Kaltes
Premium
join:2002-12-04
Los Angeles, CA
|  Re: This is not new
Many resellers may not be able to offer DSL service for various reasons. If the local carrier has a monopoly on DSL service, that carrier is abusing that monopoly and leveraging it to inhibit competition for local phone service. It is called tying, forcing a consumer to buy something he doesnt want to get something he wants.
If a consumer wants local service from company A and DSL from company B, he cant get it. Company B forces the customer to take local service in order to get DSL. That forces consumers to take local service from B even though A's local service is superior in every way.
A lot of the rhetoric I see is that all these services are really just 1 thing, because they share the same line. DSL and local service and long distance are all different, even though they use the same lines. Why should a reseller be forced to provide DSL as a requisite to competing in offering local service? That does not make sense.
All telecom infrastructure should be nationalized and run by government employees. As bad as the post office might be, if a post office-like entity ran the telecom infrastructure in this country we would all have better service for less money.
The government, once it buys out all the infrastructure, could resell. It does not work when you take two parties with inherently unequal power/control over the system and attempt to make them equals.
The companies that own the lines resent being forced to act like the government by behaving in the public interest instead of like a selfish company (which is what they are, and this tying demonstrates it), and resellers resent operating with a systemic disadvantage. I had a SBC salesperson matter-of-factly tell me that Verizon's service couldn't possibly be competitive because "they have to buy time on our lines." It is sad when the bad faith of the local carriers is being used in sales pitches.
The only fair way out of this it to make local carriers extinct and give everyone equal status as resellers of government-owned lines.
All you techs would be much better off as govt employees as well, with better job security and benefits.
(As a disclaimer, I am an opponent of big government, but I do not let my political leanings disrupt my common sense. The govt already heavily regulates this area, let's just be honest instead of having the government administer the lines by proxy.) |
