Welcome back, Ma Bell

Eric A. Hall ehall at ehsco.com
Mon Mar 6 16:40:16 UTC 2006



On 3/6/2006 7:17 AM, Omachonu O. Ogali wrote:

> Section 271 of "The Act" prevented RBOCs from selling long distance  
> unless if they truly opened their networks to competitive access by  
> CLECs (UNE-Ps primarily

Right, LD was the carrot in the MFJ

> Then, AT&T and Sprint exit the long distance market. MCI Friends &  
> Family? Nowhere to be found.

...because as it turns out, nobody can compete when LD is ~$.03 per min
(or worse, when it is $.00 with voip/skype/etc).

Sure there was some effort by RBOCS to get into national LD at first but
once it got down to sub-nickel rates nobody cared anymore, and even the
existing market giants have long since bailed on it. Too bad their debt
loads weren't tied to shrinking projections.

So the use of LD as carrot was the prime failure here, and is arguably
what [in]directly killed the old giants. Hoorah for regulation, which
tried to pick a winner, and got it absolutely wrong.

> Let me cut this very short. Local, long distance, and the newest  
> children: cellular and Internet, all under one umbrella, well two.

Except that local service is also becoming available through non-telco
providers, LD is already non-existent as a market, and POTS line
deployment overall has been declining for years. Internet penetration in
the US has pretty much stabilized.

The telcos are supposed to just whither away? The reality of realigning
markets and new technologies demands that the telcos adapt.

> Competition? I guess I have cable.

I certainly agree that the limited range of low-latency broadband options
is a problem. There is some choice there but not much.

But fear of telco might also result in another scenario: cable only.

-- 
Eric A. Hall                                        http://www.ehsco.com/
Internet Core Protocols          http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/coreprot/



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