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Regional Bells Blocking Broadband Competition 378

Posted by timothy from the doing-their-best-at-any-rate dept.
Tim Doran writes "USA Today has a story today describing regulatory moves by the regional Bell companies meant to stifle competition in broadband. Of course, nobody plays the regulators like the ILECs, and they're using their massive fiber builds as leverage against the regulators. They're even running interference on municipalities who are trying to build their own fiber networks!"
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Regional Bells Blocking Broadband Competition More

Regional Bells Blocking Broadband Competition

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  • ILEC?? (Score:5, Informative)

    by wdd1040 ( 640641 ) on Wednesday January 05, 2005 @12:52AM (#11261091)
    An ILEC [webopedia.com] is a telephone company that was providing local service when the Telecommunications Act of 1996 was enacted.

    • Re:ILEC?? (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Incubant Local Exchange Carrier - Basicly means that they own the lines. A company that competes in their market is a CLEC. For instance, SBC owns the lines and Verizon wants to compete in that market. SBC would be the ILEC, Verizon the CLEC. Verizon would probably not normally be a CLEC, think smaller, like an ALLTEL or someone like that.

      • Yeah, yeah, it's Slashdot and all, but when expanding an acronym for those who don't know, it's best to spell it correctly -- "incumbent [reference.com]".

        What's an incubant? A person who sits on eggs, perhaps?
  • I suppose that they are going to oppose Internet2 research eventually just because the universities and organizations that created that network are not using their facilities to transmit the data... this is why some parts of the US economy are on the way to failure, because a few large bodies who monopolize the market in telecoms can't innovate fast enough, and spank down those who can.

  • It's not just the regional bells (Score:5, Interesting)

    by moorcito ( 529567 ) on Wednesday January 05, 2005 @12:54AM (#11261102) Homepage
    When I was back home in Kansas City over Christmas, my uncle-in-law, who is a lawyer for the city of North Kansas City, was telling us about how Time Warner Cable was sueing the city because they were trying to put in their own cable broadband lines.
    • "Seems it's best to sue the city whenever the city does things for the city. Such actions by the city are undemocratic. And when I mean undemocratic, I mean a barrier to free trade. And when I mean a barrier to free trade, I mean... not sure what that means, but it's what all the kids are talking about these days. Hey--did you get your Bush 2005 Christmas Calendar?"
      • I won't argue whether it's democratic or not (doesn't really apply here), but it *is* rather un-capitalistic for the government to compete with private business.

        How would you like it if the State(TM) entered whatever business you were in and started to undercut your prices?
        • You mean have the state compete with a government approved monopoly? Who else would compete?

        • Re:It's not just the regional bells (Score:5, Insightful)

          by JanneM ( 7445 ) on Wednesday January 05, 2005 @02:03AM (#11261392) Homepage
          Who decides what is private business?

          Could guard companies rightly claim that a municipal police force is robbing them of business opportunities? Could someone start a private firebrigade and rightly stop the city from providing that service itself?

          What about people building private armies? The Pentagon is denying them their livelihood!

          I'm only slightly facetious here; the question really is serious.

          • Who decides what is private business?

            Easy. Whatever the peoples' respresentative, the elected government, decides.

            No business has a god given right to exist if a democratically elected government says no.

            ---

            It's wrong that an intellectual property creator should not be rewarded for their work.
            It's equally wrong that an IP creator should be rewarded too many times for the one piece of work, for exactly the same reasons.
            Reform IP law and stop the M$/RIAA abuse.

          • FCC Chairman Michael Powell has done everything in his power to restrict American citizens' choice of information and entertainment [com.com]

            Powell is one of the most digusting double talkers. Talks one thing to the public, does exactly the opposite in congress. He should be castrated.
          • Could guard companies rightly claim that a municipal police force is robbing them of business opportunities?

            I know you're doing a what if, but we had that and they were called the Pinkertons. And they were *brutal*. They were the detectives, the police, the judge, the jury, and executioners.

            Believe it or not, the level of corruption we experience now is nothing compared to the past (although still unacceptable).

        • If it meant my government were trying to do something intelligent for once, I'd like it alot. But then, I'm a practical guy, and I'd probably just start altering my business strategy to take into consideration state competition. It is rather uncapitalistic to compete in a courtroom, rather than in the market.

          After all, fedex and UPS seem to do well enough.
        • If the state can do it better for cheaper, and as long as its not subsidized by my taxes, more power too em. When I have only 1 broadband option, that is something called a MONOPOLY

  • SBC story from Illinois (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ckolar ( 43016 ) <chris@@@kolar...org> on Wednesday January 05, 2005 @01:01AM (#11261132) Homepage Journal
    We're familiar with that type of game here in the Fox Valley area west of Chicago. We had three communities try to pull together to get municipal broadband [tricitybroadband.com] through and it was fought tooth and nail by SBC. It is pretty pathetic that we are still waiting for complete broadband services out here given that Fermilab is in Batavia (one of the three cities). SBC resorted to scary, misleading ads and other dirty tricks [tricitybroadband.com] and managed to keep the plan suppressed.

  • Who would have ever thought? (Score:4, Funny)

    by akeyes ( 720106 ) <akeyes+slashdot&gmail,com> on Wednesday January 05, 2005 @01:01AM (#11261135) Homepage

    Who would have ever thought?

    "The No. 2 wireless carrier, Verizon Wireless, is also controlled by a Bell company, Verizon."

  • And your point is? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by the_skywise ( 189793 ) on Wednesday January 05, 2005 @01:05AM (#11261144)
    I'm not a fan of the bells, but they don't have much room left to maneuver. They're got a government regulated monopoly to deliver local phone service. Cheap. To everybody. For a dying service because everybody's using cell phones. They can now compete in long distance and TV now but everybody's using their cell phone for long distance and cable and satellite are far more popular choices for TV than "the phone company". And yet they've still got this boat-anchor around their necks in delivering high quality and low cost 100% uptime POTS lines to every person in an area. If they want to raise rates or change service, they have to get permission from the government.

    So now along comes high speed service which is about the only feature they can compete on and now the SAME governments that forced them into these bizarre redtape bureaucratic maneuvers want to build their own fiber lines! For a political boondoggle! Yeah, if I were a Bell exec, I'd be pulling every trick in the regulatory book I could to keep my business afloat.

    Now personally, I think the bells are dinosaurs and they're screwing over my favorite ISP by offering their DSL at cut rate prices but forcing my ISP to resale at $10/month more.
    But don't be suprised when the Bells use the tools at their disposal to survive. Instead wonder why it is that the legislatures seem to think they're at the mercy of the Bells and not the other way around!

    • Re:And your point is? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 05, 2005 @01:25AM (#11261226)
      They don't deliver phone service cheaply. Tell me that $25 a month for a phone that never actually gets used is cheap.

      Community supported broadband projects, like the one mentioned for the Louisiana town are a FANTASTIC deal for the town, if they can swing it. If the city finances it as a 20-year bond, and charges everyone in the city $15 a month, they can deliver fibre to the home. The Iowa Communications Network delivers fibre to every county in a very rural state. It cost $350,000,000 to build, and has a cost of $20,000,000 per year to run. There are about 3 million people living in Iowa, so it comes to $120 per person for a startup cost, and less than $10 per year continual cost. If you amortize the $120 over 20 years, then it's exceptionally dirt cheap really fast internet for everyone. And the bell network doesn't take it's profit and give it to shareholders in another state.
    • They're got a government regulated monopoly to deliver local phone service.

      No industry that is regulated wants to be deregulated.
      Regulation is not an impediment to profit, it is a usually insurmountable, barrier to entry for competition.

      Look at the airline industry - going from regulated with tons of cushy waste and guaranteed profits to constantly on the edge of bankruptcy (either coming or going).

      You can draw similar comparisons with just about any deregulation in recent memory.
    • I'm not sympathetic to the Bells. They got their monopoly for a good reason, and if they don't like the terms of it, maybe they should exchange the terms for some competition?

      In my state, SBC was getting a lot of complaints regarding poor service and slow repairs. Many retired phone repairmen were offering to work part time, but SBC insisted on full-timers despite not being able to get qualified applicants. Holding out in a bizarre all-or-nothing fashion is part of what got them wailed on by the state a
    • If they want to raise rates or change service, they have to get permission from the government.

      When the general market trend in telecommunications, is for costs to decrease, then the inability to RAISE rates is no impediment. In telecommunications, NO ONE is raising rates!

      So now along comes high speed service which is about the only feature they can compete on and now the SAME governments that forced them into these bizarre redtape bureaucratic maneuvers want to build their own fiber lines!

      1: So what
    • Follow the money...

  • Phone companies playing god (Score:5, Informative)

    by bmasephol ( 709904 ) on Wednesday January 05, 2005 @01:06AM (#11261150)
    We have this problem in my hometown ( or something similiar ). 2 different companies wanted to come in and stick a big antenna on top of our water tower and provide wireless broadband connections to everyone within reach. Only problem is that they had to get their high speed connection through the local phone company (TDS) and it turned out that the company had plans to bring DSL into the area in a year or so, so they drug their feet and eventually it never materialized... twice! two different companies denied. Now we get their high priced slow ass DSL and all towns around our area with different phone providers have the wireless available. Its completely retarded.

  • Phone Fiction (Score:3, Funny)

    by Tackhead ( 54550 ) on Wednesday January 05, 2005 @01:07AM (#11261157)
    RBOC: "Regulations, motherfucker, do you write them?"
    FCC: "Yes..."
    RBOC: "Now describe to me what our customers look like."
    FCC: "T-they're kinda wooly... and have four legs..."
    RBOC: "Go on" FCC: "...and they eat grass..."
    RBOC: "Do they look like one of our customers?"
    FCC: "What?
    RBOC: "DO. THEY. LOOK. LIKE. A. CUSTOMER?" FCC: "N-no?" RBOC: "Then why you tryin' to stop us from fuckin' them like one?"

  • Unfortunately (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jd ( 1658 ) <imipak@FREEBSDyahoo.com minus bsd> on Wednesday January 05, 2005 @01:18AM (#11261203) Homepage Journal
    We can expect more of this happening. Especially as certain people in office are more concerned with getting money from industry than getting a decent industry.


    Personally, I think municipal networks (GMING springs to mind) [g-ming.net.uk] are the way to go. I don't like the idea of private companies, with minimal to no accountability to anyone (except maybe the top 5 richest shareholders not on the board), having absolute control over who can do what.


    True, Governments tend to abuse authority as much as anyone else, but at least you can vote them out of office. They also have a bit more ready cash to play with than most corporations, making the idea of ten gigabit pipes to the home a possibility. (So much so that Japan is planning exactly that.)


    As it stands, most private ISPs are a bunch of incompetents who profit largely by backstabbing other private ISPs. (I can't think of any ISPs I've used, over time, that I actually liked for the quality of service.)


    The main reason multicasting isn't deployed is because they don't know how to bill people for it. The fact that they don't bill any other protocol doesn't enter into the picture. IPv6 has never made much headway, not because it's not needed or wanted (since when have users not wanted things that automagically configured themselves and worked out of the box, wholly mobile and utterly transparently?) but because it IS automatic, mobile, etc, making the whole "ISP Experience" irrelevent and actually a disincentive.


    In the end, ISPs don't want competition. Competition means smaller profits, especially as the number of USians going online has flattened off sharply. They want a homogenius, uniform, consistant monopoly. And if you're going to have that anyway, why not have someone like DARPA or NIST run the damn thing, so at least you know someone technically competent is running the show?

    • They want a homogenius, uniform, consistant monopoly.

      Which is exactly what a government controlled telecom would be. Only without all the efficiency of a private company.

      • Re:Unfortunately (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Brandybuck ( 704397 )
        Government run businesses have the efficiency of the USPO, prices of the IRS, and customer service of the DMV. Who can say no?
      • Corporations are only efficient at the bottom of the hierarchy. THe workers are forced to be efficient or be fired. But all the surpluse gets eaten up by the vampires at the top--CEO's etc.

        For example, look at the Social Securiy Administration, which provides medical care administration. It's administration costs are only ONE PERCENT of its total budget. Now, your typical HMO also provides medical care administration, but it has 15% admin costs. It's true that the the HMO is more efficient at the botton, w
      • Anyone who thinks that having the government run all telecommunications should just look at Telstra here in australia to see why it would be a BAD idea.

    • As it stands, most private ISPs are a bunch of incompetents who profit largely by backstabbing other private ISPs. (I can't think of any ISPs I've used, over time, that I actually liked for the quality of service.)

      Look harder.

      With the big ISP's, it's often "pick package A, B, xor C". You fit into them. It's the other way around with small companies - what can they do to help you.

      I work with 2 small companies (one hosting provider, one ISP). I love that tech support is two people. They know me. I know th

  • What is most irksome about the baby bells... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by StDave ( 13072 ) on Wednesday January 05, 2005 @01:24AM (#11261225) Homepage Journal
    Is that they have built their networks on our dime. They would have you believe that they built these huge networks out of their own pocket and that they took a huge risk in doing so.

    The truth is that these infrastructures were built by government and given to them for maintainence. Perhaps not literally, but certainly financially. The phone company does not have emminent domain rights to my property to erect poles (snicker) or dig a trench, but for that power allowed them by the government. If they had to pay anything, it was small, and it didn't matter anyway, since they were nurtured by guaranteed profits by Public Service Commissions.

    To have these guys behave in this way now disgusts me. There are 'real' companies taking 'real' risks these days without any guarantees of success or profit and they end up paying through the nose for communications lawyers just to get the chance to compete. I don't know if you have had to deal with a baby bell trouble ticket recently, but it wouldn't be hard to beat them in service.

    The way I see it, the baby bells are only winning this race because we gave them a 75 year headstart.

  • The ISP I worked for went bankrupt (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 05, 2005 @01:36AM (#11261267)
    ...partly because of things like this that Qwest pulled. They were able to offer DSL piggybacking over the phone line, while we had to order an unbundled loop circuit (which cost money up front we had to charge the customer), then send out a tech to wire the circuit at the customer premise. When you compared pricing, customers would see a $99 setup fee from us for the circuit, modem, and sending a tech out to do an install, while Qwest would "waive" all but $.99

    This is not to mention things like swiping the UBLs to for voice lines (hey, there's no dialtone, it must be a free line -- oops, down goes someone's DSL for a week), and circuits showing too high insert loss/bridge taps/whatever and then turning around and offering the customer their own DSL within a week of requesting the information from Qwest. It got so we would simply check the distance from the C.O. and if it looked okay and there were people in the neighborhood that had service we would send out a tech to do our own test.

    Their actions might not have been on purpose, but the regional Bells show gross indifference if not utter contempt for CLECs.
  • I don't mean "why is /. posting it?" I mean, why is the newspaper making this out to be such a big deal? Think about the company you work for. Now, imagine (if you are in the private sector) that the government was going to start getting into your business, only without the existing infrastructure to deal with, or uninformed stockholders, or the local government, or franchise fees, right-of-way clearances, etc? Wouldn't you fight to get it stopped, even if you didn't care?

    The business model most of these c

    • Wouldn't you fight to get it stopped, even if you didn't care?

      I would fight only if I didn't care.

      If I cared I would realize that I have no sovereign right to impose my commercial services on my customers and either I would compete with the government, find some way to work WITH the government, or get out of town.

      If you think it is unfair that the government has more resources then you do, you are right. It is unfair. Too bad.

      You have no moral claim against the sovereign entering into "your" market a
    • Well, why don't all the private schools get together and sue the government. After all, they are using public funds to maintain buildings and such, and that's unfair competition. Abolish all public schools to let the private sector flurish. Never mind that if the government withdrew, people would be underserved and there would be a large number of people that wanted an education that would be denied.

      The same is happening here. The government sees broadband as a utility. The private companies aren't pr

  • That is a LEADER !! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by zymano ( 581466 ) on Wednesday January 05, 2005 @01:44AM (#11261307)
    Not taking shit from the Bell co. and their attempt to monopolize broadband.

    We need communities to follow her example. Broadband shopping is not like buying a car. It's an investment in infrastructure just like roads and electric plants. This is what the 'RIGHT WINGERS' don't want you to know. They reply with propoganda that government will only hurt broadband when in fact most monopolies of this countries have been private companies.

    I see the Bill Gates , Carnegies , Rockefellers and other criminal monopolists as an excellent analogy to whats going on here.

    They are trying to crush competition ! They don't want poor folk to get broadband because it cuts into profit margin !

    What's even funnier is that the government created the first network .

    And even funnier is that the phone company hated the internet because it cut into their long distance business. Now they say they care about the consumer. BULLSHIT !
    • I see the Bill Gates, Carnegies, Rockefellers and other criminal monopolists as an excellent analogy to whats going on here. They are trying to crush competition !

      Agreed.

      Similarly, I see homo sapiens as the problem here -- killing and eating Neanderthal man to extinction.

      -kgj
    • This is what the 'RIGHT WINGERS' don't want you to know. They reply with propoganda that government will only hurt broadband when in fact most monopolies of this countries have been private companies.

      You have the right/left slant 180 degrees out of phase. The right wing position would be deregulate and competition is good. The left wing position is to regulate and control the market. The situation with broadband is fairly simple:

      * Telecom/Cable Company spent millions building out a fiber and copper ne

  • Here in NYC (Score:3, Interesting)

    by MrRuslan ( 767128 ) on Wednesday January 05, 2005 @01:44AM (#11261309)
    you can only get verizon DSL if you use there phone phone service. I know a few people who actually sighned up for AT&T DSL service and they had to go trogh hell because verizon didn't want them to go. It's a vicious battle and the customer looses this one because of lack of choice.

  • Qworst (Score:3, Interesting)

    by hkb ( 777908 ) on Wednesday January 05, 2005 @01:57AM (#11261367)
    Add Qwest to this fucked-up list of idiots. They threatened us ( a local consortium of public education and city government in Oregon) with legal action because we wanted to set up our own fiber network instead of paying to run over their lines.

    Joke's on them, though. We finished it, and its fully operational.

    Bye bye income for Qwest, probably one of the worst companies in terms of price, service, and billing. Their incompetence with billing and overbilling customers is legendary.
    • Don't you know that American free enterprise capitalism as exemplified by the Telcos is the best of all possible worlds?
      What you did in Oregon is COMMUNISM! Traitor!

      Excuse me now, I have to pray at my Ayn Rand shrine.... /sarcasm (hey, it's Slashdot!)

  • How one local ISP is responding. (Score:4, Informative)

    by happyEverGeek ( 705021 ) on Wednesday January 05, 2005 @02:22AM (#11261469)
    My (favorite) ISP, Sonic.net, on December 20th, filed comments at the FCC in response to BellSouth's request to exclude independent ISPs from access to DSL. The concern is that if BellSouth gets it's way, SBC may do the same. This would leave all California with just two choices for DSL: SBC or Comcast. Sonic.net is well worth the extra money I pay each month. I don't want to lose that choice.

    Here's the PDF of their comments. [sonic.net]

  • The amazement of it never ends... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Phoenix-IT ( 801337 ) on Wednesday January 05, 2005 @02:24AM (#11261473)
    ...That Corporate America becomes increasingly more unethical every day and no one seems to notice or care.

    The way they bribe congress, lie to the consumer, lie to regulators, and pull double-standards right out in the open like Bell did in this article.

    I mean, really... Has no one noticed that "binding arbitration" appears in just about everything you are required to sign now? Do you people not know that this usurps your right to a trial by jury? That the real function behind it, wether or not you win the arbitrator's decision, is so that the company can't be found "guilty" of a criminal actions that would surface in a trial?

    Oh wait, not that being found guilty in a court would matter... Look what happened to Microsoft...
    • Seriously, a lot of this binding arbitration language has happened because of abuses in the legal 'profession'. Once you get lawyers involved 90% of your gains from the action (or more) are history. It's like watching a family tear itself apart over an estate. No one really makes out but the lawyers.

      At any rate, real reform probably won't happen through lawsuits. There's going to need to be completely transparent, independant regulatory oversight for that to happen on the scale it needs to.

  • Atlanta-based BellSouth disagrees. Bill McCloskey, a company spokesman, argues there are no barriers to entry into the broadband business, as evidenced by the army of carriers -- cable, wireless, local governments and others -- that are trying to compete.

    "For anybody to say that there is no competition just doesn't compute," McCloskey says.

    There are very few options for anyone that wants anything beyond dialup other than 1. Whichever cable company owns their geographic region. 2. Whichever ILEC owns

  • What... the....fuck.... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Cervantes ( 612861 ) on Wednesday January 05, 2005 @03:04AM (#11261622) Journal
    I wouldn't believe it if I didn't read it on the Internets [=)]

    A city... passed a law... GUARANTEEING BUSINESS TO A PRIVATE COMPANY. A L-A-W. That thing that is supposed to ensure order and justice. To guarantee profits. To a private company.

    What the sweet fucking hell is wrong with you people?!?!? How does shit like this happen?!?

    And, IIRC, don't ya'll have a funny thing called "Taxes" that is supposed to be used for "Public Services" such as water, roads... and the Internet? I'd call that a necessity in the New World, little Mr. 13th-in-the-world.

    Seriously, I'm not trolling. What the fuck is wrong with a country when a company can sue because, in doing something good, a public entity takes away possible profits? And how the fuck does NO-ONE stand up and complain? I know most of the media is more concerned with money than with truth, but how does this not sneak in somewhere... a major newspaper, an anchor who just blurts it out...

    COME ON PEOPLE! Democracy is a method of government. Communism is a method of government. Autocracy is a method of government. CAPITALISM IS NOT A FUCKING METHOD OF GOVERNMENT!
    • CAPITALISM IS NOT A FUCKING METHOD OF GOVERNMENT!
      Well that's OK then, since this is much more like communism than capitalism. Think of the Bells as state-run companies whose chiefs are relatives of the party bosses. The details are a little different, but not by much in any practical sense.

  • I worked for an ILEC doing this. (Score:5, Informative)

    by bs_02_06_02 ( 670476 ) on Wednesday January 05, 2005 @03:11AM (#11261647)
    For 10 years, I worked as a SONET/DWDM engineer, designing and implementing fiber installations for one of these ILECs.

    I read the article. The ILEC is standing in the way of progress? Give me a break. Sure, in this instance, they're complaining.... but local and state governments stand in the way all the time, yet that never makes the newspapers. I've seen cities grant access to install fiber, and then decide they're going to jack up the right-of-way costs to the ILEC, and then give away access to the competition for pennies per mile. Fair? Or unfair?
    Often, local governments will take bids for right-of-way to install fiber. That doesn't promote competition. It tells me that the local government is greedy, and they want money to spend. They aren't interested in competition until years later when the citizens are angry with the single provider that won the bid.
    During the dotcom boom, many cities took bids for fiber-based infrastructure builds. And often times, it was some poorly-planned flash-in-the-pan company that spent their entire wad winning the bid for a single city, and had very little money for equipment, labor, or anything else. Does anyone know if Sacramento got their city-wide fiber-to-the-home project completed? The last I heard, the company had gone bankrupt during installation, and had been bought by someone else. I hadn't heard whether installation was completed in any neighborhood. Anyone? Is that what you want coming to your house?

    I've also seen local governments place a 10 year moratorium on new construction because people don't like their streets dug up. Frankly, that stifles competition too.

    Laying fiber is very expensive. It's not like DSL, where you're re-using the copper loop, or cable modem, where the cable companies laid fiber to the neighborhood, and re-used the coax to the home. Fiber-to-the neighborhood is cheaper by far than fiber to the curb. Fiber is a huge pain to lay to the home.
    Surveying, digging, laying conduit with thoughts to bend radius, redundancy, sewer, water, power, and future repair access for accidental cuts? Hope that the contractor has their best person running the backhoe so you don't have to worry about severed gas, electrical, or water lines. Then blow fiber down the conduit, terminate it, light it, test it, educate the end-users (the 50% that initially express an interest), all the while working with city planners, utility companies, city water/sewer departments, and keep the subcontractors in line? Then, after years of work, put active services on it, give away service for the first few months, and then hope to turn a profit at what the government says you can charge for services. And listen to people complain about the high cost? And then hope to be LUCKY to get 20% (I'm optimistic) of the installed homes as paying subscribers?

    It's no wonder that the ILECs are concerned. It takes a long time to build, and it's very expensive. And the stockholders and Wall Street are mad if the payoff is anything over 5 years.
    What would you think if you just spend $50 million laying fiber rings (not fiber to the home, but the precursor... fiber to the neighborhood), and then the local government decided to subsidize a "public" network, undercutting your entire investment?

    And then consider this:
    Installation into a neighborhood of 400 homes, you need 400 timeslots on the SONET ring, or 400 wavelengths on a DWDM system. And then expect that 20% will subscribe, but they'll move every other year or so?
    Much of the fiber that was blown into the conduits during the dotcom boom is already out-of-date when even last years' best DWDM equipment is considered. The older fiber has problems handling 40, 60, or 80 wavelengths. So you might need to spend millions on extra DWDM chassis to cover a neighborhood. Sure, you could use a DWDM to cover a neighborhood, and then use SONET to hit every house, but who wants a DS3 or less to their home?
    Personally, I'd rather have a wave on the
    • "but local and state governments stand in the way all the time, yet that never makes the newspapers."

      Well, see local and state governments are run by the citizens (at least in theory) with regular elections. So when the local government does something it probably has the (tacit) approval of its citizens. And if they don't like it, someone loses their jobs. How exactly do I vote out a company (without buying it....)?

      "I've also seen local governments place a 10 year moratorium on new construction because p

    • Re:I worked for an ILEC doing this. (Score:5, Informative)

      by isdnip ( 49656 ) on Wednesday January 05, 2005 @11:20AM (#11263592)
      You're clearly sympathetic to the Bells, but your details on how they do fiber to the home (FTTH) are wrong. They don't use SONET rings for FTTH, and if they did, they wouldn't assign a slot per home, but would do something on demand. SONET technology is advancing rapidly with things like GMPLS. But FTTH typically uses Passive Optical Network (PON) architecture. A PON takes a strand of fiber and optically divides it among up to 32 drops (typically using an 8-way and 4-way splitter). It's a tree, not a ring.

      The most standard PON, which I think Verizon is buying, is called APON (A=ATM) or BPON (B=Broadband), depending on who's doing the talking. BPON is an ITU standard so the components are interchangeable between vendors. Tyipcally there's a 622 Mbps (SONET OC-12) downstream on one lambda (wavelength=color), and a 155 Mbps (OC-3) upstream on another lambda. Those carry voice and data. (The upstream transmitters do have to be synchronized, arbitrated, etc.) A third lambda carries analog broadcast video, the cable TV spectrum (tyipcally 54-862 MHz), the same way as cable plant does.

      Competing technologies, Ethernet EPON and GPON, are purely packet-based, rather than SONET+analog. These are showing up in a few places but it's largely a religious thing for now. I don't think they are really cheaper, but they're probably better for pure data or mostly-data applications. Packetizing TV channels can get costly, especially for a small system.
  • Here in Australia we have our own competition overlord called Telstra, they own the copper network, and theyre part govenment owned part private owned (although the Government wants to sell it all, copper network and all)

    So yeah we know what its like to have competition swayed in Australia, the way Telstra protects itself in terms of looking after its private interests by using the power of its government interests.

    But what large corporate jugganaught wouldnt eh?
    And remember, competition isnt in the inter
  • Here in Sweden we have a lot of municipality owned power companies that have entered the broadband business, some supplying fiber to the curb, some going all the way and connecting private houses and offering services.

    Generally, these entities have little clue on what is important when offering services, whereas they are excellent at putting cables (=fiber) in the ground.

    As long as taxpayer funded entities put cables in the ground, it is necessary that these are available to all players to rent. This has
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • to each other without the &%#&% baby bells?
    For years, no provider would bring any kind of high speed internet to my town [despite its relatively high percapita incomes] because the subscriber density was low. DSL has never penetrated to most of our neighborhoods and we have no fiber. Cell phones go dead around here too...hilly and people are too snooty to tolerate a cell tower in THEIR back yard.
    So some of us got together and purchased a fractional T1 connection and started going house to house wi

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