Slashdot Mirror
FCC Considers Deregulation of DSL
Phlatline_ATL writes "In an article on ArsTechnica, they explore the FCC's current consideration to reclassify DSL as an information service and as such would no longer require the telcos to lease out their lines. This seems like it would effectively make the telcos the exclusive DSL broadband providers." From the article: " So after six months to a year it would be goodbye Earthlink and Speakeasy, hello SBC DSL monopoly (in the case of Chicago, where I live). So the telcos would get what they want, which is no competition while the consumers get screwed. But it's perfectly logical under the FCC's definition of broadband competition, where they want cable to compete with DSL--and hopefully IP over power lines and WiMax down the road."
"If only we were allowed to keep their lines all to ourselves," they say, "we would hurry to get fiber laid to every house in the land and offer faster and wider range of services."
It's not exactly as if DSL has been a "competitor" by any means in any area I have lived in. Its distance requirements, slow speeds, and typical poor telco customer service has always lagged behind services offered by Cable. This is speaking only from my limited experience with four different DSL providers and two cable providers so obviously YMMV.
When I first got DSL in the summer of 1998 from Epix/Commonwealth in PA it was 640/160 and remained that until 2003 (IIRC, I wasn't living at home anymore) at which time they bumped the service to 1.5/384 to "compete" with Adelphia cable. Five years stuck at half the speeds? Problem was that there was NO competition because Adelphia was only broadband downstream and analog upstream in many areas for quite some time.
Out at college we got DSL in the fall of 1999 when we moved into an apartment. Verizon offered the lines and we took up the local freenet ISP as they were cheap. They were offering 768/128 on overcooked DSLAM racks (two racks per T1 instead of one rack per T1 like it was supposed to be) and speeds were consistently in the 40kB/s range. No one would take blame and would always finger point at the other guy (it's the ISP's fault, no it's Verizon's fault!)
Roadrunner came to town in the fall of 2000 and we dropped DSL quickly. While our latency in online gaming went up so did our download speeds. At first it was a bit over 1.5mbs but quickly went up to 3mbs. There was no finger pointing as RR handled both the ISP and the line. Was it good? Certainly for me it was. Faster speeds, less downtime, and no finger pointing. Comcast was smooth in MN but working for them in OH I knew that there could be serious issues (depending on your location) with speeds, intermittent bloc-sync, etc. 1.5mbs and then 3.0mbs w/o any real problems. Problem here was DSL wasn't even available and if it was, it was only 640/128 for more money...
My idea of DSL being competitive changed only slightly when I moved in August of 2004 to a house that offered Charter (no servers w/blocked ports) and DSL (Frontier and ISP choice). I went with Frontier and Visi (local kick ass ISP that allows servers). For once in my DSL using life I am happy w/the speeds (currently 3712/448) and the service. Visi handles everything for me so I just contact one point. I would be *extremely* upset if I had to go back to Frontier as they don't allow online bill pay, aren't very nice on customer support, and are likely not as knowledgeable as Visi's guys. Charter, charging $39.99/mo for the Internet (I think it was only $11 for CATV making it a total of $52) was a ton less money than Visi/Frontier at over $60 (requiring me to have a voice line and the $25/mo ISP charge). For most the price alone is a no brainer. For me, because of the server issue, the couple extra bucks is worth it.
So in all those years Cable hasn't improved all that much and neither has regulated DSL. So where's the competition driving faster speeds? How will deregulating DSL do anything?
It's sometimes better for the customer to use the same line and ISP and it's sometimes better to use the ISP different from the line, but it's *always* better to give the customer a choice.
So, the FCC is going to "do us a favor" and push for businesses to continue to fuck their customers over? Freedom to choose is always a better option to than freedom for businesses to do what they want... They have proven time and time again that they don't have competition as they already charge astronomical rates for the lines. They probably can make more money by finger pointing and less staffed CSRs for their own ISP. What incentives do they have to move to high capacity lines if the only other option is Cable? None. Especially when it's in the best interests of the Cable company to keep their available down
For one, The local telco only has the infrastructure because of a pre-existing monopoly. You're not supposed to be allowed to leverage a monopoly in one market to undercut or prevent competition in another. Second, in many areas, it is simply not possible to string new cable alongside the existing stuff, or to get permission to rip up the roads to lay new lines.
The FCC already classifies cable-modem service as an 'information service' under the telecom act. (See the recent Brand-X decision from the US Supreme Court.) If cable modem service is an information service, then I see no reason that DSL isn't -- they carry exactly the same thing.
The real problem here is that there's not a whole lot of in-between: either you're an information service and barely regulated, or you're a telecommunications service and heavily regulated. To me, the scariest thing about the 'information service' classification is that it allows the carrier to decide what to carry and how to do it.
For example, your cable company starts offering a VoIP service -- what's to keep it from degrading Vonage's VoIP service? What about when they degrade IP video feeds that compete with their own pay-per-view services?
Antitrust law can take care of some of this problem, but it's a hard case to make.
Laissez Faire Government is absolutley no inovlvement. We follow something calle Keynesian Economics where the Governement regulates as needed, the switch was made during the 1930's depression.
I've been with Speakeasy for almost 5 years and would not consider another provider. When I first signed up, it was a bit rocky getting online (took about 3 months while they coordinated with the local phone company and the Covad middle layer) but since then I have moved from coast to coast a couple times and had no trouble bringing my service with me. Other than at the very beginning, I've had virtually NO downtime -- ran into a little trouble when my DSL modem started failing, but they can hardly be held responsible for that.
Furthermore, they have eminently reasonable policies. You are allowed to use your DSL connection as a full and proper connection to the internet -- they have no arbitrary restrictions on services you can run. It's not a download-only pipe like the Telco and cable companies want to sell you. They do their best to support you running any OS you want and the techs I've spoken with are actually sharp enough to help you outside of a script. Not only that, but they have some authority to do what it takes to get the job done. All the while, you have access to the communications logs between the Speakeasy techs and the local telco and other parties involved in providing the line.
The existence of a company like this, IMO, indicates that there is demand for services the telcos are unwilling or unable to provide. They footed part of the bill to run the wires to your house, so they should get some return. That's why Speakeasy *rents* the line from them and adds their markup on top. There's no reason that the telco needs to bundle ISP services with the telco line. If I think the telco has a good pipe but offers crappy ISP service, it makes sense that I can opt out of their ISP offerings. The architecture is already in place to let me do this.
Furthermore, the telcos did not foot the entire bill for running the wires. Government assistance and tax dollars helped set up the network. They're part of the public infrastructure and they knew that when they got in the business. They therefore have responsibilities not only to their shareholders, but to the society that they bargained with to get their business in the firstplace.
As a Speakeasy customer who relies on their static to get work done, I was greatly alarmed by this article on Ars when it was posted yesterday. So, I did a little digging, and found this article. From it, I learned that the FCC is now only considering dropping the requirements that carriers must resell their finished DSL services, not the actual CLECs that rent the lines and have phsyical equipment in COs such as Covad. The following quote from the article illisutrates their evolving position:
Since Speakeasy resells Covad services (or at least they do in my case), Speakeasy isn't going anywhere. Granted, no agreement has been met yet, but it appears that a block of the FCC Commissioners is looking out for us. It is a bit disturbing to FCC mucking with these rules in anyway. It is clear that they don't understand the degree of reliance folks have on these services for their livelihoods.
What about areas where the is no competetion (with cable, etc)? It seems to me like this ruling will be ambivalent at best for people in large metro areas, but rural America - whose broadband infrastructure is still spotty at best, and often unavailable - gets screwed.
I grew up and my parents still live in a small town (~1200 people) in northeast Ohio. Broadband cable became available from Adelphia - the only cable provider in the area - about 4 years ago, and the bargain price of $59.95/mo w/o cable TV. I convinced my folks to try it...it was only slightly more than paying for a second phone line and dial up. It was an improvement, but just barely. Terrible uptimes, slow speeds (lucky if a download broke 35kb/s), and other crap...but still not dial up.
A couple of years ago, SBC took over the local telco, upgraded the equipment, and offered DSL to those lucky enough to live in town. 1.5m/512k service for $30 a month. I got my parents switched over and the difference is astounding. They're currently getting 3.0m/768k service for $26.95. I thought, "WOW! Broadband has become cheap, widely available, and fast!"
Not so. I am heading back to college this fall to begin studying law. The local population near the school is about 10x the size of my home town, so i figured they had to have good broadband, eh? I called the cable company. They don't service my street. Ok. I called the telco. After initially telling me I couldn't get DSL, they called me back to say that I could, in fact, but that they had to manually verify the "rural" address by sending someone in a truck.
In order to get DSL, I had to subscribe to local phone service. After much haggling over packacges I didn't want, I finally got them to give me *just* local service for $17/mo. 1.5mb/128k(!) will be $50/mo more; effectively, $67/mo for crappy broadband. I'm being bamboozled.
After I had signed up for a one year commitment with the Telco, I found out that a local ISP offered DSL for $7 less per month. The moral of the story? ANYTHING that has the potential to reduce number of options available to consumers is bad. I had another choice I didn't know about...but at least it was there.
A preposition is a terrible thing to end a sentence with.
Competition isn't always good. Look at mobile telecoms in N. America. Crippled by multiple competing standards each touted by different competing companies. It retarded growth for years, whilst the rest of the world using GMS got on with the business of selling phones and services.
Even now, I found it backwards and expensive here. I went to the UK recently (yes, I had to ensure my N. American GSM phone worked outside N. America because GSM here is on different frequencies here to everywhere else. GRRRRR!) and picked up a SIM card for a local pay-as-go account. They billed by the second instead of minute, and when I used up all my time, I could still receive incoming calls. Nice. Oh, it took me less than two minutes to get it all hooked up in the Post Office across the road from King's Cross railway station in London.
A couple of weeks later I went to California and tried to do the same. It took them more 45 minutes to set me up on Cingular. And then USD$10 didn't even last me a week of very light usage. What a rip-off. I used a third of that with heavier usage in the UK. I think billing by the second versus minute is one of the biggest issues.
Anyway, long gripe about a pet issue. The point is, the market often needs to be regulated in some way for the best all round results.
Telephone wires fall under "natural monopolies", where the investment and effort of creating a competing version of the thing for sale creates such prohibitive barriers that the market naturally tends toward monopoly. Phones, roads, sewers, power lines are all this type of situation.
Deregulation can potentially improve some of these services (provided it is done in a careful and balanced way) by de-integrating the actual monopoly from the elements sold on top of it. In phones, that would mean that one market is maintaining and selling physical phone lines (this one being a natural monopoly and hence tightly regulated to ensure non-discriminatory access), and another is selling voice and data services on these lines. The dergulation of the voice and data services market is what can help - deregulation of the wires and poles market is a disaster in the offing.
This proposal is the worst of both worlds - the telcos are allowed to keep their monopoly in the wires and poles market, as well as their vertical integration, but are having all markets deregulated. Look for rampant abuse, as well as distinct lack of competion or innovation.
Not only that, but Verizon flatly refuses to provide DSL service of any kind to this area. You get Comcast Cable or no broadband. But competition will keep the companies in check. Yeah. Right.
> SELECT * FROM MPSC WHERE clue > 0
(yeah, yeah, blatant ripoff, but I'm irked)
If the g'vt kept the data on you that google does you'd better believe you'd be calling it "doing evil"
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1035_22-5410018.html/
The FCC promised the public that by giving them complete control over the fiber lines, they (the telcos) would build them and make them competitive with the cable companies. But then I guess the Bells wanted more (don't they always)and the FCC seems more than happy to give them the whole infrastructure which was built using a lot of tax incentives and government loans (not to mention the early outright doles).
This looks to be sad times for competition and public good.
Heh, I found that my local ISP Linkline is offering speeds just as good as Speakeasy, same liberal ISP policies (allowing servers, etc) and their tech support kicks butt, for cheaper than Speakeasy. Of course if you're not in SoCal than this doesn't apply.
...in bed
NEWS FLASH
The FCC just ruled FOR the deregulation of DSL. Takes affect in 270 days.
I work for a small ISP in Fairfax, VA and this move puts our business in immediate jeopardy. My company is part of a lobbying group called the Washington Bureau of ISP Advocacy (WBIA). There are tons of useful links on their website such as how to contact your local senators and how to contact the FCC directly.
http://www.wbia.us/
Please visit and write your local and federal represenatives and tell them that you want the freedom of choice!
McLeod has Fiber running 150 feet from my house along County Rd 46. I don't have access to those lines and they are likely sharing the "public space".
So why are they being treated differently? If we are going to regulate/deregulate due to public space I want access to that Fiber.
The EU regulations, which are pretty sane, have a simple distinction. Run a network open to the public and you get regulated, but you get unparalleled access to public lands. Run a private network and you're at the mercy of local government collecting huge amounts of money for a permit.
And here's the rub; if you run a public network (such as cable, dsl, etc. for IP, telephony, even pagers) you're regulated by your friendly national telco watchdog, who insist on calling everyone who has more than 25% of a market's share a monopolist (DSL being 1 market, cable being 1 market, etc.), which gives them the option to force you to bring your prices down to cost+a reasonable profit.
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
"previous behaviour of trying to limit people's speed"?!
I worked in the wholesale DSL service & repair department of BellSouth with: access to about 100 Nortel Shasta BSN5000 switches; 15,000 Alcatel DSLAMs; 30 Sun AMS (Alcatel Management System) servers; control of all BellSouth's ATM data switches; complete end-to-end user-to-NSP control of 1.5 million ATM circuits, access to every system the company had that affected service in any way (some up to 30 years old), authority to dispatch any kind of technician...
If BellSouth wanted to, they could run a script that within 2 or 3 days would, on average, triple people's bandwidth. It wouldn't strain the system in the least. The network is big and empty. Further, the other ISPs were always miles ahead of the poor underpaid bellsouth.net tech support in competence. These days, I hear bs.net has gone even farther downhill, outsourcing level 1 tech support to India, he Phillipines, and even Costa Rica, while at the same time introducing time-and-motion studies and oppressive surveilance on the techs doing my old job. (every keystroke and mouse click recorded, microphones in the cubes that can't be turned off whether or not you're on a call, etc.) The performance metrics measure everything but whether the problem was fixed, and leave no room for creative problem-solving, and as a bonus they have required meetings for all techs on these worse-than-meaningless statistics every morning. Now that they don't have to provide service to other ISPs, I predict that they will find some way to make it even worse.
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
No more considerations needed... It's already happened
US FCC eases regulations on DSL broadband