Clint Ricker wrote:
I'll duck after this post, but I by and large tend to agree with the
basis of the article.
Scottie, exactly what regulation would you recommend?
STRUCTURAL SEPARATION like BT is experiencing in the UK, which would
never happen here.
What has regulation solved in the past 11 years? By and large, I've
not seen a single bit of FCC regulation that has had a net positive
impact for getting access to the consumer, especially post 2000 (it
was probably a good force behind making dialup Internet access widely
available and affordable).
It was not FCC regulation; it was the TA96 that was tattered and torn by
lobbying and litigating.
The FCC SHOULD have advanced its policy and then set to forcing it.
Instead it went to bed with 2 of the industries it is supposed to
regulate (media & telco).
The FCC could easily have forced CLEC's to build out at the same time it
forced the ILEC's to unbundle.
Let me extrapolate this for you:
In the NFL cities you would have endless construction as fiber is laid
to all the MTU's.
But in all other markets, not so much competition.
And then you would have VZ selling off its rural ... oh, wait, they do
that now because they don't want to invest the money.
They make a good rate of return (as attested to by their increasing
profits -- not revenues). They get USF and other funding to provide
service in rural areas, but do not want to live up to the promises that
they made back in 1997-1999.
Do you think I care about the 15th or 21st or whatever study number? No.
All I care about is the divide between us and and the rest of the world.
Whether you admit it or not, economically broadband is a utility. It is
the utility for home-based workers, entrepreneurs, the Creative Class,
and innovation. As more and more people get PC access and get online,
more and more ideas, projects, and innovation happens. I want that to
happen in the US. Not in India. Not in China or Korea, but here in America.
We have a shortage of doctors in America. A shortage of teachers.
Some of this can be solved via broadband like tele-medicine and distance
learning.
Forced wholesale access of the physical layer / network layer does
absolutely nothing to increase availability and, in fact, actually
hurts availabilty.
You are incorrect there. The plant company would need to keep building
out to increase revenue.
The Application side would want that as well.
The ISP / CLEC that is basically reselling ILEC copper is not
connecting anyone who wouldn't / couldn't have been connected via the
ILEC. However, because the ILEC is less profitable due to forced
reselling, then they can't buildout as much infrastructure
(theoretically).
Sure it is. CLEC's and ISP's are always stealing clients from each other
and ILEC's. Sometimes they steal them from cable. But more than just the
red ocean is the blue ocean when a new idea like Metro E over copper or
VDSL or HPNA or BPL comes along and stretches the use of the copper and
brings consumers new apps and new access. (Covad is rolling out 15MB DSL
- are any ILECs? NO).
The fact of the matter is that the US is doing pretty damn well at
broadband deployment, and, corruption aside, most of the current
administration's policies have been fairly benificial towards making
broadband more widely available (with some very major exceptions).
I actually don't think that more DSLAM's are being deployed. I see how
often a business comes up as Unqualified, even when DSL is available in
that area. That's due to CAPEX being spent to over-build DSL penetrated
areas with fiber.
That's not a helpful strategy.
Qwest is no longer the ILEC in Omaha. That's the first MSA. VZ has asked
for forbearance in 6 MSA's, due in 80 days.
In 80 days, you won't be able to buy access from VZ unless they want to
sell it to you. Why? The stats say cable has beat them out. And I think
it is almost on purpose, so the ILEC can get out from under regulation
and do what it wants.
Do you think that the CLECs are actually hurting the ILECs? Or the ISP's?
ISP's have less than 1% of the DSL in the US. FISPA members at one time
had 3% of the BellSouth market in 2001.
CLEC's in their hey day had a whopping 15% of the market (2001 I
think). Not any more.
The largest CLEC has less than 100,000 customers. And even with the
Super CLEC's - all 3 of them - approaching $1B in revenue, their debt is
3/4 of that number and they pay more than 50% of revenue to the ILEC.
How does that hurt the ILEC? They make money from CLEC's. They don't
make a dime from cable.
-Clint Ricker
Kentnis Technologies
- Peter @ RAD-INFO, Inc.
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