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'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?'

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.

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.

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.