FCC Reclassifies DSL, Drops Common Carrier Rules

Neil Wehneman writes "Via Media Law Prof Blog, it is reported that the FCC has reclassified broadband service as an "information service" instead of "telecommunications". This, among other things, gives the Baby Bells the same gift the cable companies got with Brand X : the right to stop opening their lines to competitors."

Re:First

[LostCluster]

As broadband is becoming more widely available it is becoming easier to switch providers, as well.

It won't be so easy if all that's left is the local monoploy cable company and the local monopoly phone company.

Re:First

[revscat]

It's about time they did this, goverment interference in the economy will, in the long run, screw people over. As broadband is becoming more widely available it is becoming easier to switch providers, as well.

It's been my experience that corporations are far more likely to screw people over than governments. Libertarian capitalism, like communism, looks good on paper but fails utterly in reality.

Uh oh

[Chazmati]

I have DSL through a smaller carrier (TDS Metrocom, lines owned by SBC, I believe). Sounds like my service is in jeopardy. But won't this kill phone service, too? I mean, if DSL rides on your voice line, and SBC can tell TDS they can't sell me DSL, I'll have to drop TDS entirely to keep DSL. Or switch to cable for Internet access and pay another 900# gorilla. Sigh.

Re:First

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if they reclassify DSL, there *is* still an important interference: the phone and cable companies have an effective monopoly on the use of the telephone poles or fiber conduits.

But who paid for the POTS infrastructure?

[Gothmolly]

Yes, its mostly modern fiber and VOIP internally, but there's copper to every house, and poles, and those discrete switching stations in the bushes. Who paid for all that? Since we (the US Taxpayers) did (whether its good or bad is irrelevant to this discussion), it should be open to all.
Those who live by the government teat (Telcos) should have to die by it, too.

Surely this leads to less competition?

[DavidRawling]

I don't understand.

Surely this means that the local "Baby Bell" will be able to prevent other companies from using the infrastructure, either directly or by pricing them out of the market?

If so ... how does this help the consumer? Who lobbied for this? And why was it done? TFA has little detail and the FCC press release seems to be more self-servient than anything else.

Now ... if the price they sell broadband at is $29.95/month, but they will only sell line access to the competing ISP at $39.95/month, the ISP cannot compete.

In Australia Tel$tra did just this (briefly) and got a slap on the wrist from our consumer agency, the ACCC. Is there a similar organisation in the US? Is that what the FCC press release is commenting on in the 2nd last para:

In a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, the Commission seeks comment on whether it should develop a framework for consumer protection in the broadband age - a framework that ensures that consumer protection needs are met by all providers of broadband Internet access service, regardless of the underlying technology.

Corporate America

[jurt1235]

As it might be clear to the average US citizen by now, is that monopolies are detested by the US goverment. They do everything in their power to break foreign monopolies to give US companies a fair chance in the big bad foreign world.

What is also clear by now is that for inside the US there are different rules. Good luck! I live in a foreign country and the weirdest things happen under the name of free market (like jeopardizing the electricity network), but everything gets more expensive because of this. You (US citizen) however are in the lucky situation that things happen in reverse, and everything will get more expensive.

Re:Uh oh

[Sc00ter]

Well I'm moving to an area with a suck ass telco and no chance of DSL.

Right now (at my current place) I have DSL from a local place (mv.com). They are fantastic but they only offer ADSL, so I have to keep a local phone line. I never use it.. I pay $15/month for nothing.

Now that I can't even get DSL I'm not going to get phone service, no reason to. My wife and I each have cell phones. Even if I do need it for whatever reason I'll get VoIP.

Point is, if they cut off the local DSL provider where I currently live, I'd do the same thing. So rather then getting $15/month from me, plus the fee they're charging my ISP, they would get $0.

Re:But who paid for the POTS infrastructure?

[Sc00ter]

I don't know about you, but in my hometown the polls were put in by the electric company who also pay tax to the town for the property they use. They then lease that to the telephone and cable companies that pay to have the lines run on those polls.

Oh joy!

[darkonc]

So much for market forces, eh?
Adam Smith [bcgreen.com] considered 'the free market' to be a good number of small merchants. Big business produces the same sorts of centralized stupidity as big government -- especially when it has a (pseudo) monopoly.

The real reason this happened

[nurb432]

IS not to protect consumers.

The dropping of common carrier status also removes any protection of content. Now the ISP will be liable for content that passes over their lines.

The 'consumer' no longer will have a right to privacy, since its no longer considered 'telecommunications', which was protected.

So its not about protecting us, its about controlling and monitoring us. Oh, and if it happens to make the big campaign contributors a few bucks along the way, all the better.

Re:First

[Anonymous Coward]

It's been my experience that corporations are far more likely to screw people over than governments. Libertarian capitalism, like communism, looks good on paper but fails utterly in reality.

Because government answer to the people every couple of years in elections.

Corporations answer to their bottom line.

One is held accountable for its actions, the other isn't.

Re:Not a good thing

[nagora]

why the rebulican party wants to kill local businesses, seeing that is what they say they stand for

No, the republican party stands for the republican party, that's all. Professional politicians are the last people you should turn to to run a country.

TWW

Re:Not a good thing

[timeOday]

Yes, my first thought was that this might NOT be so good for the copper network owners who are probably behind it.

Before, DSL had an advantage over Cable - you could shop around for an ISP with good policies and service. Not anymore! The Cable companies must be breathing a big sigh of relief that the FCC decided to kill off all the young, hungry competition. Now it's a boxing match between a pair of fat old geezers.

At a personal level, I hope you don't lose your job!

Re:Why was the press's initial reaction so positiv

[DavidTC]

It's not even privately funded in many cases.

Witness the various taxes (Yes, government taxes) that were put on the phone bills, and then given back to the phone company to built infrastructure for, for example, rural areas. A large amount of 'taxes' on your phone bill are handed directly back to the phone company with the requirement they use it in a certain way, usually to do with infrastructure.

Telephone wires have always been treated as a public good, and the government has invested quite a lot of money into them, often times putting up the poles or digging the holes as part of road construction at no cost to the phone company. Or letting them have access to government areas...every public subway system in the world has telephone wires running through it at some point, and the telephone company has keys and doesn't even have to go through the government.

But, anyway, the mere right to run wires over public and private land is worth millions in any community. Actually, it's probably literally priceless, as they couldn't purchase all the rights they need.

Phone companies have no right to whine they have to share the wires.

Probably for the best in the long run.

[earthbound kid]

There's a lot of moaning and doom and gloom in this thread, but I think most people have overlooked the one problem with the business of DSL resellers:

They're selling something they don't own.

Think about it, what do local DSL providers actually provide? They provide a link between your computer and some internet backbone. And how is this link made? By going over "the last mile" of copper, which is owned by the phone company. How does it make any sense for someone to sell service on a wire they don't own? That's like having the Canadian government collect tolls in one set of booths on I-95: it might add "competition" in the sense that now there's more than one group competing to be your toll booth, but it doesn't change the physical facts of the highway. Traffic is going to be just as bad, pot holes aren't going to go away, and if anything the situation will be made worse, since the transit company in charge of the actual highway isn't going to see as much profit for the changes it makes.

So basically, we as consumers are essentially screwed, because it's only natural that whoever controls the last mile exerts a natural monopoly over internet service, right? Well no, not exactly.

How the consumer can escape being screwed is, while competition over the same set of lines is basically impossible, there are multiple sets of "last miles" coming into our houses already today. To point out the obvious: cable. Now, in a lot of areas, cable service is shitty, but that's only because cable has little competition for TV service, outside of satellite, and little competition for broadband service, outside of DSL. And the DSL service is always weak, because it hasn't been in the interests of the phone companies to make DSL service better.

But, all of this can change, because of A) new pressures from wireless internet services and B) this new ruling which lets the people who own the last mile of DSL finally act like they own the last mile of DSL.

So essentially, we are going to have to give up fake competition within the realm of DSL in order to achieve real competition between DSL and cable. And that's not a bad tradeoff, in my book.

The FCC is owned

[AngryNick]

The Bu$h administration has slowly replaced all the pro-consumer people (read "democrats") in the FCC (and for that matter, most other regulatory agencies) so that it is now more big-bu$ine$$ friendly. Republican$ tend to refer to it in happy terms, like "removing the barriers to free enterprise," but leave out the part "...at the expense of the little guys." Raising the expenses of the smaller DSL providers will only result in higher prices across the board, as the lack of upward price controls will cause those with lower expenses to seek larger profits. But, then who makes up a larger part of the Republican$' base? Verizon or Speakeasy? SBC or AOL? "Jeb/Frist 2008" sounds like a great tax shelter/investment for those extra profits.

Re:Surely this leads to less competition?

[SA Stevens]

Well, we could always prevent THEM from using OUR infrastructure if they don't want to play by our rules.

Be careful. In the new legal environment, what constitutes 'THEM' and what constitutes 'OUR' has changed radically. The recent Eminent Domain ruling has changed a lot of the rules. (basically, those slick fucks who took both Business Administration and Sociology courses in college, meaning 'the liberal MBAs', are on the march)

Re:Surely this leads to less competition?

[jba]

And how do you think verizon is paying for that? With the monopoly money that we (the citizens of the US) gave them.

Verizon only has to sit on their ass to make billions - no private startup could ever compete with that in the current funding environment.

Re:Build more networks!

[anthony_dipierro]

You want a better network than the telcos and cable companies provide?

Not really. I want a cheaper network than the telcos and cable companies provide.

Build one.

Seriously though, how would I go about doing this? Who would I have to talk to to get access to the right of ways so I could lay or string cables? I'm not asking a rhetorical question, I really want to know.

Re:The renaming game...

[Anonymous Coward]

How about

"whistleblower" to "liberal/democrat/unpatriotic"?

even when the whistleblower contributed to the Bush/Cheney campaign in the last election.

Re:no common carrier == censorship possible

[Anonymous Coward]

No they haven't. They have not been filtering ANYTHING. They simply have not been replicating some of the Usenet groups onto THEIR OWN SERVERS. This is not censorship. They do not have to provide news servers. They do not have to replicate all the groups onto their own news servers.

If you want your binary groups, you'll have to find another Usenet provider.

Re:Build more networks!

[The Breeze]

Yeah, they spent $millions or $billions, sure. Over 100 years. And most of those $millions or $billions were MATCHED with taxpayer dollars - incentives, free gifts of right-of-way, etc. The telephone network was built with the help of BILLIONS of taxpayer dollars, over DECADES. It could not be "rebuilt" by any competitor, no matter how well financed, in anything less than another few decades - and even then, they most likely would not be able to legally acquire the same rights-of-way that were given to the telco when it was a monopoly.

You want to be a free-market capitalist? Fine, so do I. In a free market, you have to pay for value received. The telcos want a monopoly over their partially-taxpayer funded network? No problem. Let's calculate how much taxpayer support they've received over the past 100 years, bill them, with interest, and then they can be allowed to have exclusive control over their lines.

THAT'S free market. What the FCC has just done is corporate welfare - big companies sucking off of the public tit and pushing the smaller puppies away.

Re:Uh oh

[Pharmboy]

I have a small gas generator that is only 4400 watts, but that is enough to power the blower, etc for the gas heat (i have gas logs too, no electricity needed). since I have a well, instead of city water, I needed it for that too. I run it a few times a year and keep Stabil in the gas tank. I try to run the whole tank out every year, so the fuel is never more than a year old. Several times, I was the only one on the block with power, hot coffee, radio, tv, phone, and water. And food.