"Scottie, exactly what regulation would you recommend?"
I think the FCC had it going going in the right direction with Computer Inquires I, II, and III. Problem was, they never enforced these! The even took out the office in early 2000 that investigated the companies that "broke the rules." I am thinking out loud and not actually thinking this through, but here is my idea. Do as they started with Computer Inquires...All ILEC's and Cable Co's should not be allowed in the ISP business. They can start their own ISP as a separate entity, but the parent ILEC/CC will have to sell to all ISP's, including their own at a wholesale rate for use of their "transport." There should be no cross subsidization from one to the other. Of course I am limiting this to the ILECs/CC that have received some kind of government subsidization (whether it be grants, tax cuts,etc...) to build out their networks for Cable TV and telephone. For us WISP's, give us all the tax cuts, grants, etc...that they have gave the CC and telcos. Why should we not get subsidization when they have and refuse anyone access to their networks? Give me a couple of million dollars and I will have my county and the next county covered with wireless within two years and providing access to some people that have never had anything but dial-up and about 26k dial-up at that. I live in an area full of Cooperatives. Cooperatives do not have to follow many of the Tele Act of 1996 rules (rural exemptions). I live in TN where, I actually lost count, but there are approximately 20 +/- telephone cooperatives. So I do not and have not got to do many of the things you guys have got to do. Now that talk all this BS about bridging the digital divide, but they still let these cooperatives get away with monopolies and not having to follow half the rules that the rest of the US ILEC's have to follow. As long as this goes on, rural America may see 20 Meg speeds by the end of the next century. We never had ISDN here until around 2001 and DSL around 2003 and of course it was done by the co-op telcos that were given almost every penny to do it by the USDA. Ah, I am through with my rant. I could complain and gripe all day. I spend a lot of time on http://www.cybertelecom.org/ and teletruth.org that goes much deeper into the points I stated above. -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Clint Ricker Sent: Tuesday, July 24, 2007 3:47 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] Broadband Baloney? An FCC Commissioner's takeon"Broadband".. 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? 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). We had over 11 years of forced network unbundling for the ILECS (ie where the ILECs are required to sell the bare copper at cost). The idea, of course, was to help service providers get on their feet while they were building out their own network. By and large, for a policy standpoint, it did very little to actually increase network buildout. Almost all of the CLECs took the easy money of reselling the Bell networks and ran, making agreegates of billions of dollars and not really building out any network to speak of. (Yes, there are some exceptions, but, this sums up the general problem). Forced wholesale access of the physical layer / network layer does absolutely nothing to increase availability and, in fact, actually hurts availabilty. 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). The only real change in FCC policy in the past 11 years (fundamentally) is that more people actually have to provide the services that they are selling. It's harder now to buy Bell DSL service, stick your own label on it, and say that you're competing with Ma Bell. All in all, I think that's a good thing. I understand that it isn't necessarily economically efficient to have multiple sets of copper / coax going to the same house / office building, and that telecommunication companies often constitute a natural monopoly of sorts. Forced selling of the network layer still doesn't get any new people access to the Now, if they wanted to successfully regulate the market, force a separation of the network layer and the physical layer into two separate companies, a model that is being vaguely adopted for some muni-funded developments. 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). The US is fairly far down on the list statistically; however, comparing US to Japan or European markets is not an accurate comparison. Sure, there is fiber available for >$25/month in many countries...can you profitably deploy fiber in Idaho >at $25ARPU? Montana? Kansas? North Dakota? Is bad FCC policy to blame? Or the fact that this is a big country with a lot of empty space...something that doesn't affect most of the countries that are "beating" us in broadband development. Is the government policy hurting the independent ISPs? Really? Given the huge regulatory requirements that exist on the ILECs, and the relative freedom that the independents operate under, I can't really see the independent industry as being hurt by government policy. BTW, I do agree that the FCC is in the pocket of the telco's...and so on and so forth. However, most of the changes have, nevertheless, been positive changes. The industry does need less regulation, IMHO. As long as there is interconnection is manditory, there really doesn't need to be much more regulation. Don't like AT&T? Build your own network...(as most of you are doing). Expand. Grow. Acquire customers...you know, compete and all that sort of good capitalistic stuff... -Clint Ricker Kentnis Technologies On 7/24/07, Peter R. <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Mike Hammett wrote: > > 3 mbit is not fast. The US IS behind other countries, there's no > > point in whining about it. Yes, there are very substantial reasons > > why our numbers don't look as good as theirs, but there's no need to > > skew the system to make us look better... just solve the problem. > > > > > > > > Fixed wireless is broadband. WIFI hotspots, cell phones, etc. are > > not broadband (maybe the cell broadband cards). The reason our > > numbers are climbing is because this has been a problem for some > > time and we're working on fixing it. It takes a lot to change > > things like that for the third most populous country in the world. > > > > > > > > Perhaps it should be measured per household and not per capita, I > > dunno. > > > > > > > > The reason why there's less competition elsewhere is because what is > > present is doing a good enough job! Their telcos have delivered 15 > > meg DSL for years, while ours don't yet offer it. That's why cable > > is taking on so well here. It surely isn't because anything > > connected to Comcast has a good price point (DSL and satellite TV > > are both better values). > > > > > > > > ----- > > Mike Hammett > > Intelligent Computing Solutions > > http://www.ics-il.com > If they change the definition to 1MB, EVDO won't count and neither > will IDSL and DSL Lite. The numbers of BB users in the stats will drop > - the telcos will look like they have very few BB subs since about > 10-20% buy Lite (depending who you believe). So the FCC will never > voluntarily change the definition. > > BTW, in countries with deep BB penetration, the regulators are TOUGH - > as in the FCC Chairman does not have Ivan and Ed's hands up his butt > so he can talk like Charlie McCarthy. > > But ALL of that is beside the point. End of the day, YOU guys have to > find, acquire and retain profitable customers. No matter what the > regulatory or competitive environment looks like. > > - Peter @ RAD-INFO, Inc. > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > ---------- > Would you like to see your advertisement here? Let the WISPA Board know > your feelings about allowing advertisements on the free WISPA lists. The > current Board is taking this under consideration at this time. 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