Companies urge FCC to drop open access idea

[frostedflakes]

This is another example of how government regulation can hamper innovation. Get rid of all government regulations and restrictions(like the cable franchise requirements in NYC) making it expensive for new companies to plant new lines. Once you reduce the barrier of entry, more lines will pop up overnight and the cable companies will have no choice but to reduce prices.

Its the same thing with cell phones. The government restricts airwave frequencies, then sells them to the highest bidder. Make all the carrier frequencies public domain. That will give cell phone companies the incentive to build more towers per square mile. The more towers, the less interference from other cell phone companies, the better the signal. Instead, we have cell phone companies that build the minimal amount of towers per square mile because they can be confident that no one will interfere with their signals.

Unfortunately it's not quite that simple. Do you really think it's practical for a dozen companies to be digging holes all over the city and laying down their own lines? Especially in a place like New York where the infrastructure is already incredibly dense.

And the FCC has allocated some of the old analog TV spectrum for unlicensed use, so hopefully we'll start to see a lot of companies using this for wireless internet service. Because of the lower infrastructure costs it should be a lot easier for wireless start-ups to get their foot in the door.

 

[Mike Gayner]

Functional separation and unbundling has been extremely successful where I'm from. Competition has become intense, prices have dropped, more equipment has been installed at exchanges and speeds are 10x higher than they were just 6 or 7 years ago. I have my pick of 10+ good ISPs at my doorstep, all chomping at the bit to get my business.

 

[Modelworks]

Functional separation and unbundling has been extremely successful where I'm from. Competition has become intense, prices have dropped, more equipment has been installed at exchanges and speeds are 10x higher than they were just 6 or 7 years ago. I have my pick of 10+ good ISPs at my doorstep, all chomping at the bit to get my business.

Good to hear ! That is what I keep telling people about countries like yours. You have so much more competition. I have 1 provider for internet that I can use. It is either pay them or have nothing. Companies will invest in infrastructure when they can have 10+ companies that want to sell service over it.

 

[charrison]

The reason the drop in ISP is so great is because telco made it impossible to run a business and lease the lines. DSL reselling died because there was no profit for anyone but the telco. They would lease the lines but at rates like $45 for the line and the ISP could add whatever service to that. But at $30 for the DSL + $45 for the lease that would be $75 a month per customer and nobody could stay in business. The only ISP that survived were ones that got good deals and those are dying now because telco are telling them they don't have any free lines to get out of lease agreements.

If you look at the pattern of the laws changing it is clear what telco had in mind.
Early 1990's - dialup internet - telco tried to sue providers like AOL because phone lines were tied up for hours each day, they wanted a premium added to dialup users for every hour used. Telco had not built up local networks and did not want to invest so everyone could use the lines all they wanted . Sound familiar ?

1996 - telecom act - made data and voice equal as communications. Seemed like a win for consumers, but the telco had other plans. They went to congress and got regulation dropped on the amount of profit margin allowed with promises they would use that money to have broadband 45Mbps lines to all homes by 2004. They made billions and never carried through. New Jersey has actually sued verizon and ATT for breach of those agreements, why other states don't follow I dunno.


1999 - Requirement telco lease lines to providers at cost as a peace offering to the FCC for not having done as promised in 1996, there were now thousands of ISP and the telco were not hurting for cash. They were charging $4 for features like call waiting , their cost 5 cents . No profit control so they could rape the consumer now. Before with regulation the most they could have charged would have been 30% or about 7 cents.

2002 - FCC repealed rules requiring leasing of lines , telco could lease lines if they wanted but were not required to lease. They told the FCC this was needed because they didn't want to invest in areas if they had to share the lines.

It took them just over 10 years, but they got what they wanted in the early 1990's.

My point was there was never several thousand DSL ISP. There were probably a few dozen DSL ISPs at most.

 

[charrison]

Functional separation and unbundling has been extremely successful where I'm from. Competition has become intense, prices have dropped, more equipment has been installed at exchanges and speeds are 10x higher than they were just 6 or 7 years ago. I have my pick of 10+ good ISPs at my doorstep, all chomping at the bit to get my business.

I can say the same thing here. bandwidth available to me has increased dramatically as well in the same time period. Cable and telcos have been in constant upgrade cycles to compete with each other. Today i can get 18meg dsl for less than what i payed for isdn 10 years ago. And there appears to no sign of slowdown of upgrades.

 

[Double Trouble]

You're kidding right? Cable and telcos are beating each other over the head for triple play customers, stealing customers from each other based on price and price alone. I wasn't kidding when I said it's an extremely competitive industry. Also go bid out an internet circuit to say 10 ISPs and see what prices they come back with. Even at the wholesale level there's a lot of difference in price.

You're so full of it, it's coming out of your ears Explain to me how me having 1 choice for broadband is "competition"? I have no choices, if I want broadband, I have to get it through my one local cable company. They have a monopoly, they can rip me off for all the want. If there was competition, I'd want government to butt out and let the market sort it out... but since there effectively is no competition in many markets, the government has to step in and keep the internet from getting dominated by monopoly isp's.

 

[sonoma1993]

You're so full of it, it's coming out of your ears Explain to me how me having 1 choice for broadband is "competition"? I have no choices, if I want broadband, I have to get it through my one local cable company. They have a monopoly, they can rip me off for all the want. If there was competition, I'd want government to butt out and let the market sort it out... but since there effectively is no competition in many markets, the government has to step in and keep the internet from getting dominated by monopoly isp's.

i agree, spidey is full of it.. In my area there is no competition for highspeed internet. It's either comcast for cable internet or att for dsl. My grandpa who only lives like 3 1/2 miles from me, he out in the country kinda. He can only get comcast for high speed internet, otherwise it's dial up for internet access.