Posted on 05/23/2002 10:00:23 AM PDT by Alan Chapman
Government has ruined virtually everything it has meddled in and now come the politicians to save us from the mess they created in the first place.
Supply-and-demand economics just doesn't stand a chance in the good ol' U.S(ocialist).S.A. anymore.
Sen Hollings is a moron. I work for a certain Bell company in Louisiana. We of course offer DSL over our phone networks. We can get DSL just anywhere if we wanted to get it anywhere. It's just a simple matter of inserting into the POTS loop a DSLAM or a miniRAM. Not to mention they have developed a DSLAM that can give DSL to people 11 miles out.
The key here is cost. To install this equipment costs a good bit of money not to mention the tax that the Feds put on our equipment and the area that they tax on our internet availability. So you have a DSLAM which requires 2 T1s to operate at full capacity chock full of channel units that cost about 150-200$ a pop not to mention the money it costs to install and maintain.
So Bell will put these places only where they can be guaranteed a return within so many months of initial use. So the places where only half a dozen or so people would use it would never see it. While the place where 1.5-2 dozen people want it may see it if BellSouth sees potential growth.
Holling doesn't understand the nature of Telco's. They install and spend thousands of dollars to give service under the assumption that they'll make it back eventually. When you introduce competition you make profitability more elusive and force fewer expenditures in additional plant.
Back when there was a phone monopoly Bell could just pour money down the drain on some expenditures that were not guaranteed to ever be profitable because they could take the money from guaranteed sources of cash. That's why local service was cheap but long distance was expensive.
No matter how you cut it some company owns the copper. They have to maintain it. If you make every CLEC and Bell company pay the same rate for access after cleaving the copper from Bell then you're guaranteed most CLECS will go belly up since they operate with minimal capital to begin with. Hollins needs to understand that Telco's operate best under a monopoly. Expect your service to get worse if Fritz gewts his way.
And that's another thing. "Lack of competition" can't dissuade Verizon from giving service to rural Pennsylvania because they have to install the equipment first which will be used equally by it's competitors. If Verizon installs DSL out there then they have to sell access to it's equipment at 75-80% of their normal rate. The simple fact is competition dissuades the installation of additional phone equipment. This senator needs to shut up about things she don't understand.
Is that the copper that the Bell company runs through my yard on the way to the neighbors' houses down the street? When is the Bell company going to start paying rent for using my property?
Oh wait - the Bell companies only want a law the exempts them from having to share their property - not mine.
If they won't compensate me for their use of my property, the least they could do is improve their crappy service. But they refuse to do so.
Personally, I think SBC should be busted up into state units, the 100-year-old voice grade standard should be phased out quickly, and high-speed digital standards mandated.
It's a right of way. When you brought that property odds are it was sold with that right of way in it. Bell can't decree itself a right of way without consent of the owner. And if they got it that means someone before you gave it to them.
A agree we do need to scrap the voice standard and most Bell companies do havew the money to go with broadband standard in a few years. BellSouth has alone 724 billion in assets it could put up. But the thing is it's about return on their investment.
When the Telco's get treated the same way as the cable companies then you'll get better service. There are no ridiculous laws mandating cable companies sell their bandwidth to their competitor for 75-80%. And since they came up with surent regulations before cable modems they get a free pass on that too from the Feds.
It's simple. Tell the feds to lay off and bell can get you a lot better service. Don't believe me? fine. But the FCC mandates parity in Bell service and that of resellers. If Bell can't reduce the problems that the customers of resellers get how do you think they get parity? They just swing more resources and time into maintaining the reseller's customers and let their Bell customers suffer.
How so? What kind of xfer rates?
I live in a whole neighborhood that would like a DSL alternative to the local cableco, but Verizon won't move because I'm just upwards of 20000 feet from the CO.
You see digital signals degrade after a certain distance so they need to be "repeated"(hopped up) every 3 miles or so. DSL in it's former form couldn't be repeated so it had only it's initial distance. However the new form is more akin to a T1 (which can be repeated) so it's allowed to be repeated up to 3 times allowing for much more distant applications.
It's cost prohibitive though because of having to use repeater slots and they'd need to install a new DSLAM module in the office. Not entirely a big job though. If they wanted to they could have it up and running in no time. They just more than likely have cold feet and don't want to invest the money on a unsure investment.
We have the same problem with FITL application. Before people with fiber optic to the curb of their house couldn't get DSL but Marconi developed a channel unit that would allow DSL in the FITL system. However the cost makes it a shakey investment.
I miss the old days of Bell when money was just an object and they could pour money down the drain becuase they knew they didn't have to worry about losing market shares.
Um, actually they can. By law, the telephone companies have the power of eminent domain. That government grants that power to the utilities with a public franchise. A utility can condemn your property and confiscate it for "fair market value" - or just run their wires or pipelines or whatever through it without compensating the owner of the property.
My point is - when a utility gets those sort of powers to use other people's property without compensation - in the public interest - it's fair to expect that the utility will be subject to some regulations, including sharing the "last mile".
There is another good reason for requiring the telephone utilities to share their "last mile" - we don't need an excessive overbuild of buried cable and wires added to utility poles. That will cause a lot more problems. Ever seen a picture of Beirut? It's ugly. They have so much wire haphazardly strung up in every direction that it looks like the city is covered with a cobweb.
I remember when the phone companies had rules that prohibited customers from attaching answering machines or fax machines or modems from their telephone lines. They claimed it would destroy the telehphone network if customers started attaching their own equipment. The "Carterfone" decision struck down that rule. The telephone network was not destroyed, and in fact, the opposite happened. It sparked a telecommunications revolution.
So I'm not buying this garbage that the telephone companies can't deploy universal DSL unless they get a law prohibiting competitors from offering service over the phone lines.
I'm doubting this as there is a current legal challenge in my area that prohibits us from installing any additional plant for several miles along a highway because the owner of it is refusing access to the property.
'So I'm not buying this garbage that the telephone companies can't deploy universal DSL unless they get a law prohibiting competitors from offering service over the phone lines.'
I guess it's a good thing that's not the argument I presented. The argument that I presented requiring the reselling of access at a cut rate as well as federal taxation of certain equipment prohibits the investing of capital.
I'm just asking for fair treatment. If we do this to the Telco's we should do the same for the cable companies. We should require total access to their equipment and system for 75-80% of cost as well as progressive taxation of their equipment. Besides when was the last time you saw a local competitive cable company offering to reconnect your cable TV even if you owed the other regional cable company money.
The courts get these eminent domain cases all the time. It's due process, but the property owner almost always loses.
I favor a reasonable amount of eminent domain powers for utilities, in return for regulations on the utilities that serve the public interest. Requiring the telephone companies to allow competitors to access their facilities is a reasonable tradeoff for eminent domain powers.
As far as the cable companies are concerned - their technology and topology is much different that the telephone companies. They don't have the physical capacity to carry as much signal as the phone companies because everyone is sharing the same wireline. In contrast, the phone company generally has a dedicated line from each home to the central office (at least for the homes within a certain radius of the C.O.), and switches for point-to-point connections.
The cable company has other regulations imposed on it, such as the "must carry" rule, that aren't applicable to the telephone companies.
The regulations have to fit the services offered by the utilities, so trying to impose telephone company regulations on a cable company doesn't make any damn sense.
But at 75-80% of cost? I don't mind the shared access issue. It's that they can, and do, run commercials that gloat that they don't have to pay their phone bill to us or that they can give the same service to the consumer cheaper is just too much.
And about sharing cable lines. That's still not that great of an excuse. Most phone resellers resell in name only. They could easily do the same for cable. All they'd do is send their check to a different company and they then send Cox, charter, etc a check for 80% the cost. And what of cable modems? Am I able to resell cable modem access at 80% of cost to residential customers as well as providing phone service over coax to business consumers? As it is most cable companies are dumping coax trunks for fiber allowing them more bandwidth.
Yeah, but it's only a measly 128kbps up/down and costs $120/month, right?
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