Posted on 10/07/2002 7:31:07 PM PDT by HAL9000
SAN FRANCISCO (CBS.MW) - SBC Communications' President William Daley said Monday that unless regulators and legislators ease up on monopoly rules that are hurting the telecom industry, the collapse of the largest telecom companies could grow worse."The industry is in a meltdown," Daley said Monday in an address at the Commonwealth Club of California in San Francisco. "And it's just a brushfire compared to the wildfire that could be on the way."
According to Daley, about 500,000 telecom-industry jobs have been lost and $2 trillion in market capital has evaporated in the last 18 months.
Daley, a former Secretary of Commerce in the Clinton Administration and chairman of Al Gore's 2000 presidential campaign, said that the unintended results of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which was intended to open up local and long-distance phone service to competition, have created a business situation whereby regional Bell carriers such as SBC are forced to open their network lines to smaller and larger competitors, and, in effect, operate those lines at a loss.
Daley reiterated what the cost of telecom regulations and a general spending slowdown in sector spending has done to SBC. Less than two weeks ago the company said it would lay off another 11,000 employees on top of the 10,000 jobs it had already cut by August, and it slashed it capital spending for 2003 to between $5 billion and $6 billion from the $8 billion it budgeted for 2002. Daley said that in 2001, SBC spent about $11 billion on capital expenditures.
"The business model does not work," Daley said. "It costs us $27 to make a line available, but competitors are paying about $15 to lease lines from us. So we lose fifty percent and more of the revenue that phone line used to generate for us, but we keep 100 percent of the cost associated with providing that service. They only have to invest in salespeople. The result is threatening the stability of the market."
Meanwhile, Daley said the Bell carriers are forced to jump through regulatory hoops of fire in order to get the green light to offer long-distance service, even in states where they have been providing local service for years.
SBC currently offers local phone service in 13 states and long-distance service in 7 states. "If we could get more into long-distance, it would give us a little more even playing field," Daley said.
Daley said that the economics of the telecom marketplace have changed dramatically since the Telecom Act of 1996 went into effect, but that regulations have not evolved to accommodate current business situations.
"We knew we'd lose (some customers), but we didn't think we'd lose with this scheme. It's not a true form of competition," Daley said.
Additionally, Daley said industry regulations and a weak telecom market have caused a trickle-down effect that is resulting in slower rollouts of DSL broadband service, and is hampering the development of new technologies.
"Broadband is dominated by cable companies, which are unregulated monopolies," Daley said. "Only phone company-provided DSL is regulated, and pervasively so. These regulations raise our costs by hundreds of millions of dollars. Most new technologies in telecom are created by someone else and these guys, the Lucent's, the Nortel's, are dying."
And Daley's stock options are going underwater.
Daley, a former Secretary of Commerce in the Clinton Administration and chairman of Al Gore's 2000 presidential campaign, said that the unintended results of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which was intended to open up local and long-distance phone service to competition, have created a business situation whereby regional Bell carriers such as SBC are forced to open their network lines to smaller and larger competitors, and, in effect, operate those lines at a loss.
The solution is obvious - structural separation of the Baby Bells. Split SBC into wholesale and retail units. The SBC wholesale monopoly can profitably sell access to all of the retailers, including SBC retail, at the same price. That arrangement will simplify the determination of wholesale pricing and rate of return.
SBC should also unwind their investments in Mexico, Africa, etc. and reinvest that money in the areas of the US that are their primary responsibility.
SBC can also earn money by competing for local service against the other members of the Baby Bell cartel (Verizon, Bellsouth, etc.)
Finally, SBC should dump Daley and Whitacre, and get some executives who understand the principles of competition.
I suppose gave Repubs nice possibility to spend all these soft money on areally effective attack issue ads.
This is the truth..what's wrong with it?
Telecoms are like the "richest 1%". They make a great scapegoat.
When you lie down with Democrats, you wake up with regulations.
SBC has legions of MBAs, PhDs, economists, and other assorted eggheads and bureaucrats. But it is ultimately controlled by Democratic politicians and unions.
I did watch the FCC's en banc meeting on the economics of the telecom industry today. Most of the distinguished participants said that the best way to attract investment capital to the telecom sector is intermodal and intramodal competition.
According to Daley, about 500,000 telecom-industry jobs have been lost and $2 trillion in market capital has evaporated in the last 18 months.
Now you'll ask how do I know this? Well, I know someone in the Co-Location Distribution end of SBC in Nevada. She and I have had many discussions about this subject. (I cannot bring actual prices into this discussion) If our government wanted to keep the cost down they would go back to the old Ma Bell system, but there was too much money to be made by independant companies who could further the telecommunication growth faster than Ma Bell had the funds for, so the "Break-up" occurred.
Imagine owning a "telephone company" when you don't own the poles, the switching equipment or even the telephone cables that provide your communication system capabilities. All you have is a bunch of sales personel who sell your contract with the major company to your local folks at a very profitable cost to you.
Was this beneficial to America and the world? Yes, I think it was, but was there a price to be paid that we didn't see? Yes, I think there was. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 opened the central offices to smaller independant companies where space and facilities would be sold. New central switching office equipment was bought by all the major companies to allow this. During the rapid growth of Nortel, Lucent and the others billions of dollars were made by all. Now that the economy isn't going so strongly, just maybe Clinton's plan is backfiring, nationwide and worldwide layoffs are occurring. There has been major belt tightening at all of the telecommunication companies. Restrictions on education of new technical systems, travel and lodging, restrictions on who can carry company cellphones, who actually needs a pager, etc. are happening with all the big companies.
The major question now is, "Why are the major companies required by the SEC to continue to sell space and facilities to independant telephone companies at below cost prices. My guess is that Congress won't even touch this subject until after the elections and they are all firmly seated once again. Whether the long wait damages America further is a question that should be brought up to our legislators.
are required by the SEC to sell space and facilities inside the central switching offices to independant telephone companies at below cost prices.
Having said that, and mindful that even Daley can't do that much damage in less than two years, I hope he ends up broke and discredited, because he is scum.
Because the Republicans won't fight hard enough to stop them. I've been watching Bush maintain the open border policy that Clinton rigged up to bring us down to a third world country. If we want changes, why do we keep voting in incumbants???
Essentially, the break-up of the Bell System was in the works since 1913. It wasn't that MaBell didn't have the money for growth it was the regs placed upon her by consent decrees. Indeed, Ma Bell had very, very deep pockets, but if you go back to 1956, a consent decree between the gov and AT&T prevented Ma and her various companies [i.e., WesternElectric] from competing in any other industry, or technology than telephones. For instance; a telephone switch is nothing more than a computer, but Bell was prevented by law from selling computers.
So the "Break-Up" occured not becaue Bell couldn't grow fast enough, but because MaBell had so much money, other people wanted a piece of the pie.
After divestiture in 1984, the laws further constrained AT&T from competing and forcing them to sell access to their lines to competing companies with rates dictated by government.
Now the 96 law was intended to open up local service to competition since the RBOCs have a monopoly on the last mile of lines. They wanted to get into long distance to compete with AT&T, which is easier since they can interconnect their local offices with each other rather cheaply and without having to use AT&T or other lines for the interconnect. On the otherhand they were still overcharging AT&T for access to local lines. In essence, they wanted to have their cake and eat it too.
Personnally I like the idea of spliting the RBOCS into two seperate entities. A retail and wholesale unit if you will.
The "cost" is opportunity cost. The RBOCs are complaining that the wholesale price set by the regulators is lower than the retail price. They want to charge retail prices for wholesale service.
The Telecommunications Act of 1996 established the "total element long-run incremental cost" pricing model, also known as "TELRIC". The US Supreme Court upheld the TELRIC model in their Verizon Communications v. FCC decision on May 13, 2002.
Since the ILECs are a monopoly common carrier utility, I think ILECs should charge the the same rate for wholesale service to both the ILEC and CLEC retail units.
Imagine owning a "telephone company" when you don't own the poles, the switching equipment or even the telephone cables that provide your communication system capabilities.
Imagine owning a business with quasi-governmental powers of eminent domain, and running your cables and poles through through private property without paying rent to the property owner.
I don't want to charge the ILEC rent for their buried cables in my yard, but I do want them to sell wholesale access to those lines. That's a fair deal for everyone. The ILEC gets to use my property rent-free, the CLEC pays the ILEC a wholesale rate for access to that line, and I get a choice of which retail telephone service to use.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.