Slashdot Mirror
FCC Rules Telcos Need Not Provide Naked DSL
Devistater writes "Despite at least four states' laws to the contrary, the FCC has ruled that phone companies need not provide naked DSL service to customers, but can require bundling; for example: Voice and DSL.
FCC Commisioners Copps and Adelstein say in dissent 'In this decision, the Commission unwisely flashes the green light for broadband tying arrangements.' 'If it is [ok] to deny consumers DSL if they do not [have] analog voice service, what stops a carrier from denying broadband service to an end-user who has cut the cord and uses only a wireless phone? What prevents a carrier from refusing to provide DSL service to a savvy consumer who wants stand-alone broadband only for VoIP?'"
Take cable television. I'd prefer not to waste my money on the 50 garbage channels and just pay for the several I actually watch. However, I have to pay for packages instead of an al la carte scheme.
As for telephone service. I don't have a land line. I have a cell phone and internet from my cable provider. If my internet came from Verizon through DSL, I could be forced to buy a service just to have internet.
I don't know how much the government should regulate businesses like this, but if you only have one broadband provider in your area and they want to hit you up for more services than you want, there's not much you can do about it.
I hear another court case in the offing.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
In general f(a+b) != f(a)+f(b).
In this particular case, a and b are services, and f is the cost function. Apply the result and you get your explanation.
Whose interests exactly is the FCC protecting besides big corporations? The FCC should be working in the interests of American consumers, and they are so obviously not doing this. These all-or-nothing strategies are being used by more and more megagiants like SBC and leave users with little reason to use, for example, VoIP, even though it's about three times cheaper than SBC's phone service. Thanks a whole fucking lot.
Take off every sig. For great justice.
Most of the cost of providing phone or DSL service isn't the day-to-day operational cost; it's the cost of running the physical copper cable in the first place. I don't know if the figures are still the same, but at one point it took phone companies 5-10 years to recover their cable-laying investment on new subscribers.
When ADSL first became popular, it was cheap for a very simple reason: Everybody already had a phone line, so the marginal cost of ADSL was merely the cost of the terminating equipment. The physical link was already being paid for out of the phone bill. Take away the landline phone service, and the ADSL cost jumps sharply, since it will now have to cover the formerly "free" copper wiring.
DSL simply doesn't make economic sense without attached landline phone service.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
They're called "Código de defesa do Consumidor", or "Consummer defense Code".And it states that no one can couple some product to another.
For example, if you're going to open a bank account the bank can't say that aquiring a credit card is a pre-requisite. Or if you're going to buy a car the reseller can't say that buying the insurance from company X is a pre-requisite.
It's indeed a very nice law... when correctly enforced. Unfortunetely our major DSL provider (Telemar) couples the service to an account on a "internet provider". This is of course nonsense, since the real conectivity provider is Telemar itself... but yet they still require such account. The worst part is that NONE of the so called "internet providers" has full Linux-compatible media content...
---- You know how some doctors have the Messiah complex - they need to save the world? You've got the "Rubik's" complex
Nothing.
Why would you think that the FCC cares about the public interest anymore? That line of thought is so old school. Especially when there are corporate interests to protect. And I wouldn't expect the House or Senate leadership to help you out much here - last I heard Billy Tauzin's still cutting deals as a lobbyist for telecom interests on the side (when he's not carrying the bag for pharma or entertainment industries).
That is all.
The sad thing is that corporations do have rights. They are for all intents and purposed offered the same rights as natural people under the law. See Corporations
What's to stop us from creating our own cheap/free broadband? See http://unternet.net/ for a start.
Three of the five members were appointed by Republicans. They all voted for the rights of the corporations over the people. The two Democrat-appointed members voted against. So, in this case, the Democrats were more conservative.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
The problem is.. The telecos, cable providers etc will of course abuse this.
Cable does already. Teleco's do already...
The FCC simply allowed them to continue their bullshit practices.
I dont want a fucking $50 verizon line just so i can have their FIBER SERVICE!!!!!!!!!!! FUCK OFF
The FCC is fucking crazy. They're in bed with big buisness. They lifted the consolidation restraints... they've CONSISTANTLY provided the corperations what they want at the expense of the user.
The FCC is fucking worthless. Maybe they can afford to be forced to pay $50 for a POTS line along with their $50 FIBER service... But MOST people cant because unlike the FCC, their pockets arent filled with the cash bribes from the telecos
Face it... this world is a waste. We have no say in shit.
Get rich, buy out the companies you hate... then laugh as you shit on the rubble of their corperate headquarters you just demolished.
That is the only way to have a say in this country.
Otherwise.. you're fucking food for the corperations to chew and spit out at will.
I've said this before, it's now government by the lobby group, for the lobby group. As far as leaving it to the market, as other posters have noted, the market is skewed. Beyond the local monopolies, their is collusion, price fixing et al. Any fines ever found and levied are slap on the wrist stuff.
While cable is faster than DSL, cable broadband is not universally available, nor is cable available everywhere.
This ruling isn't necessarily bad. The local cable company allows broadband without a cable subscription, but if you have a subscription, you get a large discount.
The same is/would be true for DSL if not required to be bundled. With such and such package, your DSL only costs $x amount. Without that package, it costs $xx. Most phone companies are already doing this, so this ruling is a non-issue.
Community wireless has a long way to go to be viable, sure a few cities offer it in select areas, but it's hardly universal.
Broadband via the power grid is much more likely. Every house has electricity, so the utility companies are already connected. You could have internet wherever you have an outlet. The technology is available and in use in some areas with more coming online. The only real downside is for the shortwave users. Evidently, it wrecks havock with reception.
As for the phone companies hurting in a few years because of low cable pricing, once the phone companies aren't a factor in broadband and assuming wireless or powergrid don't step up, the cable pricing won't be low, anymore. It's Econ 101.
Actually, corporations are legal persons and as such have some of the same independent rights that people ('natural persons') have.
...
In this cased, corporations seem to have a 'right" that no mere human has.
In particular, the phone line to my house is owned by Verizon, and I have no legal rights to it whatsoever. They have a monopoly here, and the FCC seems to be saying that they can force me to pay for services that I don't want. No individual human has the right to do this to me; only a corporation has that right.
Actually, we have DSL through speakeasy now (no port blocking, friendly and competent support for linux and Mac users, yadda, yadda). We recently started VoIP through them, and it works pretty well. I wouldn't be surprised if Verizon is now planning to make us pay them another $30 per month for phone service that we're getting from someone else.
There is an ongoing discussion hereabouts of the prospect that the FCC will decide that Verizon no longer has to lease their lines to companies like speakeasy. Then we'd be stuck with Verizon's crappy DSL, port blocking and all, unless we want to pay double for "business" service. And they'd charge us for a phone line whether or not we use it.
Sure wish that I, as a citizen, had the "rights" of a corporation, and could control the lines to everyone in our neighborhood
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
It is said that republican ideals are supposed to stand for smaller goverment and balanced budgets and all that, but if you look at the actual facts for recent presidents the debt gets higher under republicans and lower or at least doesn't rise as fast under democratic administrations.
Heck under that medical prescription drug payoff they actually made it illegal to bargain with the drug companies plus it is illegal for any drug made in America, that passes American drug standards, to spend time on canadian soil. It would be just too dangerous for American citizens to take. What was even more amazing is there was no outrage about that.
No, I'm hardly surprised our goverment gave permission for holders of monopolies to bundle things. In my not so humble opinion, letting phone companies largely do what they want is insane. Yes, in the major cities you will get good networks built, becomes the math works out for them to make the most profit, but in other places less accessible broadband and the rest just stay in the 80's because it may not be profitable to install there, or they can make more money elsewhere.
Where would the country be if the goverment only built roads like this? Yes the free market system has a whole lot good about it, but there are areas where it will consistently fail. Basically anytime you have services that have limited or no competition, the free market fails. Now in theory, the market would step in and create competition, but quite often the price of entry is so high to be infeasible. After all a large coporation can often easily run a loss in a particular region for years if thats what it takes to kill the competition.
In theory yes, maintaining the physical plant is where the bulk of the costs are, but the problem is that NECA regulates the prices we can charge the ISP side of the house for that line. If it has dialtone the line is say $20, without dialtone the line is $75. Since this is a tarif and the telco's are regulated they must pay tarif rates..
To E-mail me, replace the first period in my domain with an @