Sorry Wrong Number
The FCC made the news with a regulatory ruling. The
issue was "BellSouth Telecommunications, Inc. Request for Declaratory
Ruling that State Commissions May Not Regulate Broadband Internet
Access Services by Requiring BellSouth to Provide Wholesale or Retail
Broadband Services to Competitive LEC UNE Voice Customers" The
ruling is FCC Finds That States Cannot Force Bells to Provide DSL Service to CLEC Voice Customers. [order pdf] this along with Commissioners Copps and Adelstein [dissenting] Statement can be found off the FCC's home page.
As the ars technica article A death knell for naked DSL?
points out it has its weird consistancy of dereglated competitiveness
as long as the competition is outside their service monopoly, ie cable
or satellite agaisnt dsl. This is similar to the FCC's long standing
nonsensical notion that having one corporation own every TV, radio
station and newspaper is ok; because these are all different things -
the information is therefore different, and not possessed of one
viewpoint. In their
separate statement Copps, Adelstein, dissenting in part, approving in
part (principle of transportability of phone numbers across carriers):
try to raise a flag on what they term "broadband tying":
A tying arrangement occurs when a seller conditions the
availability of one product on the buyer ís purchase of a second
product...this practice could limit consumer choice and reduce
competition.
It seems starkly anti-competitive to me. It allows the baby
bells to leverage one segment of the market to preclude customer
choice. It massively raises the barrier to new competition entering the
market. Newcomers will be left with the challenge of having to enter
phone service, DSL , perhaps Voip markets at once to get customers
clear of the Bells. This will likely chase out what competion in
DSL ips there is - companies such as Toadnet (whom I like because they
sponsor NPR's Soundprint) the existing regional telco's will have you
over a barrel and will have the DSL option all to themselves.
Behind much of the extravigant posturing for freer markets is
just a facile corporatism, the grinding down of choice, a grasping
after rent seeking arrangements, the grinning reek of
government-mercantile partnerships.
12:32:28 AM  ;;
|
|
