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FCC Reclassifies DSL, Drops Common Carrier Rules
Neil Wehneman writes "Via Media Law Prof Blog, it is reported that the FCC has reclassified broadband service as an "information service" instead of "telecommunications". This, among other things, gives the Baby Bells the same gift the cable companies got with Brand X : the right to stop opening their lines to competitors."
It's a information service, since you don't need any special hardware. Right...
I call troll... Nobody is stupid enough to say a monopoly is good.
As broadband is becoming more widely available it is becoming easier to switch providers, as well.
It won't be so easy if all that's left is the local monoploy cable company and the local monopoly phone company.
Hey everybody! One of the GNAA assholes forgot to click on the "Post Anonymously"!
Mod down and ban this fucker and all his Friends!
But monopolies can afford so many more of those campaign funding dollars.
It's about time they did this, goverment interference in the economy will, in the long run, screw people over. As broadband is becoming more widely available it is becoming easier to switch providers, as well.
It's been my experience that corporations are far more likely to screw people over than governments. Libertarian capitalism, like communism, looks good on paper but fails utterly in reality.
I have DSL through a smaller carrier (TDS Metrocom, lines owned by SBC, I believe). Sounds like my service is in jeopardy. But won't this kill phone service, too? I mean, if DSL rides on your voice line, and SBC can tell TDS they can't sell me DSL, I'll have to drop TDS entirely to keep DSL. Or switch to cable for Internet access and pay another 900# gorilla. Sigh.
Even if they reclassify DSL, there *is* still an important interference: the phone and cable companies have an effective monopoly on the use of the telephone poles or fiber conduits.
Yes, its mostly modern fiber and VOIP internally, but there's copper to every house, and poles, and those discrete switching stations in the bushes. Who paid for all that? Since we (the US Taxpayers) did (whether its good or bad is irrelevant to this discussion), it should be open to all.
Those who live by the government teat (Telcos) should have to die by it, too.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
I don't understand.
Surely this means that the local "Baby Bell" will be able to prevent other companies from using the infrastructure, either directly or by pricing them out of the market?
If so ... how does this help the consumer? Who lobbied for this? And why was it done? TFA has little detail and the FCC press release seems to be more self-servient than anything else.
Now ... if the price they sell broadband at is $29.95/month, but they will only sell line access to the competing ISP at $39.95/month, the ISP cannot compete.
In Australia Tel$tra did just this (briefly) and got a slap on the wrist from our consumer agency, the ACCC. Is there a similar organisation in the US? Is that what the FCC press release is commenting on in the 2nd last para:
As it might be clear to the average US citizen by now, is that monopolies are detested by the US goverment. They do everything in their power to break foreign monopolies to give US companies a fair chance in the big bad foreign world.
What is also clear by now is that for inside the US there are different rules. Good luck! I live in a foreign country and the weirdest things happen under the name of free market (like jeopardizing the electricity network), but everything gets more expensive because of this. You (US citizen) however are in the lucky situation that things happen in reverse, and everything will get more expensive.
My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
By the time there is only one Internet to rule them all, no one will be able to afford it. We'll also be swearing that war is peace, or some junk like that.
This is going to only going to create local monopoly providers. I work for a small, state of michigan only internet provider. That has been around for 8 years. We have started servicing DSL and it is exploding.
People are coming to us because they dont have to call flippin India to get tech support and they know we are a locally owned family company. We can provide DSL for $20 a month for a year contract and after you add the taxes and charges of SBC you are at that or over it.
It is times like this why I shake my head and ask why the rebulican party wants to kill local businesses, seeing that is what they say they stand for.
----
Gomaze
funny, seems like free speech has been censored here already
The FCC has finally reclassified broadband service, giving the baby bells and the cable companies what they've wanted for so long, equal footing with the ISPs
The existing model was equal footing. This gives them total control now; the ability to pull a Microsoft to drive the competition out.
"If all the world's a stage, I want to operate the trap door." - Paul Beatty
I'm not sure either way on this one. The intent of the ruling is to allow differing technologies to compete with each other. It could be argued that by forcing Baby Bells to provide assistance to companies that compete with them in offering services, the Baby Bells have to assume an unfair burden.
But if DSL is just one technology. Already cable and DSL companies are locked in a heated battle over who will dominate residential broadband. Even if the local phone carrier and the local cable carrier are effectively monopolies, they're still in competition with each other, right?
DSL and cable aren't the only broadband technologies available now, and other players may try to come up with their own competing mechanisms.
I'm not saying that I know for sure that the ruling will enhance competition, or that the consumer will ultimately be best served by it. But I'm not sure that allowing the Baby Bells and cable companies to compete head to head in an unfettered fashion is such a bad thing.
If anything, I am more bothered by the fact that cable companies are provided local monopolies by municipal governments, which gives me no choice in cable access as a consumer. At least the Baby Bells are no longer truly "regional" in that they can all compete with each other for local and long distance services, as well as DSL and wireless.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Does Magid's comment make any sense to those of you who know how DSL works?
So much for market forces, eh?
Adam Smith considered 'the free market' to be a good number of small merchants. Big business produces the same sorts of centralized stupidity as big government -- especially when it has a (pseudo) monopoly.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
IS not to protect consumers.
The dropping of common carrier status also removes any protection of content. Now the ISP will be liable for content that passes over their lines.
The 'consumer' no longer will have a right to privacy, since its no longer considered 'telecommunications', which was protected.
So its not about protecting us, its about controlling and monitoring us. Oh, and if it happens to make the big campaign contributors a few bucks along the way, all the better.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Sure, just like AT&T treated customers fairly. Not as if they charged people fees to rent those sophisticated telephones, or that their actions were egregarious enough to lead to a court-directed breakup.
Clearly you are not a Verizon customer if you think the phone company won't screw you over. I'm just happy Covad (my DSL provider) has been actively seeking agreements with the Bells in preparation for this.
Personally, I think the FCC jumped the gun. Yes, there *may* be more competition in the future with wifi and internet-over-power, but at this point they are merely pitting two monopolies (cable and phone service) against each other. And given the long-term poor customer service of both of these, I'm less than thrilled at the prospects for this supposed "competition" benefiting me.
Is it unreasonable to expect headlines like "Local ISPs across the country doomed"? Even if the press doesn't care about the ISPs, that's a lot of people who will probably be out of work soon, and employment trends generally are something the press cares about.
I hate this ruling for several reasons:
I think that the press is slowly starting to pick that up, thanks in part to organizations such as the Consumers Union. I hope the FCC is forced to reconsider. If they don't, I hope the local ISPs take the initiative to build some new infrastructure of their own (and I hope it's something so clearly better that it's not just an expensive mess).
I'm not sure about the underlying reasoning here- FCC has changed a lot since Mike Powell left. They may have decided that preventing anticompetitive behavior is too much intereference in free markets, although that hasn't often stopped them before.
But it is obvious that this move will constrain DSL's quality and price advantages. I have to suffer with Verizon and I'm in PAIN everytime I use it and everytime I see my bill. Things will only get worse. What the hell is everyone waiting for? Oh right, I forgot, you're waiting for SOMEONE ELSE to take the risk.
Every other country in the world has far better broadband infrastructure than the US, and it's because of the behavior of our monopoly providers.
I hope this will finally provide an incentive for metropolitan wifi providers and cable vendors to decide upon and implement a reasonable business model. Guys, it isn't rocket science, and it's not going to take anything like the irrational capital-deployment decisions that resulted in the long-haul-fiber overbuild.
My current ISP usually gets 5 out of 5 for their customer service. The phone company has spent 20 years proving they average 2 out of five.
Phone company, understand this: kill my ISP, and you'll never again see one of my bytes on your line to my house. I'll find another way.
That's a promise.
Anybody else feel the same way? Write your congressman. Maybe it's time for an email campaign.
To a politician, one email equals one voter.
The FCC, like the rest of the government, is "or is supposed to be" sticking to the constitution on their decisions. For them to force SBC, Verizon, et al to open their lines to the CLEC is unconstitutional, it would be like the government forcing McDonald's to Serve food from Burger King, or Vice Versa.
You know what, open up your own telephone company by laying your own cable down to compete, you have every right to do so. That brings me to another point, when Netscape was losing their market share to Microsoft over Internet Explorer, instead of competing with Microsoft, they took it to Washington and whined cried about losing to Microsoft. That is when the unconstitutional Anti-Trust case came about. Look what's happening right now, Microsoft hasn't really had any competition for a long time and was stagnant on any updates. As a result, Mozilla Firefox "Originally known as Mozilla Phoenix due to the fact it was basically Netscape rising from the ashes" was written and now is taking market share away from Microsoft, which is now developing Internet Explorer 7, which originally was developed for the Next Version of windows "Codenamed Windows Longhorn" is now being developed for Windows XP SP2. One problem, though, they are still stuck on themselves to compete and since they aren't developing IE 7.0 for Windows 98 or even ME, they are going to lose out to Firefox which supports Windows 98 on up, as well as Mac OS and Linux, and none of that came from that anti-trust lawsuit.
Revscat, that is what happens when the Free Market decides. Even a so-called "convicted monopoly" can lose out to a potential competitor, Microsoft might eventually lose out to Linux in the future. What happens when the government attempts to control the free market is when problems arise? People usually attribute the great depression to Herbert Hoover, but it was the government getting involved into the free market that led to it, it wasn't Hoover at all. The breakup of AT&T is another example, The "Baby Bells" are now almost as large as AT&T was before the breakup. On top of that, they even swallowed up AT&T.
To sum it all up, to have a prosperous nation, the government absolutely needs to stay out of the free market. Every time they get involved, not only do they voilate the constitution, they also make the economy a mess.
_____________________________________
A vote against a Libertarian candidate is
a vote to abolish the Constitution itself.
Libertarian capitalism, like communism, looks good on paper but fails utterly in reality.
I'll save all the 14-year-old armchair Libertarians, whose parents pay for their internet access, some effort by saying "Shut Up, Hippy".
Freedom: "I won't!"
. Most of the initial headlines were "FCC eases rules" or "Phone companies get internet relief".
The news outlets are writing the story because they're getting faxed press releases from the telcos, and therefore are accepting the Telcos' spin.
That would be a biopoly
Especially if they both end up being owned by the same mega-corp -- But the FTC wouldn't allow that, would they?? (sigh)
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
Here's the theory, in perfunctory fashion, because I don't buy it. Broadband uptake in the US is not going as quickly as somebody wants. Aha! the FCC reasons (helped by whispers in the ear), it must be because the owners of phone lines won't upgrade them unless they get the full return of their investment. So if the Baby Bells own and maintain the lines, the Baby Bells are granted full control over how much they charge other information service providers, and, in order to make negotiations between the Baby Bells and indy DSLs more equitable, the Baby Bells can now walk away and say no soup for you, More return on investment means more investment in infrastructure and more supply means more demand. Entry into the brand new beautiful broadband world accelerates.
And some folks at SBC and Verizon get together with their lobbyists and a few of their contacts in Congress and the Executive, and tilt many a glass in honor of these days in the new gilded age.
It's been my experience that corporations are far more likely to screw people over than governments. Libertarian capitalism, like communism, looks good on paper but fails utterly in reality.
Because government answer to the people every couple of years in elections.
Corporations answer to their bottom line.
One is held accountable for its actions, the other isn't.
You know what, open up your own telephone company by laying your own cable down to compete, you have every right to do so.
Uh, a few problems with that.
1. If you tried it, you'd be tossed in jail, since in most communities the phone company is the only company allowed to go stringing wires all over the place. At the very least they have far less expensive access to do so. They also own the poles and can charge your company for their use at a rate they deem fair.
2. In most areas the existing infrastructure was paid for by the community - either directly through taxes, or through subsidies of some sort, or through emininent domain, or through granted-monopoly-status in which the company could recover their sunk costs. A new provider won't get any of these benefits, and cannot compete.
Now, if the government were to eminent-domain all the poles/wires, and then auction them back out to competitive phone companies, you might have a point. However, I doubt that is going to happen.
Don't get me wrong - I'm all for the free market. However, the market in question is not free...
Don't take this the wrong way--I'm honestly curious--but is this a non-sequiter, or am I misinterpreting it? If I build something other people can't easily duplicate, that doesn't make my product common infrastructure.
I'm depressing ignorant of this subject matter, but if it's public infrastructure, shouldn't that be simply because it's built on public land (or under random people's front yards)?
I want it to be open, so we have lots of ISPs to choose from, but I'm not willing to force privately-funded stuff to be forced open by the government unless there's a better justification than 'people will be better off'. I'd benefit from free [insert commercial project here].
You want a better network than the telcos and cable companies provide? Build one. Roll out new FTTH. Or wireless. Or carrier pigeon. Whatever. This is the Internet, a network of networks. We can build more than one.
Don't force another company that spent $millions or $billions on their network to "share" with their competitors at government-dictated rates. The expense is in the network, not the backend and marketing layers. I wouldn't spend $gigabucks building new plant if I knew the government was going to force me to hand it over to competitors either.
Is it unreasonable to expect headlines like "Local ISPs across the country doomed"?
Maybe the owners of many news agencies have investments in things like major ISPs. Take Time Warner for example. Could any of that news be coming over from a source like Yahoo as in SBC/Yahoo DSL?
Libertarian capitalism, like communism, looks good on paper but fails utterly in reality.
The problem being that it usually seems to fail due to government interference. It's hard these days in the U.S. to find an industry where the government hasn't interfered significantly via protective legislation or subsidies in various forms. Abroad, it's hard to find a free market economy that wasn't hobbled at inception by a too-rapid transition from a prior system, resulting in a lack of adequate financial and legal infrastructure. Admittedly, legislative stupidity is part of the 'reality' that a market model has to deal with, but at least in this country it's an aspect of reality that we could influence.
There are numerous things wrong with our current telecomm infrastructure in the U.S. It seems to me that there are two long-term directions we could take that would improve it. We could be honest about wanting government control over the pipelines, and pay for them. Perhaps communities could use the recent despised (rightly so, IMO) liberalization of eminent domain laws to buy the pipelines -- poles, wires, associated rights-of-way -- and lease use back to the telecomm companies. (Wouldn't be fun to turn liberalized eminent domain against the large corporations that wanted it?) We would have to be willing to pay the taxes necessary for the purchases and upkeep. This would be much more honest than the current situation.
Alternately, liberalize it, continuing in the current direction. These effective monopolies won't last in the face of improving wireless communications and other technologies. If prices go up, there'll be more incentives and money available to develop alternatives. Prices will eventually come down again.
Neither path should be pursued by sudden changes in the legislative environment, because it's the transitions that cause hardship. But we, as a nation, or at least as individual communities, need to figure out which alternative we prefer and stick to it. The current waffling back and forth is what causes a lot of grief.
I'm not just going to sit around the office and put up with this anymore. I'm writing my local TV stations and newspaper. I also have a friend who did some campaign organization for Kerry up here around Seattle and I'll see if there is anything she can do to help organize something going against this. I'm also interested in the possibility of a Public Broadcast TV news show that reports on all types of issues like this that normally get back-burnered by pointless stories like that whole Aruba waste of time.
It seems unclear from the press release whether the upcoming R&O, which doesn't seem to have been published yet, removes the requirement for ILECs to share copper pairs as UNEs or simply removed the requirement to share DSLAM ports as UNEs.
I find this section from the press release more chilling on a long-term basis:
"The Order also requires facilities-based providers to contribute to existing universal service mechanisms based on their current levels of reported revenues for the DSL transmission for a 270-day period after the effective date of the Order or until the Commission adopts new contribution rules, whichever occurs earlier. If the Commission is unable to complete new contribution rules within the 270-day period, the Commission will take whatever action is necessary to preserve existing funding levels, including extending the 270-day period or expanding the contribution base."
(Emphasis Added)
This is the FCC putting everyone on notice that they may expand the list of services/providers which pay into USF. That is a step that I don't want to see happen. While USF is a nice theory, in practice it is used as a method to defray costs for the incumbent telcos in serving desired markets. Can anyone provide several examples of rural CLECs or WISPs receiving USF dollars to support their efforts?
You know what, open up your own telephone company by laying your own cable down to compete, you have every right to do so.
That's the rub here. You have the right, but you can't. You need massive amounts of investment. The barrier to the market is so high, that even if the existing players all offer shoddy services at inflated prices, it is still likely to be high enough that no new players enter the market, because the return on investment is too long-term or too costly for possible new market players.
That's the sad reality that has made me give up my libertarian views (and shocked me when I realized it): the free market is inherently unstable. Due to scale effects, it is profitable to merge. Once there are few enough players in the market that they can all come together and debate their situation, it is profitable to conspire to raise prices and decrease quality. The only thing stopping this from happening is a steady flow of new market players. But as market entry costs are raised, there is a steady risk of entry costs outgrowing potential profit. At least in a short enough term that it is competitive with other avenues of potential investment. As a result, the only thing protecting the freedom of most markets is constant government intervention to lower market entry costs.
This is also why anti-trust legislation does not punish merely owning a market. It punishes owning a market and raising entry costs to keep out competition. And very cleverly, its punishment is to force the monopolist to lower market entry costs. This is not a bad thing. It is in fact highly necessary.
Back to this specific case. What the government has just done is increase market entry costs. The conjecture now is that market entry costs will be so high as to make it unprofitable to become a new player in the DSL market, and that this in turn will lead to a power-abusing oligopoly. I agree with this view. I think the government's decision to decrease market regulation and increase market player freedom will lead to decreased market freedom.
They probably would let you use their phones Sc00ter, but it's an EMERGENCY. Better all around if you don't have to run down the street, knocking on doors and waiting for people to come to answer them. The cells ought to help a bit though eh?
I want it to be open, so we have lots of ISPs to choose from, but I'm not willing to force privately-funded stuff to be forced open by the government unless there's a better justification than 'people will be better off'. I'd benefit from free [insert commercial project here
First let me just start by quoting the internet policy document linked, and laugh out loud a little.
It first tries to put out some reasonable, sensible goals for the FCC.
Then it states, "Although the Commission did not adopt rules in this regard, it will incorporate these principles
into its ongoing policymaking activities."
Sure it will.. sure.
Apparently, its not just about choice. They are now "Information services" and not subject to common carrier rules.. but are they subject to common carrier protections? I guess we'll pretend they are for a bit, but it probably wont take long for the RIAA, MPAA, CMAA (Crazy mothers of America Association) to set someone up the lawsuit, to phrase a cliche.
Oh, wait. This is the US. We give completely absurd handouts to corporations all the time. In fact, I'm fairly sure that's our motto.
What we need to do, and what we were working towards, is have one government-operated entity, or just the government itself, control the wires and the building they go to, and the phone companies jsut come in and hook up. That's, legally, almost where we were...sure, the phone companies owned the building and wires, but they had to charge themselves the same amount ot use them as anyone else.
This, of course, is completely unacceptable, because...um. I dunno.
All I can say is, thank God gays can't get married! (That's my new standard tagline whenever the Republicans rip us off. Feel free to use it.)
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
However, if you do it because you are a government-sanctioned monopoly with sole rights to do it (in some areas) and a government mandate to do it, and you do it partially with government money, partially with your monopoly status, then the situation changes. You can't maintain the 'privately-funded stuff' argument when your private corporation has had special legal status to be the only game in town for 100 years.
The phone companies are here to serve us. Not the other way around. The rules need to reflect that. Compare it to the power/water/sewer/postal monopolies and the government regulation needed to keep that common infrastructure working for us.
Hopefully this will start taking off. At 300', you need a whole lot of them. At 30 miles, "one per city" is often good enough.
Cory Doctorow's latest novel, "Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town" has a sub-plot about unwiring the entire town. It's not the first place I've seen such an idea, and it worked well with the story. Remember to switch all your nodes to ParasiteNet!
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
Witness the various taxes (Yes, government taxes) that were put on the phone bills, and then given back to the phone company to built infrastructure for, for example, rural areas. A large amount of 'taxes' on your phone bill are handed directly back to the phone company with the requirement they use it in a certain way, usually to do with infrastructure.
Telephone wires have always been treated as a public good, and the government has invested quite a lot of money into them, often times putting up the poles or digging the holes as part of road construction at no cost to the phone company. Or letting them have access to government areas...every public subway system in the world has telephone wires running through it at some point, and the telephone company has keys and doesn't even have to go through the government.
But, anyway, the mere right to run wires over public and private land is worth millions in any community. Actually, it's probably literally priceless, as they couldn't purchase all the rights they need.
Phone companies have no right to whine they have to share the wires.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
It'd be a lot easier to get a variety of providers that just benefitted from this ruling to build these back doors. "We gave you one, now you give us one."
Wrapped in the flag, it's a pretty present for the patriotic consumer. "Verizon is doing its part to protect America from terrorism. By installing a back door for feds..."
Also, in the last few years, the gov'ment has been reformulating statistics (un-employment, etc) invariably using some figure that was unavailable in previous calculations making comparisons difficult. This logic could, conceivebly, be applied to the definition of "information carrying mediums"--or any other communication the FCC may wish to regulate.
Say, Voip, for instance. Is it data, and can be blocked by telco networks, or is it "telecomunications?"
Perhaps this quote from Wi-Fi planet may shed some light to what's really going on: "I look forward to creating clear rules for all IP-enabled services." --Rep. Joe Barton (R-Tex.), chairman of the House Energy and commerce Committee.
Anybody else think that the primary driver behind this ruling is CALEA and not "competition" at all? Just think how much easier it will be to implement the new wiretap requirements without having to deal with the hundreds or thousands of local ISPs. Some of which may be owned by people who may have moral objections to wiretaps. Or may be small enough that the operators actually know their customers and may be tempted to tip them off.
Instead they can deal with maybe a dozen or so mega corporations. The size of which helps to ensure an amoral compliance. Most (all?) of which are already under FCC regulation which helps ensure the government has a suitably free hand to punish them should they step out of line. Where every customer is nothing more than a number which the corporation has no allegence to.
It's not like this would be the first time those in power were less than honest about their motivations behind a policy.
duopoly. Think Greek, not Latin.
It would have been nice if instead the cable companies had been regulated. Then I might not now be paying ridiculous fees for a 'commercial' account just so that I can host my own *personal* mail and web servers.
It's all Greek to me.
Leased loops are not going away. The telcos still have to provide access to the dry copper going out to customer locations. This ruling simply says that the telcos no longer have to provide the actual service on these copper pairs. I can see how in some areas this will be devastating. The company I work for, fortunately, has enough vision that they've seen this coming. For the past several months we've been implementing a solution using Ciena networks equipment that will allow us to continue providing dial tone as well as DSL to formerly resold SBC and Bell South customers. Basically instead of the copper getting plugged into SBC / Bell South equipment it is physically moved into our collo equipment. This is actually better for our company, leasing a copper pair is far less expensive than just reselling DSL or local phone service, and it gives us the opportunity to grow into new service areas and offer price points we weren't able to meet previously.
Also, we've obtained a $100 million grant to develop fiber networks in three cities, over which we will be able to provide data, voice, and television services...
This ruling is just a kick in the arse of the small telcos who have been skimming profit from the large ones by just reselling service (they've been able to do this for around 5 years now)
As someone else said, the teat is being taken away, it's time for the small telcos to stand on their own two feet and invest in their own infrastructure...
Just my $.02
You mentioned subway systems, which reminded me of how that can go wrong...ever notice that Verizon Wireless is the only cell carrier that has transmitters in Washington DC's Metro system? It's because Verizon (the phone company) simply won't let competing tower operators connect to their subway infrastructure.
> * It's the FCC wantonly overriding Congress
You've taken this to your Congressman?
If you can persuade Congress to accept the view that their authority has been subverted by an agency rule, they can fix it -- and they would be highly motivated to do so.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
The only reason I even -have- a landline to my house is so I can get DSL service. So as long as I got the land line I signed up for unlimited service, it's not that expensive.
Now if I can't get DSL, why do I need a landline? I'll just cancel it and use a cellphone.
That is the market pressure we can apply, and the one (hopefully) which can be used to bring the telco's to heel. They want us to buy phone service from them? Then they continue to give us the DSL access we want.
A lot of people are already forsaking landlines for Cell Phones. Without DSL, who really needs the telco's anymore?
Although I hate dealing with SBC and Verizon and such companies, I believe this is going to benefit other technologies other than DSL. I have a friend who bnow works for a Electric company in Cincinnati Ohio, he has been busier than ever installing Internet over power lines. The up/down streams are very good and in some ways better than cable. Now, WiMax has been growing in popularity as well being able to totally bypass all looping charges. Cable companies such as Timewarner Cable have been good to ok in my opinion. I believe DSL providers are going to see a slower growth in the DSL market and more people are going to move to these other connections for their internet. Heck it is almost cheaper for me to buy a Cell phone internet service with broadband speeds than to purchase the norm.
In Milan, OH, where I am currently there is cable but not DSL.
Nice troll, dude. I can't resist.
...it was because IE came bundled with the OS, wheras netscape did not. Again you defend predatory, anti-competitive, monopolistc practices.
"it would be like the government forcing McDonald's to Serve food from Burger King, or Vice Versa."
Firstly, you're wrong because your analogy is specious. It wouldn't be like forcing McDonalds to SELL BK product, the CLEC's do a good job of selling the product. It would be more like, if burger ovens were incredibly expensive, and McDonalds owned 99% of them, forcing McDonalds to MAKE burgers for BK, which BK would then resell.
Secondly, you're wrong because Micky D's and the King are much more evenly matched as competitors than baby Bells and CLEC's are. Because it's not as prohibitively expensive to buy burger ovens as it is to lay copper wire over an entire city, county, state or nation.
Thirdly, I hope you realize you just used "McDonalds" and "unconstitutional" in the same thought. That alone should give you some pause - but you're obviously a zealot, so it probably won't.
"open up your own telephone company by laying your own cable down to compete, you have every right to do so."
It takes more than a "right" to start a business. It takes investment capital. In the case of telco's, every CLEC out there owning their own infrastructure would be three things. 1) Fiscally impossible. 2) Incredibly wasteful. 3) Incredibly ugly - can you imagine every telephone pole made 100 feet high, carrying cables for every single telco in the country? Is that a street you'd want to drive down or live on? Especially since all these wires are all using only 1% of their capacity?
Do you realize that you're defending predatory, monopolistic, anti-competitive, anti-free market status quo?
Let's continue for a moment down the analogistic path. When American (and foreign) space missions have flown, and have carried into space scientific experiments and equipment, they weren't all from the same person or company. Do you think that every single scientist who needed experimental results from space should have built and flown their own shuttle? Would you have the scientific community be kept from the knowledge that helps you and me lead better lives rather than have all the experiments piggyback up on the same shuttle? Would you have every astronomer build their own Hubble telescopes rather than use the one that exists, and share it?
At one end of the scale, you have fast food franchises. When you open one, investment costs are relatively low. Accordingly, there's millions of these places, and they all compete. At the other end of the scale, you have going into outer space, or laying copper to every house in the nation.
"when Netscape was losing their market share to Microsoft over Internet Explorer"
"taking market share away from Microsoft"
What planet do you live on? Here on Earth, IE has 86.56% of browser market share, as opposed to Firefox's MIGHTY EIGHT PERCENT!! This in spite of the fact that IE is the WORST BROWSER EVER WRITTEN! This in spite of the fact that Netscape had over 50% market share until 1997! Gee, how on Earth did that happen? Woo hoo, let's hear it for predatory monopolies!
"Revscat, that is what happens when the Free Market decides"
Only an utter zealot (or a troll posting anonymously) would treat the phrase "free market" as a proper noun to be capitalized.
Look, Einstein, this is how it works. Regulation, like everything else in life, operates within a spectrum. On the far end, you have over-regulation. I honestly can't think of any recent examples of this, but I'm sure it exists somewhere, probably in Europe. In the middle, you have regulation at it's most appropriate level, where business and consumers are equally represented. These are called CHECKS AND BALANCES, maybe you've heard of them. At the other end, you have UNDER-regulation. Yes, Virginia, there is such a thing as under-regulation. It
They will never stop until somebody makes the
"You know what, open up your own telephone company by laying your own cable down to compete, you have every right to do so" And this is why Libertarians can't be taken seriously. How am I or any small startup or hell even a reasonably sized corporation supposed to do the above? Lay thousands of miles of cable across public and private land? I suppose w/o the benefit of ED either (b/c you don't like that idea either do you?) "To sum it all up, to have a prosperous nation, the government absolutely needs to stay out of the free market. Every time they get involved, not only do they voilate the constitution, they also make the economy a mess." This hurts my eyes.. the government needs to ensure a free market and this means access to it(markets) for its citizens. Libertarians would trade one form of facism for another. Seriously someone needs to create Libertarian-lite(a party that doesn't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater).
Comment removed based on user account deletion
DO NOT forget that should common carrier status be dropped that ISP's can now CENSOR PARTS OF THE INTERNET.
Please Correct me if I am mistaken, This is wildly more important that price gouging.
For example, the ISP you are currently at may block you from going to a competetors site, a party may give $$$ to the ISP and block you from viewing another party's website.
Check journal for info on Anti-TextBook, an idea by me.
The problem isn't that dsl is now an "information service". We need to have some of the same rules that are in "telecommunications" apply to "information service", so that the switch won't negatively affect competetion. Reclassifying it is fine, but if you're going to reclassify it, do it right.
http://illhostit.com/ - Webhosting
But that's exactly the sort of shit I'm talking about. Verizon doesn't own the damn subways. They were given the right to run wires through the subway because DC would look ugly with telephone wires.
And now that they 'own' this space, they think not only can they run cell tower wires through it, but that other companies can't.
I bet they even run private WANs through there, too, for businesses in multiple buildings. They charge the businesses for the wires, run them though their free access space, and rake in the cash.
We need to go out and take every telephone wire and accessway back from every phone company, becuase they simply will not stop abusing them. My personal preference is to just give them 24 hours to remove their wires from public places or have them confiscated (hehe), but in the real world we'd probably have to buy them using eminant domain.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
There's a lot of moaning and doom and gloom in this thread, but I think most people have overlooked the one problem with the business of DSL resellers:
They're selling something they don't own.
Think about it, what do local DSL providers actually provide? They provide a link between your computer and some internet backbone. And how is this link made? By going over "the last mile" of copper, which is owned by the phone company. How does it make any sense for someone to sell service on a wire they don't own? That's like having the Canadian government collect tolls in one set of booths on I-95: it might add "competition" in the sense that now there's more than one group competing to be your toll booth, but it doesn't change the physical facts of the highway. Traffic is going to be just as bad, pot holes aren't going to go away, and if anything the situation will be made worse, since the transit company in charge of the actual highway isn't going to see as much profit for the changes it makes.
So basically, we as consumers are essentially screwed, because it's only natural that whoever controls the last mile exerts a natural monopoly over internet service, right? Well no, not exactly.
How the consumer can escape being screwed is, while competition over the same set of lines is basically impossible, there are multiple sets of "last miles" coming into our houses already today. To point out the obvious: cable. Now, in a lot of areas, cable service is shitty, but that's only because cable has little competition for TV service, outside of satellite, and little competition for broadband service, outside of DSL. And the DSL service is always weak, because it hasn't been in the interests of the phone companies to make DSL service better.
But, all of this can change, because of A) new pressures from wireless internet services and B) this new ruling which lets the people who own the last mile of DSL finally act like they own the last mile of DSL.
So essentially, we are going to have to give up fake competition within the realm of DSL in order to achieve real competition between DSL and cable. And that's not a bad tradeoff, in my book.
This is the most informative post I've read in over a week.
Libertarian capitalism opposes the concept of corporations, which are after all artificial "persons" created solely by governments. If you want to attack the libertarians, at least you might be consistent in your message.
The Bu$h administration has slowly replaced all the pro-consumer people (read "democrats") in the FCC (and for that matter, most other regulatory agencies) so that it is now more big-bu$ine$$ friendly. Republican$ tend to refer to it in happy terms, like "removing the barriers to free enterprise," but leave out the part "...at the expense of the little guys." Raising the expenses of the smaller DSL providers will only result in higher prices across the board, as the lack of upward price controls will cause those with lower expenses to seek larger profits. But, then who makes up a larger part of the Republican$' base? Verizon or Speakeasy? SBC or AOL? "Jeb/Frist 2008" sounds like a great tax shelter/investment for those extra profits.
Word of PDF take your pick. Good thing OpenOffice opens docs.(another discussion alltogether)
Essentially this is going to screw us all and the FCC really pisses me off lately. I would like to know just who our government really represents because lately it sure as hell doesn't feel like the people.
So basically all us outlaw DSL users that don't opt for the telco sponsored service have a year, after which who knows what will happen. The actual release is very vague and uses lots of references to common and non-common carrier wording. This kind of crap is really getting out of hand with the FCC.
Check out the statements from the people that made the descision. I understand the logic but the implimentation seems backwards. Heres the basic gist, cable companies get protection from leasing thier lines(which is why my cable bill is 120 bucks with no premium channels) Telcos do not currently have the same luxury.
Some choice quotes: Kevin J Martin said: "I believe that, with the actions we take today, consumers will reap the benefits of increased Internet access competition and enjoy innovative high-speed services at lower prices. There is, however, more to do to stimulate infrastructure investment, broadband deployment, and competition in the broadband market. I intend to tackle these challenges in the upcoming months." Wow this guy makes some big claims....I wonder what those challenges are and how they intend to handle that.
Kathleen Q. Abernathy states:"And let there be no doubt: competition among broadband providers is flourishing. The Commission's most recent statistics show that over 80% of zip codes in America are served by two or more high-speed providers, about two-thirds are served by three or more, and over half are served by four or more." Idea for the next slashdot poll. How many broadband providers serve you? If I cut out thirdparty ISPs like Speakeasy I have Qwest and Comcast. Thats two services run by a bunch of monkeys charging whatever the hell they want for thier service.
all of the statements made by the people that made the decision are full of "facts and figures" with no references to sources. The real driving force behind this decision is those peer to peer music stealing communist evil pirates that are taking the food from artists childrens mouth. The short statement likes the use of "legal devices" what is a legal device to access the internet? Is that defined somewhere? Children like Jermajesty(no I am not kidding lookit up)! THINK OF THE CHILDREN! This goes hand in hand with CALEA which is cited in the release as well.
I would run away to another county but thats not much better
I'd like to vote against those that are behind this and encourage others to do the same by publishing information.
How do I find out the ties between the FCC's decision, telcos that benefit from this, and elected officials that need our votes?
To me, this issue is more important than abortion or gay marriages.
While countries like South Korea are making it easier for their citizens to have cheap broadband access, it seems our country is using government power to increase profits for several select companies at the expense of both citizens and all other companies.
How much longer are we going to stand by while our national security, our democracy, and our way of life is savaged by corrupt politicians? Sure, politicians have a history of being bought, but I cannot remember it being so blatant and so far-reaching as it stands today.
The laws regarding media monopolies that were meant to protect us have been repealed and nobody is even talking about it. Do we really want one company to own all the TV stations and newspapers in the same city or region so they can more effectively brainwash the gullible masses?
How bad must things get before we start to spend more of our time & money to participate in the political process so that we regain America's former glory? Hell, we spend more on movies or beer than we do on getting more honest politicians elected (or kicking out dishonest ones) and bitch about them voting in favor of companies that help them get elected.
Surely I'm not the only American frustrated by all this.
ps
Want fair taxes? Why don't we have a flat tax of 20% for everyone (including companies), make the first $20,000 non-taxable (or whatever matches the current USA poverty line), and make the rest non-eligible for any deductions whatsoever? Many companies making millions in profits (not revenues) pay less than 5% due to various tax credits and other deductions they have bribed politicians to include in the tax code--and those deductions are written in a manner that only allows a few select companies to qualify.
The problem with WiMax is Quality Of Service.
The bandwidth seems like a decent amount, but spread over 30 miles leaves very little per person. One kazaa user would destroy your connnection, making it useless for persistant connections, but still okay for its intention (roaming). You never want to rely on wireless connections for longer than you have to.
Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx
To correct the analogy with your phone booths along the highway:
1. You have to be able to go to the phone booth and pick from a phone-provider before you put in your quarter. You can pick SBC which having the most marketing will have the biggest and brightest selection button, but I instead pick Sonic.net, because when I pick up the phone, hear that dial tone and then punch in 411 for information, their information (e.g. Support) is much better, I can understand the person because he is speaking perfect english, not someone who studied english for 2 years reading from a script in India that can't tell me what I need to know. (e.g. How to fix a problem with my service). No thanks, I'll punch in Sonic.net and give them my 25 cents instead of SBC.
2. Secondly, SBC service and Comcast service (DSL vs Cable in California) deserve their own analogy:
The little DSL ISP's with their supperior support are the track stars in the 100m dash.
Comcast always comes in dead last and SBC comes in 2nd to dead last out of 8 competing providers.
So, now you remove all the good players, and leave the two handicapped lame track runners competing against each other, they are handicapped from their size and will never be fast.
Will they get better? No, history has shown this with any large company, good service doesn't scale. Really, look it up.
Modesty is one of life's greatest attributes
Here is what I got from Speakeasy customer support when asked how FCC descision would affect their service:
"... Speakeasy operates on a WHOLESALE model, where we buy essentially DSL physical layer (DSLAM) and add all of the IP services ourselves. The FCC ruling does not contemplate any changes to this regime, or to the massive unbundling ruling they issued in February. Covad and our other CLEC partners run exclusively on an unbundled network regime. We have direct commercial wholesale relationships with SBC and Qwest are for their wholesale products and the private commercial relationships are unaffected by the FCC ruling.
The FCC ruling will have no impact on our pricing."
- "Enemy Combatant" instead of "Prisoner of War"
- "Act of War" instead "Terrorist Attack"
- "Terrorist" instead of "Criminal" (happened in some cases)
- "Information Service" instead of "Telecommunication"
- and so on, I wonder what's next
Renaming is convenient, you do have to go through all the trouble of actually changing the law, finding majorities and such.Just name things differently and the law does not apply anymore (or so it seems these days). It's that easy.
Now, if the government were to eminent-domain all the poles/wires, and then auction them back out to competitive phone companies, you might have a point. However, I doubt that is going to happen.
uh. sorta already happened. every square foot in your city is owned by the city itself. it has the allodial title to every plot of land within its city limits. you may own the house on the land, but the land belongs to them. as such, they're allowed to contract with private companies to install and own sections of public utilities. Usually, the phone company pays a "lease" on the footage of land used to the city.
so yes, by playing the games of the city ownership, you really could just lay your own infrastructure.
...that bush photo op where he was in a warehouse extolling the virtues of local small business in the US and they used a backdrop with phony crates marked "made in USA", because all the real crates came from China?
x es/
Hysterical
http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/01/22/bush.bo
I dunno. with enough capital (which is how all small business start), you could easily start a municipal broadband service of your own. you could use cable, 802.11g, or multiple other ways to obselete the larger cable companies with smaller, faster companies offering better service. as long as it's standardized and fairly transparent to the user, the bar of entry is damn low. and all you'd have to do is pay the city for use of the land to run the infrastructure.
Uh, you go ahead and try that...
Why don't you and a friend down the street set up a 2-wire phone system between your homes (easy enough to do). Then, try to obtain permission to string the wires over the public phone system across that nice tract of land that the township has allodial title for.
And that is for something that isn't threatening the business model of the local phone company. Next, try actually setting up a competitive phone system for your neighborhood. Even if you had a petition signed by every person within a mile of your house it would take a decade to make its way through court, and then you could start paying the local phone company to borrow the use of their poles.
Hey, don't get me wrong - I voted libertarian in the last election. And I'd be open to laws that made utilities competitive. However, the laws AREN'T written that way now, and trying to pretend that they are will just cause you to go bankrupt...
Now you can go back to watching your Tranny porn and listening to sean hannity.
The telcos have had generations to make a profit. Entire generations now. They got mandated exclusivity-a monopoly- in exchange for building the infrastructure. If they have failed to make a profit up to this point and can't invest in new infrastructure, maybe it's time to just disband them and sell off their assets. they built something adequate for 40 years ago. Well, that's cool, thanks, but this isn't 40 years ago now.
I live rural, when I moved in I needed phone service to get some sort of internet. They ran new CRAPPY wire. They couldn't be bothered to take the opportunity and run something that broadband could be provided on, nope, they ran the same stuff they ran 40 years ago, as a result, no broadband available here. And this isn't WAY out in the boonies, it's just marginally rural.
That's the sort of short sighted bogusness that people complain about. It's abuse on the telcos part. I know from talking to the installers that they have fiber at the nearest box, but they couldn't be bothered to run anything even marginally better from the box. So, no one on our street can get broadband unless you want to pay for satellite broadband.
How many decades of exclusivity do they need? Where's the cutoff point?
This is a step back near as I can see. I understand their point to a small degree, but I don't see where THEY have thrown any beef on the bun even when they had ample opportunity in the past to do it. At WORST, the way it was before, any competition was forced to pay exact cost, so even there they were getting paid. there was no loss on their part, only cash coming in, even if it came from another middleman provider. Now, they have no incentive to do anything else, just milk what they have built already for as long as possible and merely *talk* about infrastructure upgrades.
WHAT THE FUCK?
Maybe now that internet access is being deregulated, municipal networks will become popular again. If that happens, this might just turn out to be the best thing that could have happened.
From The CALEA act If DSL is no longer a telecommunication, then there is no longer a need to complay with the CALEA, right? I think that this would definitely apply if I were to run the lines, and only supply DSL services on it.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
Sense it.
This latest crime against the citizens is simply more proof of their 'anxiety' on this issue.
With emerging technologies such as spread-spectrum, end user wifi broadcasting, ray-bounce and wave-merge aplications, it is no wonder that the major players in isp services are 'acting' like they are.
These technologies will allow 'all' of us to become our own isp and dns servers.
At that point the need for 'corporations' will all but be over-- completly.
With the help of their homosexual buds at the fcc (pronounced F*ck), they are simply 'hurrying' up to grab the last large chunk of 'Crack Whore' money.. before the authorities (us, the masses) come for them.
I will gladly loose all of life's battles.. in order to win the war..
Really, if you're in a major city, get fucking cable and stop being a twat.
for 911 calls. In California, if you call 911 on a cell phone, you get the CHP (State police) and then get put on hold for 5 minutes. If you call 911 on a landline, you get an operator who can tell you your name and address in a split second. Most people never make a 911 call, but when you have to make a 911 call on a cell phone, you'll cherish that land line.
It may help you understand why this, anti citizen decision, and many others came to pass.
There is a place for govenment regulation when it is not economically viable to have competition. There is no money to build a second land line phone system, especially in today's cell phone world.
If you know any history, you know "antitrust" laws were passed around 100 years ago to conteract "trusts", huge monopolistic companies that controled all oil (Standard Oil), for example. A Supreme Court much less "activist" than today's upheld this act of Congress.
You can't get very far in today's world by reading a bunch old Ann Rand books...
Looks like Texas is better off than California in this regard, at least in my experience. 911 from a cellphone here gets me an immediate "What city, please?" followed by a transfer to that city's 911 service. Takes a few seconds, but it sounds much better than minutes.
Try it out yourself. During a non-peak and non-widespread emergency period (no rain, even), call 911, see how long it takes, and say "Sorry, just testing the system. Thank you for being there." Then hang up and don't tie up the line. Here it doesn't take long at all. If it does take a long time from a cell phone in your area, raise holy hell, because there's no reason for it.
Playing pornographics games during the day is evil! Play at night!
Probably won't though ... they publicly threaten judges who disagree with them, but don't really care what the agencies do, usually because they appointed all their buddies to run the agencies anyway.
Aren't the common carrier rules what shelters ISPs from liability for the internet's content and the actions of subscribers?
If they're now an information service, do they lose this?
Will ISPs now have to censor the internet and monitor customer behaviour for fear of prosecution for content?
reclassification as an information service rather than a telecommunications service might change the way privacy and rights issues (i'm thinking of court cases, seizures of equipment, etc.) are handled, would it not?
Large print giveth, and the small print taketh away
Sure, this decision may make for less "competition"... in the sense that ILECs are now free from being required to share "their" lines... and maybe the little Mom and Pop local DSL ISP is going to be murdered through this decision.
But... the whole idea of shared-line competition was fishy to begin with. It stifled any real progress because it left the CLECs at the mercy of the local teleco for the infrastructure.
Sure, there are some isolated success stories... but the bottom line here is that the original 1996 act which made this all possible did not help those in an area where the local teleco had neither the capital or the inclination to provide DSL service... so it really didn't create competition (or actual service!) in places that needed it most.
This ruling isn't going to make it any worse (or better) for those who live in rural America. It's only going to have an effect on a very small percentage of people who have Speakeasy, Earthlink, and the like. And those companies can only really compete in customer service and price... not the actual up/downlink... so what's the point? Service doesn't improve... it just moves sideways.
Don't get me wrong... the argument presented by the RBOCs complaining how they didn't want to upgrade infrastructure and the be forced to share it was simply greedy and disingenuous, to say the least. But now they have their way. So I hope to see a huge push for FiOS... true competition for the cable companies.
In short... if this ruling eliminates fishy psudo-competition and replaces it with real genuine competition... what's not to like?
With an ordinary company, the owners are personally liable for the company's wrongdoings (I lump LLCs, i.e. limited liability companies, in with corporations). Corporate directors generally are on the hook for criminal behavior, only.
While the corporate fiction relieves small shareholders of public corporations from responsibility for the corporation's wrongdoings, and thus makes stock ownership more attractive than if they were jointly and severally libable, the separation of power from responsibility leads to the corporate abuses we see today.
You could've hired me.
Many industries are looking for broadband as a way to offer new information services. If history is any example a near- or shared-monopoly on access will stifle initiative. We will see how long it takes for the information providers to react when they can sell HD movies on demand in Japan but not here because of lack of hardware upgrades by the telcos.
Not only entertainment but other services may not be rolled out and put the US at a competitive disadvantage with the rest of the developed world.
-- Robert D Feinman Landscapes, Panoramas, Photoshop Tips and Musings on Society
If the telcos want to stop offering a "telecommunication service" the last mile to the home and offer an "information service" instead, then they would have less of a basis for fighting against someone else coming along and offering a "telecommunications service", such as Lafayette, Louisiana. The city has a stronger defense when they are building something that isn't being offered by some company. So in a way, I see this as a good thing. The telcos are tying their own noose.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
And is exactly why libertarianism is and probably forever will be nothing more than a pipe dream.
To sum it all up, to have a prosperous nation, the government absolutely needs to stay out of the free market.
Open your eyes, idiot. There is not a single libertarian nation on this planet -- with the possible exception of Somalia -- and yet there are many nations whose prosperity and success is high, whose people are healthy, educated, and peaceful.
Every time they get involved, not only do they voilate the constitution, they also make the economy a mess.
Every time they get involved, not only do they voilate the constitution, they also make the economy a mess.
I don't know if you are intentionally lying or simply incredibly stupid. Either way, you are utterly wrong, and even a cursory glance at the world around you would shows this. Capitalism is not the One True Holy economic philosophy. It works sometimes, fails sometimes. No system is perfect, and libertarian capitalism is no different.
A vote against a Libertarian candidate is a vote to abolish the Constitution itself.
That is utterly pathetic. No one group can make claim to being the one true Constitutional party, any more than any given church can lay claim to know the "true" word of God. Sure, zealots make such claims, but they are just that: zealots.
ISP rules and regulations. Right now, if you live in an area with lots of competing ISPs, you can shop around to find one that has a ToS that you agree with. Maybe you have to pay more for it, but that's ok, it's your choice. If however all the competing ISPs dissappear, the telcos then get to dictate whatever terms they want, if you don't like it, you can't do anything about it.
The reason this worries people so much is that they've already been assholes about it in so very many cases. Cable companies are infamous for providing "unlimited" cable service but then screaming at you and throttling or shutting off your connection if you use too much bandwidth, in their opinion (and usually the limit isn't spelled out).
Often you get even stupider restrictions. Here locally Cox had a rule that said VPNs weren't allowed on residental cable modem service. You had to have their bussiness DSL to use that, which in additon to being about twice the price for much slower service, was really hard to get because their business division was incompetent. The way VPN was worded, even SSH would qualify.
Also, seems to me that all the advancement we've seen in DSL has happened since it was opened up. I got DSL back in 1999 when it was pretty new and telco only. Man, talk about a fucking disaster. I can't see how anyone but a geek would put up with all the problems. Also it was really pricey, and all we got was 256k/256k. Now I get 6m/768k DSL from a 3rd party (Speakeasy) and great service to go with it. It's been reliable enough it easily would qualify for business use. And for all that, they don't restrict my bandwidth usage, don't filter any ports, etc.
Basically it seems to me that the phone companies are too incompetent to do anything but provide copper. HAving met some phone switch guys, this doesn't supprise me, they are all stuck in the past and think that the Internet is a fad, more or less, and that voice is where it's at. So fine, let them provide the copper, someone else can provide transport and access, someone who knows what they are doing and does a good job of it.
Testify, brother! I hate things that use electricity (i.e. money) to absolutely no useful purpose.
I've got a 1950 Western Electric 500 with a G1 handset right here on the desk next to me. I had to modify it with a paperclip so the ringer would work on a 2-wire system (it was made for 4-wire) but it sounds just fine - better than a cell phone or a modern chinese-made phone.
And unlike the people with powered, push-button, memory-chip phones, I can actually remember the phone numbers of my friends and relations... choosing to store their numbers in a chip, when you can easily fit dozens in your head, is just training yourself to be retarded.
You forgot Nokia...damn good DSLAMs!
Now DSL can be just like cable - a hideous warren of viruses and worms; an incompetently administered, fertile field for criminals.
Ever notice how phone technology, when it was no longer the province of regional monopolies, suddenly became astronomically more powerful and fantastically cheaper?
That's the majic of competition, the "invisible hand" that guides the marketplace, the cornerstone of capitalism.
True "laissez faire" capitalism - where there is no law at all - leads inevitably to monopolies, and those monopolies are always dominated by Murder, Inc. Look at the illegal markets, which are the only truly "unmanaged" capitalism. If I can murder my competition, that's cheaper than making my products better than theirs. If I can monopolize delivery of a service, that's cheaper than making my service better than the other guy's.
When customers cannot "vote with their feet" - when they have no choice of services - there is absolutely no incentive to provide quality service to the customer.
Capitalism is a great system under proper social conditions. Without laws to foster competition, though, capitalism just becomes another form of feudalism.
I attack nothing, merely point out what seems obvious.
large Goverments are not so much 'evil' as stupid.
I have a saying I like to use:
"Never attribute to Malice that which can be adequitly explained by Ignorance."
with the addendum:
"Intentional Ignorance is just as bad as Malice."
Another way of saying "the government operates with the express consent of the people."
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
They didn't spend THIER money, they spent OUR FUCKING MONEY from taxes. christ, does verizon get you hot or something?
uhhh, no.
You don't have the right to close and tear up streets, and endanger existing emergency services to dig fresh trenches for a redundant wire system. then the next guy to dig will cut your wires, as they called the real phone co, water co, power co, gas co cable co to check, and they all said it was clear.
You don't even have the right to used unlicensed radio frequences to cover large areas.
The telephone compainies are a government granted monopoly for a very good reason, and thats also why they need to be strictly regulated.
(How people managed to reason that those laws should apply to Microsoft, I don't quite get. I honestly think that all the people who 'complained' that Microsoft was the only real choice in the market actually hurt the competion; Why would someone invest/work-for/expect-support-from a company that people were saying was destined for failure?)
The Supreme Court ruled (4-3) recently that the FCC could keep the "information service" designation of Internet over cable - so Internet over cable is unregulated except by the local municipalities that give them franchise. The Supreme Court didn't make this rulling because it believed the designation was correct, but because the law was vague on this point and the Supreme Court was not willing to substitute its own interpretation of a vague law for the FCC's, despite the fact it seemed to disagree with the FCC, if you read betwen the lines.
Dispite the fact that the ruling repeatedly says it applies only to cable, the new FCC Chairman, Martin, decided it also applied to DSL. By designating DSL as an "information service", it becomes unregulated and the phone companies can cut off ISPs.
There are many legal problems with Chairman Martin's move - especially for the phone companies. And Congress might not like losing billions of dollars in Universal Services Funds (a tax on DSL, but not on cable, that will just disappear).
But the main problem is that the copper over which DSL travels was paid with rate payer dollars to a monopoly, AT&T. When AT&T was broken up and the Bell companies formed, the Bell companies were given the copper - they never paid for it. So in 1996, a new telecommunication act was passed that said the Bells had to share the copper with other companies that wanted to provide services over it. Now the FCC has ruled they don't have to share.
So what happens when you have only two monopoly sources for broadband - DSL and cable? Look at gas prices and you'll get a clue. Prices will first stablize to preserve market shares. Then they will start inching up, both DSL and cable, and keep going up as long as neither monopoly is stupid enough to try to use price to alter market share.
One thing I notice in the FCC's release:
...
(2) consumers are entitled to run applications and services of their choice, subject to the needs of law enforcement;
This sounds like it's saying that the phone/cable companies can no longer do port blocking, and can't kick you off for running a server.
The main reason I subscribe to speakeasy is that they promise to not block ports, and they encourage you to run servers. Most ISPs, including almost all phone/cable companies, have a TOS that makes it illegal to run your own servers. They also block at least ports 25 and 80. You have to relay email through their servers, and you can't legally run a web server at all.
It'll be interesting to see if this is enforced. Of course, if say Verizon or Comcast terminated your access because you run a web server, they could still just say "Yeah, it may be illegal. You're welcome to take us to court. In 5 or ten years, if you win, you'll get your access back. BTW, you'd better have a good team of lawyers."
I also wonder what that "needs of law enforcement" means? Do we all have to provide a standard backdoor to our system, accessible to any law enforcement agency (and anyone else who knows the access protocol)?
While I'd like to think that the FCC has the interests of us "consumers" at heart, I'm not really sure that this is their motive here. Not if they're acting to kill off the ISPs that provide unfettered access, handing total control over to the companies that have historically blocked full access, and saying "Trust us".
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Phone companies have no right to whine they have to share the wires.
Maybe not, but they do have the right to bribe the government to do things their way.
Of course, these days "bribe" is often spelled "campaign contribution".
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
It's completely absurd to let phone companies own and control the wires, and yet be allowed to string wires wherever they want with no compenstation to the property owners or the state. I think that's overstating the reality, or at least oversimplifying. A right of way, although often taken via eminent domain, is often paid for -- to the initial owner who is forced to grant it. After that, the loss of property value is presumably built into the price. (I know that whenever I've considered land for purchase, I have checked carefully -- myself -- for rights-of-way, and taken them into consideration.) Whether compensation is generally fair or not probably varies -- in fact, most of the details probably vary a lot state to state. The utilities do pay for the equipment and its upkeep. I don't think anyone is or was working towards publically-owned equipment. At least I don't ever remember hearing of any community proposing to pay a company to buy the equipment. What is generally done in the U.S. is to pretend that the utilities are private companies while regulating the use of their assets as if we, the public, owned them. It's a fundamentally screwed up and morally dishonest system that naturally leads to lousy companies and unhappy consumers. One entity representing consumers dictates -- with absolute power -- how to use assets and price product, while another entity, which is trying to make a profit for its shareholders, is responsible for owning, maintaining, and (hopefully) expanding those assets. What a joke. California's electrical system gave a wonderful example of how well this works. Most of cases of truly publically-owned utilities that hear of -- community-owned electric or phone companies, for instance -- sound like they work out fairly well. However, I haven't heard of any cases where the community owned and operated the pipes and leased them to suppliers. It would be interesting to hear if this has been tried, and how it worked out.
However, almost no telephone wires has land purchased by eminent domain.
They have to buy land if they want to put a pole on private property. They do not have to buy land if they just want to string it over your property.
And they therefore place almost every pole on the public right of way, again without paying anything, and run the wires wherever they want.
And, ironically considering the recent decision that says the government can buy land and give it to people who bring in more tax revenue, all the telephone purchased land has been purchased by the government and the telephone company just gets to put up poles for free. (Why should the phone company purchase the land when the government will do it for free?)
The telephone company, basically, owns no land. Everything they have ever put up is on public or government land, with the government purchasing land for them.
Half the time, the damn switching hub thingies on the side of the road are on government land.
And, yes, half-assed deregulation is what screwed up California. The story I heard is that they deregulated the production of power and placing it on the grid, but continued price regulations of the selling.
Thus producing the same effect as rent control has had in New York. Except instead of buildings standing vacant, it was power plants not being built in the first place.
You know, there is an obvious, sane way to deregulate everything, to introduce competition while keeping things stable. Take whatever tiny monopoly cannot be removed, like the power grid or the phone lines, hand it to something like the USPS, an 'organization' that is part of the government but is expected to pay its own way, and let everyone hook into it and compete for customers.
And then there is the other way, the way the government likes to do it, the fucking stupid way. It's hard to describe, but, like obscenity, you'll know it when you see it. Or at least when you get slammed upside the head by it.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Just another example of privatizing gains and socializing losses.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
If Qwest is anything like Verizon, neither they nor Comcast are ISPs. They do no provide Internet Service. They provide you with web and e-mail access.
A real ISP provides you with some amount of bandwidth, running Internet Protocol, period, full stop.
It doesn't make you run Windows. It doesn't require you to install MSN. It doesn't prevent you from running servers (within reason). It doesn't force you through their proxies to access those limited approved services. It doesn't periodically change your IP address.
I'm not saying that the great unwashed masses aren't happy with what Qwest/Comcast provide. I'm just saying don't call it "Internet Service".
I'm not being sarcastic: I haven't seen these studies, so I don't know. If I was running the nodes, I'd probably put no more than 5 to 10 miles between them for similar reasons; and I'm sure there'd be some sort of cellular-type switching protocol, to keep the nodes talking to their closest access point. Also, I'd want bandwidth limits, exactly so that a single Kazaa user would not take out the network.
Why do you say "You never want to rely on wireless connections for longer than you have to"? I see us moving to wireless-only in the future. As with ParasiteNet, if we have enough links in between, we can get anywhere (albeit with latency). Perhaps the latency is why you'd want wires?
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
As for WiMax degration, its a numbers issue.
According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WiMAX you're looking at about 70mbit/s spread across 31 miles. Thats just not enough to compete with the 6/.7 most cable providers sell, and nowhere near what you'll get with other wired solutions (Verizion FIOS at 15/5mbit).
Itd be great to be able to quickly google on your laptop from the car or fact check with wikipedia, but to sustain your irc client and try and download anything over it would be too painful day to day.
The overlapping nodes idea might work, or you might end up with serious signal overlap causing packet loss. We're still talking about mostly unlicensed spectrum here, anyone can use it for anything they want even if it ruins your service. (see 802.11b + cordless phones)
As for my dislike of relying on wireless, it is mostly latency and general reliability. As more and more people move to wireless networks, the quality degrades worse and worse, ask anyone living in dorms how their own 802.11b network is doing and you'll find most just give up.
I'm biased in that I do a lot of online gaming and do most of my real work over ssh rather than locally, so I feel a random 15 second connection drop or ping spike more than most people, but theyre definately there.
Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx