Posted on 08/06/2005 11:53:55 AM PDT by Arkie2
Federal telecommunication regulators Friday scrapped rules that phone companies say have limited their ability to compete with cable TV operators in selling high-speed Internet service.
But what's good for the companies may be bad for customers, according to advocacy groups, which predicted higher prices, fewer choices and slower innovation as a result of the ruling by the Federal Communications Commission.
The panel, in a 4-0 vote, ruled that Verizon Communications Inc. and other so-called Baby Bells no longer had to provide discounted access to their high-speed lines for independent Internet service providers such as EarthLink Inc.
Phone lines carrying data were reclassified as an information service, not a telecommunication service, meaning they don't need to be shared.
The decision had been expected since June, when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld an FCC ruling that cable companies did not have to share their Internet lines with rivals.
"The order we adopt today is a momentous one," FCC Chairman Kevin J. Martin said. "It ends the regulatory inequities that currently exist between the phone and cable providers."
Verizon and SBC Communications Inc. hailed the decision, saying that the elimination of the mandate to provide access would spur greater investment in broadband and new services for customers.
Consumer groups decried the ruling, saying it would allow the phone companies to kick independent Internet providers off their networks or dramatically raise the cost for access,
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
BTTT
Part of the "let them eat cake " administration
It doesn't help the consumer to buy the bell company's DSL connection from someone who is reselling it. DSL is cheap and it is going to stay that way because, otherwise, people will switch to cable modems. This will mean more investment in high speed connections like FTTP from the bell companies, which will cause the cable companies to up their speeds and lower their prices. Win-win for everyone.
Interesting outlook. It seems to me that if companies like AOL are prohibited from offering access (or charged whatever rate the phone companies decide) it will decrease competition.
one of my other major gripes with an otherwise good president is his abandoning of telecom competition.
I originally attributed this to the bumbling idiot otherwise known as Michael Powell, former FCC chair and baby boy of Colin Powell. ( can't really balme Colin, he at least got his dimwitted kid a government job....)
Besides having a Buffoon run the FCC, Teleco's were notorious at mismanagement and waste of investor money.... but there's much more to the story....
I suspect by 2010 we will be back in the same old situation, 1, maybe 2 options for telephone service, 1, maybe 2 options for data. Competetion will be defined as at least one alternative to the quasi-monopoly, regardless of cost or quality.... like Microsoft and Apple,
consumers will have two equally bad choices and they'll just have to pay the money and shut up....
It's amazing how many problems, no matter how ugly they may look, can be solved by just having trust in the free market.
BUMP!
The telephone companies are the ones who decide whether or not to install DSL capacity. If they are required to share the prospective revenue stream with third parties, their incentive to install new capacity is reduced.That is a serious issue with me, because cable charges heavily for high speed access and they have no competition unless DSL is available. So I want DSL to be available - and I don't want that competition held back by government action to pretend to make DSL cheap but to actually impede the provision of the service to people who don't already have access to it.
If "advocacy groups" are against it it must be a good thing.
Hmm. The NRA could be considered an advocacy group.
no, it means that you will get your high speed data from one of two choices....your regional cable company, or your ILEC.
your local mom & pops, CLEC's, and ISP's are done in the data game. This, combined with recent actions of the FCC to end competition in telecomm is a one two punch for the industry. But it was a good idea while it lasted....
if the incumbents can now charge second vendors more than they charge the general public, how do the resellers stay in business?
If a CLEC pays more for a DSL line than the joe blow down the street can get it from SBC... how do they stay in the DSL business?
oh, wait,....Volume! hehe
Roger that ~ Bump!
I'm a comcast cable modem user and couldn't be more satisfied. There hasn't been an interruption in service (for me at least) in a couple of years. The other night I was downloading a game patch, a very large file. I glanced at my download speed and saw that I was getting 5 mbps throughput. I downloaded a 150 megabyte file in less time than it takes to boot up. Don't tell comcast but I'd pay twice what I'm paying now for 5 megabytes per second communication and I don't even watch porn.
Well then, how about most consumer advocacy groups? I like the NRA.
I get my broadband with a system called Fixed Wireless, no Comcast nor Ameritech.
In effect they have killed competition. In our area we pay $60 a month for Broadband, because the area has a contract with the cable provider that eliminates competition ( I assume the political hacks that did this get SOMETHING in return)
um, also be aware of who actually crafted this, and other recent FCC rulings....
incumbent carriers, (like SBC, for example) in conjunction with the CWA, (the Communication Workers of America, the Telecom Union) have been writing the rules during the Powell admin of the FCC. This is in tune with Michael Powell's so called "new corporate-libertarianism" in which he describes the best functioning society as one in which the great corporations and the government combine to work cooperatively to promote the general welfare of society...huh?
that doesn't sound like any libertarianism I ever heard, but it does remind me of a pudgy Italian fellow.....
Anyhow, SBC and CWA united on this to protect their jobs. See, if SBC can eliminate other companies from the table, the ILEC is safe because there is no competetion, and the Union is safe because without all those zany non-union telecoms around , their wages won't be subject to pressures.It's a win-win for Big Unions and Big Business!
A good example, from personal knowledge, is the SBC-Birch Telecom angle. The SBC management and CWA united to do everything they could to eliminate competition from vendors like Birch, McLeod, Ionex.
(It doesn't help that in the middle of a total war with SBC and the One Big Communications Union, companies like Birch and McLeod are plagued by mismanagement, but that's just another angle...hehe)
oh, well, it was a good time,
yep, what'll happen in the next few years, after the collapse of the few remaining independents is communities will have 2 high speed accesss alternatives, their regional telecom, or their regional cable company....
and, oddly enough, their prices will slowly rise, but for some uncanny reason stay fairly close to one another. hmm....
some say that other venues will develop, such as high speed satellite. and I think thats great....hehe
so in 2010, I can get broad band internet from:
1. the regional cable co-$99.00
2. the regional baby bell-$96.00
3. the regional satellite service-95.00
for telephone options I have:
1. The regional baby bell
2. The regional Wireless provider
...lucky me!
Why do you ignore the essential change that this ruling provides? Verizon and similar companies no longer have to offer "discounted" access to third party providers.
Under previous rulings, Verizon and others had to provide other companies acess to their lines at less than market rates and in some local markets it was less than cost. And people wondered why DSL was not being rolled out faster.
Just because a small company WANTS to be a competitor, gives them no RIGHT to be a competitor at other companies' expense.
My DSL bill is now 1/2 what it was when I first signed up for it.
Keep in mind this article is from the LA Times, which is about as socialist as they come.
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.