Uald
@bellsouth.net
 from:
ieolus 
| reply to ninjatutle
Re: Who are all these geeks crying for mo speed?
said by ninjatutle :I'm glad you people think infrastructure magically comes out of thin air  It doesn't. Everybody knows that. What people forget though is we already paid for FTTH.
»www.newnetworks.com/BroadbandSca···ntro.htm
Starting in the early 1990's, driven by the Clinton-Gore Administration’s desire to create a very high-speed network throughout America, the Bell phone companies claimed that instead of the government taking the lead role, the Bell companies would step up to the plate to rewire America’s homes and offices, schools and libraries with a fiber optic broadband network. It would replace the aging, 100-year old copper-based network with a glass-based fiber optic wire that could handle America’s broadband needs.
From 1993 through 1996, there were announcements and plans that would make anyone think that we were in the midst of a fiber optic revolution. In order to make the country believe that these networks were real, the phone companies spent almost a billion dollars on two groups, TELE-TV and Americast. Americast (the group formed by SBC, BellSouth, GTE, Ameritech and Disney to promote fiber optic/broadband content) was promising 68 million fiber optic homes in 28 states.
What was promised? By 2000, according to the Bell companies' annual reports, press releases and state filings, about 50 million households should have been rewired. California's Pacific Telesis (Pac Bell) promised to have 5.5 million households wired with fiber optic services, Ameritech; which covered 5 states including Illinois, Indiana and Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin) promised 6 million homes by 2000, Bell Atlantic claimed 8.75 million homes, and NYNEX said 1.5-2 million by 1996. (Ameritech, Pac Bell, Bell Atlantic and NYNEX were four of the original Bell companies.)
WHAT WAS GOING TO PAY FOR THIS?
The local phone companies are regulated by the state public utility commissions. They are utilities, and offer essential services — phone and data services. The utilities were regulated by controlling the companies’ profits, known as "rate of return". Remember, in the 1990’s there was no competition of any consequence, and so the phone companies had a guaranteed income. It is still guaranteed in that if their profits fail to please, they ask for a price increase.
The plan was to simply get all 50 states to remove this old "rate of return" regulation with "deregulation", meaning the removal of regulation. In this case, it was also called "price caps", or "alternative regulations", or "incentive regulations", all of which would give the phone companies more money to pay for these upgrades.
From the customer side, in essence, these plans allowed the phone companies to either raise the price of specific services, or allowed the companies to not have to give back money for very profitable services. For example, "Calling Features", such as "Call Waiting" or "Call Forwarding", can cost customers $3-$5 a month, and yet cost less than ONE CENT to offer. They could also cut staff, take large tax write-offs for the aging equipment, and get a host of other perks.
(click link above to read the rest of the article)
They got their side of it, they got the deregulation they wanted, the tax incentives, the price caps on public utilities removed, they even talked the government out of doing something they were going to do instead. Meanwhile they feed you a story about how it's just impossible to wire America because we're all so spread out. Why is it they can't even wire our cities? Why can't you even get 100Mbps (heck, now Japan's going to start offering 1Gbps to the home for the price we pay for 6Mbps) in New York where the population density is much higher? Isn't population density the argument everybody loves to use for why we pay the same for speed that is 166 times slower? |
