Re: Broadband Competition Must Surely be Working

snipped-for-privacy@aracnet.com wrote:
>> - They will absolutely NOT allow connections to other ISP's over >> the fiber connection, essentially limiting ISP's other than >> MSN to dialup customers. > They stressed this is not a regulated service. As such, they can > charge as they wish and run it as they wish. HOWEVER, anyone else can > run fibre just as they did. The cable company -- while it was still a > small outfit -- obviously was able to run fibre, so the field is open to > others.

That is a Straw Man argument. The phone company DSL revenue was/is generated from existing infrastructure that was developed with the benefit of government sponsored monopolies and subsidies. They have an existing revenue and equipment base to support the expansion to fiber. Also, the cable companies that you reference were deploying in a new non-telecom market, also with monopoly protection. It wasn't until recently that they offered Internet or telecom services (I know when they did it, I had one of the first cable Internet connections in the area).

They also need permission to run these lines, they don't have the > automatic ROW of a standard utility. While my _area_ overall has > FIOS, many specific sections do not have FIOS because permission was > not granted by the appropriate parties.

I suspect the ROW is grandfathered onto existing ROW agreements used with the existing phone service. They are only deploying into areas that they already serve.

I also want to point out that this magical "competition" is no > guarantee of lower prices....... > Economics include a multitude of factors, one of which is demand.

True. But prices only come down when supply EXCEEDS demand. If there is no excess supply then there is no pressure to reduce prices.

In other words, right now many of us have a choice between phone > company DSL and cable company broadband. It just so happens that > prices of those are about the same. If a third provider showed up, do > you really think prices would go down? Not likely as long as demand > remained high. > As mentioned, anyone else can come in and run fibre and provide this > service if they wanted to.

You're missing the point. I currently have phone company DSL, and I'm quite happy with it. But I =DON'T= use the phone company ISP. Because the phone company is an infrastructure provider I can choose a different ISP, allowing me to tailor the services to my needs. I even pay a premium for that. What Verizon is doing is eliminating that option, forcing everyone into the FIOS equivilant of Verizon Online/MSN DSL but charging them 30% more for the priviledge.

I'd be quite happy even paying inflated rates if I could stay with my current ISP. I, and many like me, am technically experienced enough to manage my own systems and host my own domains. I go out of my way to find an ISP that supports the configuration I want. Verizon is out to kill all of that. When Verizon is through there will be no more Earthlink, no AOL, no EasyStreet ....

Because of the way the service is classified they are also free to c> Now hold on a second. I'm in Apple Valley, California, one of the

market areas where Verizon is rolling out FIOS (no ETA yet). $99 may > be the cheapest price for a connection where you can run servers, but > there ARE less expensive packages available that still give you lots > of speed.

This has nothing to do with speed. I'm currently paying Verizon $37/mo for the priviledge of using a 768K/128K DSL circuit that terminates at a local ISP. If all I cared about was speed I'd go with Verizon Online and get 3M/384K DSL for $30/mo. (including ISP charges).

So, I think we'd need to compare apples to apples where cost is > concerned. Many existing fiber and copper broadband providers don't > let you run servers on the cheap connections either.

And there are many that do, too. What's your point? My point is that right now I'm free to choose one of the providers that does. Once Verizon squeezes the other ISP's out of the market I won't be able to.

John Meissen snipped-for-privacy@aracnet.com