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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."
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.
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.
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
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
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 ----
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).
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.
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 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?
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.
Your argument sounds good in theory, but that's not how it happened.
Telcos were legal monopolies for many years, in exchange for doing the work (NOT "taking the risk") to build out the infrastructure. The customers paid for that build-out with higher-than-necessary rates (had there been competition), all manner of rules about where you could get a telephone (from the phone company, only), how you could get a phone (rentals only, no purchases), and on and on.
During that period many miles of copper and fiber were rolled out, but also innovation was stymied (for example, ISDN was stifled in the US while Europe had it for ages as an everyday service), and all our grannies paid a big chunk of their social security money each month to rent that princess phone next to the bed (ac adapter and "night light" option extra).
So don't discuss "forcing a company to share" something that they didn't really build but by incentives granted by the same people who now want to use that which was built.
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?
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
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.
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.
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
- "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.
You want a better network than the telcos and cable companies provide?
Not really. I want a cheaper network than the telcos and cable companies provide.
Build one.
Seriously though, how would I go about doing this? Who would I have to talk to to get access to the right of ways so I could lay or string cables? I'm not asking a rhetorical question, I really want to know.
Yeah, they spent $millions or $billions, sure. Over 100 years. And most of those $millions or $billions were MATCHED with taxpayer dollars - incentives, free gifts of right-of-way, etc. The telephone network was built with the help of BILLIONS of taxpayer dollars, over DECADES. It could not be "rebuilt" by any competitor, no matter how well financed, in anything less than another few decades - and even then, they most likely would not be able to legally acquire the same rights-of-way that were given to the telco when it was a monopoly.
You want to be a free-market capitalist? Fine, so do I. In a free market, you have to pay for value received. The telcos want a monopoly over their partially-taxpayer funded network? No problem. Let's calculate how much taxpayer support they've received over the past 100 years, bill them, with interest, and then they can be allowed to have exclusive control over their lines.
THAT'S free market. What the FCC has just done is corporate welfare - big companies sucking off of the public tit and pushing the smaller puppies away.
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
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.
I am not arguing your point, but what you are proposing is actually illegal, at least in most places. Calling 911 *intentionally* for any reason other than an emergency is not a good idea. Telling them you are "testing them" is even worse.
You could just call the regular number and ask the emergency services what the procedure is in your state. This way you don't tie up an operator and delay a real emergency call.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!