SBC CEO: Pay up if you want to use our pipes 613
acousticiris writes "If there were any delusions that Ma Bell Wasn't Back, SBC CEO Edward Witacre has cleared that up in an interview with Business Week Online. When asked about Google, Vonage and other Internet Upstarts he responded in typical Ma Bell Style: 'How do you think they're going to get to customers? Through a broadband pipe. Cable companies have them. We have them. Now what they would like to do is use my pipes free, but I ain't going to let them do that because we have spent this capital and we have to have a return on it. So there's going to have to be some mechanism for these people who use these pipes to pay for the portion they're using. Why should they be allowed to use my pipes?'."
Uhhhh.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Empty Threat (Score:5, Insightful)
On the other side of the fence the "Internet Upstarts" are paying for *their* pipes as well. Even the pipes "in the middle" are indirectly paid for, although that process can sometimes breakdown (as Level3 and Cogent are proving). It isn't like there is some magic way to get access from point A to point B "for free". The costs are just bundled in your access bills. What ticks off a telecom is that the prices for packets are so darn *cheap*. It makes land line voice look expensive, which is driving the adoption of VOIP.
If they decide that paying for your pipes (both directions) doesn't give you access to the services you want, the only option is to impose filtering. If they decide to filter, block or otherwise prevent the customer from unhindered access to Internet products they will be in violation of the common carrier provisions. Which is fine if they want to then make a stab at blocking *all* bad stuff the Internet contains. However, I suspect that's not where they want to be, as without common carrier status they become liable for anything they *fail* to block.
Frankly, all this comment proves is that they are desperate for revenue and yet know they can't raise rates on telephone services (thanks to regulation) so they are flailing around for anything they can think of. Legal probably sent him a "memo" right after that comment got back to them though, as I'm pretty sure *they* understand the ramification of the implied threat.
Why should they be allowed to use my pipes? (Score:5, Insightful)
Stop whining and change your dying business model.
Wait a minute . . . (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:so? (Score:5, Insightful)
Problem is that they're already paying for the use of the lines. What do you think your monthly ISP fee is doing?
Seems he now wants to be paid twice.
Back... but too late (Score:4, Insightful)
This isn't 1905 and as long as I have a few choices Ma Bell won't be one of them. I've got cable... if they blow it I can go satellite, Power, Fiber, and worst case scenario I'll become an activist to set up a community Coop ISP.
Ma Bell is to late in coming back to the game!
Free? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Because they are in part, public property... (Score:3, Insightful)
Look for a delightful lesson in political theater and twisted rhetoric to come.
"We've Spent Capital On This" (Score:3, Insightful)
I appreciate that I've been getting all this broadband for free all this time. Oh, wait, I pay a monthly fee for that. Hmm, perhaps I can pay that fee to someone else who won't be so restrictive? Where is that number for Speakeasy...
The gentleman seems to have an odd understanding of how this all works. Google pays him to get to me, and I pay him to get to Google. The second that changes, I'll pay someone else who doesn't feel that it's a privledge to get my business.
Re:Empty Threat (Score:3, Insightful)
You raise some excellent points, especially about them flailing about for revenue. All I can say is that their service sucks. That is why they lost me as a customer. If they want revenue, they should offer quality service. I mean, this is not a new concept.
Consumers paid for access, not "pipes" (Score:5, Insightful)
What the hell does he mean by people using his "pipes" for free? I pay every month for my access. And I'm not paying for wires strung to my house, I'm paying for bandwidth, for the ability to get packets in and out of my router. Nothing free here, I paid for it.
Yes, there's someone on the other end making money on this and the greedy bastard thinks he should get "his share". Does he want that to apply to every transaction?
I called and ordered a pizza for delivery last night. Do they get a cut?
I checked my bank balance and paid a couple bills this weekend. Do they get a transaction fee?
I do work from home some days. Do I need to give them a portion of my pay when I do that?
Re:I guess I'm confused (Score:5, Insightful)
Your man here runs a phone company. His customers pay him for voice service, and also he gets paid by broadband providers for the right to run internet connections over the same line (or possibly he sells broadband himself - I don't know exactly how it's done in this particular case).
He has now noticed that some people are using the broadband connection instead of the voice service. There go his profitable long-distance and international charges! He charges a nontrivial amount per minute for a call to Tokyo, but these people are rolling it all into their modest monthly broadband fee! Aargh!
The words 'buggy whip manufacturer' spring immediately to mind.
Re:Somehow (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, wait, you mean that a useful and attractive internet means people are going to not sign up for SBC broadband! Of course, how silly of me that I didn't see your impeccable logic for what it is immediately!
Re:Now you know... (Score:2, Insightful)
Heh, I thought the exact same thing when I saw this. The guys at google aren't stupid, ya know...
Re:Empty Threat (Score:3, Insightful)
Umm.. Because if my stuff don't work... (Score:2, Insightful)
This stupidity will die when the board of directors of the first company that tries this fires the CEO for the inevitable backlash.
How much scarier if the government blocked these services to protect their phone monopoly money? Thank goodness the US telecom market is mostly private...
It's about VOIP (Score:5, Insightful)
In context, he is talking about VOIP.
In effect, SBC is providing the means by which VOIP providers are competing with SBC's phone line business. That's what bother him.
But he has to understand, if SBC is going to offer generic internet service, they have to tolerate customers using it for whatever they want. What Whitacre and his ilk would like is to regulate what customers can do with the service. This would start with shutting out competition and progress to charging for each protocol, port, destination, etc..
We have to preserve the common carrier principle in internet access.
No she's not (Score:4, Insightful)
People will pay to have a 'cleaner','smarter' internet, and she will have a contract that basically lets her control anything comeing into or out of the computer.
These people are really good at this game. They will stand in front of congress and lie, they will cheat, they increase there rates and call it a tax so people will think it's cause of the government.
SHe's a bitch, she is smart, and she has no morals. Don't turn your back on ma bell, she'll put a shiv in it.
Re:Empty Threat (Score:2, Insightful)
Hmm, if the telcos could raise rates, wouldn't that make the transition to VOIP faster? The unregulated market would allow them to "figure-out" what the real value of their service is. Raise the rates and watch customer bail; lower the rates and watch the customer bail a little slower. I say less regulation and let the companies figure out how to do their own business.
Re:Read it again (Score:3, Insightful)
Hmmm. I guess I missed that implication. I agree that that is idiotic; I as a customer have specificly paid for the ability for google to send me bits. Ergo, the pipe is already paid for. If he doesn't feel that the ISP rates are sufficient to cover his costs, he should feel free to raise his rates and get eaten alive in the market.
The Pipes are already paid for... (Score:5, Insightful)
*Please note that corporations are lower-case and should be treated as such. They should not hold the same status legally as The People (we're mentioned in the Constitution, not them). Period. I'm all for the "American Dream" but not at the total expense of We, The People.
Rasied in barn? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Uhhhh.... (Score:5, Insightful)
By this very nature, they will wind up receiving far more traffic than they send. Now, these pipsqueaks (in the ISP world, they are small) are causing a fuss, wanting to get paid for all this extra traffic that is being put on their network, far more than they are putting on others networks. But what about the flip side? These ISP's are Leeches writ large, sucking other users content while providing non of their own. They charge clients $$ for access to the internet, then want to charge the internet for access to their clients.
Bad stuff is coming. This will be fought amonst the smaller Tier 1's, and it will be a bloodbath.
Coming soon.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Empty Threat (Score:5, Insightful)
with a slap on the wrist?
What was his previous job ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Pretty much sounds like it: trying to defend a business with an out of date business model by attempting to 'regulate' rather than trying to compete and give their customers what they want.
It may take a few years but unless he changes business tactics his company will slowly die, just as the dinosaurs did when conditions changed and they did not adapt fast enough.
The next question is just as worrisome. (Score:5, Insightful)
Clearly this is a man who is comfortable with the idea of monopolies being granted to him (and not his competitors) and uncomfortable (even angry) about anyone figuring out how to compete with him. My read on this is that, given a choice between innovation and staying in a monopoly world where he is king he'll choose the latter.
Welcome Back Ma Bell, we haven't missed you!
Re:rephrase the debate (Score:3, Insightful)
--LWM
Re:Because they are in part, public property... (Score:5, Insightful)
Next thing you know, some county somewhere is going to charge Amtrak for driving through without paying.
How about this... We give anyone who wants to be an upstart the same access to putting fiber in the ground as SBC and see if they like that.
rant: Eliminating any monopoly in the United States of America has been impossible for some time now (see: campaign contributions). Personally, I think the telecommunications industry is one of the first that needs to be seized and freed back up.
Re:Consumers paid for access, not "pipes" (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd say that except for people leeching from a neighbor, people on both ends of a given conversation paid for access of one form or another, be it phone, internet or both.
He doesn't even know what he's saying. (Score:4, Insightful)
If SBC starts regulating content on their wires, then they open up a huge legal can of worms regarding liability. VOIP is just content. It's conceptually no different than a video stream or an
But that doesn't change the fact that it's content.
I sincerely doubt SBC wants to be responsible for all the content that crosses their wires. The last thing any company needs, even one as big as Ma Bell, is an endless stream of lawsuits about kiddie porn, bomb making tutorials, warez downloads, DVD rips, mp3 streams, so on and so forth.
Common carrier means common carrier, and changing the definition of common carrier would cost an asinine amount of money, even by the standards of corporate fund-slinging on Capitol Hill.
Re:Somehow (Score:5, Insightful)
Why should they provide their customers the service they signed up for? They promised to provide access to the internet for a certain price, not to some subset of the internet that agreed to pay their extortion. If they can't make a profit, why is this Cogent's fault? Did SBC inform their customers they would be used like this? Will they be compensated for being unable to connect to work because SBC's CEO isn't getting a big enough bonus check?
What an... what is the word... %(*#$ (Score:4, Insightful)
It is such an old school business attitude... The phone companies need to realize that the days of monopoly are over... The gig is up, the cat is out of the bag... etc... VoIP works great... Vonage is so simple to use... someone's grandparents could use it...
Even if there were some widespread blocking of Vonage... it would not be hard for them to get around it... It isn't like they have to stick to standard SIP ports... Their service could easily run over port 80... If they tried to block their IP address, could they not start using IP blocks from their ISPs? And hey.. aren't the ISPs already making money on transit costs for these companies...?
This guy is a real loser... Sell your stock in SBC
Re:Back... but too late (Score:4, Insightful)
Nice empty threat but I think if you actually had to do it you would be in for a rude awakening. Satellite internet is expensive(like $60/month), downloads are capped(like 200 MB/day), uplink is very slow and ping times are horrible. Ping times of 1 1/2 to 2 second kill online gaming and is somewhat annoying for things like VoIP and video conferencing. You are behind a firewalled server so you wont be serving any web pages over it, the uplink speeds preclude that anyway. VPN is difficult at best, requires additional charges and special accelerator gear to not be unusably slow and it is still annoying slow for OpenSSH. I don't think the satellite providers are investing much in new capacity, because no one will buy their product unless they have no choice so its not a growth business, which leads to deteriorating performance as they cram more users on the same satellites.
Satellite is only desirable, or maybe tolerable, if you live in rural areas with no other option.
You're only real options are likely to be:
- a cable monopoly
- a phone company monopoly
- maybe a power company monopoly someday
- wireless
It remains to be seen if wireless avoids being monopolized, because for example the above monopolies sue if a city tries to provide it as a free service. If Wimax becomes the dominant wireless medium I believe it also has licensing structure that can create monopolies depending on who snaps up the license in a give area.
Luckily you do have several monopolies competing with each other which is better than have no competition, but as you see with oil companies if you have several big players who decide to collude they can maintain artificially high prices so they all still profit at the expense of consumers.
P.S.
Probably wont win any points saying it but it is true that cable and phone companies have invested vast sums in copper and now fiber infrastructure. You do need to insure they make a profit, and are able to service their debt as long you want that infrastructure in your home. Now if wireless could be made to work and provide similar service it obviously eliminates a lot of that infrastructure cost but I'm not sure you can get anything close to the same performance on wireless anytime soon. The other downside is wireless means we get bathed in some more potentially carcinogenic radiation.
Re:Somehow (Score:5, Insightful)
After that, I'll push for cars, entertainment and space travel... They want to be free too!
he can cripple without sniffing packets (Score:4, Insightful)
then you sign up with the cable telco's "high quality VoIP solution", which pretends to mean better pipes upstream but really means TCP without the jitter, they get their tax.
-steve
Infastructure is the issue (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Somehow (Score:3, Insightful)
Why stagnate? (Score:2, Insightful)
The more they fight it the stupider they look and eventually will lobby to play catchup [e.g. force the actual players to comply with stupid laws like E911]. Hey SBC, wake the fuck up, the days of $1.30 a minute to Europe are long over.
That and what of peering? You gonna charge me money to talk to a voip user who uses your ISP services? Ok, how about my ISP charge your customers money for using my ISP?
This is just more of "I don't get it, I don't want it, it shouldn't be".
Tom
Backing Up that Threat (Score:5, Insightful)
While it is illegal for Witacre to drop all VoIP traffic, it doesn't mean he won't be identifying this traffic and providing it with highly degraded service with added noise, especially if the call's destination is one of his clients. This way he can do his best to maintain his customer base since the average customer will believe that using VoIP is like talking through a tincan.
Sure in the end the buggywhip tech of the old Ma bell will loose out, but it will be a prolonged fight. Witacre rebuilt ATT, he's pretty shrewd. -- the guy just single-handedly overturned one of the largest anti-trust cases ever. I don't think he's going to be easy to presuade with some little "laws".
Re:Consumers paid for access, not "pipes" (Score:3, Insightful)
Until you are caught and prosecuted for theft of service for subverting controls that the ISP put in place. The world is scary. Don't think it's as simple as you would like it to be.
What a great 20th Century business model !!! (Score:2, Insightful)
Let's charge the people using the lines, and charge the services that are provided.
Why stop there?
Bill me for stopping to pick up groceries in addition to the groceries.
Charge my credit card for browsing Amazon
While I wait in line, absorbing all that heat you'r providing (or shedding BTUs alternately) charge me an hourly rate - no fractions!
This is the very heith of idiocy. Does he realize how much dark fiber is out there? This is right up there with banks and bank tellers: I used to interact with a human teller and get my funds, or deposit the til. Now, I 'interact' with a machine - a machine that doesn't have health care, disability insurance or a retirement plan - and the bank charges me - ME! - for the privilege of said machine use.
Oh wait I forgot. Greed is a very successful business model.
kulakovich
Re:Somehow (Score:5, Insightful)
eTrade, here I come! (Score:4, Insightful)
A hint to Mr. WitLacker: Due to overbuilding that was done by SBC and others during the dot-com years, dark fiber is still stupid cheap. Now, if you want to strip money from google, you'll have to ruin your own market among other customers, since I can imagine a dozen tricks ranging from buying up existing contracts to teaming with owners of existing contracts to upgrade endpoints to increase per-fiber bandwidth. Your own client base is in a position to compete with you if you get greedy.
Or Google can short-circuit past you by renting/leasing dark fiber and buying their own endpoints. And anywhere you've got a rock-solid monopoly, they can explore stopgaps like microwave. In a phrase, you can't put this genie back into a monopoly bottle, no matter how hard you try.
Next, I'm not sure how you plan to detect which endpoints are google's, or how you intend to increase charges to those endpoints without getting excessive on all other datapoints, given the rather ambiguous nature of data packets. But, if you are able to differentiate the data, all Google has to do is refuse to pay. Every time you block a paying customer from reaching Google, you'll be drowned in loud screams. After questioning your parentage, customers will insist someone's in of breach of contract (either you or google) and since they don't pay google for access, They'll blame you. If you try to shift the blame to google, we all *know* who'll win those legal/PR battles.
This isn't your grandma's ol' monopoly: for every tactic you can think of, the data infrastructure (which is what geeks like me consider the REAL internet) is creating alternatives. And every time you squeeze, you'll lose PR and goodwill and customers. You'll piss off shareholders. You'll piss off techies (ask your canine mom, Darth McBride about the wisdom of doing that). Oh, and the state public-utility regulatory commissions: act like a monopoly and various state legislatures and their consituents will shove your sorry ass deep into regulatory hell: imagine a world where the regulators deem that dark fiber will be repriced downward until it is fully utilized.
Re:Somehow (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe not as unfair as it first sounds? (Score:5, Insightful)
The fixed costs are the physical line, maintenance, exchange equipment etc.
The variable costs are basically the calls, or are they? It costs them a fixed amount for the infrastructure to enable you to make calls. Once the mainly fixed costs of providing the infrastructure is met then profit starts. I know this is a simplistic description but it mostly hold water. So in effect the business is built around mainly fixed costs.
However if you take away the revenue associated with the making of calls then something has to give to meet these costs which remain largely the same.
This can either be reduced profit, reduced costs or an increase in the fixed charge.
Reducing profit is something companies are unlikely to want to do. In SBC's case their profit $1.2 billion from $10.3 billion represents 11% profit. Not bad and they can afford to lose some from that. But get much below say 6-7% and alarm bells will start ringing. Not least they won't be keen on investing speculative money on a high risk, low margin business like say next gen. ADSL.
Reducing costs. I dare say there could be some of this going on in a business of this size but after not too long they would have to reduce their infrastructure costs. And reducing infrastructure costs would eventually mean reducing service.
The third option is to move the fixed costs onto the fixed costs the customer pays. IE The line rental and the Broadband supply.
Doubtless there are other ways of looking at it but any way must address the issue of fixed costs being paid for.
Re:Wait a minute . . . (Score:3, Insightful)
Shades of Things to Come (Re:Somehow) (Score:5, Insightful)
This is sure to set off a firestorm of US bashing, but the first thing that came to mind when I read this quote today was the interest in the UN and/or EU in wresting "control" of the internet from the hands of the US. Is this the type of thing we would see if these other parties gained control of the root servers? Pay up or no DNS for you??
Only in that case you (as a consumer) wouldn't have the option of punishing them for this outrageous behavior with your pocketbook by switching to another provider. You would just have to a) hope that the service provider (Google, Yahoo, whomever) would pay the piper; or b) you might simply be stuck if the service/information you wanted to access was deemed unacceptable and therefore all access to it via DNS was eliminated. (Hopefully you could root out [forgive the pun, I had to do it] the IP address on your own or you would REALLY be out of luck)...
Re:Who is paying the bills... (Score:4, Insightful)
The prevalent theory on Slashdot is that Ma Bell gets the infrastructure paid for by government subsidy, and triple charges the users for using it (consumer + ISP + content provider). The theory seems to go on that Ma Bell just sits there raking in billions of dollars a year by doing nothing.
The fact is, the Bells put a *HUGE* amount of their own money into the ground. They run copper and fiber to approximately 100% of the houses in their areas, along with the DSL switches, fiber switches, and other pieces of expensive equipment. Just the maintenance on that investment is in the *billions* of dollars per year.
You all seem to think this investment should just be written off, and the pipes be free for everyone.
Fact is that they are NOT charging more than once for the infrastructure. The Consumer pays for the infrastructure from the intr-LATA network up to the side of their house. The ISP pays for the facilities (the OC3 or OC12 big pipe) that connects their infrastructure to the internet back-bone. The content provider pays either for the consumer network (for very small providers) or something similar to the ISP model, they are paying for a big pipe to get deliver more content.
Interestingly, in this model, no one is directly paying for the internet backbone. All of that is paid for via the other plans -- ie, some portion of the consumer, ISP or content provider payment is diverted to pay for that. So instead of triple charging, they are really just charging for the piece of the network the customer is using, and using part of that revenue to pay for the backbone.
Yes, Ma Bell is in business, which means she wants to make money. Its just not as unfair as this site would make aout. Also with the entrance of cable, cell phone, satellite, and VoIP, they are also not a monopoly.
Re:Uhhhh.... (Score:3, Insightful)
so Big content provider signs up with ISP "A" and pays them to let the content provider ship bits out onto the internet and to the consumers.
the consumers pay ISP "B" big money to let them recieve bits of content from the content provider.
this is not an unbalanced situation... it doesnt matter which way the bits are flowing only that they are flowing... neither ISP could exist without the other... if ISP "B" cuts off trafic from the content provider their customers will have no reason to keep using their service and big contetnt provider will have no reason to pay ISP "A" to let them ship bits out as there will be nobody to recieve them and we all go back to mail order catalogs and porno magazines...
this is just ridiculous... and I have little doubt it would fail... SBC tries this and they become AOL back in the bad old days, limited access to content based on who would pay them, except in this case without customer service or any content of their own... no content provider is going to pay their tax and their broadband customer base would dry up.
but hey... if they can convince all the content providers to pay them a tax on their customer base, then more power too them... I doubt they will get much out of this though...
Which is why Verizon is pulling ahead (Score:3, Insightful)
Between their EVDO service and fiber, they've turned the tables on the cable companies and gone from irrelevant to the top in a space of just 2-3 years. Verizon, for all the complaints against them is actually competing and not whining. At least not yet.
What is the TRUE value of Internet Content? (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's try the legacy Ma Bell perspective:
You make a phone call to Joe. You initiated the transaction but both you and Joe pay for access to the network. Even further, in the wireless phone world both you and Joe likely pay per minute for the call.
Now let's try a cable perspective:
You want subscribers who will pay a monthly access fee. To get them, you need the best available content. You MUST get networks such as ESPN, CNN, ABC, NBC, MTV, etc. into your content package. You don't charge ESPN for access to your "network"...
Similarly, newspapers:
You need subscribers. You pay content creators (reporters, comic authors, etc.) for the content necessary to attract and retain subscribers.
It seems the battle is which model does the data backbone (the Internet, if you will) fall into? Is it simply a network by which people and organizations can communicate with no guarantee or claims as to the quality of that content (a la the phone network) or are you selling end-subscriber access to a content service (a la cable TV or newspaper)?
I think for SBC the answer is "yes". It's both. They have end customers who want access to the Internet FOR the content that's there. They also have customers who just want a communications network for data. Here is another way to look at the power of the organizations involved:
Could a major Internet content/service provider (Google, CNN, Apple iTunes, Yahoo, etc.) approach a network provider (SBC, Comcast, AOL, etc.) and threaten to cut off those network's subscribers unless the network provider PAYS them for their content?
This would be the true coup de etat in the industry. When a single content or service source becomes so demanded by end consumers that it MUST be available on your network to keep those subscribers. I don't know that any website is yet that important... Maybe Windows Update could be, if anyone used it.
Re:Somehow (Score:4, Insightful)
When you have high-bandwidth wireless freely serving everyone in Osage County Kansas, then get back to me.
Rick
Re:Empty Threat (Score:4, Insightful)
Unregulating the telcos will mean prices go up and service goes down.
All true, HOWEVER (Score:3, Insightful)
I can't emphasize this enough--uncompetitive companies must go under for the free market to operate efficiently. Propping up an aging, uncompetitive company hurts consumers--through poor service, high prices, and slowed economic growth.
In point of fact there might not BE any way for SBC to reconcile their fixed costs and the new consumer expectations of fixed connectivity pricing. So be it--that's life.
SBC/AT&T could go under tomorrow and the world would go on. Either: they would declare bankruptcy and write off debt and renegotiate union contracts, thereby lowering fixed costs, OR some other more competitive company would purchase their assets, employees, and customer lists, and provide service more efficiently. It would messy for a while, but when is any change neat, even if it's badly needed?
SBC/AT&T is welcome to do their best to get return on their investment. But the burden is on them to make it work, not on us.
Re:You don't remember Ma Bell, do you? (Score:2, Insightful)
You do know which party people turn to when they want a powerful central authority to take care of them, right? You do know who promises social welfare, corporate regulation, protectionist economic policy, and universal health care, right? You do know that there was only one candidate in the last election that would make any sense as your guess, right? You do know that he lost, right?
Bush lost?
Not to state the obvious, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe because the more compelling bandwidth-intensive apps there are, the more demand there will be for bandwidth (i.e. "your pipes")?
Vonage isn't stealing from you, they are selling your product! You can't use Vonage without a broadband connection. And if customers get used to running several apps like Vonage, they'll find that they have saturated their cheap $19.99/month DSL plan, which means they'll start wanting to bump up to the pricier plans.
Nothing sells a platform like apps, and if you're the phone company or the cable company, you're the platform. You want to encourage the growth of these apps, not shut them down.
Re:Uhhhh.... (Score:5, Insightful)
This CEO says he "owns" the pipes. Fine, let's get the government all the way out of this venture. I want a reckoning of much money local, state, federal governments have put into the building and maintenance of those pipes. And if SBC's going to "own" them, they'd better cut those governments some big ass checks to compensate them for their investments, and the government can plow that into making the communications market competitive again. Otherwise, I hope the state AG's start looking hard in SBC's direction...
Re:Shades of Things to Come (Re:Somehow) (Score:5, Insightful)
Change the US and EU around in your statements and you can see exactly why the rest of the world is nervous about leaving the DNS in the hands of an organisation which is on a short leash to a governmental trade department.
However, that's a whole other story, done to death in other threads..
Do quite agree with ye though that the SBC quote seems a little heavy handed....
Re:Somehow (Score:5, Insightful)
The original reasoning behind the friendly monopoly was to prevent divergent standards in telecom from emerging and to prevent mass destruction of public property. Think about it this way...one company, one city, many streets and alleyways. Any time SBC lays new fiber, runs new lines, erects new poles, etc. the city is well aware of it. The proper forms are filled out and streets are closed/traffic redirected/people are notified.
Now imagine there are 4 telcos in your city. Each one will be on their own upgrade and repair schedule. Each one will fight for customers. Each one will be loathe to exchange with other companies' traffic. Each one will tear up streets during upgrade cycles. See the problem here? Telecom is considered important enough for city governments not to fuck with it, just like the power company. A phone, a water pipe, and power to every address is not too much to ask for.
If our government worked better, i.e. wasn't so slow and wasteful, I'd wish that we'd have government controlled telecom. We could have a national telecom policy that'd bring us fine things like fiber to the home like Japan, Korea, *insert better connected country here* does. SBC is an impediment to progress, while they're in the position to push it forward, they have to make sure to squeeze every last penny out of what they've already invested. So of course, the CEO will boldly say 'you must pay to use our lines'. The shareholders would expect nothing less. Common corporate bs here.
What would happen if they were unable to exact a charge on companies sharing their lines? To the shareholders, they're giving something away for free. To them, they're losing money on legacy hardware (i.e. the paths they provide have already been bought and paid for many times over). They fought like hell in court to prevent the telecom act, and it's easy to see why. The cable companies have the upper hand here, because the playing field is somewhat more level for them. They're not as strictly regulated and don't have to share their infrastructure with others. They still compete with each other and tear up public property occasionally but they're not as 'necessary' as SBC is. Yet. SBC has said time and again that if they had the right protection they would invest the billions required to put fiber to the curb. Verizon, in some areas, has already beaten them to the punch.
Basically to sum it all up, SBC is becoming a model for corporate greed and sloth. Just like Microsoft or any other company that gets too big, they never want to play nice and share with others for fear of losing a few bucks in the exchange.
Re:Somehow (Score:5, Insightful)
Wo needs your pipes, asshat? (Score:3, Insightful)
Give it a few years, wireless will do anything your "pipes" do, moron.
And it won't be owned by you, it will be owned by Google.
Have a nice day, dinosaur.
Re:Uhhhh.... (Score:3, Insightful)
I couldn't agree more. This is exactly what I was thinking when I was reading the article. How can this guy NOT have gotten a return on his investment yet? I sincerely doubt he's in debt up to his eyeballs here....considering the help he's getting from the governments, and the utter TRAFFIC that goes across the pipe these days. Saying that he needs to double his money is just plain ludicrousy, but he dances around SAYING that pretty well.
But Slashdotters are no fools
"SBC's" pipe in *MY* municipal right of way (Score:2, Insightful)
So, while he argues that other businesses should be required to pay for his pipe since they are competing businesses. He also still promotes municipal discounts on right-of-way as if he still runs a public utility. And he still promotes that other bussinesses should be pushed to use his pipes instead of being able to get right-of-way at a similar cost. So, for example, to run fiber optic between two buildings in down town Chicago would cost a non-profit University ten times as much as what SBC was charged. Hence, there is incentive to go with SBC for the fiber optic link. Arrangements are made in Feb 2005 for SBC "GigaMAN" service to be put in at June of 2005. Guess what still isn't in place?
Cities need to acknowledge that SBC is neither a public utility or has the public interest in mind for sharing right of way. As a non-public utility, SBC should pay the same exact price for municipal right of way as everyone else and refund the tax payers for the con of getting discounted right of way in the past as if they would operate as a public utility.
Of course, SBC's CEO will never come out and promote that SBC should pay it's fair share for right of way, just that other businesses should have to pay their fair share to SBC while the tax payer gets robbed by a company that is not a public utility but continues demanding discounts from cities as if they are.
Re:Shades of Things to Come (Re:Somehow) (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, it's a company in the US that is trying to play this game, not the US Govt. Regardless, it did bring to mind how far this idea of the threat of blocking access as a revenue stream could extend were other parties to gain control of the root servers. To this date, I have never heard a complaint that the US govt. has tampered with the root servers to manipulate consumer access to any site. Would other entities (whomever they are) be as scrupulous in this matter were they to take over these servers. Or, would we see the scenarios I mentioned in my previous post: "Pay up or no DNS for you" or "we don't like your site, no DNS for you"?
Totally take UN and/or EU out of the scenario if you wish--substitute any organization you wish because that is not the main issue. The main issue is, "what will [insert organization name here] do if they gain control of the root servers?" Or, "why does [insert organization name here] want 'control' of these servers in the first place?"
We all know the old adage, "If it ain't broke don't fix it." If we find that [insert organization name here] is thinking along the lines of this SBC CEO then I think we could all agree that we should leave things as they are?
Re:Shades of Things to Come (Re:Somehow) (Score:2, Insightful)
Well, what are the customers paying for, then, if not access to "his lines" which were (and pay close attention here) subsidized by U.S. citizens.
I'm all for companies trying to make a buck. I'm againt companies changing the business model mid-stream. He wants to charge Google that's fine. I want my money back. Oh, and the back rent, too.
Re:Somehow (Score:1, Insightful)
In contract law it used to be... (Score:3, Insightful)
It seems that this has been forgotten in the recent years and almost ALL of the business-consumer contracts are all unfairly one-sided!
Typical contract-
The business's rights:
2) We do not garantee the service. We do not garantee the service against interruptions.
3) We can change the terms of the contract at any time to any condition as we want.
The Consumer's rights:
2) The consumer has no other rights
This isn't the way it's supposed to work. There is SUPPOSED to be compensation for term changes.
Re:Somehow (Score:2, Insightful)
His message specifically stated that they were not allowed to run a router of any kind.
now, about going off "half cocked?"
Re:Somehow (Score:5, Insightful)
The point is, this guy is a greedy jackass who is trying to make out like other companies are getting a free ride using the bandwidth I and they *already* payed for. If google, et. al have to start paying SBC for the bandwidth I already payed for, SBC better start giving me free DSL service (all this is hypothetical, as I currently use TimeWarner cable for internet access).
The one potentially hopefull thing in all this is, because of the fact that cable companies are competing with the phone companies, (and things like city-wide WiFi networks are being created) SBC doesn't really quite have the clout that its CEO seems to think it does - just imagine what would happen if SBC suddenly disallowed access to all the websites/services that people normally use the internet for, because they didn't pay this fee? All SBC's customers would probably switch ISP's pretty fast, leaving SBC wondering what happened. Simply put, SBC needs Google, Vonage, and the rest of the Internet more than the rest of the Internet needs SBC.
I still do wonder, though, what *geniuses* at the FTC have allowed the re-aggregation of all the baby bells after government spent massive amounts of money, and 10 years of litigation, trying to break them up.
Re:Shades of Things to Come (Re:Somehow) (Score:3, Insightful)
It's like the just woke up to the Internet and said, "Hey those content guys are getting mega wealthy due to stuff coming accross our backbone and we're only getting filty rich from the existing bandwidth usage agreements with the ISP's and telcos." Even though they did not have the inovation and fore thought to come up with these ideas such as Google they still think they deserve an extra piece of the pie. That's crap and I do not care what context you try to spin it in and yes I actually read the article.
Re:Uhhhh.... (Score:3, Insightful)
I think you misunderstood his reasoning. He thinks he owns the pipes because he thinks he owns the government that helped his corp to build them.
Having him send a big ass check to his government would be futile. He would just get his legislature to pass, and his president to sign, a law that gives him an even bigger ass tax break to get all of his original money back and then some.