Broadband Sub Losses Getting Ugly for Telcos > DSL going down means broadband competition is over

DSL going down means broadband competition is over

Mandate open access and what incentive would Verizon have had to spend billions of dollars on a FIOS rollout? Spend billions of dollars so your competitors can leech off your network for a fraction of what you would be able to charge a customer?

Open access discourages investment. The only ways to make it work would be to nationalize the infrastructure and rent it out to ISPs, or mandate that the infrastructure be owned by a third party company and ISPs rent from them, similar to the way wireless carriers prefer to lease tower space instead of owning the towers outright.

Open access does not discourage investment at all. In an open access model, CLECs lease lines from ILECs. If other competitors are offering a superior service (ie, DOCSIS 3), then revenue from direct subscriptions with the ILEC and revenue from the CLECs to the ILECs will both decline as subscribers switch to superior competing services. The only way to offset these losses in the marketplace is to upgrade your lines in order to be technologically equal or superior to your competitors.

Furthermore, one could argue that open access actually increases the incentive to invest in network infrastructure. A healthy, competitive market will drive adoption rates; which would in turn generate a higher volume of revenue for the ILECs. We saw this happen back in the old open access DSL days.

We had that kind of CLEC using ILEC lines to provide broadband competition.

The CLECs soon found when they did business with those ILECs they got screwed so much there was just no way to make money. They all went out of business. If it was possible to do that business they would still be there but it's not.

I agree it makes sense in a way, but with the ILECs still providing the copper lines and getting paid exorbitant amounts to build and maintain them it takes all the money out of the business.

You can't sell DSL against ATT for $90 a month, and that's probably where you would have to be.

It's the same as when they did that fake electric deregulation scheme in California. The bill I got from the Southern California Edison Company was 80% transmission and distribution. The rest was the deregulated part, "generation". So even if you got your electricity for free you would only save 20% maximum. No wonder there was never any competition. I wanted to save much more than 20% on my electricity.

Now, if there were a way to get 17 sets of wires on the poles out back there would be electricity providers walking the streets offering lower and lower electric rates. "Let me hook you up to our wires right now". Nope.

Actually, the FCC killed mandatory line sharing in 2005. That spelled the end for most CLECs. A handful have stuck around though. One in particular, Sonic.net, has been doing very well despite this.

That sonic.net hasn't gone out of business yet is a testament to their cleverness.

They are not line sharing, they are ATT resellers.

They handle the customer service and billing and manage trouble calls, but I talked to them about my ATT circuit.

They can't get me anything ATT won't give me.

ATT will not bond pairs even though all their equipment supports it. They won't support ADSL2+ even though all their equipment (and mine) supports it. I demanded they bond pairs to get my speed up and they refused.

The won't do anything that requires them to lift a finger. As long as you pay them without them having to exert themselves they are willing to take your money. If you don't like what you are getting from them they suggest you might be happier with another provider. They actually suggested that to me. They have no competition and they know it. They can do better but they refuse to do so.

ATT is a third rate company and we badly need the Justice department to break them up again.

Remember that ATT divestiture?
»en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_Syste···estiture

Well, here we are 30 years later, they are all back together again. It was a 30 year plan! It worked perfectly and no one is the wiser. Certainly everyone at the Justice Department that had to do with that is long retired, just like was planned.