 calvoiper
join:2003-03-31
Belvedere Tiburon, CA | reply to LegoPower77
Re: -sigh- Two thoughts:
First, uncertainty is a great disincentive to investment. That is the primary reason that the ILECs have fought a never-ending battle in the courts to upset the Telecom Act. With the prices of UNEs in flux, the definitions of UNEs in flux, and now even the availability of UNEs in flux, who is going to invest in a new business? That leaves only the Whining Baby Bells--who have the captive cash flow to be self-funding.
Second, I may seem like a broken record here, but I'll again repeat Alfred Kahn's maxim--"Deregulation does not mean that you fire the policeman." There is a big difference between regulating commerce (active price and route regulation, etc.) and regulating safety or anti-trust issues. Where the ILECs are wrong now (but still convincing too many people) is that they claim they should be free of the remaining regulations under TA'96--when in reality, those provisions weren't meant to regulate commerce generally, but only to protect from and make amends for the long history of antitrust offenses committed by the local monopolies we used to call the "Bell System".
Calvoiper
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VoIP--the death knell of remaining voice monopolies! |
