Ulmo
join:2005-09-22
San Jose, CA
 ·Comcast
 ·SONIC.NET
| reply to Camelot One
Re: now's a great time to use that rural penetration data
said by Camelot One  :That said.....damn, did the FCC Chairman get raped by a cable company employee when he was a kid? Why are they b*tch slapping the cable industry, while caving to telcos at every turn? I'm all for competition, but if you are going to overly-regulate one side, do the same to the other. I noticed that as well. Verizon FiOS has been getting some latitude for implementing fiber *and* for not trying to short-circuit the government process *as much as* AT&T (Verizon used to be worse than they are now, but they took a congenial attitude during this rollout, which no doubt was a wise decision). However, Comcast also did a pretty decent fiber rollout recently. FCC has allowed cable companies to go all digital, which I keep advocating and advocating that they (cables) *not* buy any more sub-XVID quality boxes, but other than that I noticed they (cables & FCC) are not on best terms.
I think part of the game being played here is that AT&T charges less for their crap than Comcast does for their comparatively better stuff, so FCC is giving AT&T extra latitude. I think they need to start leveling and equalizing the playing field, though, making rules that are more specific for what they intend rather than rules that are more technical in nature that are only supposed to have certain side effects (made difficult by a variety of different delivery methods). However, that would take accountings: how much gov't and monopoly customer investment went into each network, etc.. If we looked at everything, there'd be some interesting resultant data for who should be doing what.
It seems to me there are a lot of factors, not just garbage politics, but us armchair readers here can really see a lot of shots missing TPC and being shot at the cables.
I'm not quick to assume FCC's shots are entirely wrong, though -- far from it. |
