fcc ruling on dsl providers' access to infrastructure

Mon Aug 8 02:20:19 UTC 2005

On Sun, Aug 07, 2005 at 02:21:59PM -0700, Douglas Otis wrote:
> 
> On Sun, 2005-08-07 at 11:09 -1000, Randy Bush wrote:
> 
> > > will the ilec's start offering competitive services (not bw,
> > > but non-dynamic ips or small blocks to end-users?)
> > 
> > if their competition has been eliminated by fcc ruling, what
> > does 'competitive' pricing mean?
> 
> The choice for broadband will be either the cable company or the phone
> company, in those areas with both.  In other areas, it will be just the
> phone company.  : (

The bottom line is that at a certain point there are a limited number 
times you can put a wire to everyone's house into the ground. Cable modems 
only make sense because the cable TV customer base to justify the build. 
At some point in the future we might actually come up with a workable IP 
over powerline technology, but again that will only make sense because of 
the existing customer base that wants electricity.

Clearly this is a special situation where there is a natural monopoly 
given to whomever runs the wires. Maybe what we need is a certain class of 
company who will be responsible for running and maintaining the public 
data infrastructures. They could have lots of government regulations to 
ensure that they are charging a "fair" price while still being guaranteed 
a profit, and they could provide the last mile service for all those ISPs 
out there who are the ones that can actually compete and innovate. We 
could call them telcos, and... oh wait, nevermind.

-- 
Richard A Steenbergen <ras at e-gerbil.net>       http://www.e-gerbil.net/ras
GPG Key ID: 0xF8B12CBC (7535 7F59 8204 ED1F CC1C 53AF 4C41 5ECA F8B1 2CBC)