Billing in a Telecom industry is alittle strange to start with. There is a set of Interchange agreements between the ILEC (bells) and the CLECs (various small phone companies) to provide those small companies lines at a lower rate. The theory was that by doing this it would promote a non-monopoly. The smaller companies then take up the rest of the costs associated with distributing and billing the end user. The goverment regulations are suppose to protect the smaller CLECs.
What this court case did was basicly say that the ILECs are not required to share any new technologies that they have produced. They are throwing a fit in saying that by not allowing them to charge full pricing to the CLECs that they charge the rest of their customers. That they are lossing out on money they could have recieved from end users. The problem with this is that the overhead to run a business to make a competative market requires that those CLECs be sold to at a discounted rate. The ILEC basicly gets to use its existing infastructure to provide service to the CLECs with out having to do end user billing. And in the Telecom industry end user billing is expensive.
Now, CLECs can get very creative on how they sell their lines in order to make maximum profit. An example is the company I work for in florida sells only to businesses. And only if those businesses need multiple lines. Say, the cost of each POTs (plain old telephone) line is 15.50 each and the cost of a T-1 is 69.00. If the customer wants 10 lines for their business it is alot better business wise for us to run a T-1 to their business and break those 12 channels into voice of T-1 lines. We will still charge the customer about 20.00 a line but make a pretty healthy profit.
A person might ask why CLECs don't just use the existing infastructure to sells direct to customers. All ILECs own the last mile to the end users home or business. There was a set of regulations that granted out the current infastucture to them. To build out to those places would require that those CLECs get right of way permits to lay more phonelines. That isn't going to happen.
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Billing in a Telecom industry is alittle strange to start with. There is a set of Interchange agreements between the ILEC (bells) and the CLECs (various small phone companies) to provide those small companies lines at a lower rate. The theory was that by doing this it would promote a non-monopoly. The smaller companies then take up the rest of the costs associated with distributing and billing the end user. The goverment regulations are suppose to protect the smaller CLECs. What this court case did was basicly say that the ILECs are not required to share any new technologies that they have produced. They are throwing a fit in saying that by not allowing them to charge full pricing to the CLECs that they charge the rest of their customers. That they are lossing out on money they could have recieved from end users. The problem with this is that the overhead to run a business to make a competative market requires that those CLECs be sold to at a discounted rate. The ILEC basicly gets to use its existing infastructure to provide service to the CLECs with out having to do end user billing. And in the Telecom industry end user billing is expensive. Now, CLECs can get very creative on how they sell their lines in order to make maximum profit. An example is the company I work for in florida sells only to businesses. And only if those businesses need multiple lines. Say, the cost of each POTs (plain old telephone) line is 15.50 each and the cost of a T-1 is 69.00. If the customer wants 10 lines for their business it is alot better business wise for us to run a T-1 to their business and break those 12 channels into voice of T-1 lines. We will still charge the customer about 20.00 a line but make a pretty healthy profit. A person might ask why CLECs don't just use the existing infastructure to sells direct to customers. All ILECs own the last mile to the end users home or business. There was a set of regulations that granted out the current infastucture to them. To build out to those places would require that those CLECs get right of way permits to lay more phonelines. That isn't going to happen.