflict of Interest. I just love town politics. I just wish I could figure out a way to work up enough intrest to get the local residents mad, but this apparently ranks as a "What's the problem? These are the guys who know how this stuff works, why change it?" to most of the townsfolk, including the city reps who appointed them. Morons.

Information vs. communication services

[HTH NE1]

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?

Get rid of ILEC & local Cable providers altoge

[MCRocker]

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.

The problem is...

[suitepotato]

Too many cooks.

I love how many people glom onto this corporate bashing stance of forcing "competition" without any idea of the technical wherewithal involved in making it happen and the degredation of service in the near, mid, and long term.

I've worked for DSL CLECs which had resellers self-branding what they sold for another partner ISP which actually supplied the IPs and had a layer two frame or atm circuit to us and we had one then onward to a partner CLEC which held the facilities where we didn't have a build and from them over ILEC copper to the customer using a customer owned CPE.

Can you say clusterf*ck? I knew you'd try.

Occam's Razor applies here.

On top of this, are we going to legally require the cable companies to give away connections for free? No? Then we can add the charge they give to the competing ISP on to whatever the other ISP charges the customer.

It gets better kids. Think about this... How big are the cable providers' fiber nets? Many of them either own a load of their own or they combine their sizeable assets with others. We're not talking a couple DS3s on a dial-up ISP here, we're talking major OC fiber lines handling hugantic ginormous (thank you Bruce Almighty) amounts of data quite well every day.

I'm supposed to want someone other than my cable company for what reason? So I can say that my last mile is cable but the undersized backhaul is on an overutilized interface on an underpowered Cisco router administered by some nineteen year old cert whore? So that I can say I'm doing business with TWO different entities instead of one? So that I can say my ISP is a mom and pop (or t-shirt wearing crew of Linux geeks) unlike those big corporate cable people (in polo shirts)?

If you want something done right, you use the right tools and methods, and you do it with intent to succeed. You don't host a mission critical commercial web server on a DSL line, you have it hosted professionally on a good pipe. You host a personal vanity server on DSL.

Similarly, my broadband is too important to sacrifice to some so-called competitor's vanity. Even today in DSL we still see ISPs taken seriously whose idea of a NOC is two teens occasionally taking time out from their endless Half-Life game to run pings in five or six windows and don't even know what Matt's Traceroute is, never mind even know how to check the atm traffic on their own router. Such have been contributory to the disasterous collapse of some CLECs. I know, I used to work with such yahoos and was there when they helped down us.