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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?'"
damn! they're taking away my pr0n!
What's next? "FCC Rules Telcos Need Not Provide Naked News"?!
... I'd like to get my party back. Trampling on State rights is definitely not. If you are still voting Republican because of their "conservatism", I'd like to ask you how your lobotomy went.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
This isnt necessarly bad but i would imagine big companies to take advantage of this. But then again when that happens we will all jump up and cry and something will happen to get them back on track:P Right? My DSL from verizon doesn't come with anything as of right now. Dont worry we will win :P
---
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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."
I guess most people, even most geeks, do not realize that this is really the most important technology fight we have in front of us. Cheap broadband is absolutely necessary for us to move forward.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
'what stops a carrier from denying broadband service to an end-user who has cut the cord and uses only a wireless phone?'
Nothing, that's the point.
'What prevents a carrier from refusing to provide DSL service to a savvy consumer who wants stand-alone broadband only for VoIP?'
Nothing, that's the point.
I swear, it's like you people have never even heard of monopolistic pricing and captive regulatory agencies.
The answer to... what prevents a carrier from refusing to provide DSL service to a savvy consumer who wants stand-alone broadband only for VoIP? ...
is CABLE. ain't competition great?
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.
"What prevents a carrier from refusing to provide DSL service to a savvy consumer who wants stand-alone broadband only for VoIP?'"
I think that answers why the FCC has ruled this way, the broadband companies who are also phone providers have successfully lobbied for a law that staves off their demise.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
hey, it could go either way. But my money is on it falling down...on us.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Does anyone care that the head of the FCC took home over $1.3million dollars in bribes from telco companies? NOOOooooo
Call it what is is powell, bribed to do what the telcos want. loser
I have 2 DSL lines that are not tied to any phone numbers. I still have my analog line, but I am researching VoIP, but not ready to jump yet. What happens to me? I wonder if they can take it away? or am I grandfathered in.
2 it's a private business providing a service
Not really, local phone are regulated monopolies. Back in the government (FCC) was supposed to ensure that they acted fairly and in the interest of consumers. Government regulations dictate, for example, that you get to pick your long distance carrier, as opposed to being required to use one selected by your local phone company. DSL should not work any differently.
--Jeff
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.
Unfortunately, in lots of markets, you may only have one real broadband option (I am not including satellite in this comparison, mostly because of FAP) and by forcing a bundle on the consumer, the consumer is being victimized by a monopolistic, exploitative business.
Case in point, my house, I have a cable modem, and thankfully don't have cable as they don't offer HDTV channels in my market, and I'm not required to have cable to have the luxury of high speed internet.
DSL is unavailable to me currently, and given my rural nature and distance to the nearest switching station, will most likely always be unavailable to me.
I just jumped ship from QWEST, our local telco, to Vonage because their ever rising prices and lack of competition were killing me.
Thank goodness for unbundled connectivity (comcast).
Ocean is land, covered with water.
Free Market arguments don't apply to local phone comapies. They have monopolies in their areas and close to local governments... This is arguably a good thing, but it's not possible for another company to come in and start putting down new phone lines. No chance for competion -> free market reasoning does not apply.
--Jeff
...that we are in this mess because the government decided to meddle a long time ago, and there are no easy answers.
Umm... except for the part where the carriers don't operate in a free market. Unless you haven't noticed, local service telcos are still regulated local monopolies.
Um,no. Thanks for drinking the free market koolaid. In my town, there is one city granted monopoly cable provider, and one city granted monopoly telephone provider, whom are the ONLY options for broadband. What about "city granted monopoly" is congruent with free market again?
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
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
That would be nice if telco service was actually a free market. But it isn't. The RBOCs have monopolies in their regions, so they can pretty much do as they please. Especially since with this ruling we see the FCC isn't going to keep their rapacious greed in check.
"Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent" --Salvor Hardin
I'm tired of getting screwed over by this administration. But I guess they don't worry about DSL and phone service in the red states. Cutting funding for DARPA research yesterday, now phone companies can refuse DSL service unless you have their analog phone service. What's next? I almost hope Bush gets his SS reform though congress b/c the way seniors vote, we'll have Dems in the white house and a majority of congress in two years flat.
"Those that start by burning books, will end by burning men."
Competition. Can someone explain to me how this is different than any other situation where a company might do something unfair to its users?
Just policy based on law, and based on the mandate given them by congress.
That is to say, write your congressman if you have a beef, don't sit around whining about how much of an asshole you think Powell is.
That's like bitching about the judge who sends you up the river for selling pot, or the cop who busted. They just interpret and enforce the law, they don't write it.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
right. excuse me for saying so, but you're an idiot. If I live in Smalltown, USA, and there are two companies that can supply me with broadband, and both of them insist on also supplying phone service, then how the hell are you going to use VoIP? I want to buy what I want. It'd be like only being able to buy monitors in conjunction with CPUs.
Take off every sig. For great justice.
Well in most cases the telco (which is regulated) just provides the pipe. The bandwidth and services on this pipe are provided by an ISP (normally unregulated). While it is possible to provide bare DSL without the phone line, do to the regulated nature of the Telecom industry, it really isn't in the telco's best intrest. The NECA tarrif for a bare DSL line, is much higher then the tarrif for a bundled DSL line. This comes back to bite us as we look to move to DSL/Voip for second lines, we can't compete with the cable world since our hands are bound by the tariff. If we remove dialtone the price goes up, and if we keep it on the price goes up since the consumer needs to pay for the dialtone also.
To E-mail me, replace the first period in my domain with an @
Is there ANYWHERE in North America that has a true free market for broadband internet service? Aren't most places government mandated monopolies?
You can't be saying that the "free market works extraordinarily well" when there IS NO free market, and no real competition for broadband!
--jeff++
ipv6 is my vpn
If a sufficient number of people were to cancel their service in the region where a company held a monopoly, the monopoly would probably provide more options. Having a monopoly doesn't mean you're totally omnipotent, it just means that your customers usually have to make greater sacrifices to affect you.
"Because Science" is one step from "Because old book". Try "Because of my experiment testing my falsifiable assertion".
switch over to cable broadband then.
HD Trailers
As a fellow libertarian (presumably, at least financial conservative), I'd like to point out that everything *ELSE* about these carriers is regulated, so its practically a goverment service already.
An extreme example: I, the federal government, make a ruling that only Dell is allowed to sell computers. Dell immediately octuples the prices of all new computers. Your free market argument fails to apply ("people will reject it and the plan will die on the vine") because businesses and people have no practical *CHOICE* but to use computers, a well established commodity (so the actual choice is maintain older computers or go out of business / stop using computers). However, in a free market Dell wouldn't be able to octuple their prices (and if they did, results predictable by the free market would ensue).
My point is, these companies are largely using land granted through government powers (sometimes emminent domain), with massive government loans and some other federal aid I forget about right now. It is not a free market. The competition that exists mostly does so because the government put regulations to better approximate a free market- but really it isn't one.
Unfortunately, free market doesn't always work. Where I live, I only have two broadband choices: one company for DSL and one company for cable. I suspect this is true for a lot of other people. It doesn't take much collusion between big carriers to introduce bundling schemes where the only choice would be buying all sorts of crap from them or not having broadband at all. Cable is one example, I only want about 5 channels but I have to buy 72 to get those 5.
Note that this ruling does not prevent CLECs like Covad and their ISPs, like Speakeasy.net, from providing naked DSL service. I have this service from Speakeasy. They call it OneLink and I'm no longer an explicit customer of Verizon on that line, although Speakeasy still kicks a few bucks a month back to Verizon; it is their wire and their CO I suppose.
But in the end I have all my services, including VOIP, through Speakeasy.net thanks to naked DSL.
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
What I have to question in this debate is, what prevents the consumer from making other choices to better suit their needs? I'm sorry, but in geneneral (metro/suburban areas), DSL is not always the best choice for high speed internet. For myself, living in the suburbs of Seattle, DSL sucks and cable modem was a much better service. And if I didn't have cable, it would have only cost me another $10/mo, which seems more than reasonable.
What I mean to say is, for the most part, the open market will dictate a company's policies. In my area alone, there is a DSL provide that gives unpaired service, several telcos, Cable and i'm sure more.
In other words, "cut off your nose to spite your face."
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 'pro-business' lobby here forgets that the cable and phone companies are usually monopolies in the area -- either by mandate or by de-facto policies.
Both phone and cable companies need to get a 'leeway' to lay cable or overhead lines across everyone's property. This isn't taken lightly, and isn't done for every company that comes-along claiming they want to do it. Furthermore, both cable and phone are essential for emergencies, and thus must have universal coverage. The idea that this is (or should be) in any form a competitive marketplace is... well, misinformed. The bottom line is, it is most efficient to have a _single_ set of cables and wires, not N sets for various hodge-podge company policies.
The problem here is that a for-profit company owns these wires. It's a farce. Really, the local governments should own the wires and contract out the work and the companies that want to 'run' the services over the wires. To do this correctly, we need a completely different legal environment that recognizes natural monopolies and makes them not-profit and as _small_ as possible to enable the _greatest_ amount of competition for auxiliary services.
But, given the current setup, strict regulation is the only answer. Regulation is, BTW, what allowed the whole open-source movement to take-off; in the 70's Ma-Bell (AT&T) wasn't allowed to sell its software, so it gave away enormous IP to the public. This is how Unix came about. The regulation was proper back then, the government realized that the phone was a monopoly, and prevented the phone company from entering other markets (using its monopoly money to distort other market places). Unfortunately, that sensibility started to disappear with the so-called "pro-business" agenda in the 80's and 90's.
>The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution,
>nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States
>respectively, or to the people.
Fuck you.
Sincerely,
-FCC
yes, but it is an unnecessary service >.> Long-distance service is pretty much considered necessary
Show this to your friends and family that don't know what a real hacker is
They work for the present presidential administration. They only hand down rules what Bush wants ; that is to help out the biggest campaign contributors.
well at least in Ontario, we're slowly being offered the choice of 'naked' DSL.
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Bell Canada, one of the biggest DSL providers under their Sympatico brand (and also the largest local phone service) is slowly making the naked DSL service an option. It's just become available since March 31 2005 and apparently they are doing a "quiet launch" (i.e. only removing local phone service if the customer requests it.) Of course they aren't advertising it because they probably don't want many of their DSL subscribers to drop their local phone service en mass. As a consumer I'm glad to see this happen as I'm sick of paying an extra $30 a month for a local telephone line that I barely use just so that I can get DSL service (I mostly use my cell phone).
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pa
If you bothered to read the ruling and not the opinion piece, you would know that the ruling merely tells the States to butt out and stop trying to enforce rules that conflict with existing FCC unbundling rules. This rules removes the conflict between FCC and State rules.
Under the existing FCC rules, the encumbant Telco is not required to offer DSL even if your lines are capable of providing it (they do it because its profitable). BellSouth had a policy of not offering DSL if the local loop was being used by a competitive telco to provide analog voice service. Probably due to techincal and billing issues. Some states were trying forcing BellSouth to provide DSL anyway. This was illegal.
This ruling does not automatically mean that the telco will refuse to provide DSL unless you buy voice service from them. In reality, what you'll probably see is the telco providing discounts for getting both DSL and voice service from them. Like Verizon offering cost saving bundles for home and wireless.
unbundled? Comcast gives large discount if you have cable TV on their internet service. If I did not hav cable TV I would NOT have comcast internet service. Not only that but that is the only reason I actually have cable TV.
Its cheaper to have comcast Internet + comcast cable TV than it is to have ala carte satellite + comcast internet.
Well, the hope is that if enough people spite their face, the person holding a monopoly on mirrors will try to change their business plan ... requires a lot of lost noses, though. Its still a better situation than it could be:
Imagine that the water company requires that to get water service, you must also get gatorade, seltzer, and prune juice service. Its impossible to fight the monopoly in this situation, as they only need to wait you out for a couple of days (hopefully you can deal without a net connection for a little while). The only thing that breaks such a monopoly is someone from outside trucking in water, which is analogous to satellite service. You only *really* need to worry when you're down to one massive provider (you have a local rather than universal monopoly, consider yourself lucky)
"Because Science" is one step from "Because old book". Try "Because of my experiment testing my falsifiable assertion".
I'd gladly dump my phone servive, and pay a fraction of the money I would save toward better bandwidth.
The only remaining advantage of POTs is that it has its own power (when we had the blackout here in NYC, the landlines kept working).
We paid for this infrastructure held by this monopoly (or, baby monopolies), and it seems only fair that we should get better service from it (or, them).
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
The FCC is hoping that residental broadband adds a competitive player coming out of left field -- some form of wireless, power-line, etc. The business case for new companies becomes easier if the FCC lets cable and Baby Bells pursue agendas that alienate early-adopter consumers. Historical example is satellite TV: if cable companies were forced by regulation to provide a good customer experience, DirectTV would have never made it beyond the rural marketplace.
Ok. The telco's arent' forced to provide DSL at all, and this does not have anything to do w/ it. Instead, it says that the telco's do not have to provide a DSL only service. Meaning, if you want DSL, they can force you to buy their standard phone service as well. Your analogies don't hold up here. You want to have DSL, but you don't want to have phone service. Both of them come over the same wires, and if you pay for DSL, you are still paying a small fee to "use" those wires. You still have to buy your cup for your coffee. A modified analogy of yours would be to say that 7-eleven has the right to force you to buy a cup of coffee if you want to buy a doughnut.
Comcast gives large discount if you have cable TV on their internet service.
This is true. I priced it out and realized that between Comcast and Vonage, I can get broadband, VOIP, and cable TV for cheaper than I'm getting POTS service and DSL from SBC.
Goodbye SBC!
Imagine that the water company requires that to get water service, you must also get gatorade, seltzer, and prune juice service. Its impossible to fight the monopoly in this situation, as they only need to wait you out for a couple of days (hopefully you can deal without a net connection for a little while). The only thing that breaks such a monopoly is someone from outside trucking in water, which is analogous to satellite service. You only *really* need to worry when you're down to one massive provider (you have a local rather than universal monopoly, consider yourself lucky)
Or better yet, you have local residents picking up their rifles and shotguns and taking the water they need by force. In this case, it would be totally justified.
The whole point of government is to prevent anarchy and chaos such as this. When essential services need to be provided to people, it is frequently done either by the government, or by a government-granted monopoly, for reasons of efficiency and practicality (you can't very well have 10 different companies' sewer systems running underneath your subdivision). When you have a monopoly situation like this, there is no free market. This seems to be something that the Randians here just don't understand. Because there is no free market, government regulation is necessary to prevent abuses, and to ensure the public good is considered first and foremost. If your company is more concerned with corporate profits than the well-being of its customers, your company has no business providing a public service with no real competition; there's lots of other sectors of the economy you can go compete in to your heart's content without any fear of government interference. Unfortunately, these stupid companies want to have their cake and eat it too: they want no regulation or interference, but they also want to maintain a monopoly and rape their customers as much as they can without having to worry about any form of competition.
This story actually shocked me that it's even an issue. In Canada it's pretty much a given that since your DSL comes over the phone line, you'd have to have an active phone line to get it.
Where I live (smaller area), there's two broadband providers. The phone company, SaskTel, who requires you to have a voice line, and Shaw, who requires you to have basic cable.
Wow, I don't know if you are trolling or if you are some sort of a free market extremist but I'll reply anyway. Are you for abolishing monopoly laws, and about a million consumer protection and other laws that regulate the "free" market in USA thereby making it substantially less free? What happens when you run out of places to move to, does free market still work?
finding a carrier that will meet their needs?
service bundling is very common in Australia - the main telco offers a small % discount if you bundle all services (phone, web, mobile). Another provides extra fast adsl if you bundle phone - this is what I use to get ~ 6/1 Mbit goodness. Yet another requires you to sign up to their phone service if you use their internet.
Surely the whole point of this is to provide a more diverse market? I don't really see what the problem is - as long as there's a demand for a solution, someone will want to provide it.
This is nothing more than a tactic to prop up telco providers because their bubble is about to burst. Given the massive amount of market that cell carriers have already taken from them, large-scale VOIP on the horizon, and competing broadband options (cable for example), it is only a matter of time before their business model fails entirely.
If there's anything that governments are good at doing it's maintaining the status quo. Whether we're talking about an economy that relies too heavily on oil, or something as (seemingly) innocuous as telephone service, governments will always fight against fundamental change or market shifts because it will result in a period of instability.
There's a reason why the connectivity linking the telephone in my house to the telephone system is the same as it was five decades ago when my dad was born (hint - it has nothing to do with free-market or competition).
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
As I see it, the solution to this is wireless. The phone company only has a monopoly because they happen to own the line going to your house, and it is cost prohibitive for a competitor to string their own. Wireless neatly gets around this issue.
Business should be free to offer whatever the heck it wants. Consumers should be free to buy whatever the heck they want.
Unfortunately these two freedoms often come into conflict.
In a particular area, if the cable company delivers something better, faster, and cheaper than the telephone company, then the telephone company will ultimately lose revenue, which will stimulate an improvement in the telephone company.
It is quite possible that DSL is less expensive than cable in a given area even with the added charge for phone service. DSL would draw more customers, and the phone company would be free to force DSL customers to buy phone service as well. This is not a perfectly competitive market. The "invisible hand" will not help you here.
"The use-mention distinction" is not "enforced here."
...this could be a win for cable. Since forever, every cable operator I've worked for has been only too happy to provide cable modem only and let the customer pick DBS if they want. I can pick and choose or bundle however I like and they've always been of the mind to have this. For the phone companies to fight so hard for something that is only going to bite them in the arse with the public is grossly stupid, but I am not surprised since this is the telcos we're talking about.
Meanwhile I freely choose a service bundle from my cable company for voice, video, and data and save tons over the comparable packages that I would be forced to take or leave with the phone company. It's this sort of thing that caused me to kiss off SBC years ago and never look back.
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
This is nice in theory, but in practice it doesn't quite work that way. Although you are free to avoid products of a certain monopoly, you often don't have any other viable option(hence the monopoly). As a example you could simply not buy service from you local telco, but if they're the only telco and the only broadband ISP then you'll have to give up any kind of landline AND give up (affordable) internet access. Given the option of and unfair service contract or no service at all, well there isn't really a choice.
<gir voice> I love this sig... </gir voice>
I'm an old-school conservative - my basic philosophy is that if there is any question about whether to make a rule, there *is* no question: don't make it.
I'd like to think this philosophy would work here, but it won't, because you already have regulated monopolies in place, and normal market forces are not at work that would cause the plan to die in favor of a competitor that did not bundle.
Perhaps if we'd followed the phisophy from the the get-go and not had regulated monopolies, the free market forces would eventually take care of it. But as it stands, that won't work.
Which is part of the reason I believe in deregulation in general - once you start making special-case rules, you keep having to add rules to make sure the old ones don't screw things up, and eventually you have a mess of 10,000 laws just to regulate soemthing like a phone line.
Telcos are usually a government-granted monopoly. Microsoft has gotten slapped repeatedly for being too close to being a monopoly and tying products together. If other companies elsewhere sell two services separately, but a local monopoly says that they MUST be sold together, and there's no good technical reason for the difference, then that's tying, and it most certainly should be illegal.
Well, I had the choice of the monopoly phone company, or the monopoly cable company.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
3 ... it's a possible violation of the Sherman act (anti-trust), in the area of "tie-in sales".
(example case: this one is about refusing to sell rights to one film unless rights to a whole set of films were bought simultaneously)
Excerpt: "The standard of illegality is that the seller must have "sufficient economic power with respect to the tying product to appreciably restrain free competition in the market for the tied product...." [Northern Pacific R. Co. v. United States, 356 U.S. 1, 6]. Market dominance - some power to control price and to exclude competition - is by no means the only test of whether the seller has the requisite economic power. Even absent a showing of market dominance, the crucial economic power may be inferred from the tying product's desirability to consumers or from uniqueness in its attributes."
I would say that, given the monopoly status of phone / DSL providers, you don't even have to worry about "market dominance" at all -- it's automatic. They're in a position to do "whatever they like", and this is illegal even for companies -not- in a monopoly position. From a discussion of this same law over Windows/IE/WMP, the distinction was also made clear between "cars with tires" (cannot be functionally complete) and "operating system with browser/media player" (can still work, with fewer features) even though in both cases there are separate markets for "chunks" of the item being sold. And that's for a case where the 'extra' is offered for "free", not a "oh, you have to buy this too" clause.
I assume he beats his wife too. WTF is this bribes stuff? Please document.
But MOST PEOPLE DON'T have that much to spare. The fact is that the cable and telcos are PROFITEERING using a monopoly granted them by the state.
Why is it that muni wifi goes for next to nothing? Because the actual costs are not that graet to provide broadband.
And the politicians have been bought off by the telcos and cable cos.
I say they all need to get some time in jail.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Business should be free to offer whatever the heck it wants. Consumers should be free to buy whatever the heck they want. Telephone companies have a monopoly over a particular area? In a particular area, if the cable company delivers something better, faster, and cheaper than the telephone company, then the telephone company will ultimately lose revenue, which will stimulate an improvement in the telephone company. Or get broadband through your cellphone carrier. It's not quite as fast as DSL, and not quite as cheap, but it's an alternative choice, if that's what you want.
It doesn't work that way with phone. The copper lines are regulated because at one time nearly every single phone system in the nation was owned by a single company which engaged in whatever practices it felt like such as telling you that you couldn't install or even buy your own phone much less do your own wiring. Imagine a mobo company telling you what peripherals and memory you were allowed to use or even requiring that you have it done by them and forbidding you from doing anything with it that they didn't like.
For this and many other reasons, Ma Bell was broken up into smaller companies, and they were regulated to the hilt. As it was fairly impossible given modern growth and other infrastructures accompanying the same to build out a parallel infrastructure by any given competitor who wanted to. IOW, running tens of hundreds of thousands of copper pairs per city on top of those already there was just not doable.
Therefore, the Regional Bell Operating Companies still held an essential monopoly for copper pair phone service.
Prior to this FCC mega-mistake of a decision, it was conceivable that you could get ILEC DSL and get phone from a CLEC just as easily as the other way around. Or do without it if you chose.
The point of the regulations was the copper was not easily overbuildable without burdensome effects on local infrastructure, quality of life, etc., and therefore a necessary national resource of sorts held by a company with a virtual monopoly on it. So they opened the lines to usage by competitors as long as certain fair fees were paid to the telcos for access and maintenance and co-locations and power and so forth.
This new rule basically encroaches on that competition regulation by saying that if one service on the pair is ordered then they can require other services with it or not give any service at all, thus essentially preventing their customers from choosing a competitor for one of those other services.
Should Video over DSL ever take off, will they get away with denying a VoDSL CLEC's services to their own telco DSL customers?
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
"The DSL needs to go over the same physical wire that the landline requires. If you don't have a landline, and don't pay for landline service, why the heck should any telephone company be forced to provide DSL over that line?"
Because WE PAYED FOR THAT LINE. Yes, that's right. Much of the infrastructure our phone companies use was publically funded, on the condition that phone companies (a) served some areas that might not otherwise have been profitable enough and (b) would allow competition/reselling over those networks.
I think the more relevant question is: why in the world are we the people still so moronic as to believe private interests will ever deliver a true version of (b)?
What we need is a publically owned and directed network that private services can compete over. But that scares businesses like, oh, Qwest, to death. Without a lock on distribution, innovation and quality of service might be the qualities they'd have to compete on, not how they can manipulate rules for using their network.
And as for (a)... it's not working either. I've been trying to get my parents DSL for eight years. No dice, despite the fact they're a mere two blocks from a technology office park.
This recent DSL ruling is dinosaurs protecting their turf, not the free market at work.
Tweet, tweet.
GOAL! GOAL! GOAL!
Did you expect the FCC to side on the position of the consumer, the tax payer? HAHAHAHAHAHAHHA SUCKER.
Damn it.. wheres that boat with the fucking tea on it... i know its around here somewhere.
Burn the FCC down.
Yea, thats why I went to cable modem and got VOIP.
Government doesnt overhaul itself. The people overhaul the government.... with guns.
The RBOCs are rolling out their own VoIP solutions.
Who in the hell ever said they expect the naked-DSL line to be free of charge? Where do you get this crap from?
The large monthly fee for telephone service is NOT
the cost of maintaining the physical line. The cost of maintaining the physical line is a tiny FRACTION of that cost, so it is nonsese to bundle them together.
Perhaps 7-Eleven should refuse to give you the free coffee they advertised, unless you buy the $20 coffee mug it comes with?
Actually that's a poor analogy because 7-Eleven is NOT A MONOPOLY. TELCOS ARE A MONOPOLY. That is why the government can force them to do whatever the hell they want to. The government gave them a legal right to be a monopoly, in exchange for regulating them any way they see fit. The FCC has the legal right to decide that your telco must serve free pancake breakfasts every day. They don't have the right to force 7-Eleven to do much of anything.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Yes, the telcos. They are going to get greedy, start requiring phone lines with DSl...
Meanwhile over at CableLand, they are going to sell you VOIP, TV and internet for the same amount you can get DSL and phone lines together. That combined with much faster bandwith to a lot more people mean phone companies are going to be HURTING in just a few years as everyone and thier grandmother gets lured in by the low, low cable pricing.
Community wireless internet is the dark horse here.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Complain to the FCC here and then write your Congressional representatives (figure out who your representatives are here. If you cant take the time to figure out how to do this properly, then you must not care that much.
What's to stop us from creating our own cheap/free broadband?
You mean wired or wireless? The bought-and-paid-for FCC regulates wireless in the United States, and bought-and-paid-for state governments regulate wire-line, some even banning cities from setting up their own tax-funded networks.
- Run your business under the existing rules using Barbell's copper.
- Run your own wires all over the city and make up your own rules.
Granted, this would mean a lot of wire running all over the place, but you could lease space on the existing company's telephone poles and whatnot to put your wires there. The wire-running would be regulated in such a way that the city would not turn into a huge cobweb of telephone company wires. In some areas, if there are a lot of different companies that want to run wire, the city itself might install enough fiber optics to cover any voice, video, and data that the city might need in the next hundred years, and the telco's could lease time on those wires. Just a bunch of ideas. Yes, they would all be expensive. Yes, they would all require a lot of time and effort. But hey, it might be good for the economy... More wire needs to be produced, more contractors used, lots of fun...As I see it, the solution to this is wireless.
Which the FCC also controls. Watch the local cable company and the local telco buy up all the spectrum and then jack up the price of DSL because fixed-wireless competition can't buy its own spectrum to run WiMAX. And/or watch state communications commissions ban municipal WiMAX service.
It's essentially what happening here. Phone companies should/could turn into mega isps and could offer their own VoIP service for a cheaper rate than Vonage does.
I think this could end up damaging the Phone co's in the long run given that there are other companies out there that would love to take a share of the "we'll provide the services all through your (cable/satalite/phone/power/etc. line"
--pete
....access over it's network, I fail to see why telcos should be forced to do the same. Don't tell me about technical hurdles in doing so-it can be done.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0379225/
Check out the above documentary link on IMDB and immediately go and rent this movie (or not). I for one welcome our new(?) Corporate Overlords.
Here we have Cable, DSL, Wireless, Satellite, and some places have Powerline, and Fiber Optic.
Several points:
With all that said, this is just one more reason not to use the local telco in my book. DSL sucks cable balls anyway, and forcing you to take the land-line with the service clearly serves no benefit other than protecting their ass from VOIP and cell-phone companies.
With all that said, this is just one more reason not to use the local cable company in my book. Cable sucks DSL balls anyway, and forcing you to take the MPAA TV subscription with the service clearly serves no benefit other than protecting their ass from satellite TV companies.
They say that this is required by ANATEL, our version of the FCC. Here's an informative page that attempts to detail the rules set by the agency. In fact, most of ABUSAR's website is very handy for brazilian broadband users.
Hint: use commercial Velox numbers instead of your residential one and cancel your ISP. I don't know if Rio's will work with you if you live in another state, but I, uh, know someone who could give you one of those. Not me, of course... *wink*
Next thing you know, they'll sue a certain aged woman for showing her boob on TV in prime time. What the world is coming to?
Oh, please, let's not pretend actual costs and telecom have anything to do with each other. These are the guys who charged us thousands of dollars over the years for a simple telephone, because they wouldn't let you buy one at the store and plug it into their precious network.
"What stops 7-Eleven from denying you a coffee unless you also pay for the cup? What stops a liquor store from denying you 750ml of Vodka unless you also buy the bottle that it's in? [etc.]"
The fact that they weren't ruled to be monopolies.
Attention ignorant mods: please learn some history.
Ok, I'll bite. The Center for Public Integrity reports that FCC officials had accepted nearly $2.8 million in travel and entertainment expenses over the past eight years, mostly from the telecom and broadcast industries they regulate. This extends to Michael Powell, who seemingly maintained the status quo. Recently however the department has changed its policies and is requesting more federal funds for travel to replace what was once paid for outside of the goverment.
30 characters are fine for a s
What stops 7-Eleven from denying you a coffee unless you also pay for the cup?
;-) to run such lines down the street to our house. A few other kinds of lines are legal, such as electrical or cable, but those are also restricted to just one or two legal suppliers.
This parallel only works if your local 7-Eleven has a deal going with your local government that forbids any other food stores from operating in the area, and it's illegal for you to drive to a remote store for your coffee.
The phone line coming into our house is owned by Verizon, and it's illegal for anyone else (including me
I guess we can be glad that food doesn't work this way (yet).
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
There is a $10 fee on top of my ~$30 cable broadband service to get it without cable TV. does anyone else get this? My service is thru Charter.
anyone who thinks that Telco's are trying to "recoup" losses associated with the copper plant is just naive. ... If you don't believe me call your ilec and ask. Even better ask to have it removed...that's always good for a laugh.
But this reverse bundling still serves to support and extend the monopoly. It probably should be made illegal. Note that Microsoft does much the same thing -- getting their their monopoly OS bundled with various competing computer mfrs.
Easy: dump DSL and get a cable modem instead. Our local cable network was just upgraded to 5Mbps anyways. Beats that pants off local DSL all for $44/mo.
oh you just wait. regulation will eventually make it so that we can't do anything without filing a form XB-230U-JJKG-23473842389-KLOW374938748275-234-2352 -6536-234 with a government agency like the Department of Freedom of Food Selection and Consumption Freedom Department, to ask permission to eat a piece of bread, and wait about six years for approval. Papers will have to be filed each day, beginning six years or so before a baby is conceived, so that there won't be a lapse where someone is not allowed to eat. And you'd better remember to file this form each day, or you will eventually have a lapse, and you'll go hungry. And this form will take approximately 100 times the amount of time to fill out as all the IRS crap for your taxes. (By the way, if you haven't done that yet, better get crackin', cuz they're due in less than two weeks.)
The Bush administration's Dept. of Justice has
announced that all is forgiven to AT&T (Ma Bell),
in keeping with the non-penalties involked against
MSFT in their anti-monopoly lawsuit.
The regional (baby) "Bell" telcos have just
announced a conference during which the telcos
are expected to plan their re-merger.
The FCC has just announced that the television
and radio media conglomerates will now be
permitted to own up to 100% of any given market.
The FCC and the FTC have just come out in a joint
declaration that dialup ISPs, WiFi-based ISPs,
and independent DSL service providers have been
issued C&D orders for their business operations.
Federal mediators are expected to offer these
independent operators up to 10 cents on the
dollar, dependent upon the number of customers
they can bring to the table.
Way to go, FCC!
Troll?! How exactly? While i know its fashionable to bash our capitalist economy on slashdot, the vast majority of people well educated in economics agree that this *is* the most efficient way of "doing things". Free market is what we base a lot of our principles on, and companies *should* be able to offer whatever they want to offer.
Most of us have our choice of DSL providers: Vote with your wallet, if you want naked dsl, go with Speakeasy's One service, which caters to that need.
The only crime here is that CABLE (not dsl) is allowed to monopolize geographical reasons, which effectively locks consumers in to one choice. That is completely and totally against free market principles.
I'm sorry if i didnt go along with the mainstream and bash all that is business, but use your brain for a second... troll?
No, in fact they are not. They have been treated as "persons" for many years based on a mistaken reading of a 19th century court rulling that did not in fact decide the issue.
Of course, they're not going to tell you that, are they?
--MarkusQ
The free market can generate monopolistic behaviour, like "tying", but in each case it represents an opportunity to undercut the monopolist and capture the market for those consumers who are being bullied.
Eg: if telcos tie DSL to voice, there is an opportunity for outsiders to market alternative broadband technologies such as direct-connected ethernet or subscriber wireless.
in some states dsl is the only show in town and this makes it impossible for people to use voip providers for their voice service (and save)... how can the fcc know what's best for every state?
Get your torrents...
The telcos are saying "If you want to use our copper wires for DSL (from us or anyone else), you have to pay us line rental fees (or whatever they call it) for a local phone too", right?
Why is this bad? We have the same thing in australia too...
Ok, what we really need, is for all us F/OSS enthusiasts to go out, buy an island, and form our own country, with an entirely FDL'd constitution. w00t! Open Source Government here we come!
SIGSEGV caught, terminating
wait... not that kind of sig.
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 @
Actually, that article describes Powell effectively working to change a longstanding policy, well predating the Bush administration, and it describes absolutely no use of outside travel money by Powell himself. The claim of Powell taking money in this thread is still unsubstantiated.
Anyone can provide internet connectivity as DSL service or any way they want to do so, and the FCC has ruled it's not subject to local regulation and if you're not the dominant provider you're not subject to FCC regulation either.
Anyone can offer VOIP telephone service without local regulation as the FCC has ruled VOIP is not subject to local regulation and generally VOIP providers are not subject to FCC regulation at all.
So why can't a company simply offer DSL or internet connectivity to people's houses and offer them the option of VOIP if they want it? Done that way, it has absolutely no state regulation and isn't federally regulated. I'm surprised more telephone companies haven't gone that route and thus completely eliminated state or federal regulation of their operations altogether.
The lessons of history teach us - if they teach us anything - that nobody learns the lessons that history teaches us.
Methinks the FCC looked at the potential loss of income that coincides with those "bundedled" packages. I complain every time I see these "service taxes" and other surcharges. 911, yes, but two charges from the feds, one from the state, another for the city, and one more unknown adds up after awhile.
If I really am talking out of my ass...explain it to me with respect so I'll at least pull my ears out to listen.
Do you want a piece of me, punk?
;-)
[portuguese]
Putz, Carlos!!
Você veio lá do Debian-RJ me catar aqui, só pra me dar lição de como burlar o Velox!? Vá catar coquinhos!
Te vejo na próxima reunião!
Abraço,
Victor
[/portuguese]
---- You know how some doctors have the Messiah complex - they need to save the world? You've got the "Rubik's" complex
force me to buy cable TV that I don't want, instead of phone service I don't want?
Or is it actually possible to get them to sell you cable internet without any tv attached?
Its not like DSL is the only option available either. Go cable.
If cable doesn't fit your needs (I find this part surprising since you can ram more data down coax than a phone line), get satellite broadband or even microwave. Still don't like that? Move, or get fiber to your home.
-- Game Developers: Stop porting badly-textured games from crappy console systems!
I mean, look at President Bush. He is for big government and defecit spending. He is against states rights and favors external nation-building. These are not traditional conservative values.
I'm glad Republicans are starting to wake up and say, "Hey, wait a minute!" These guys aren't even conservative!
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
So instead of naked DSL, you have to buy phone service. The cheapest plan you can get in VA if you are not on fscking food stamps costs $19/mo by the time you get done with all the junk fees and taxes.
The best part is that you don't need to have phone service to have a cable modem, and the $20/mo requirement to have phone service makes cable modems look like a mighty fine deal.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
When I had my cable modem, not only was I not forced to buy their cable TV, they didn't even offer a discount on the bundled package if you got both video and internet service from them.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
So they've won the right to force me to seek another provider that doesn't make me to buy what I don't want. As long as there is someone else who wants my money more then the phone companies do they'll be the only ones losing from this kind of practice.
I don't know where you live, but here, there's one choice. If you're in my town, it's Sprint. Period. Cell phones != DSL. Cell phones != land line.
That's a monopoly.