FCC Abandons Linesharing, Kills DSL Competition 612
raygundan writes "According to Reuters, the FCC today decided to greatly curtail the laws that force incumbent phone companies to share their lines with their competition at cost. This does not bode well for companies like Covad Communications who provide DSL using phone lines to bridge their data networks over the "last mile" to customers. The new rules do force line sharing as long as companies are willing to offer voice service, but this essentially states that if you are not already a phone company, you cannot offer DSL. The existing rules will be phased out over three years. There is still some hope, however, that a federal court might strike down the FCC ruling. Oddly, the news agencies seem to be reporting this as a minor change to the rules, rather than an end to all non-ILEC competition in DSL." The FCC's front page has links (luckily PDFs as well as Microsoft Word files) about the decision, including statements from each of the commissioners.
It's times like this ... (Score:5, Funny)
Erm, I mean, a Canadian.
Re:It's times like this ... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:It's times like this ... (Score:2)
I do however live there as a non-Sympatico customer, so if this madness ever hits us I guess it's back the old blanket and smoke signals. (I'm pretty sure there are bylaws prohibiting that as well)
Re:It's times like this ... (Score:3, Interesting)
So what are the Canadian requirements on ILECs concerning CLECs (line-sharing, colocation, etc.), non-carrier ISPs, etc.? I went to the CRTC Web site [crtc.gc.ca], but none of the "Statutes and Regulations" appeared to address that, and there are a ton of "Decisions, Notices and Orders" but I'm not going to plow through all of them. (Even a Google search for canadian regulations CLEC line-sharing turned up a pile of stuff the first items of which didn't seem to directly address the question.)
Re:It's times like this ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:It's times like this ... (Score:3)
Re:It's times like this ... (Score:3, Funny)
"He's got more gigs than the Jackson Five!"
Re:Why does this guy get a 5 on the FUNNY scale? (Score:3, Funny)
You're just bitter because you've never got two first posts in a row
Beautiful (Score:5, Funny)
for the inevitable flood of layed off tech
workers.
Re:Beautiful...Rose coloured glasses (Score:5, Informative)
"I mean hell if they were allowed to sell DSL AT COST you people would still throw a shit fit because DSL lines ARE EXPENSIVE!"
NOT, they are just bloody existing copper lines. If a responsible entity had DONE ANY sort of decent upkeep over the last 40 years, there would be no issue, but instead they sucked up the profit, blew it on useless expansions in areas that were NOT their field, now they want us to pay for their mistakes...I say we nationalize the infrastructure, it is after all a BUSINESS REQUIRMENT these days, and then appoint someone to operate it and let the bells become tenants just like everyone else.
Note, I don't mean this as a personal attack, it just sounds like you are leaping to the defense of your employer....Archfeld
Re:Beautiful (Score:4, Insightful)
See? Money Well Spent. (Score:3, Funny)
No DSL and no Jolt make Homer somthing, somthing. (Score:5, Funny)
Bottom line is if they do this they'll have a Jolt crazed tech geek attacking their office with a Nerf(tm) crotch bat. I need my Speakeasy DSL service.
Re:No DSL and no Jolt make Homer somthing, somthin (Score:3, Interesting)
This of course means that DSL can have the same restrictions put on it that cable does (no incoming requests, no servers, no static ips), which I'm sure will benefit "fighting terrorism", 'cuz we all know that terrorists run their own web servers from home via DSL.
*sigh* Anyone in the Michigan area want to share-lease a T1?
Re:No DSL and no Jolt make Homer somthing, somthin (Score:2)
Re:No DSL and no Jolt make Homer somthing, somthin (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:No DSL and no Jolt make Homer somthing, somthin (Score:4, Interesting)
Hey, that's an idea! Demonstrate VoIP for the dingbats at the FCC, to reinforce the idea that any ISP (owner of the lines or not) can do voice service!
Here in the uk... (Score:5, Informative)
DSL. (Score:5, Interesting)
My two other options were (ATTBI which is now over $60 w/o CATV, or IDSL through IIRC Covad for $90).
So what did it do for me? Nothing. I am still stuck with a service I am not entirely pleased with (the speeds are fine, it's the price increases and the conversion to Comcast that I am not happy about).
Re:DSL. (Score:3, Informative)
ostiguy
Re:DSL. (Score:5, Informative)
Interesting (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Interesting)
The Bells have been dicking people around for ages, why not return the favor?
Re:Interesting (Score:2, Informative)
This seems to indicate that you're right, but you'll also end up paying a good bit more for it. Unless I'm misreading...
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Informative)
Never mind that the crappy half is already strung to every house everywhere, and the running redundant phone wires is both wasteful and counterproductive.
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Informative)
1. The CLECs pay the ILECs the same for the lines as the ILECs pay themselves, unless local governments change it. In that case, it is stupid. Fair is fair.
2. Those lines are build on public land with tax money. The ILECs are not the only party with money invested there-- you and I paid for that stuff, too.
3. Do you remember there being any DSL BEFORE they were forced to open their lines in 1996? No? Thought so. Remember ISDN and $1500 T1 Lines? DSL is an old tech that could have been deployed back then. Why didn't they? Because with no competition, there was no incentive to upgrade OR lower prices. The fact that we have DSL at all is a direct result of the competition jump-start that act gave the market.
The government may not own it outright, but if the government's going to use my money and public land to benefit the ILECs, I think it's close enough. If you think sinking government money into a private company in return for nothing is a good idea, well, that's bullshit too, junior.
Re:Interesting (Score:3, Interesting)
In some markets, yes. In some markets, no. In many places the bells have paid and/or continue to pay for the exclusive rights to their poles. This is one reason why ricochet ended up putting POPs in malls and such.
It also wouldn't have had the demand necessary to roll out DSL until recently. In most places the copper isn't really good enough to support it to the usual "quoted" maximum of 17,000 feet.
The solution isn't to punish the telcos, the solution is to promote alternative solutions. UWB, for example, if the FCC allows more widespread deployment. The cable systems are an excellent example, and if AT&T thought they wouldn't be more legal trouble than they're worth at this point, they'd be doing VoIP everywhere they currently do cable modems. (It's coming, but not near fast enough.)
The telephone infrastructure is a necessity to the modern way of life, at least until cellular gets cheaper, or POTS gets more expensive. As technology marches on, and more CPU power becomes available in smaller packages, we'll see the POTS network eventually replaced by a mishmash of everything else.
I'm not saying that telcos shouldn't be regulated and watched carefully, but I think it's unrealistic to expect them to aid their competition. There's really no benign way to manage that kind of relationship, someone will always be taking advantage of someone. In addition, there's only so much copper. A future infrastructure might be easier to share, but we aren't quite there yet.
Re:Interesting (Score:4, Interesting)
Personally, I would have liked to have seen a stronger Telecom Act -- split the infrastructure from the service providing units competely. Continue to regulate the infrastructure company, and deregulate the service company completely. The infrastructure company would make money by charging the service companies what is costs to to provide the infrastructure. This is essentially what the Telecom Act tried to do without actually breaking up the Baby Bells. And the Bell lobbyists and PR folks have earned their money selling the FCC and people like you a long line of shit.Indeed, that is bullshit, because that is not what was required by the Telecom Act. All that was required was that they charge external customers the same price they charge their internal customer. If they aren't accounting for the actual costs internally, that's their problem.They do support it quite a bit, however. Why don't you see if you can start up a phone company and run some copper parallel to SBC's in your neighborhood. SBC will sue your ass out of existence (based on their protected status) so fast it'll make your head spin. Similarly, start up a company that runs electric lines parallel to your Electric company's or cable lines parallel to your cable company's. Utilities are protected monopolies.It's not less than the cost of the line.
Fuck 'em. Break 'em up again. Do not allow the government subsidized and protected infrastructure company provide service. And don't regulate the service company. But don't protect them either. If the Bell service company pays $15/mo for a loop, then any company should be able to get a loop for $15/mo. And if the Bell service company pays $25/mo per sq. foot of CO space, then any company should be able to get CO space for $25/sq foot. Like I said, that's what the Telecom Act tried to do in a half-assed way. But the Bell's pockets are too deep. And now you'll have a choice to use you cable company's monopoly broadband with restrictive ToS or you local Bell's monopoly broadband with restrictive ToS.
-Craig
Complain to the FCC (Score:3, Informative)
Charman vs Commisioners (Score:5, Interesting)
Read Webster. Learn what "deregulation" means. (Score:5, Informative)
Deregulation is letting those who own their lines lease them at the prices they want to, or not at all. See any regulations there?
Exactly.
Best example is the California power system "deregulation" that caused all those blackouts - what was billed as "deregulation" wasn't deregulation at all - just a different set of regulations that turned out to be much, much worse than the old set.
Point of the matter is you should not trust anyone's opinion on what deregulation will do if they do not even know what deregulation is in the first place.
WHICH PARTS are "deregulated" are KEY... (Score:3, Interesting)
Let's get this straight. Line sharing doesn't create a disincentive to invest, because the network ALREADY exists. Secondly, We need to stop pouring our money in copper networks. Cutting line sharing was the worse thing the FCC could have done for the deployment of broadband. This will effectively kill the competition (Covad), who has played a key role in deploying broadband where the Bells didn't want to. This was a retarded move.
WE NEED TO INVEST IN FIBER NETWORKS.
We do this by forcing entrant competition to build thier own facilities and fiber networks (THESE ARE THE NETWORKS YOUR DON'T WANT TO SHARE). Facilitiy based competition will truely help in lowering costs, create new jobs, build a redudancies in our important communications network, and lastly give Lucent, Nortel, and the shot in the arm they need by giving them new business.
The Bells and Democrats just used your own conservative zealotry against you, and turned slashdotters against thier best ally, Michael Powell, who would have kept line sharing.
That's how dichotomies are played...
I wanna put down my own cable! (Score:2)
Thanks FCC! (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Thanks FCC! (Score:2)
Say goodbye to inexpensive DSL... (Score:5, Interesting)
It's time for the phone company monopoly to end - it's obviously not working for the interest of the consumer.
Re:Say goodbye to inexpensive DSL... (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm sure their argument is that they won't upgrade because they are afraid if they do they *won't* profit. Me? I don't know who to believe... Sure the phone company is greedy and wants to keep this pie all to itself, but on the other hand their competitors are just as greedy and want a free ride. Government has to step in and set a wholesale price that in the end is arbitrary and probably has a greater corelation to which company funded which campaign than to how much the line costs to install & maintain.
The problem is that the one wire to your house IS a monopoly and there aren't many good ways to get around that. The only way to have real competition is between different networks - phone line, cable TV line (maybe the power line? wireless?) anything else is still a monopoly and you are only arguing about how to regulate it.
Thank God someone understands! (Score:4, Insightful)
These "virtual" phone companies that ride the carriers _at_cost_ have been largely responsible for part of the telecom bust. It's the same model as Enron. Selling things that you don't actually own or maintain. If something goes wrong, you have to pay the carrier $$$ to get it fixed.
A few months ago slashdot was bitching about why cable was clobbering DSL and was taking over broadband, and there would be no more competition. Do you want to know why? The reason is that SBC (in my area of the country) is forced to give up their lines ANY TIME SOMEONE WANTS TO USE THEM, for free (at cost, but that bandwith is lost to SBC).
If you want real broadband competition you cannot cripple the companies doing the investment into the network of DSL.
Cable companies do not have to share their lines. The telecom deregulation act did some good, some bad. (We got worldcom and a bust, but attributing everything to that is not the best idea.)
I get long distance for 5cents a minute, and may soon switch to MCI for unlimited local and long distance calling.
Don't whine about access to a network you never built!
Re:Say goodbye to inexpensive DSL... (Score:5, Insightful)
And that's the argument for why "TELCO must share". As to "viable alternatives", what would you propose? The only viable alternative I can see is the TV cable company.
Ratboy.
Solutions (Score:2)
2) Lay your own damn pipes.
Yes I work for a Non-Bell ILEC and frankly why should "my" infrastructure be used for someone elses profit. I wouldn't like it if Bell tried to bully their way into one of our markets, why should I be allowed to steal from them.
Re:Solutions (Score:2)
Re:Solutions (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Solutions (Score:3, Interesting)
Besides, why would you say the ILECs is doing so poorly right now? They're certainly not tanking like some industries, and although the general telecom isn't doing so well, that's also counting in things like the paging market (flying downward) and all the third-party DSL providers.
Yes, they're laying people off... they're also paying huge bonuses to their CEOs.
Re:Solutions (Score:2)
Re:Solutions (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Solutions (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah, the problem is though that the government subsidized the creation of Bell's infrastructure in the first place.
Re:Solutions (Score:3, Insightful)
Just because the government handed out some money to someone, does that give everyone else the right to share their assets? The government subsidizes farmers, but if I wander onto a farm and pick a few apples, I'll get arrested for theft. Or a better example, I wouldn't be able to walk onto the farm and plant a few sq. yards of my own crop. Or at least I shouldn't be able to.
No home servers for you!! (Score:2)
there is a *small* upside (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:there is a *small* upside (Score:5, Interesting)
BAH! (Score:5, Funny)
--
What on earth are they thinking? (Score:2)
Points of View (Score:3, Interesting)
Cable modems currently dominate in market share.
Basically, they say, "There won't be any competition in broadband access because we can't compete with Big CableTV".
This is a joke, unfortunately, many people see it their way.
The thinking is... "We don't have enough time to do what is right, we just want to make sure we at least get an Oligopoly out of this."
The whole thing is a joke, and I'm actaully kind of happy that Cable will rule the day. I consider them the lesser of two evils. Also, I like the way cable franchises are granted much better than the original consent decree that split up AT&T.
The little companies get hurt. Ma Bell is just too powerful, end of discussion.
AT&T ought to hold onto their cable a little longer. But, they've got just too much debt.
Too bad.
Encouraging investment? (Score:5, Insightful)
The Federal Communications Commission on Thursday voted to exempt new high-speed communications networks from requirements that they be shared with competitors, a move aimed at encouraging investment in bringing fast Internet access to consumers.
Right. Big time investment. Just around the corner. We just need to know it won't all get snapped up by our competition. But we're planning. Yes we are. Big Time Investment. Promise. Even though the economy's in the crapper. Investment. In the future. Of the internet. For Consumers. Investment.
Horseshit!
This is such complete and total doublespeak. Every telecom network in this country was built with public assistence. That's the way to "encourage investment." This is simply a move to allow the established Bells (and neo-bells, like SBC) reap more profit off of existing (publicly subsidised) infrastructure.
Where am I going, and how did I get in this handbasket!
The troll had some of it right. (Score:5, Informative)
That's partly right. But the AC had the bulk of it right, too.
Early in the history of telephony -when it was still local - there was competition. And the competing companies refused to interconnect and complete each other's calls. (In particular, Bell, the big gorilla, refused.) So businesses (like hotels, banks, legal firms, newspapers, telegraph offices, and cab companies) had to have phones from two or three companies to be sure all their customers could get to them.
Bell used their own reluctance to aid the competition to convince the government that telephony was a "natural monopoly" and thus needed to be regulated. (At the time gas and water distribution were considered to be "natural monopolies" because it would cost N times as much to install pipes for N companies, so supposedly a monopoly under price regulation could deliver the service for less than the cost of multiple copies of the infrastructure.)
So the regulators set up a system where "franchises" - regional monopolies - were given to various companies. Of course where a local phone company already existed it got the franchise, and where multiple companies existed the big guy typically got it and the little guys had to sell him their equipment (or trade it for equipment in a less-lucrative market they also shared).
If I recall correctly, Bell was the big gorilla at the time because it had had selective access to Bell's patents, another government monopoly. (Bell made it to the patent office a half hour ahead of another inventer with a virtually identical device.) So in the early days Bell had the best equipment and others had to work-around, and once the patents expired Bell was the big kid on the block.
Under regulation the prices were set at levels that guaranteed Bell about a 6% return on investment - and whenever it dropped below that they could petition for and receive a price hike.
(Bell Labs actually existed to spend as much money as possible on research vuagely connected with telephony, because for every dollar spent there Bell could bill customers $1.06. It was the biggest failure of the system, because basic research pays off big. Virtually from the start they made more money licensing Bell Labs inventions than the lab cost.)
As long distance became possible, Bell (who had by then bought out most of the little guys, except for some rural co-ops and small towns wired by the likes of General Telephone) became the regulated monopoly for interconnecting the cities.
Bell continued to be a government-mandated monopoly until a series of court decisions.
First the Carterphone decision led to the "foreign attachments" tariff - and you could stop renting a phone built by Western Electric (Bell's manufacturing subsidary) and hook up one bought from an independent manufacturer. Phones went from a paper cost of hundreds of bux to cheap disposables over a few years.
Then Microwave Communications Inc. (MCI) took advantage of that tariff and inflated long distance charges by setting up their own inter-city microwave hops, renting local lines, and bypassing Bell. Bell sued, MCI counter-sued for antitrust, and the fallout was that not only was MCI (and others) allowed to continue, but Bell was required to let them hook up on the same basis as Bell's own long-distance operation. And to keep Bell from playing accounting games to subsidize unregulated long distance from monopoly local bills, Bell was split up into AT&T (long distance), Lucent (Western Electric & Bell Labs), and a handfull of "Baby Bell" RBOCs (Regional Bell Operating Companies) to continue the monopoly local/short-range long distance service.
Meanwhile, virtually all the local copper was installed by Bell Telephone or the Baby Bells while they were regulated monopolies, with government-mandated monopoly pricing for their service subsidizing the cost. A new competitor in a deregulated local phone business would have to wire a whole city and then pay for it with money made while charging less than the established RBOC, which is sitting on paid-for subsidized copper and can cut prices to the bone. Can't be done.
Eventually the RBOCs were allowed back into the long distance business - at a price. They had to provide DSL service and rent their local copper to upstart competitors at a wholesale price. It seemed like a good idea at the time, because the long-distance service was where the money was. Players there were mostly AT&T, MCI, and SPRINT. (The Southern Pacific Railroad had strung fiber along their right-of-way for their own communication. Fiber has a LOT of bandwidth, so they rented out the surplus bandwidth by becoming a long-distance phone and long-haul data carrier.)
But about the time that deal was cut, several upstart long-distance companies completed THEIR long-haul fiber loops, and the price war started. Suddenly the Baby Bells had no revenue from the shiny new long-distance operations. So they started dragging their feet on the DSL deployment. As for installing more copper to expand their own service and rent to their competitors, it no longer makes ANY sense with the only revenue coming form local service. So they won't do it until the ruling is reversed.
Meanwhile the competitive local phone carriers never really materialized (except for the cable operators, who also had existing copper installed). And the little DSL ISPs - except Covad which re-organized out of bankruptcy, dumping ITS startup costs - are pretty much dead, from their own price war (and from the local Bells' tendency to raise their service costs by screwing up their local copper). So from the regulators' point of view the competitive market they're trying to protect hasn't, and won't appear. Thus the release of the Baby Bells from the wholesale price controls, in the hope they'll start installing more cable.
The Net closes in. (Score:3, Interesting)
When I was a small business systems consultant I frequently encountered a problem with SMTP. The DSL lines for a certain baby bell would not pass outgoing email if the "from:" field did not contain the approved domain. I likened it to the post office refusing to deliver mail that was placed in a box with a return address not on the block where the box resides.
If these companies can lock down these networks, then average users (those not interested/willing to manipulate email fields) are going to be "forced" to use the email domain of the provider as a return address. This provides these baby bell ISP's with a MSoft-ish method for bullying users into using their products (as opposed to just competing on the basis of quality).
This is anti-competitive, un-American and anti-capitalist.
Difficulties .. and Wireless (Score:2, Insightful)
Technically, the Bells really should be able to lay down the law when it comes to who access their cables. I mean, it's their cables.
I'm all for competition, but this is kind of an awkward situation.
On the other hand -- all ya'll who are hot to trot with wireless Internet access: hop on the venture capital wagon, and start your roll out in about
Re:Difficulties .. and Wireless (Score:5, Informative)
Technically, the Bells really should be able to lay down the law when it comes to who access their cables. I mean, it's their cables.
I'm all for competition, but this is kind of an awkward situation.
The point you're missing is that the Bells, unlike say McDonald's being forced to let Burger King use their extra grills, have a monopoly in the last-mile telecom arena. What's more, it's a government-sponsored monopoly. That means that the Bells have, as a condition of their monopoly, certain restrictions and responsiblities that other industries don't.
The Bells can stifle any sort of telecom competition simply because they DO control the wires going into your house. Thus, the only way to ensure any sort of telecom competition is to force the Bells, as a condition of their maintaining their utility/monopoly status, to open their networks to competitors at reasonable prices.
Define "reasonable" (Score:3, Interesting)
If it's just the cost of maintaining the line, then where's the incentive to put in new lines and roll out new services?
Re:Difficulties .. and Wireless (Score:3, Insightful)
Bells should lose their monopoly/utility status. They should also lose government mandated leins to lay their wire. Then they can own the existing wires, if they like, but anyone has to be able to lay their own. And the cost of land should be real, to all the competitors.
Same for the wireless spectrum. The government monopolies have been proven to be much, much less beneficial than freemarket driven bandwidth use. Regulate all spectrum like we regulate the visual spectrum and 2.4 GHz: You cannot blind anyone.
I'm a damn liberal Democrat, and I can see that the libertarian answers are the correct ones in these situations. The existing legislation is profit-driven. Crony capitalism at its worst.
Re:Difficulties .. and Wireless (Score:4, Insightful)
Is there any reason that you couldn't have more than one line? Sure you wouldn't want dozens or hundreds of different lines but couldn't each town or county grant three or four different companies the right to lay down those wires? Then each company could provide whatever services and compete on a level playing field with none of them holding either it's control over the physical assets or it's influence with the legislature to set a "reasonable price" (which may or may not be "reasonable" and will forever be controversial) over it's competitors.
I suppose you still have the problem of who fixes the mess when a phone pole falls over and pulls down *all* the lines - perhaps they would all have to share the expense of a common maintenance & repair service on an equal basis.
Re:Difficulties .. and Wireless (Score:5, Insightful)
When it comes to essential public amenities, you cannot allow monopolies to stamp their and say "It's my ball, you can't play with it!"
Re:Difficulties .. and Wireless (Score:4, Insightful)
>establish COs and copper to (nearly) every house
>in the United States, I'd be a little pissed at
>the government for making me open it up to
>people who are offering competing services.
If you've paid taxes in the past century, you DID lay out a serious amount of money for that stuff.
Clue for you. (Score:5, Insightful)
Nope, it's your cable. They built it on public easments with monopoly protection. Keeping others off those lines is about as bogus as keeping others from being able to run their own last mile network, but that seems to be the way it was and is. Now demands have been made that others can use those lines AT COST and offer services that the Bells were unwilling to offer.
I'm hoping that Powel plays this well. As someone else pointed out, he does not agree. This is just the kind of thing that will turn Powel into a houshold word, if he can pull it off.
If he can't, I expect the Bells to start pushing their high priced and highly restrictive service. Woot, I might get to chose between two really lame monoply servers who own the internet.
Screw them. Build your chunk of the wireless mesh today.
Re:Clue for you. (Score:3, Interesting)
Nope, it's your cable. They built it on public easments with monopoly protection.
First, the cable in most places wasn't paid for by the government; easements, yes, hardware, no. The exceptions to this general statement are in places where the cost of installing the cable and hardware could never have been recouped (sparse rural areas, etc.) over their lifecycle; and that was paid for by the government by a universal connectivity tax imposed on the customer base ... a tax which is still imposed on every line, in spite of the fact that "universal connectivity" was achieved two generations ago.
Further, the monopoly protection was granted in return for nearly 100 years of delivery of government mandated QOS guarantees, universal access, interoperability and standards compliance that have driven world telecom markets, a steady tax stream (collected by the Bells on their dime for the FCC and local governments), rental income on many of those public easements, government mandated rate structures, etc, etc, etc. The government granted phone monopoly has for a very long time been a cash cow for the federal government, and local states take in a big chunk of revenue as well. The monopoly grant was a tit-for-tat public-good agreement that has long since been paid off, because it achieved its objectives of universal access to a nationwide publicly accessible switched voice network.
Now demands have been made that others can use those lines AT COST
And you'll find that the ILECs don't really argue against access (they might if the opportunity presented itself, but that isn't their main objection). Their argument is that the definition of AT COST is unfair and discriminatory. The definition in force until this FCC decision of AT COST only allowed the inclusion of ongoing direct maintenance costs, and that even those numbers were being low balled by regulators (according to the ILECs). The ILEC argument is that AT COST should be defined in terms of total LIFECYCLE costs, particularly since maintenance is such a relatively small fraction of the purchase-installation-maintenance-disposal cycle.
The ILECs further argue that by being kept out of markets like cable TV and long distance (remember, THOSE companies are not being forced to provide access to their infrastructure, at ANY cost) that they are being unfairly forced to shoulder a cost burden that no other telecom grouping is being asked to provide in return.
Does that really lead to a lack of investment by the ILECs? I don't have a clue; I'm sure that it is part of the issue, but there are certainly others. But it seems to me to be a fundamentally unsound premise that a long ago repaid, mutually beneficial, regulated monopoly agreement between the government and a private industry (an agreement, by the way, that was ruled to be illegal, and forcibly broken by the federal courts) can be used today to prop up competitors who are not being asked to provide very much in return...
Well, maybe not the end of the world (Score:4, Interesting)
First, just about every DSL provider in my area is already offering Phone to go along with DSL. Most of the DSL only providers in all areas died in 2000/1.
Additinally what to stop a DSL only provider such as Covad to start "offering" voice. They could charge $900/line to get around the FCC rules. Nobody would buy it, but at least they could still sell their DSL.
All the smoke and fury... (Score:5, Insightful)
So does this mean worse service for DSL customers? (Score:2)
This passed despite heavy dissent? (Score:4, Interesting)
Excuse my ignorance (I'm Canadian), but if the majority of the FCC is opposing it, how did the plan get decided upon?
Re:This passed despite heavy dissent? (Score:3, Insightful)
Nationalize! (Score:5, Interesting)
Too bad most consumers are so scared of socialism, even though it has a place in situations like this. Ironic, that socialism could give us a truely free market.
The lines run through public property. They cross millions of private property boundries. They should be a public resource.
Then the Phone Companies could compete on products and service. And the Baby Bells would probably all go under in less than a year after exposing their actual incompetance in a suddenly open market.
Re:Nationalize! (Score:4, Insightful)
Either option works for me. Our current situation is crony capitalism, plain and simple.
we have paid (Score:5, Insightful)
You must realize that before deregulation, the telco's were selling us $1,500/month T1's and per-minute ISDN service. DSL technology is old and could have been deployed in the
Wait five years from now after deregulation occurs and we are still paying $50/month for 1.5Mbps ADSL when the rest of the world will have fiber strung to their doorsteps. The Bells have a history of stagnation and emtpy promises, thats why the telco act of 96 was created in the first place.
Corrections to the Summary (Score:5, Interesting)
ILECs have not been forced to share their lines at cost. That is a myth invented by the baby Bells to convince lawmakers that linesharing makes them lose money. Actually what the 1996 Telecom Act says is that they have to rent their lines to outside customers and they must charge everybody the same rate, including internal customers.
A popular stunt among the ILECs [webopedia.com] is to rent lines to their own internet divisions at way below cost, thus making their internet business seem more profitable than it is. The 1996 Telecom Act just evens the playing field in that respect and prevents the Bells from using their local loop monopoly to prop up other corporate divisions.
The new rules do force line sharing as long as companies are willing to offer voice service, but this essentially states that if you are not already a phone company, you cannot offer DSL.
This is actually not as bad as it sounds when you consider that FCC Chairman Michael Powell *spit* wanted to completely sweep away ALL the regulations that require the ILECs to share lines. His proposal was defeated with respect to local phone service because Republican commissioner Kevin J. Martin jumped the fence and sided with the Democrats. So while this may suck for Covad, Speakeasy, etc., at least it won't totally eliminate DSL competition for now.
Probably both sides are going to be unhappy about this. Expect this battle to go to the courts next.
This article [washingtonpost.com] has more good info.
But which monopoly is the real culprit? (Score:4, Insightful)
* The phone companies who own the wires running to your location?
* The local governments, who regulate how many wires can be put up, and extort plenty of cash from anyone who wishes to emplace new ones?
* The state governments, who already charge heavy tariffs on current communications methods (hey, it's a monopoly, we can milk it as much as we want), and also put more tariffs and more barriers on newcomers to the business?
* The federal government, which severely limits anyone who wants to try a wireless solution?
Bigger problems with DSL (Score:5, Interesting)
If I were to try to move, I would have to do two things. 1. Stay at the current address until the deal is setup at the new one, phone line is installed, DSL is working, THEN cancel the old service and move. This will increase the cost of moving substantially. 2. Ensure that the real estate agent or landlord understands that it's a deal-breaker (escrow money is refunded, deposits returned) if it turns out DSL is not available, and that it might be a month after closing before this is discovered. I'd need that explicitly written into the contract, and absolutely clearly understood by everyone involved.
If I'm looking at a piece of real estate, I want to know what utilities are available, as the very first items to evaluate. I want to know if it has running water, electrical service, natural gas, if there's garbage collection, telephone service, cable tv, and, DSL. Since my career depends on the internet access, it's actually on the same list as running water and electricity. And I can actually work around the lack of water and electricity, but if there's no DSL I'm stuck.
So, why can't I find out BEFORE getting involved with a piece of real estate, whether it has this service available? Also, what kind of approach can I take to force the issue? I don't want to sign a contract or a lease without knowing in advance whether I can get DSL, what signal rate it will support, and what providers will offer the service.
Backfire? (Score:3, Insightful)
I seriously considered turning off all of my landline services last year. The only thing that stopped me was the announcement that DSL was finally available in my area.
If no competition in the DSL market causes me to turn off my DSL service, I'll likely turn off my landline phone as well, and go strictly cellular.
What we could see happen, with wireless technologies becoming more and more viable, is the elimination of any wired communications to the home.
Eliminate the "last mile" of copper and you eliminate the Baby Bells.
Why is this a problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem isn't lack of competition, quite the opposite, more competition means more companies each with redundant staff and bureaucracies. The solution is to actually have the FCC mandate service quality. DSL service sucks down there because the phone companies are free to do whatever the hell they please.
If you had a government regulating body which looked out for the best interest of the consumer and dictated that the Bells must meet these service levels for customers things would be rosey.
But ooooh no, regulation is bad for business. BS! In natural monopolies like this it's the only way to go. You simply TELL the company they must provide quality service, no excuses.
Until this happens we're going to continue to see the weekly story on slashdot of people whining that their DSL is too slow or they can't get service.
Re:Why is this a problem? (Score:3, Informative)
Okay. But what happens when the laws requiring companies to provide certain quality of service are incompatible with profitability?
A href="California energy crisis", that's what.
Re:Why is this a problem? (Score:3, Informative)
The providers initially claimed that they were being pinched by gov't mandated low prices, and actual high prices in the free market, but this was factually incorrect. The high prices in the "free market" were... here's the surprise: government mandated, and chosen by the power providers. They siphoned money out of the customers via PG&E, which really was pinched. There was surplus energy at the same time as the rolling blackouts.
Re:Why is this a problem? (Score:3, Interesting)
Only those that are natural monopolies. There's only one road directly outside your house. There's only one gas line in. There's only one electric main. One phone line. One cable.
Some things are natural local monopolies due to physical resource limitations.
Great News ... (Score:3, Interesting)
Line Sharing is Stupid (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't want POTS on my DSL line! I have no need for POTS! My cell phone is my primary phone number.
The market should embrace novelty, and if the cost of doing that is a second pair of wires to your home to accommodate POTS, so be it! (With the important market caveat that other people must feel the same way...) Splitting hairs over the incramental cost for DSL above POTS service is not productive.
Make the 3rd parties offer "full service" for them thar copper wires!
Mike Powell not a friend of #10, either (Score:3, Insightful)
See what happens when you take state governments out of the loop? I swear, repealing the Seventeenth Amendment [friendsforamerica.com] just keeps on seeming like a better and better idea...
Disruptive technologies (Score:3, Interesting)
If the DSL providers compete on a different level they can win this. This decision was a result of the FCC being bought by the telcos. Plain and simple.
A new idea: Physical Infrastrcuture Companies. (Score:3, Interesting)
However, with the modern approaches to communication, the Baby Bells need to be broken up in another way I have not yet seen mentioned:
Separate the dial provider from the infrastructure provider.
Check this out: You RBOCs would be split into two separate entities, your dialtone providers, and your cable-line providers.
Unfortunately, the infrastructure generally lends itself to a natural monopoly, similar to electrical service...but in most places, we can choose our energy provider...but still need to pay the distributor.
This could work well with phone service. Once company would own and maintain the infrastructure, and provide the physical path for anyone who make service available on it. Then the costs of the line would have to be paid by the service providers you choose, be it Covad, Verizon, or AT&T.
It would be nice then, because any companies could provide competing service if they all have to cover essentially the same wireline costs to reach the consumer. However, if the bells get to keep the whole ball of wax, then there'll never be any good service.
I've got my Covad IDSL line because I have no restrictions on what I can do with it...and I have a block of IPs. Compare that to the "business-class" Verizon DSL and cable modem service, and I get one IP...no routable netblock...and a ton of service restrictions (i.e. no servers).
In short, unless the physical plant is made into a separate operating company, we will never truly have competition for telephone service.
What will come out of this (Score:3, Interesting)
So what happens now? Once the rules get fully phased in, the rates will rise as the telcos milk their monopolies on internet service. At some point, someone will complain, the government will step in, and internet service will become a regulated monopoly.
In the end, I don't think that'll be a bad thing. Local telephone service is a regulated monopoly, and it's been pretty good so far. But it might take awhile to get there.
Funny thing is... (Score:3, Interesting)
But I guess the slashdot editors would rather bitch about it in retrospect than do something about it beforehand.
Catastrophe (Score:3, Insightful)
Clearly it must be stopped.
Their goal is to reduce the ownership of all user-facing internet services to a managably small set of large owners. Coincidentally, these will be the big media and phone companies that are threatened by the internet in the first place. When all the independents and smaller players have been eliminated, and less than a dozen RBOCs and cable operators control all broadband (and thus almost all internet access) in the U.S., they will kill what threatens them by simply raising the price.
Some number of months from now, users will find that their ISP has suddenly renegotiated their deal. The new choices will be cheap but brutally capped broadband that is useless for P2P, streaming media, and VoIP... pay-per-K offerings that ensure these things are prohibitively expensive... and classic, "business class" $1,500+ T1-style service.
Surveillance of users will become not only more pervasive but more standardized, as the Internet trust announces trade groups and landmark deals that support both police and "private" law enforcement efforts.
Of course, in addition to prices going up, this guarantees that investments in new infrastructure (to provide better services) will now entirely cease. Without competition to threaten offering anything better, the bells and cable companies will do what they have always done (before TA96). Absolutely nothing.
Oh, you thought the cable companies and bells would compete with each other? This one really slays me. Why spend billions competing when you can just form a trust and price-fix instead? This is capitalism 101. And when the number of players is that small, it's virtually guaranteed to happen.
I know, I'm a paranoid lunatic. None of this could really happen here, right? I mean, just because it's already happening in Australia, Canada, and England... pure coincidence.
Of course, this tragedy will cause lots of collateral damage. The first victim that comes to mind is the video game industry, which has lots of innovative, "harmless" uses for massive, cheap bandwidth. There are many others as well.
But for all you folks watching in amusement as the big players stumbled trying to crush P2P, VoIP, etc. with lawsuits and bribed-legislation, this is the other shoe dropping.
On the bright side, the market for wireless technology might be looking up... that is, until the FCC turns out to be less than forthcoming with licenses, rules, and considerations necessary to allow wireless broadband alternatives. Watch for it.
It's more of a question of cheap/lazy providers... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Powell Stinks (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Powell Stinks (Score:4, Insightful)
But seriously, we could spend all day blaming one party or the other for this, or we could discuss the merits and problems of this new decision. Particularly interesting, to me, would be a description of the good things accomplished by the existing regulations. I was under the impression that the whole partial-deregulation quagmire was universally perceived as a disaster. Apparently you don't think it was. Why?
Re:Finally the bells can use their *property* (Score:4, Interesting)
Is it "socialist" to ask for fair access and competition on lines my tax dollars helped pay for? The ONLY portion of the network Covad uses is the high-frequency part of the local loop. They have their own data backbones and switches. All they want is a way to connect that to your house, on a part of the phone line (which you already pay the phone company for) that they are not using unless you already have DSL. And they have to pay the same amount the phone companies charge their own DSL divisions for each line.
Re:Finally the bells can use their *property* (Score:5, Insightful)
Finally the bells can use their *property* without subsidising their competitors.
Property that was paid for via a government protected, anticompetitive monopoly with tariffed rates that kept costs high and federal laws that prevented competition. Line sharing simply recognized the reality of how those lines were paid for and how the law kept others from competing. We payed artificially high prices for decades to finance that property with the stated purpose of developing a public infrastructure...not as an act of "corporate welfare" for the Bell system.
This will be a good thing in the long term 3-5 years.
No better than what happened when the cable companies kept increasing rates and not improving service when THEY didn't have any competition. Think about how bad the cable is now...even WITH the competition from satellite services. With most consumers having only one, perhaps two broadband options left to them you can expect the costs to rise, bandwidth to get metered, and content to be prioritized via PPPoE. Fewer choices is NOT a good thing. Don't believe me? Ask any economist. And note that the non-Bell ISPs *consistently* beat the service ratings of Bell ISPs...see Broadband Reports [dslreports.com].
As for comparing us to South Korea...? Do you really think our situation in the U.S. is even remotely similar to that of South Korea???
With previous rules there was no incentive to upgrade their systems because then their competitors would be able to use it too. Now we can have: cable, phone, satelite, wireless, and (perhaps) power line all competing.
With the previous rules the Bells simply followed the strategy of deliberately keeping their equipment primitive and broken to block competition long enough to put them out of business. They knew they were the choke point for the CLECs, and that if they could deny them revenue long enough they could put them out of business. And with most of the CLECs the strategy worked...most of the CLECs went under. Here in California Pacific Bell/SBC had a whole host of tricks to make it difficult for CLECs like Covad to get wire pairs for DSL installs...but remarkably had no problem at all when it came to handing out those same pairs to companies installing home alarms.
This is a good thing even if it is not the socialist position.
Drop the stupid rhetoric. The old, regulated Bell system was clearly more like socialism than what we have now. The US government protected them from competition for the better part of a century to allow them to build up their infrastructure. Ensuring competition by allowing competing providers to use the existing infrastructure just makes sense. Would you require each trucking company to build its own highway to transport your frozen chickens to market?
Re:It didn't work anyway (Score:3, Interesting)
I signed up for USWest's DSL service. They were extremely prompt about installing everything so they could start collecting money from me.
After it was up and running, I called USWest and changed ISP's. They had no wiggle-room for fucking up the line, since it had obviously been working fine for the two months that USWest was my ISP.
I reccomend this tactic highly.
Think a little harder. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's hardly "private property" when public money built it.
And to top it off, it's not "free," either. The CLECs (like Covad) must pay the phone companies the *same* rates they charge to their own DSL divisions. Covad pays SBC the same as SBC's DSL division pays SBC. And on top of that, SBC (or whoever your ILEC is) gets paid for the damn phone line in the first place.
So, they get paid for the line, AND paid AGAIN for the line by Covad, AND tax money, tax breaks, government assistance, and right-of-way to build the lines in the first place, and you think that keeping the lines open for competition isn't fair?
Screw that.
Re:Think a little harder. (Score:3, Insightful)
If the farmers had gotten together and bought a law making it illegal to grow your own veggies (i.e. if they had acted like the incumbent phone companies), then it would be reasonable to either extract concessions in return or take away the special benefit.
If the ILECs were willing to give up the benefits of a mandated infrastructure monopoly (including retroactive payback for what they have already gained from it), then I'd have no objection to letting them off the hook. The problem is that they want it both ways.
Re:Think a little harder. (Score:3, Insightful)
Before the telecoms act of 1996, we had government subsidies with no benefit to us. There was no DSL (although the technology was available-- it's not a new idea). Just $1500 T1s and ISDN.
To use your analogy, the situation was more along the lines of paying farmers to farm, and then having them sell year-old dried vegetables for quadruple market value because they were the only game in town.
But that analogy has one gigantic flaw-- in a given area, there are thousands of farmers, all competing to keep price down. If there were 500 phone companies servicing my hometown, all sharing the subsidy, I imagaine these rules would be totally unnecessary.
no, and, ummm, no (Score:3, Insightful)
Most of the lines that are being leased were paid for by the public by means of government subsidies to the Bell(s). Not only were they subsidized by the public, but they have been paid for many times over; so they aren't losing any money. And they are definitely NOT private property. Even so, the CLECs ARE paying for the use of the lines (and the lower cost is not any lower than what the ILECs pay).
Covad has an enormous network of hardware and cable, they are only needing the last mile of wire to the home. Now they can no longer lease that small segment of the line that's ALREADY there.
Now, there was some sort of provision for new networks that were deployed to newly developed communities, and I can see the Bells being a bit ticked off about that...
"The Bells also won't have to let rivals lease access to new fiber lines that they lay down to connect new housing developments or businesses. Even that decision, however, is bound to cause confusion in cases in which portions of the Bells' networks are composed of both copper and fiber."
but that is only an issue with them selling their new network to phone carriers since Covad uses their own equipment and is just leasing a section of the line (as opposed to the CLECs phone guys who lease every bit of the line and the hardware that connects it).
Powell actually wanted full deregulation EXCEPT in the DSL market. What happened was the opposite. While this will help keep phone costs down, there's no reason at all that this will help lower DSL costs (it might, however, help DSL availability since the Bells have more incentive to offer it).
The other big issue is what is the point of having multiple phone lines going to the same building? Powell said ending the leasing of lines would encourage AT&T et.al. to run their own lines to offer competitive service. Does he realize how expensive AND wasteful that is?
Re:Allegience Telecom (Score:3, Informative)
Their tech support is a joke as well. Call them and ask them why your internet is down.. they'll tell you they "are working on it, ETA unknown."