The Birth of DSL → Confused again

From the WSJ article:
"When consumers eventually did get excited about the Internet, the Bells profited by renting them second phone lines to access it."

But the telco shills would have us believe that the Bells lose money on dialup lines. Another lie?

said by article:

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That strips the phone companies of revenue, even while DSL continues to be unprofitable for them.

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You forgot this. While everyone screams that telcos are making money like crazy on DSL.

Recall that before CLECs and DSL, the RBOCs were screaming that they had to get a 2 cent per minute charge on ISPs phone lines, and they had to get it yesterday, or the network would be overwhelmed and you WOULDN'T BE ABLE TO GET DIAL TONE WHEN YOU PICKED UP THE PHONE.

Actually it IS possible for a telco to loose money on a dial-up line. The regulated industry sucks majorly for the smaller telcos.

I work for an ILEC we have a 2 county service area where we are the local telco. Our state public service commission says that calls from our service area to near by territory covered by a Bell is a local call and we cannot charge it as toll.

Bell charges us an interconnect fee of something like 1/2 cent to 1 cent a minute (depending on a few factors) to terminate that traffic. So in theory, if the customer only has a basic line with dial tone, no extras, and dials to an ISP in one of the bell territories and sits online nearly 24/7/365 we would either barely break even on the line or loose minor amounts.

That's one of the reasons telcos at first wanted the FCC to allow them to charge you additional fees for calls to dial-up ISPs.
[text was edited by author 2003-03-14 14:31:38]

said by oherra:

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Bell charges us an interconnect fee of something like 1/2 cent to 1 cent a minute (depending on a few factors) to terminate that traffic.

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Is the telco that you work for allowed to charge a similar per minute fee for calls originating in a nearby Bell territory and terminating in your area?

Anyway, I think SBC's pricing structure is starting to cost them customers. My wife and I disconnected our two SBC landlines a couple years ago and replaced them with a couple SprintPCS phones partially because of the 25 cents a minute that Ameritech was dinging us for calls placed to a Verizon exchange customer less than 6 miles away.