Talis
join:2001-06-21
Houston, TX | reply to deepthroat1
Re: Down with SBC! 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. |
