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FCC May Push Bells to Unbundle DSL
Carl Bialik writes "The FCC is nearing approval of two big phone deals -- Verizon-MCI and SBC-AT&T -- according to people familiar with the situation cited by the Wall Street Journal. But regulators are considering requiring asset sales and other moves, including the offering of unbundled DSL, 'without requiring consumers -- mostly home users -- to subscribe to phone service. Verizon already allows some customers to do that, but SBC doesn't. ... Patrick Mahoney, an analyst at Yankee Group, said that traditional phone lines are cash cows, so allowing customers to buy Internet access without traditional phone service would be costly to telecom providers.'"
Sure you *can* get it unbundled, but you would loose out on the special $100 per month discount for having both services... and who wants $140 per month DSL just so it can be unbundled??
Well, I know quite a few people who would get DSL without the phone service. And I'm one of them.
We all use our cell phones to make all our calls, local and long-distance. We don't need a land line anymore. Yet we're forced to pay for one because of our DSL. Sure, there's cable, but I (we) don't want to pay $40+ a month for cable internet when we can get SBC DSL for $15 a month.
A timeline of how big telecom has hindered broadband in the US is one day going to be as funny and shocking (in a quant corruption kind of way) that reading about the building of the Brooklyn bridge is today.
...
From the baby bells in the early 90s to the
ouch
Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.
Okay, my impression of this kind of setup during a network outtage:
"Hi, I need you to go reset the-- hello? Hello? Is anyone there?"
That way, nobody worth worrying about will even consider alternatives. That keeps the alternatives from getting big enough for network effects to make them attractive.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
No. I think that if YOUR network craps out, and YOUR internal voice traffic goes over that same network, the effect of this is left as an exercise for the reader. :-)
So...."allowing customers to buy Internet access without traditional phone service would be costly to telecom providers."
Wrong. They are not entitled to profits. McDonalds doesn't lose money if you don't buy a hamburger. A business doesn't lose money if you buy the competition's product.
On the other hand, we all get screwed when businesses look at consumers as owing them profitablility. These Telecom's are the same folks trying to prevent cities from providing public internet access. As Joe Consumer, what costs them neccessarily pleases me.
I had Speakeasy IDSL (DSL over an ISDN connection) 18 months ago in Houston due to my distance from the nearest CO. It worked great for two years, but when it finally did break the finger pointing began:
It's a problem with your router, it's a problem with Covad, it's a problem with SBC, it's a problem with your router.
After two weeks I was still unable to get things back up and working and they wanted me to put a deposit down for a Covad engineer to visit between 9am and 4pm weekdays only. Keep in mind this is for a service that I was paying $140 a month for a 144k connection.
Needless to say, I called up SBC and had a DSL connection in place and running two days later--they had just installed a remote shelf in my neighborhood.
The prices they are charging for "naked DSL" just happens to be the same price I'm paying for a phone line and DSL from SBC. Since I've never had an extended issue with my SBC DSL I haven't seen the reason to pay the same amount but lose my landline.
It's ashame because SpeakEasy is by far the best customer service you can get from an ISP, but until they own copper into my house they just don't control enough of the variables.