California DSL Fight Gets Nasty > Down with SBC!

Down with SBC!

"The real enemy that ISPs should be worrying about, Britton said, is the cable industry. Cable Internet access has a decisive market share advantage over DSL in the high-speed arena. Instead of fighting, ISPs should work with telecommunications companies, Britton said, to increase the adoption of DSL, creating more business for everyone."

Yes, the real foe (of telco and ISP's) is cable. However, it is ludicrous for SBC mouthpiece Britton to call the ISP's to arms, while continuing to charge them such high line access fees that the ISP's are forced out of business.

SBC, lower your line access fees so that ISP's can make a buck. Then you'll get support and cooperation from them to defeat cable.

The ISP's aren't prevented from investing in their own DSLAM's and other network elements by anything but their own pocketbooks.

SBC is in business to make money. They shouldn't be forced to lose money so others can be more successful. If the ISP's feel they are overcharged, they can go to another CLEC for DSL access. If they don't like having to sign a contract with ASI, they can go to another CLEC for DSL access. They can invest in becoming their own CLEC for DSL access. No one prevents them from doing this.

Perhaps ISP sales for DSL isn't a profitable business to be in. Perhaps it is like bare bones residential POTS lines. Maybe CLEC's like Covad and Rythms et al wouldn't have gone bankrupt if they had sold direct ISP access to DSL retail instead of selling wholesale to ISP's trying to underprice ASI.

Perhaps they tried to grow too quickly. Perhaps if customers didn't jump ship when they heard a whisper that their CLEC is restructuring, the CLEC would still have revenue to operate.

Imagine what would happen if ALL of SBC's POTS, Centrex, PBX, DSL, DS1, DS3, etc customers jumped ship at once, AND all their investors sold ALL of the stock... SBC too would go down. That won't happen, because SBC has built a reputation that people trust- regardless of how many horror stories there are about bad service, rude tech support, etc (and I believe most all of them- as there are GOING TO BE BAD EMPLOYEES with any business) that doesn't mean that EVERYONE that subscribes to SBC for DSL service or even POTS or ISDN or whatever is totally unhappy.

Maybe SBC charges ISP's high DSL access fees because that is how SBC makes money... Should they lose money?

Boogie74

said by boogie74:

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The ISP's aren't prevented from investing in their own DSLAM's and other network elements by anything but their own pocketbooks.

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said by KrK:

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said by boogie74:

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The ISP's aren't prevented from investing in their own DSLAM's and other network elements by anything but their own pocketbooks.

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Yeah, except even IF they did this, they still have to pay SBC for the line, so the rate of return on the investment becomes a lot harder to justify, they still have to cover the ILEC fees with higher prices then the ILEC DSL offerings, and thus, can't compete.

No one is asking SBC to lose money. They won't. It just needs to be even, and a fair price.

Or else, kick 'em to the curb...

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reply to lifer49
These ISPs are STUPID. They need to break into cable access, it has 80% of the Broadband market share. DSL IS DEAD!!!! The TELCOs have lost!!!!!! Wake up!!!!!!!!!! I can get phone, long distance, cable TV, and faster than DSL internet access from one company, on one bill, on one piece of COAX. FOR THE SAME OR IN MY CASE LOWER PRICE!!!!!!!!!! I have to go the lunacy gives me a head ache.

Do you honestly believe that companies like AOL Time Warner and Comcast are going to open their lines to other ISPs? If they did then cable internet access would be just as bad as some DSL, as the RBOCs are forced to let competition sell services on their lines. Coax may have great bandwidth potential, but i'd like to see how it would stand up to carrying multiple ISPs, like the RBOCs must do, as well as both analog and digital cable tv service. BTW, I am aware that Time Warner cable is starting to offer Earthlink service in some areas, which is basically being done to keep the regulators quiet.

reply to boogie74

said by boogie74:

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There really isn't an answer to this- except to allow RBOC's to re-align pricing between business and residential. Raising residential pricing for retail accounts provides an incentive for others to invest in their own networks, hence giving way to competition.

Of course the consumer world would hate this, as they are used to paying below cost prices for basic local loops, and won't find it fair to actually pay prices that would generate a profit.

Boogie74

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reply to EXASITECH
Sure. Find me a cable company that I, as an ISP can buy connections to serve my customers and I will be in the cable business. Nobody doubts it is a viable technology, and one that, in my opinion, offers a number of practical advantages (read: more economical than "pronto") especially in rural areas where many subscribers are miles from the CO.

Yep, I would buy cable connections in an instant over DSL. But they are not available in MY service area, so I am forced to use the only alternative to get to my customers and that is DSL. We can argue that DSL is better for security, but with SBC and their infernal BCG most if not all advantages of DSL are out the window. If I am going to have to share a connection and bandwidth of a BCG box, might as well take cable - it's cheaper to deploy and is more universally available.

There is no overwhelming technical reason why Cable companies could not resell collocation space in their headends and individual connections. It's been done, been demonstrated, and I myself have identified several easy workarounds to those few problems that are cited.

SBC and the other ILECS may be disingenuously anti-competitive in their conduct. But the one thing that rings true in various rantings of SBC employees is the basic question - why does SBC get hammered for the same practices that seem to be invited, encouraged, and accepted among the cable networks?

And why do cable companies so arduously fight to keep other ISPs out, even if these ISPs are willing to pay handsomely? I have a few theories:

1. Cable companies don't want to lose control of "their" customers. People want bandwidth, and the freedom to explore possibilities of that bandwidth. But for cable companies, it's not about bandwidth, but content. They have always had a tight control of content, and the holy grail is premium content via pay for view or the movie channels. Allowing another company to buy a wholesale pipe into their wired homes and living rooms is an anathema to the cable culture, even though the actual impact of selling wholesale channels to ISPs would be a win-win profit center, especially if there were mutual non-compete agreements (The last thing most ISPs want to do is get into the traditional TV business).

2. Cable networks are ever worried about available bandwidth, and feel that selling to ISPs would squander valuable channel space. Here the cable companies do face regulatory and contractual challenges that in all fairness to them, are real concerns. Many modern fiber-cable hybrid systems not only carry internet and 200+ channels of digital compressed video, but are still required to carry a complement of 50-60 analog channels for legacy "cable ready" sets per local franchise agreements. Even if they could offer free set top boxes (which would reduce loss to theft) most cities and counties refuse to relent. Add to this the must-carry FCC ruling that means the system must carry all local channels within 50 miles, contractual and licensing ties (In order to carry the popular Sci-FI channel or ubiquitous CNN they have to also carry 5 other channels nobody ever watches, and of course there's the shopping channels that they get spiffed on sales. So even though these cable networks may have bandwidth to burn today, they are reluctant to give up a single megabit to outsiders. Even though cable has tremendous data carrying capabilities (a single 6mhz TV channel yields 36 megs full duplex, nearly a T3), many cable companies are loath to devote a single TV channel's space to broadband, let alone reselling more to other companies.

3. Everybody including membership warehouses, home improvement centers, coffee houses, telephone companies, and even cable TV networks think they can cut corners or making an extra buck by being an ISP, even though few understand what it takes to be a good one. While they may have money to throw at a network, they usually misjudge the demand for support, the need for sophisticated OSS and billing systems, and the cost of training and keeping good people who keep their sanity and don't lose their cool when they are yelled at at 3 AM. Cable companies have a completely different operation, corporate culture, and workforce that is completely different than specialized ISPs. Cable companies, with their home consumer based vision of the internet don't understand the engineers and techno-geeks that constantly tweak and tune in a routine that every well-run IP network needs to function. With just a few exceptions, cable companies rate poorly in customer service and satisfaction compared with companies that specialize in business class IP services.

The bottom line is, they could resell space on their networks, but don't. Many could also partner with CLECS to compete with the telcos head on and provide dialtone via cable (Cox does this well in Orange County, CA) but most do not.

Yes, the modern cable systems have the right technology to deploy wide scale broadband services to homes, and quite literally, But like their brethren at the ILECS, they have not wised up and looked at the big picture for the future.

Someday, cable companies will wake up and realize they can't directly compete with the economies of scale offered by Dish and DirecTV for traditional entertainment and video channels. At the same time they will discover they sit on a powerful technology - a broadband gold mine of interactive and wholesale bandwidth resale opportunities that satellite and wireless networks can never match in capacity and scale. Even if the bandwidth is there, the latency renders satellite and many wireless networks unusable for many applications.

reply to EXASITECH
seems strange but why hyping cable when you are posting from dsl.rcsntx.swbell.ne? isnt that from a dsl address?

reply to boogie74
In response to the post by boogie74:

You're right. ISPs aren't prevented from investing in DSLAMs. But you might be surprised at the barriers that incumbent phone companies like SBC can create to make sure that ISPs who install DSLAMs are given a competitive *disadvantage*. SBC does not want to cooperate with CLECs and, as the company who controls the infrastructure, SBC has the unique ability to make things miserable for anyone who is attempting to compete with them.

I am the owner of a small ISP in Los Angeles and we are partnered with SBC. Every day I see SBC use it's monopoly to create barriers against us. We react to this because we have been around for almost seven years and we don't want to loose our long-time customers to SBC.

But it's difficult going up against a company who has unfair advantage. As a government sanctioned monopoly, SBC are the legal owners of the physical copper that connects homes to the greater phone company infrastructure. They have right-of-way everywhere in their territory and no competitors are allowed to trench and lay their own cables.

Monopolies like this are illegal except in situations like the one SBC has inherited. As I understand it, the legal monopoly was granted back in the 1930s where, in the interest of communication, it was the only way to erect a nationwide telecommunications system. In response to the antiquated laws of the 1930s the Telecommunications Act of 1996 was created. It's purpose was to foster innovation by allowing (quote) "anyone [to] enter any communications business -- to let any communications business compete in any market against any other". But instead of modernizing the Telecom Act of 1934 the '96 Act has allowed incumbent phone companies to gain an unfair advantage over ISPs while maintaining their government granted monopoly.

Some phone companies *did* modify their operations to comply, not only with the laws, but with the spirit of competition that was proposed in the telecom act. our partnership with GTE has been successful for both ISP and phone company. We have many satisfied customers connected and have added five new high speed connections into the GTE network since we first partnered with them in 1999.

I have seen the operations of GTE California, a phone company who I believe embraced the spirit of competition, and I compare this to the operations of Pacific Bell. Pacfic Bell (wholly owned by SBC) found loopholes that would allow them to maintain monopoly control over services like DSL. Not coincidentally, independent companies who were dependent on Pac Bell like Flashcom, Zyan and Northpoint all went out of business leaving hundreds of thousands of Californians without Internet service.

I am not in love with GTE by any means. In fact, we have major problems with them too. But the unfortunate situation created by Pacific Bell eclipses any of the problems we have with Verizon (who owns GTE). As a result of our partnership with these two phone companies I am witness to the differences of an ethically operated phone company compared against those of a greedy desensitized company, whose only motivation seems to be domination of all Internet and telecom markets without regard to consumers time or inconvenience.

So, why did so many DSL service providers suddenly go out of business? How could Pacific Bell decimate all of its competition so effectively? Another ISP owner and CISPA board member answered these questions best when she said (quote): "Pacific Bell has mastered the art of strategic incompetence". Botched installations, mysteriously deleted orders and grossly incorrect billing are the weapons SBC uses against any competitors who dare to travel onto SBC turf.

To this day, my company, L A Bridge continues to provide DSL and Internet services. We didn't put all of our eggs in the DSL basket. Thanks to T-1s, Co-location and dial-up we continue to operate in the black. We encourage consumers to use independent, local ISPs who provide localized and individualized services. If you live in California then visit CISPA.org for a list of these indie providers. And if you have had an unfortunate experience with Pacific Bell then we ask you to contact the Public Utilities Commission and voice your opinion.

--Tony Cappelli
L A Bridge Internet & DSL

reply to EXASITECH
Cable probably has a significant portion of the *residential* broadband market. Business customers use DSL since cable does not reach most businesses. Even if it did most businesses would reject cable because of the security issues and service blackouts inherent in a shared network. 2600 magazine has monthly articles on how to steal MAC addresses to implicate innocent cable users in DoS crimes.

Businesses don't want to put up with such foolishness.

In my opinion cable is inferior to DSL. My guess is that you agree with me. The reverse lookup on your IP address indicates that you are posting from a DSL line.

2600 magazine does not sanction any illegal activities of hacking whatsoever. 2600 magazine does show readers how they could be possibly be attacked and how to seal up such holes in there systems. I have learned quite a bit from that magazine and have helped my sys admin make sure our network is secure. Please do not add to the governments fear campaign of hackers.

reply to EXASITECH
Well then tell my cable company to stop boosting services on the lower population end of the county and move to my end.

I live in Northern VA and have DSL, I would have originally rather had Cable after seeing how well RoadRunner worked (offered by Cox 5 miles to my left), but Comcast has yet to offer anything in my area except shoddy service (would get Direct TV or Dish but Apartment complex won't allow it). Digital Cable launched last year sometime in my county and has yet to move beyond the area around the Comcast Main office, Cable Internet available for over 2 years now is still in the same boat. I have called them and been called by them and the Rep told me that all of the wiring has been finished and the Testing Completed. But they won't turn it on.
So now I have Verizon DSL and it has only gone down once. The service I have seems to vary greatly from the horror stories others have experience, I think in part due to the fact that I am in a prior GTE area.
Cable will not replace DSL, My ping is a lot lower with ADSL then my friends Roadrunner account, I don't slow down around 6pm when everyone gets home from work (most nights I'm not home by 6), and my download speed on 768/128 is fast enough to be comparable mostly due to the fact that a lot of sites will not pay for the bandwidth to support DL'ing at anything over 120kbps and when I hit 88Kbps on most (downloading Red Hat 7.2) the time differance wasn't enough to worry over.

reply to kilingspam
You don't get it. SBC is a phone company, a common carrier in regulatory jargon, and has no right to discriminate in how it provides services to its customers (whether it's a CISPA member or PacBell Internet). Period. Yes, an ISP can become a CLEC and install its own DSLAMs but that misses the point too. An ISP should not have to become a CLEC in order to provide DSL service. If SBC and the other telcos want to sell DSL service to their affiliated ISPs, then the telcos are required to provide DSL service to competitors as well by the Telecom Act. The fact that cable companies refuse to provide open access is a completely different issue, and one that obviously CISPA is pushing for as well. CISPA is fighting to open all pipes and allow its members to provide superior service to its customers.

reply to kilingspam
Let me say that I see some real thought behind a lot of the opinions expressed here. Some of the opinions are misguided, but that's true of almost any discussion. Given that level of respect for all of you I hope you won't be to hard on me. This argument is not much different than the arguments made in 1984 when AT&T first divested the LECs.

SBC is required to resell it's regulated services to competitors at a set discount rate. The purpose of the arrangement is, of course to allow the CLECs to offer the service to customers at a price point lower than SBC's and still make a profit. In fact, this process was designed to foster the new companies and make sure that SBC lost customers to them. This really wasn't a very good idea then and still isn't today. The almost immediate result of this was horrible customer confusion over who they should call for help and when.

To some degree the same can be said of this unregulated portion of the business. The tangle of companies involved in provisioning DSL has created a horrible mess for customers to attempt to fathom all on their own. Competition isn't always better. It is however confusing and it's always easier to blame the incumbent than to accept responsibility for a poorly thought out business plan. There is no requirement that SBC resell it's enhanced services at anything other than prices negotiated and contracted with each competitor. The cry is SBC makes it too hard for us to make money off of THEIR product. Think carefully about that.

I'm sorry, but you aren't going to get a favorable ruling here. At some point, it is no longer SBC's responsibility to cut prices to competitors so they can sell what is essentially your product to others for less money. Is anyone believing that SBC is pricing their product to DSL competitors (wholesale buyers) at prices higher that retail customers. If your charging $60/month for DSL it's because of a flawed business plan that relied on the idea that SBC would subsidize the DSL business the way it did the CLEC business.

said by deepthroat:

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SBC is required to resell it's regulated services to competitors at a set discount rate. The purpose of the arrangement is, of course to allow the CLECs to offer the service to customers at a price point lower than SBC's and still make a profit. In fact, this process was designed to foster the new companies and make sure that SBC lost customers to them.

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oooohhhh You mean like cable TV

reply to dbarc

Well said. That is one excellent post.

reply to dbarc

Re: Down with SBC!

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IF we're going to have any monopoly, let it exist only with the loop and let the other services compete on their own merits.

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