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The Courts Government The Internet News

SBC Hit with Antitrust Lawsuit 209

Posted by michael from the slings-and-arrows-of-outrageous-fortune dept.
mrtaco01 writes "Four Internet service providers have filed an antitrust suit against SBC Communications, alleging that the Baby Bell unfairly inflated wholesale prices for high-speed Internet access."
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SBC Hit with Antitrust Lawsuit More

SBC Hit with Antitrust Lawsuit

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  • How is this illegal? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mandalayx ( 674042 ) * on Friday July 25, 2003 @08:36AM (#6531299) Journal
    The suit, filed Thursday in the U.S. District Court for Central California, claims that the rate SBC charged the companies for digital subscriber line (DSL) service was too expensive for them to resell profitably. Linkline Communications, Inreach Internet, Om Networks and Red Shift Internet Services are seeking $40 million in damages and a discontinuation of alleged "price squeezing" from SBC, according to the court filing.

    Attorneys for the California ISPs say San Antonio-based SBC must discontinue its pricing system in order to give smaller companies a chance to compete for DSL subscribers.

    Looking at the way the article was written, I get the impression that some ISPs are suing SBC for providing a service which was hard to resell at a higher price.

    In other industries, this is known as not having a good business plan. I'm unaware of how this is illegal and wanting clarity on this issue..

    • Re:How is this illegal? (Score:5, Informative)

      by banzai51 ( 140396 ) on Friday July 25, 2003 @08:42AM (#6531359) Journal
      The problem is that SBC owns the lines going to your house. SBC also sells DSL access. So they open it up to everyone like they are legally supposed to, but then start jacking up the prices so all the other DSL businesses go under. This leaves SBC as the only DSL provider in your area. Prices and restrictions on users go up. Not good for the public that has to pay more money for less service. This type of behavior crowds out good ISPs like Speakeasy.

      • Re:How is this illegal? (Score:5, Informative)

        by jchawk ( 127686 ) on Friday July 25, 2003 @09:16AM (#6531616) Homepage Journal
        That and keep in mind that Bell was originally granted a monopoly on the phone system and it's building was subsidized by your tax dollars.

      • Re:How is this illegal? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by ekidder ( 121911 ) on Friday July 25, 2003 @09:19AM (#6531637) Homepage
        In many (most?) cases, SBC is reselling their lines at a loss, considering that they are still the ones that have to maintain the line. The states have a pretty strict control over how much SBC can charge for lines (being the ILEC and all) and most states have kept that at a low rate. (Illinois is about $16, I think). SBC would probably be happier with it if the ISPs were also paying to have the lines maintained.
        • That's complete bullsht. $29/month to DSL providers is far away from being a loss, and that is what they charge in -most- cases.
        • A DSL line is, by definition, also a plain old telephone line. Is it's maintenance fundamentally different than if it where just your average, everyday phone line? If not, then as long as someone has an SBC landline (ie. 95% of the population in SBC territory), then they already ARE paying for line maintenace.

          And the idea that SBC is selling DSL lines at a loss is dubious at best. The R&D to develop DSL was paid for in the late eighties / early nineties via special permission from congress to raise
          • as long as someone has an SBC landline (ie. 95% of the population in SBC territory), then they already ARE paying for line maintenace.

            IIRC, back when I was still comparing DSL providers I heard that one can't get DSL in SBC territory from anyone without having an SBC landline account. Even though I'd just as soon ditch my home number entirely I can't without SBC blocking the line. There's no technical reason for this to be so. Speakeasy does after all pay SBC's rent after I've paid Speakeasy.

          • I believe the real problem comes in with the Remote Terminals. These are beige boxes about the size of a standalone freezer (or a refrigerator on its side) with lots of doors. Sometimes, particularly in California, they're entirely buried underground, with only a small door and electrical junction box above ground.

            They contain a miniature Central Office, including SBC owned DSLAM equipment. SBC doesn't want to have to open up rack space inside the RTs to third party CLECs like Covad. And since the pote

        • Don't forget these are the same lines that carry your telephone communications. SBC is getting plenty of money to maintain them. They are most definately NOT selling them at a loss, but are slowly squeezing everyone else out.

    • Re:How is this illegal? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 25, 2003 @08:44AM (#6531373)
      This is also known as 'bait and switch'...

      What you aren't reading is that SBC conned all these ISPs into jumping on the DSL bandwagon, and signing up thousands of DSL subscribers...

      After they did all the leg work, SBC then lowered the price they offer the public. Hence making it too expensive for the ISPs to compete with SBC (since they still are paying the old rate, they actually pay MORE for 'wholesale' DSL access then SBC is selling to the public for)

      Part of the problem with DSL is that the OWNER of the copper last mile has all the advantage. Even though you may be buying DSL Internet from any one of a half dozen ISPs, they ALL rely on SBC to get that last mile. Hence, they have a monopoly.

      The courts allowed them have this monopoly, on the understanding that access was fairly given to competitors to 'resell' those facilities at a fair price.

      Droping your retail price below your wholesale price doesn't seem very fair, and since it was the FCC that mandated this (ie, they made it a law), that is why it is ilegal.
      • This isn't bait and switch... That is when you advertise one thing at a great deal, but then conveniently don't have any of that item in stock when the customers arrive. This was a common practice of Sun TV during the 90s.

        Sometimes I wonder why this 'Anonymous Coward' guy is still allowed to post, he is obviously an idiot, and he posts so much!
        • Ya, he missed on the name. Its called Predatory Pricing, and it tends to get companies in trouble. Especially when that company has a monopoly. Wrong name or not though, he has a point. If a company has a monopoly and then uses that position to drive out all competition by lowering prices below their cost, this is a bad thing, and illegal.

      • [quote]
        What you aren't reading is that SBC conned all these ISPs into jumping on the DSL bandwagon, and signing up thousands of DSL subscribers...

        After they did all the leg work, SBC then lowered the price they offer the public. Hence making it too expensive for the ISPs to compete with SBC (since they still are paying the old rate, they actually pay MORE for 'wholesale' DSL access then SBC is selling to the public for)
        [/quote]

        The bold part is the kicker. If SBC lowers the montly rate for ADSL serv
        • We are charged the "wholesale" rate of $39.99 per month per ADSL line. We are charged $125 per CPE (equipment shipped to customer). SBC charges its ADSL customers $25/month for service, with no equipment charges. How can we compete with that? Our "wholesale" rate is almost double what SBC customers are being charged! In order to break even we have to charge $60/month and have a two year service agreement to recover the cost of the CPE. There is no way this can be called "fair competition".

          Actually, we a

      • I would love it if the courts declare that SBC was barred from doing direct customer DSL sales.

    • Re:How is this illegal? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by panda ( 10044 ) on Friday July 25, 2003 @08:46AM (#6531387) Homepage Journal

      In other industries, this is known as not having a good business plan. I'm unaware of how this is illegal and wanting clarity on this issue..



      It's because ISPs and phone companies operate in a regulated market, and not a free market. Telcos are pretty much required (for the moment) to offer wholesale access to their lines to competitors at a rate that is fair because the telcos usually have a monopoly on the lines in a given geographical area. This was all spelled out in the Communications Reform Act of 1996 in the USA. It is up to the regulators and the courts to determine what is fair pricing, and these things are usually determined by lawsuits such as this.



    • Re:How is this illegal? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by mblase ( 200735 ) on Friday July 25, 2003 @08:58AM (#6531476)
      In other industries, this is known as not having a good business plan.

      Actually, in other industries, this is known as falling victim to a monopoly. That's why it's illegal.
    • It's also known as leveraging a monopoly to expand it.

      But since Microsoft effectively gets off scott free for doing this, SBC has probably decided they can probably get away with it too. Unfortunately, as noted elsewhere, SBC is in a regulated market, and Microsoft is not. This may be an interesting case to watch.

    • Re:How is this illegal? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by wulfhere ( 94308 ) <slashdot@huffELIOTmans.org minus poet> on Friday July 25, 2003 @09:20AM (#6531645)
      I work at an ISP that resells SBC DSL. The problem is, we are paying $34.95 for each DSL line to a customer. SBC is turning around and selling DSL for $29.95.

      As if this weren't bad enough, we have documented cases (but not enough money for a lawyer, yet...) of our customers being contacted to switch a week after they turn up with us. You see, we have to enter customer info into SBC's database to place the order.

      And speaking of SBC's database, did you know that it returns different copper distances for SBC vs. the ISP? We have had customers whose loop was not qualified for service be contacted by SBC a couple weeks later and be able to get service.

      All the telco's abuse their power, but SBC is one of the worst.
    • The original suit made the bells not able to play on a level field. It pretty much forced the bells into giving away their stuff to anyone that wanted to compete in their market..

      Floor space in their buildings, lines, etc...

      So technically in this case, they may have a argument, legally.

      Personally I think its a bunch of garbage, as was the initial breakup in the first place.
    • Same thing with Covad and their resellers. I work for a little ISP out in the middle of no wheres california. We tried reselling covad DSL but the pricing for US was 30 dollars more a line then what Covad themselves were offering the lines. What goes through customer minds... "Why should I pay you 100 a month when it only costs me 70 a month directly with covad?" The other big issue is when you resell for covad, YOU are responsible for tech support, they will not talk to end customers only to the resell

  • Finally... (Score:1, Interesting)

    by kmak ( 692406 )
    Maybe now we can get lower price broadband... 50$ a month is still a bit high, especially after all these years..

  • Less Time For Other Suits (Score:5, Informative)

    by ThatDamnMurphyGuy ( 109869 ) on Friday July 25, 2003 @08:38AM (#6531319) Homepage
    Good. This will mean they should have less time for suing people using frames in websites [museumtour.com], erm, I mean "Structured Document Viewer".

  • It's all moot anyway (Score:4, Funny)

    by TerryAtWork ( 598364 ) <research@aceretail.com> on Friday July 25, 2003 @08:40AM (#6531329)
    We're moving to high speed wireless and ISPs will go away.

    Almost.

    • High speed wireless and voice-over-IP will eventually make the Telco's obsolete as well. It's not the near future, but technology will eventually make it possible for a communications web to exist in a 100% peer-to-peer network. There will be a need for companies to link across large expanses of ocean, but the government will take over that job (IMHO).

  • This will lead to lower broadband pricing? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MtViewGuy ( 197597 ) on Friday July 25, 2003 @08:41AM (#6531343)
    I think this case could have a big precedent if the plantiffs win.

    It could mean that your installed DSL line could have several different choices of ISP's instead of just the ISP officially supported by the telephone company, which will lead to price competition and eventually monthly pricing more akin to dial-up pricing (e.g., US$20 to US$22 per month unlimited access).
    • It could mean that your installed DSL line could have several different choices of ISP's instead of just the ISP officially supported by the telephone company, which will lead to price competition and eventually monthly pricing more akin to dial-up pricing (e.g., US$20 to US$22 per month unlimited access).

      I don't know about SBC's area, but for anyone else stuck in Qwest's area (I feel for you, really) you can already pick from multiple ISPs. Qwest has their ISP list [qwest.com] so you can see who's available. I have unlimited 640k/256k access for $19.95 a month from these guys [ultrasw.net].

      • Now if they would only do something like this for cable. I'm stuck with mediacom here, the download is allright but the upstream is essentially nonexistant and latancy blows either way. I've looked into DSL, but can only get an SDSL here that's twice the price and half the bandwidth. Well the upstream is still better.
    • no it won't. They are going to claim that the service costs that much. A typical DSL connection is 768k (which is a little over half of a T1).

      They share the T1 between many connections at the DSLAM (usually a rack, but I have been told that they like to sometimes share two racks per T1).

      So, the DSL line prices are going to either remain the same, or go down only when they share more DSL lines between T1 (thus effectively cutting your possible bandwith down -- depending on the other DSL users on your rac
    • It could mean that your installed DSL line could have several different choices of ISP's instead of just the ISP officially supported by the telephone company

      First of all, this is already the case. In my last apartment, I had dsl, and when I was shopping around, I must've browsed through twenty different ISP's. I originally tried to go with Speakeasy [speakeasy.net], which was just getting rolling, but as they didn't have a Chicago POP at the time, and I'm in Michigan... It caused a few problems having my gateway in Se

    • It could mean that your installed DSL line could have several different choices of ISP's instead of just the ISP officially supported by the telephone company, which will lead to price competition and eventually monthly pricing more akin to dial-up pricing (e.g., US$20 to US$22 per month unlimited access).

      This is already how it is.

      The telco's resell DSL lines wholesale to ISPs who then provide the retail service for the customer. The problem is the cost structure is still high for providing the DSL ac

      • Actualy from somebody that lives within SBC land SBC charges less for the first year than they charge another telco to resell the line. When you can get a 29.99 line from the telco or a 50 from an ISP there isn't any real compotition.

    • Re:This will lead to lower broadband pricing? (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Would you folks stop calling it a DSL Line?

      Examples of proper use: I have DSL; They want a Digital Subscriber Line; etc.

      While you're at it can you cut out calling ATMs "ATM Machines" and PINs "PIN Numbers"?

      Thank you,
      Drive Through

  • Only SBC? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Is this not to say that other independent ISP's shouldn't follow suit and file against Verizon who does the very same thing? I ended up paying over $80/mo. just because of Verizon's ability to "make the line DSL ready" at $42.00 a month. What a joke!

  • Competition (Score:5, Informative)

    by marekk ( 572361 ) on Friday July 25, 2003 @08:42AM (#6531358)
    I for one would love to see more 3rd party DSL operators/licensees in my area. A year ago, with SBC the only DSL company in town, the price was $49.95/mo.

    Just two months ago, with the addition of the first 3rd party DSL provider, SBC dropped their price to $29.95/mo (which I was able to sign up for).

    Granted, this wasn't due solely to the entrance of this 3rd party, but also high competition between Time Warner, the local cable modem supplier. The dramatic decrease in the pricing though just goes to show how good competition is for the consumer.

  • I'm happy with it. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Creepy Crawler ( 680178 ) on Friday July 25, 2003 @08:43AM (#6531361)
    We lived about 15000 ft from the CO, and we wanted DSL. We called them, and instead of saying "GFY", they said they'd look into it and call back.

    One day later, they said we could get it. Turns out, we were the first, i repeat, FIRST in that whole area for DSL. They installed a DSLAM and got rid of 2 load coils on the lines. All that for a piddly 30$ a month for a 1 year contract.

    I'm usually against inflation praticies, but the cost has to come from somewhere if they're going to solve the last mile problem.

    Yes, I live 8 miles away from the local city, and there's a CO near there serving OC-3 to local companies.

  • This is crap (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Sumbody ( 686160 ) on Friday July 25, 2003 @08:44AM (#6531370)

    I live in Chicago, prime SBC territory where SBC (nee Ameritech) is fighting for higher wholesale prices for all resellers of their connectivity and dialtone, claiming they (SBC) can't compete. My home is served by an ISP out of Seattle, who finds it profitable enough to offer me great prices on a twice-resold DSL (SBC ==> Covad ==> Speakeasy.net) and a 1-year contract almost up. These other ISPs are crybabies, or trying to enter SBC markets too late to compete. Fire their MBAs and hire some that have a better penchant for marketing and planning.

  • SBC in Illinois... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by BJZQ8 ( 644168 ) on Friday July 25, 2003 @08:44AM (#6531375) Homepage Journal
    SBC/Ameritech in Illinois recently was granted a huge rate increase by the State. This is on rates charged to other phone companies for their lines. Strangely enough they DID shortly thereafter announce new DSL service to some relatively rural areas...but then again, we have not gotten any closer to real competition yet.

    • ...but then again, we have not gotten any closer to real competition yet.

      ...which is probably due to people not being able to acquire capital to enter an already comoditized market. Unless someone can bring something new to the table that either (a) dramatically increases the value of the service to the customer or (b) dramatically reduces the cost of providing the service, there's not much of a compelling reason to enter into a market with razor-thin margins.

      • The same thing could be said of electrical power, and water, and gas and sewer systems. I realize that most of these were (and sometimes are) public ulilities, but many of them are privately owned and operated and operate with decent profits. I also fully realize that lots of the rural electrical service is provided by a descendant of the Roosevelt-era Rural Electrification Agency, and that many have no water or sewer service. But I'm talking towns of 5,000-20,000 people and not three hicks, a lean-to, a
  • I have to side with SBC on this one. As a former telcom employee, DSL prices were offered a cost to compete with cable. The recent price drops are due to reduced equipment costs.

    I find it amazing that the wholesale rate on a T1 line is $50 a month! Customers still pay what $300-500? It's probably cheeper for some companies to set up shop as a CLEC just to buy resold lines for their business.

    Competition is a good thing, but some of the regulations are a joke.

    • Re:Do you know what wholesale rates are? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by wawannem ( 591061 ) on Friday July 25, 2003 @09:42AM (#6531891) Homepage
      Well, you shouldn't have mentioned that you are a former telcom employee. You lost a lot of credibility with that statement.

      First off, I want to clear up a few things about equipment costs that telcoms hide behind. They use this as their way to jack up the rates, because after salary and wage expenses, they really don't have much reason to charge a monthly fee to their customers, so they claim to be constantly upgrading their equipment. The telcoms are sneaky though, equipment works its way from the largest areas down to the rural areas so that they are re-using the same equipment where it is needed, and everyone gets an upgrade. Sounds good right!?
      WRONG

      The trick is how it goes from one CO to another. Each CO liquidates its old equipment to a holding company for pennies on the dollar. The holding company is usually a seperate entity whose main stakeholders are executives at the telco. The holding company then offers the equipment back to the next CO for its *original* price!!! Think of how much money is generated when just one upgrade works its way through the COs in an area. The telco has had to re-purchase the same equipment over and over again, so then they go to the local PUCO (public utilities commission) and ask if they can raise the price since the upgrade cost so much. When they get it approved it is a double win for them, they are getting more from their residual monthly fee, and they have made an ass-load of cash from their holding company entity.

      For Public Utilities, it is all about how to work funny-money through the system, they don't have to worry about pleasing the customer since their is no competition. If you really think that your local telco is out to please/help you, then I have a bridge in Brooklyn I'll sell ya ;).

  • NYTimes Coverage (Score:2, Informative)

    by AltismoMaster ( 569463 )
    New York Times has coverage as well (free reg. bla bla)

    http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/25/technology/25DSL .html [nytimes.com]

    More articles:
    http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/ch ronicle/archive/2003/07/25/BU143220.DTL&type=busin ess [sfgate.com]
    From which quotes: "... SBC's monthly wholesale fees were between $32.50 and $39 per subscriber. At that price, he said, his clients were unable to compete against SBC when the additional cost of Internet service and modems is factored in."

    http://www.bayarea.c [bayarea.com]

  • Value Added Services, not just re-selling (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Cade144 ( 553696 ) on Friday July 25, 2003 @08:53AM (#6531439) Homepage

    For smaller ISPs to flourish they need to offer something the Big Boys (ie SBC & co) do not, perhaps better customer support, or some sort of Value Added Service. Competing on price alone will get you nowhere

    ILECs (Incumbent Local Exchange Carriers) own the 'Last Mile' and other giants (Verio, Level3, etc) own the upstream pipes. Between paying for the upstream access and the co-location costs at the Central Office, I don't see how anyone even expected to compete with SBC and other ILECs in the DSL business.

    SBC does not even make a profit on DSL, they just hope that over the long run they don't have to upgrade any more of their plant, and can continue to sell the same (slow) DSL service for $50 a month. Recurring revenue will let them break even in the long run.

    Small ISPs should charge more, and offer more at the same time. Upstream firewall service, or anonymous file swapping, or extra good spam filtering or some sort of extra content available only to subscribers.

    More is more. Smart consumers will pay more for expanded and better service.

    • For smaller ISPs to flourish they need to offer something the Big Boys (ie SBC & co) do not, perhaps better customer support, or some sort of Value Added Service.

      As a geek, I'd have to vote for Speakeasy [speakeasy.net] on this one. I wish I could've gone with their service when I had dsl at my last apartment, but they had to set me up with a gateway in Seattle. (I live in Michigan - minimum pings to anything about 150) They offer the largest spectrum of bandwidth options I've seen from an ISP, they're Linux-friend

  • Telecommunications Act of 1996 (Score:5, Interesting)

    by b1t r0t ( 216468 ) on Friday July 25, 2003 @09:00AM (#6531495)
    I worked as a contractor at SBC for a short time a couple of years ago, and at one point they had some sort of explanatory session about the Act, and what certain non-compete rules meant for sharing information between different divisions of SBC. The one thing that I found interesting about this was that their requirement to share DSL lines with CLECs was not due to TAo96. It was actually a condition of the Ameritech merger that allowed them to sell long distance service in that area.

    That having been said, from the viewpoint of a customer getting DSL from a 3rd party ISP back then, I wasn't too impressed with this, primarily because it caused the formation of ASI (which I think stands for "Advanced Systems Inc.") ASI was the ILEC holding company formed to handle the DSL circuits themselves, and its creation caused a severe increase in the delay of DSL installation, and these delays went on for at least a year.

    The second issue I was aware of back then was exactly what these ISPs are complaining about. At some point SBC decided that the resale price for a DSL line to ISPs would be (surprise!) exactly the same as what they charged individual customers for basic DSL (with ISP) service at the same speed.

    My ISP wasn't too happy about this, but they really died because they got "hosed" after they were bought out by a CLEC. Another ISP in the area, TexasNet, wasn't too happy about it either, but didn't get rid of DSL until SBC decided that it would remove one mode of billing, I think the one that let SBC pass the charges through to the ISP (the other being having the charges go onto the customer's phone bill).

    These days I get my DSL through SBC, fast and reliable but expensive (6Mbit), thanks to being near a Remote Terminal. I depend on them for nothing but a pipe, and have made a point of ignoring their stupid SBC/Yahoo nonsense. In fact, the only ISP service I can't and don't do myself is NNTP.

  • This is nothing new (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Telephone companies have for years now stifled competition by offering ISP competitors inflated T-1 and fiber optic prices, allowing them to undercut dial-up and DSL prices when selling to the consumers.

    What's more, even when the telephone companies aren't competing with direct DSL or dial-up competitors, they still manage to stifle competition by disallowing access to their telephone poles which could be useful to wireless ISPs, despite the recent US Supreme Court ruling on this matter.

    This is nothing ne

  • Antitrust will be the main avenue to competition (Score:5, Insightful)

    by isdnip ( 49656 ) on Friday July 25, 2003 @09:02AM (#6531515)
    SBC and the other incumbent telephone companies grew up with protected monopolies. They grumbled when the FCC's Carterfone ruling in 1969 forced them to allow "foreign" attachments of customer-owned equipment like telephone sets, PBXs, answering machines and modems. (Before that, you could only rent equipment from them. A 300-baud modem was $25/month.) They grumbled when long distance competition was authorized.

    They would have grumbled when local telephone service competition was authorized in 1996, but they got, in return, permission to offer long distance service and "advanced" services such as Internet. So having gotten much in return, they're trying to weasel out of their half of the bargain. Powell's FCC has rolled back competition. They're making it next to impossible for CLECs to lease the high-frequency part of copper that's needed to offer consumer DSL service, and even cutting off some access to plain old full-price copper wire. So the CLECs like Covad won't be able to offer the ISPs a substitute for ILEC (SBC, VZ, etc.) DSL. Game! Powell also has a pending proposal that removes common carrier status from ILEC DSL, which is what this case is about -- SBC won't be required by federal regulation to offer raw DSL bit-pipe service to competitors of its Prodigy ISP service. Set! And even dial-up is coming under increased attack; many dial-up ISPs are becoming reclassified as toll calls, as the ILECs try to worm in a back-door "modem tax". It's happening -- I'm involved in some of these cases. Match!

    So the independent ISPs are being squeezed hard. Under the old pre-1996 regulations, the ILECs were not subject to much antitrust review, because regulation controlled them. Now, they're being unshackled, but they still have their inherited monopolies on essential facilities -- that's a term of art in the antitrust business. They're blatantly using these monopolies (the copper loop) to leverage sales of what should be fully-competitive businesses (ISPs like Prodigy and VZ Online). That is certainly a red flag in antitrust.

    Since the regulators (FCC) have stepped aside, relief will have to happen in the courts. A number of cases are pending now; this one looks to be particularly important. Its fate will help determine if the American public will have free access to the Internet, or whether we'll be stuck behind a corporate-administered Great Firewall of Bell, paying top dollar for limited choice.

    And with an Internet in monopoly hands, the FCC's excuse for broadcast ownership deregulation (extreme concentration of ownership of the media) is proven a lie. But Powell hopes we don't notice.
    • 1969? Then the ruling wasn't being enforced that well. I caught an episode of "Kolchak the Night Stalker" on Sci-Fi a month ago, and it was made in 1975. Kolchak called in a bogus repair service call to MaBell to pick the brain of one of the line techs for some reason. The tech figured out that it was a bogus service call and then threatened to turn in the office for having illegal telephones on the premise. Kolchak then was yelled at by his boss because the boss did not want the contraband telephones
      • To clarify...

        Carterfone allowed "foreign attachments" but only using a "protective coupler", which was an extra-rent box from The Phone Company. So you still couldn't plug in your own phones directly and be legal (though of course many of us did so anyway). Around 1977, the FCC introduced Registration, which did away with the protective coupler requirement, provided that the equipment was either
        a) Registered with the FCC, having passed tests (this is what everything does now); or
        b) Grandfathered -- if it
        • Thanks for clarifying this. I cannot believe I lived my childhood through such a stupid period. Renting telephones from MaBell... Looking upon that whole set-up from a 21st Century perspective sure makes it look ridiculous. Then again, I rent my cable box so I guess I shouldn't be throwing any stones! :)
  • They have an (extremely sketchy) agreement with my apartment complex under which they are the only available phone service. This locks me out of both cheaper digital phone service from the local cable company, and also a neat little promotion where I would have been getting a substantial discount for ordering multiple services. I'm talking to managment, but no headway yet.

    SBC DSL is also a ripoff--I wanted to get Speakeasy, but SBC won't share their lines. Hence, my cable modem will be delivered today o
    • If you don't want to support SBC at all, then make sure your cell phone (why can't we call them "mobile phones" like the British since PCS is not cellular?) is not through Cingular. SBC owns the majority of Cingular stock... Use AT&T Wireless until they merge with Cingular if that ever happens...

  • article text (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Four Internet service providers have filed an antitrust suit against SBC Communications, alleging that the Baby Bell unfairly inflated wholesale prices for high-speed Internet access. The suit, filed Thursday in the U.S. District Court for Central California, claims that the rate SBC charged the companies for digital subscriber line (DSL) service was too expensive for them to resell profitably. Linkline Communications, Inreach Internet, Om Networks and Red Shift Internet Services are seeking $40 million in

  • I hope God roasts their stomachs in HELL! (Score:3, Funny)

    by pair-a-noyd ( 594371 ) on Friday July 25, 2003 @09:09AM (#6531563)
    SBC and their cronies screwed me for several years on DSL service, adding false charges, adding multiple accounts, EXTREME over charging, piss-poor service, etc..

    Getting ass raped with sand, broken glass and a telephone pole would have been a more pleasent experiance than doing business with SBC.

    I hope that they are utterly destroyed, that everyone that works there commits suicide and that their rotting corpses are dragged through the streets behind SBC service trucks..

    SBC raped me over and over and over and they deserve every bad thing on the planet raining down upon their heads, a thousand times over what they did to me and may they all spend eternity in HELL with SATAN ass raping them with a 300hp chainsaw...

  • SBC at it for a while.... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by bluesangria ( 140909 ) on Friday July 25, 2003 @09:09AM (#6531564)
    Notice those links at the bottom of the article?

    Endless summer of DSL discounts [com.com] July 7, 2003

    FCC loosens broadband rules [com.com] February 20, 2003

    SBC unfair on high-speed Net, ISPs charge [com.com] July 26, 2001

    ISPs fight for more than DSL scraps [com.com] June 26, 2001

    ISPs allege Bell abuse in high-speed services [com.com] October 27, 1999

    Seems like ISP's have been fighting SBC's anti-competitive practices for years. IMHO, the biggest mistake the FCC made was in allowing the Bells to compete as ISP's. They should be barred from being ISP's so that the motivation for them to compete with their own customers (independent ISPs) is removed.

    blue

  • Look, it's very simple (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Rogerborg ( 306625 ) on Friday July 25, 2003 @09:23AM (#6531661) Homepage

    If you want genuine competition among suppliers of a service, you can't have one of the suppliers running the infrastructure that the service is supplied over. Public infrastructure should be owned by and run for the benefit of the public, not for the profit of one particular user of it.

    Welcome to the Illinois State Toll Highway Authority, Now A Wholly Owned Subsiduary of Ford Motor Co. Inc. $2 Surcharge Per Axle for Non Ford Vehicles.

    Would we tolerate that? Well, the Bell network is little different, it's just less blatant.

    • Its almost like common sense, only its not very common.

      As simple as these things may seem to us they are not so simple to someone who lives their life not caring about how any of these things gets handled, or even worse, caring about making money or helping corporations make money at any cost.

      When you put a mob of people in charge of something like the FCC, FBI, CIA, etc. When things get all fucked up who do they blame? Noone. Or certainly not themselves. The public's solution? Create another departm

  • Happening to me now (Score:3, Interesting)

    by El Volio ( 40489 ) on Friday July 25, 2003 @09:25AM (#6531683) Homepage

    I'm moving into SBC territory next month, and the same situation exists here in Texas. Essentially, if I want to use another ISP, I have to pay that ISP a monthly fee and a separate line charge to SBC. But if I sign up with SBC, the combined line/ISP charge is the same as the line charge to go with someone else. So I can spend $30-$60 on the line charge and another $20-$40 to stay with my ISP, or just that $30-$60 to use their ISP. As much as I like my current provider, the financial incentive to switch is too great. But that still smacks of predatory pricing on the part of a monopoly.

    SBC's not the only one that does this, of course. I work for another RBOC (though not in the telco or ISP areas) that does virtually the same thing. Evidently either my understanding of deregulation is flawed (the data services (DSL) unit must charge all ISPs the same, including their own) or the RBOC ISPs are really netting $0 after the line charges. Somehow I don't believe it's the latter.

    • I live in an area that was served by a "mini" CO that was connected by fiber to the real CO (NOC). After about 6 months of phone calls, SBC finally put in a remote DSLAM and got my neighborhood up and running with DSL. Quite frankly, I was shocked at how quickly that happened (note: we were part of Project Pronto way back when....the $6 bil project to roll out DSL. I think its since been cancelled but not sure)

      Since then, the prices have dropped a bit and now I get 1.5 down and 256k up -- for $49.95/m
  • How about the ISPs registering as a CLAC so they
    can have access to the poles and run thier own
    copper cable? Or maybe sell WiFi wireless access?
    Good luck, I hope they kick SBC's ass!

  • Cable Companies Are Worse (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 25, 2003 @09:30AM (#6531746)
    I work for an ISP. We provide dialup, webhosting, colocation and things along with wireless DSL.

    SBC isn't as big of a problem as is RoadRunner. Giving all these things away free (i.e. installation) and undercutting us (and other ISPs in town). They've got thier own network that we can't buy into. They're also classified as a different type of "communications" company (with the cable t.v. aspect) and therefore don't have the same heap of taxes, regulations, and codes to follow.

    Now, it's one thing to be able to offer your services for less than your competition, if you can do it, well, you've got the better business model. However, Time Warner can't seem to do it either, as they are writing off about 14 BILLION dollars in losses each year.

    I'm not even going to get into the other uncouth things they do (as in sabotaging our wireless networks, etc).

    bastards.

    (phaeton sez)

  • SBC (Score:2)

    by smoondog ( 85133 )
    I'm really suspicious of SBC. Here in California they air feel good commercials that basically tell us all how good they are, and how bad everyone else is. I have a hard time trusting companies that do that, it usually means that people have a reason not to like them. Also they have ads trying to tell us that they are the oldest company, and therefore the best ("looking back, moving forward. S-B-C"). My understanding is that they have just been sucking up baby bells since the decision that allowed them
    • SBC was once Southwestern Bell. They are trying to put MaBell back together. California used to be under Pacific Bell, but their management sold out. Like all the other BabyBells, they failed to grasp the importance of ISDN and botched offering that service to consumers. (my Atari 1040ST had ISDN capabilities supported in the OS back in 1986 but PacBell didn't start offering service until 1994/95 and it was too expensive). PacBell also botched another of their strategies. In the cellular market, they
  • Someone should take them to court for failure to properly operate backhoes. I can't count the number of times they've cut major connectivity lines when they were trying to dig them up. On one day, they cut both of our upstream providers' pipes within an hour of each other. One was cut north of us and one was cut to the south.

    Talk about denial of service.

  • Lines need new ownership (Score:3, Insightful)

    by peterdaly ( 123554 ) <petedaly@ix[ ]tcom.com ['.ne' in gap]> on Friday July 25, 2003 @10:07AM (#6532132)
    I can't see this happening, but here's the way I think this should work:

    The phone company should be forced to "sell off"/"split off" a company that owns and maintains the poles and or last mile. This new company should continue to be government regulated, and maybe even get public funds. Forcing it to run as a non-profit run for the public good may not be a bad idea.

    All companies that want, including the current incumbant, should have to purchase or lease access from this new company to provide copper based services.

    This is what the mid 90's telecom act tried to create, but the "line owner" was virtual, and part of the largest service provider. The obvious conflict of interest caused problem. The solution? Eliminate the conflict, by making them two companies.

    To take this a little further, I purchase my water from the town I live in. Why can't the copper last mile infrastructure be like that?

    I know this is never going to happen, but that's my utopian vision.

    -Pete
  • I see this as a welcome development, especially seeing the SBC company is rapidly growing into a huge communications monopoly right before our eyes and until now nobody has raised questions. For those who don't know, SBC has controlling ownership of Cingular Wireless [cingular.com] and are already bundling residential phone service with wireless, and as if that's not enough, they are now jumping into the satellite TV market as well [chron.com]. The plan is to have people buy their home phone, cell phone, high speed Internet and satel
  • I'm still getting automated emails 3 years later from Earthlink telling me that they're very sorry but DSL is STILL not available in my area. I checked with them first. Then I checked with PacBell, signed up with them straight off.

    I've been very happy with their service so far. Very rarely is there any outage.

    However, they have jacked up the price from $30/mo to $50/mo. However, a local DSL provider who did offer me service a few years back was charging $100/mo. On the pretense that they offered "pre
  • A Correction:

    The "Om Networks" in the artticle should read "Om Technologies" (known as Omsoft [omsoft.com]) like the rest of the world has it [google.com]. Since I'm one of their customers, this case made my day :)

  • SBC in Nevada (Score:4, Informative)

    by Tiresias_Mons ( 247567 ) on Friday July 25, 2003 @01:14PM (#6533965)
    SBC recently sponsored a bill in the Nevada Congress which made it legal for them to do this within the state. SB 400 (I think is the number) was sponsored by SBC and is an attempt to make it legal for SBC to charge whatever they want when dealing with 3rd party ISPs. I was in the car with a few colleagues Wednesday and one of them got a call from some of his clients who went through a 3rd party DSL service to say that their entire internet connection had been shut down because SBC cut the connection to the ISP.

    Its not only monopolistic pricing, they are now, at least in Nevada (and I think I heard that Indiana or Illinois had a similar measure passed) absolved from even offering the lines to 3rd parties. We're trying to start a grassroots counter-attack in the Reno area, but its going to be a long fight for certain.
  • If SBC is a baby, then I'm a embryo.

    The so-called baby-bells are babies no more. FCC De-regulation has lead to reconstitution of regional "Ma Bell" style control of telecom.

    I nominate that the baby-bells now be referred to as ...

    FRANKEN-Bells.

    They are pieces cobbled together from other entities. The name, (and it's ominous undertones) is much more fitting.

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