Verizon Nudges Fiber Deregulation > coughBScough

coughBScough

I still don't see why municipalities don't put up their own fiber, then bid out the ends to the providers. The municipality owns the line... the customers pay for the data/phone/TV traveling over it. If my idiotic representatives would have taken their 3 Billion and laid their own fiber lines with it, I'd have fiber by now!

I also see nothing wrong with treating these new fiber lines the same way we currently treat our power lines. You pay a fee for 'generation' and 'transmission'. The company that laid the plant gets the transmission money, the company that the consumer chooses to make the electricity gets the generation money... do the same! Open the lines. Then let the customers choose between SBC, Verizon, Earthlink, BellSouth, etc... DirectTV, Cox, Comcast, etc... Verizon, SBC, BellSouth, MCI, Sprint, etc.... and Verizon, regardless of WHO you choose for data, TV, phone; still charges a 'transmission' fee for investing and maintaining the lines. Problem solved! The company spending the money to lay the fiber still gets paid. That's deregulation in my book, but I will never live long enough to see it.