Tauzin-Dingell Up for Vote Soon

An Anonymous Coward writes: "Just received this letter from my ISP, one of the oldest in existence. A study here lays out the basics on the bill and why it's a bad idea. The bill retracts the telecommunications act of '96 which forces the phone giants to share the nation's phone lines (which are in public trust). Looks like it's time to write those pesky congressmen again." Too late to write. Call. Tauzin-Dingell, up for vote on Wednesday, would eliminate all the requirements on the four remaining Baby Bells to play fair with competing telecom providers. "Sure Covad, you can co-locate your DSL equipment in our switching offices - our deregulated rate is only $10,000/day/piece of equipment." It's instant death for all DSL providers except Verizon, SBC, Qwest and BellSouth.

What can us Canadians do about this?

[Anonymous Coward]

How does this affect Canadians? Is there anything we can do to help this situation?

Let's wait a minute here.

[glrotate]

The telecom dereg act of '96 WAS a flop. Has anyones phone / cable bill actually gone down since then. It was supposed to open up Long distance to the Baby Bells IF they opened up local access. SBC was very much in favor, then as soon as it was passed they gota judge to through out the part that required them to open up the local access.

So, maybe it is time to look at redoing this piece of legislation.

They already monopolize, in a way

[PM4RK5]

It appears to be the norm (or at least through my experience), that when some DSL provider uses a major corporate wire, certain problems are encountered when you sign up:

1. You may be *conveniently* too far away from the 'central office' [They make the restrictions tighter for 3rd-party service: like only up to 10,000 feet, when the real limit is several thousand feet more]

2. The phone company is painfully slow in getting the wires required to your house (ISDN, at least)

3. The phone company and your 3rd-party provider bicker about who's at fault when a problem appears. Nobody admits its their fault, so you (the consumer) is virtually screwed over.

So essentially, they want you to sign up for *their* service (gee, that installation time gets a lot shorter!). So they're already monopolizing. This was the case with Rythms ISDN (spelling?) when we had it. And Rythms went bankrupt as I recall. *cough*

Just some stuff to think about, as they alredy monopolize the wires/equipment to an extent.

down with bellsouth

[LWolenczak]

Yup, this will wipe out DSL providers, but what about CLECs? I sure like my local CLECs.... I mean.... bellsouth wouldnt know what sdsl is if it bit them in the ass. They don't want to do cheap business internet... they only want to provide the most costly service... and the crappiest response time... sure... lock the end of my t1 loop up in a box... and if the mux dies... take six hours to come reset my damn card so I can get my internet back up.

Several observations by myself
1. They only know what ADSL is... they their reps dont even know what the A stands for. They tend to think the S in sdsl stands for static.
2. They took five and a half hours once to get my t1 loop back up after their mux died a horibble death. They claim that they didnt know about it untill like an hour and a half before they showd up, but i was on the phone to my CLEC with in 10 minutes of my loop going down, and they put me on hold while they called bell south.
3. They only want money, not to provide service. They have become like the cable company. Sprint local services is esp. bad at this, they just expect to sit around and collect cash, and not raise a finger whenever soemthing breaks on their network.
4. They make it hard for anybody to compeate, and they like to get rid of "old" "useless services" that are still used, and are very useful. Bell south in a near bye town is refusing to put more alarm circuits in (a line thats easy to turn into a poor man's t1 or sdsl line, and instead telling people that their circuit will be cut off unless they replace it with some expensive digital alarm circuit.

my 1.02 cents
-LW

Re:News Flash

[ender81b]

Sure, alot of ISP's still survive. Internet Nebraska [inetnebr.com] in Nebraska has survived for nearly 10 years and provided service across nearly the entire state including DSL and in the face of stiff competition (Alltell, Road Runner, Cox Cable). As a matter of fact they are even rolling out Wireless in some parts of the state.

Of course, they have a different attitude than most ISP's - they don't have the latest and greatest in tech. As a matter of fact the tech desk machines are old Sparc stations (30mhz I believe) and most of their equipment is bought off E-bay. Doesn't make a difference; their uptimes and such are excellent, and they are the largest ISP in Nebraska - and no I don't work for them.

The problem with most of the ISP's you listed is that they expanded too fast, and spent too much buying the latest and greatest equipment with no thought of if they where going to be able to recoup the costs.

This is a good thing

[Ender_the_Xenocide]

...for fixed wireless [somanetworks.com]. (No, I'm not an employee. Just a former employee.)

DSL (and cable) suffer from the last-mile problem: getting that last bit of cable to your hourse is really, really expensive. Every service call they have to make (including turning the thing on in the first place) is a huge loss for them. Right now, smaller competitors are able to get in only because they can piggyback on the big carriers' infrastructure, but this has its own problems. For instance, Sympatico DSL here in Canada has chosen to use this awful PPP-over-Ethernet technology to share the lines. I'd prefer to use Sympatico over Rogers, cause I've mostly gotten better service, but the PPPoE is just too much hassle.

Without having to share the lines, the big companies will be able to give better service. I know Sympatico's losing business over the PPPoE thing. Of course, without competition, there's no incentive to actually improve. But without the option of using the big networks, smaller companies will have to start looking for other solutions - like wireless, for instance. No physical cable = no last mile problem = less overhead = better business for the little guy.

The current DSL situation is a bit of a mess, and not going to get better without a major shakeup. (I don't think it's as bad as a lot of people make out, but I may have just been lucky in my service on the whole.) Think of this as an opportunity...

Unfair Practices in Chicago?

[Rayonic]

Last summer I was in Chicago, staying with a relative, and I saw first-hand some of these shenannigans between AT&T and Earthlink. My relatives had chosen Earthlink DSL over the local AT&T service (probably because it was cheaper and/or faster) and the DSL connection went out every evening from about 7:00pm to 10:00pm.

Earthlink's official response was that AT&T would purposely detect non-AT&T-DSL customers and downgrade their connection somehow. Of course I'm not sure I believe them, because the daily outages only seemed to be happening during peak hours. They probably oversold their service in the area, but how would I have known either way? Well, needless to say nothing got done (at least while I was there).

Re:They already monopolize, in a way

[JonWan]

I guess this is one of the benifits of living in the boondocks. My local phone co. is a coopertive. I can make 1 call to them and have DSL installed before the end of the week, most times it's only a day or two. When I have a problem the crew is out in hours if not minutes. They don't have to make money just pay bills, heck I even get a rebate check from them every year for each phone number I have. I was the first dial-up customer to logon, It was a race between a friend of mine and me. His password got mangaled so I got there first, But alas he got the IT job. :-(

Re:...and the problem is what exactly?

[Monkeyman334]

I work for a company that became a CLEC a few months ago, and we are doing alright. We found a place that Qwest didn't provide to, but still had a central office. Cable providers aren't big out there, they use satellite tv. I'm not sure why they don't use satellites for internet, but meh. We put in our own gear and are providing right now. I've never been in the CO, so I can't confirm the problems. Probably the biggest pain is they have this 200 page manual you have to read to use the system and make orders for the line. If you put the wrong number in the ITQID field (don't remember exactly, but there are so many stupid acronyms), they reject it. I'm not sure what the results of the law would be exactly, but by the sounds of it, it wouldn't be good for the company.

There is an upside...

[Eusebo]

I'm a current QWest customer and hate every minute of it (don't have much choice for BB service) I cringe at the thought of seeing QWest's cesspool grow any larger than it currently is. However, I think there may be a "silver lining" to this cloud (at least depending on your point of view). QWest currently concentrates their DSL equipment in the CO because they have to allow equal access to that equipment. If that equal access went away, they could move the DSL equipment further from the CO to smaller unmanned stations and extend the range of DSL services to areas where coverage isn't currently provided.

While it might push some competition out (what competition is there anyway?) bringing broadband to outlying communities would be a plus...

Just my $.02

No, this is a good thing

[Russ Nelson]

This bill is actually a *good* thing. Why? Because it will enable the Bells to charge a huge amount of money for DSL connections. This will make it profitable for people to run optical fiber. Instead of getting a measly 768Kbps, you'll get 100Mbps.
-russ

Re:...and the problem is what exactly?

[Sarcasmooo!]

I find it hard to believe that retracting this act is going to right the wrongs it created, but I have no idea why. Simply put, the Telecommunications Act of 1996 [fcc.gov] resulted in the biggest blow to a free market in history. At least, that's my interpretation. The number of entities that control the nations media, from books, to music, to TV and movies, went from somwhere in the hundreds, to the present 6. But if retracting the act now would in any way rectify that, companies like the Bells and Verizon (who have a very hefty interest in preserving the ownership deregulations) would be up in arms protecting it.

Re:News Flash

[r00tdenied]

Yes, they are all taking losses. But it is because of the telcos. I present my proof as this. I work for a DSL provider, we started selling ISDN 6 years ago, moved on to DSL because of the hype. PacBell for the last 6 months has been playing hard ball with us because of their own fucked up accounting (being double billed). But only recently have we turned profitable. How you ask? We said "Fuck DSL" and we are now providing Wireless Broadband services. Now we are screwing over the telcos in their own markets by taking their DSL customers and putting them on our own network.

r00tdenied

Re:This is a good thing

[joshv]

For instance, Sympatico DSL here in Canada has chosen to use this awful PPP-over-Ethernet technology to share the lines. I'd prefer to use Sympatico over Rogers, cause I've mostly gotten better service, but the PPPoE is just too much hassle.

Hmmmm... I plugged in my linksys DSL router/hub, clicked the PPPoE radio button in the web setup for the router, entered my username and password and have since forgotten about the fact that my DSL is PPPoE. Hassle? Not in the least.

Re:News Flash

[Geek In Training]

This fictitious argument that a "dozen competitors in the same small geographical area" will all "sell at a loss and die" may be the case.

Which reminds me of the quote I read on a Slashdot book review about the dot-bombs recently:

"In perfect competition, all products are sold at cost, and there is no profit."

Hmmm, I wonder if we're on to something here. Sell the service at too high a cost, nobody will buy it (Bell). Sell it too low, and you'll get plenty of customers, but go bankrupt because you're not profiting (Covad).

So to be successful, you either have to have 1)collusion to price-fix amongst all competitors, setting minimum pricing just above break-even, or 2)start selling at a loss, then find a way to profit either by raising prices and keeping customers through brand-reputation and good service, or by selling "auxilliary services/merchandise" that are more profitable.

Aside: It looks like Amazon.com did both (raised prices somewhat, stopped handing out $20 gift certificates with every $10 purchase, partnered with third parties), and finally turned that brand-recognition into a profit, as promised. Amazing.

I don't really have a point I guess... just rambling as usual. "But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong." (Dennis Miller)

Instant Death to Competition

[ahamos]

As opposed to what? Slow death to DSL? We've been over the whole DSL thing before (and many times, I might add): no business anywhere wants to give space, equipment, and reduced-rate service to the competition. That's just dumb. And this time the Bells are right: cable service does have unfair rights to its own lines (at least in comparison with phone lines).

The '96 telco act basically only makes sense for DSL if DSL is prolific enough to necessitate protection. It's not. Almost all of the C-LEC's have gone out of business already, and the service they offer is generally trash. They typically can't afford the larger egresses and charge more to off-set their tremendous over-head.

Good God, can we at least let the service get a foot-hold before we freak out about the control of the corporations? And hey, if it weren't for corporations, who'd provide the service?

/RANT:
I really enjoy reading this site for news. What I can't stand reading, though, is how everyone's "rights" are being trampled. A guy posts treasonous info and gets busted: /.er's complain. A guy steals code/illegally distributes other people's IP/steals music: /.er's say "Big deal. It's within my rights to steal." Someone steals a /.er's work: the world might as well have come to an end.

Do the rules only apply when we want them to? When they serve an agenda? Is corporate America wholly outside of their rights by conducting business under (inter)national law?

Granted, I dislike some laws, like the DMCA and whatever damned law created ICANN, but breaking the law doesn't prove anything. Oh, sure: call your congressman to prevent something that might actually make DSL available and affordable, but just break the law when you don't like what's being done to your "rights".

Sorry. I just get so sick of hearing about "rights" this and "rights" that. You have no digitally protected rights. Everything you are doing can be and is being logged by someone. And that someone's TOS says they're damned well within their limits. And nobody has the "right" to lawlessness. Change the laws through protest: you have the right to do that.
/END RANT

Thank you and have a very nice day

Call the DC office

[vestus]

(wife works for a senator)
For legislative issues, call your congressman or senator's DC office as they deal in the political/legislative work. Their local/state offices deal mostly with constituant services, and would only forward your comments up to the DC office. Asking for a call back will ensure that they actually examine your comments, and hopefully you'll get more than a form letter. Remember that mail to DC is extremely backlogged after the 9/11 incident while it was all sitting in semi trucks waiting for irradiation. Instead, use their fax number.

And no.. they don't have 1-800 numbers.