FCC Weighs Net Access Charge Decision

An anonymous reader writes "The FCC is considering a request from AT&T to lift restrictions on the types of charges they can level against competitors that use their infrastructure. The organization had previously allowed that for Verizon by virtue of a deadlock, and Ma Bell now hopes to see similar treatment. 'All the requests have been strongly opposed by smaller rivals such as Sprint Nextel, Time Warner Telecommunications and XO Communications. These competitors argue that they have few alternatives to get access to the high-speed lines they need, and are being charged more and more by the dominant carriers.'"

Comments

Re:Good

[Kadin2048]

You would have a point if this was an industry where the barriers to entry weren't so astronomically, prohibitively high.

Telecommunications requires so much capital investment that it tends towards a natural monopoly, at least within regions, dominated by whoever can get there first and run the wires around. Once that first person is there, much of the impetus to repeat the investment is gone.

Due more to some interesting historical/technological developments than any real forethought, some people happen to actually have two sources of telecommunications, one run by the phone company any one run by the cable TV company. This sort of parallel infrastructure buildout is unlikely to happen again; in fact I think it may actually decrease: one company or the other will decide to expend its resources in areas where the other company isn't, meaning that if you want really good, high speed service, there will be a clear choice even if you have two wires running into your house.

And really, it doesn't benefit most consumers to have two halfassed networks coming into their house. You're probably only going to be able to easily use one of them (at least one of them, per service, but those services -- TV, phone, data -- are quickly becoming one "packet data" service anyway). Two companies forced to lay parallel infrastructure are always going to have higher costs and worse service than a single company, because of the extra overhead they carry, if (and this is a non-trivial 'if', granted) the single company is forced to offer service at cost, rather than being allowed to increase it.

Even in minimalist conceptions of government (which I am generally a fan of), there is a legitimate function for the state when it comes to the regulation of natural monopolies. Although I'm not advocating for state-run telcos -- although they may look good on paper, history has shown that state-run industries generally suck terribly -- the way things worked in the U.S. from deregulation to a few years ago (thanks, George!) was that the first carrier to build-out in an area, in return for using the public rights-of-way, had to share the infrastructure with other firms basically at cost, or at low negotiated rates (e.g., "Local Loop Unbundling"). Since this system has been undercut by the telco drones at the FCC, connectivity costs have gone up far in excess of service offered, and competition has diminished.