| reply to kilingspam
Re: Down with SBC! 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. |
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Talis
join:2001-06-21
Houston, TX | said by deepthroat:
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.
The purpose for the arrangement was to allow CLEC's to offer comparable service at comparable prices to encourage competition in the marketplace. Ensuring profit was not the purpose of the discounted rate. However, without that discount there would have been no hope of any company ever competing with an ILEC.
You're right, it isn't SBC's responsibility to cut prices for competitors. However, since SBC has a monopoly on the local loop, it is the responsibility of the regulators to make sure SBC does not abuse its monopoly power. If competition in the marketplace is what we desire, SBC must be required to provide access in a non-anti-competitive way. That means price concessions.
We seem to think that we can have competition and unregulated telco at the same time. As long as a single company has exclusionary rights to local delivery that will never happen. The only way to ensure competition in that environment is more regulation, not less. |
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| oooohhhh You mean like cable TV |
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Anon | reply to deepthroat1
I will have to disagree. Other than ISPs who are partnered with SBC, not many people realize what the price situation is. As the owner of a partnered ISP I can explain: SBC sells the loop component, the portion which they have a monopoly over, to ISPs for $39/month (there are another $60 in back-end T-1 and Virtual Path charges that I won't even bring into the discussion). Then, Pac Bell Internet sells the ISP component for 95 cents bringing the total bill to $39.95/month for the consumer.
I can't imagine a business plan where an ISP could survive selling the Internet access anywhere close to 95 cents. Pac Bell gets away with it because they are subsidized by SBC's monopoly who they are wholly owned by.
By comparison, Verizon sells the loop for $32.50 to ISPs and Verizon Online charges around $16.50 for the Internet access. This is a plan we can work with and have some competitive chance against.
SBC is abusing it's power. It's as simple as that. |
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| SBC isn't selling DSL internet for $39.95- those contracts are ending in these few months ahead of us. It is currently $49.95 for 768/128 access.
Boogie74 |
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| said by boogie74:
SBC isn't selling DSL internet for $39.95- those contracts are ending in these few months ahead of us. It is currently $49.95 for 768/128 access.Boogie74
RBOC's are going to need more attractive pricing to compete with cable, and that may be below ISP cost. Otherwise, RBOC DSL will be a niche market with limited potential. AT&T cable gave as much as six months free service to meet growth projections in this region, and they didn't have any real competition. ISP's need to sink or swim in unregulated markets, just like CLECS and RBOC's. If congress wanted welfare for ISP's , they wrote the wrong legislation.
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Pupowski
"Revolution is just evolution with more bandwidth" |
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