They will never sue AT&T. AT&T (SBC, Ameritech, Pacific Bell, Bellsouth) and Verizon (Bell Atlantic, GTE, NYNEX, etc), will probably announce a cross-licensing deal in which one can use the others patents and vice versa. The RBOCs are generally good at banding together to fight the little guy (CLECs) rather than each other.
Their territories are protected, they can't just randomly start snatching each others customers because the customers are LOCKED to a provider due to the physical line (and costs associated with switching just one customer). That is why you don't really have a choice in telephone providers.
Which brings me to my problem with CLECs. CLECs are generally paranoid and mistrusting so they stab each other in the back, while the big guys, Verizon and SBC just watch and laugh. CLECs have relied on MCI and AT&T (two of the largest CLECs in the country before their buyouts) to fight their battles for them, and this worked for a while until they were purchased. Now that CLECs have no one to fight for them, expect a greater number of these crushing victories.
Not necessarily, but this would be a very interesting anti-trust case if formed (*hint* *hint* *hint*). Bell Atlantic and GTE were required to divest some of their infrastructure because it was thought it would be too anti-competitive. Part of this merger included BBN Laboratories (now known as Verizon Labs) who originally held the patent. I think a review is in order.
Long distance rates dropped in the late '90s after the Telecommunication Act introduced competition. Without it, you would still be paying your phone company for long distance with no choice of another carrier. By allowing competition, new vendors invested in the market, driving down the price of long distance so much that you can enjoy your 3 cents a minute.
If that space had been locked up by the Bells, you'd be paying the same rates, and almost double for your phone card.
It's not the same in the US. The city does not own the lines. The problem here is that it is prohibitively expensive to run your own lines.
To run your own lines, you need poles. Now, you can either pay the city to put in new poles all over the city, or pay an existing pole owner.
In most cases, the pole owner is the electric or telephone company. You need permission to use these poles, before you can even start negotiating pole access rates and rights.
So, to successfully run independent of the telephone company, you need lots of cable, pole rights, customer premise equipment (e.g. junction box, mux), and the staff to deploy and install these items. Can you see the massive amount of dollar signs accumulating? The Bells inherited this from the breakup, and have reaped all the benefits since then.
In some instances, yes. There are these things between carriers called 'interconnection agreements' that dictate the rules of the network. In many cases, interconnection agreements established before say, 2000 or 2001, included clauses where company A has to pay for every call that company B terminates on their network.
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Look at the patent date.
The patent was filed by BBN Laboratories (now Verizon Labs), in the mid-to-late 1980s. BBN just never enforced it (or cared to).
They will never sue AT&T. AT&T (SBC, Ameritech, Pacific Bell, Bellsouth) and Verizon (Bell Atlantic, GTE, NYNEX, etc), will probably announce a cross-licensing deal in which one can use the others patents and vice versa. The RBOCs are generally good at banding together to fight the little guy (CLECs) rather than each other.
Their territories are protected, they can't just randomly start snatching each others customers because the customers are LOCKED to a provider due to the physical line (and costs associated with switching just one customer). That is why you don't really have a choice in telephone providers.
Which brings me to my problem with CLECs. CLECs are generally paranoid and mistrusting so they stab each other in the back, while the big guys, Verizon and SBC just watch and laugh. CLECs have relied on MCI and AT&T (two of the largest CLECs in the country before their buyouts) to fight their battles for them, and this worked for a while until they were purchased. Now that CLECs have no one to fight for them, expect a greater number of these crushing victories.
Not necessarily, but this would be a very interesting anti-trust case if formed (*hint* *hint* *hint*). Bell Atlantic and GTE were required to divest some of their infrastructure because it was thought it would be too anti-competitive. Part of this merger included BBN Laboratories (now known as Verizon Labs) who originally held the patent. I think a review is in order.
Long distance rates dropped in the late '90s after the Telecommunication Act introduced competition. Without it, you would still be paying your phone company for long distance with no choice of another carrier. By allowing competition, new vendors invested in the market, driving down the price of long distance so much that you can enjoy your 3 cents a minute.
If that space had been locked up by the Bells, you'd be paying the same rates, and almost double for your phone card.
It's not the same in the US. The city does not own the lines. The problem here is that it is prohibitively expensive to run your own lines. To run your own lines, you need poles. Now, you can either pay the city to put in new poles all over the city, or pay an existing pole owner. In most cases, the pole owner is the electric or telephone company. You need permission to use these poles, before you can even start negotiating pole access rates and rights. So, to successfully run independent of the telephone company, you need lots of cable, pole rights, customer premise equipment (e.g. junction box, mux), and the staff to deploy and install these items. Can you see the massive amount of dollar signs accumulating? The Bells inherited this from the breakup, and have reaped all the benefits since then.
In some instances, yes. There are these things between carriers called 'interconnection agreements' that dictate the rules of the network. In many cases, interconnection agreements established before say, 2000 or 2001, included clauses where company A has to pay for every call that company B terminates on their network.