ManyMedia

What happens when the infrastructure of the net becomes oligopoly-controlled? Services become limited, prices go up. I’m hardly the first to point this out.

Larry Lessig wrote in his book The Future of Ideas about the possibility that given a few subtle changes to the Internet’s infrastructure it would be relatively easy for the cable companies or another small handful of telcos or other large businesses to take control of the Net, turning it into the kind of closed systems TV or the old telephone networks used to be. This dire prediction may be upon us.

Comcast has been progressively turning on functions to block VPN traffic for the last four or five months. If you fight through the Comcast site to find the terms of service you discover that’s only the beginning. Under their rules prohibiting you from using your Internet connection for ‘any business purpose’ you are arguably in violation if you so much as buy a book from Amazon.com.

Network blocking, business, cable, closed network, Comcast, DSL, infrastructure, Net Neutrality, Network, oligopoly, prohibitions, telecom, VPN

Think you can use SBC for DSL, and use someone else for local phone service? Think again. In “Some Lose DSL Service With Switch of Local Service,” Wall Street Journal reports that SBC has been disconnecting customers’ DSL lines when they transfer local phone serivce:

Many other DSL customers have had similar trouble. MCI last year lost about 100,000 potential local-service customers when the company was told by the Bells that these customers would lose their DSL connection if they made the switch, says James Lewis, MCI’s senior vice president for state public policy. Now, MCI doesn’t even try to sell its local service to such customers, Mr. Lewis says.

Some state regulators, rival carriers and consumers see the policy by SBC and other Bell companies as a hardball tactic to keep customers from defecting. “This is the same type of anticompetitive tactic they’ve used to put competitors out of business since day one,” says Chris Murray, legislative counsel at Consumers Union, the advocacy group that publishes Consumer Reports.

Playing hardball to “keep” us? They’ll have to play a lot harder and faster to keep ahead of the bad attitude they’re generating among their “consumers.”

Network, Policy DSL, monopoly, public utility commission, regulators, SBC, telecom

Two stories of note from the Washington Post this morning. First, “FCC Chief’s Plan Would Ease Line-Sharing Rules“, reveals:

The nation’s big regional telephone companies would be able to provide ultra-fast Internet and video services over new fiber-optic lines without having to lease those lines to competitors, under a draft plan circulated by the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission.

Sources familiar with the proposals by Michael K. Powell said that in “new-build” areas, where copper phone lines aren’t in place and where the phone companies run fiber cables directly to homes or businesses, requirements to share those lines would be eliminated. …

Powell generally agrees with many arguments for deregulation, but, sources said, his plan would phase out many of the rules over time. It would free the regional companies from sharing requirements on their current broadband service — digital subscriber lines — only as they upgrade it by pushing fiber lines closer to homes, which would improve performance.

Details were less clear on Powell’s proposals to adjust the rules governing local phone competition, which is complicated by the fact that public utility commissions play a large role in determining rules and rates in individual states.

Powell has said that wireless and voice-over-Internet technologies already provide a lot of competition, and he has questioned rules that force the regional phone companies to share their systems with competitors.

Then in “Supreme Court Sides With NextWave,” the Supreme Court ruled:

…that the government wrongly seized more than 200 lucrative wireless licenses from a bankrupt telecommunications company. …

Now NextWave can finish building a network or sell the licenses to other companies. It will free up wireless spectrum in dozens of crowded markets, including Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington.

The court, on an 8-1 vote, rejected arguments that the FCC had a regulatory interest in taking licenses from a company that is reorganizing its finances.

The Hawthorne, N.Y.-based NextWave’s $4.7 billion bid for the frequencies was the highest in 1996. After taking them back, the FCC sold the licenses in 2001 to Verizon Wireless, VoiceStream Wireless and other companies at a second auction for nearly $16 billion.

Lemme see… the Supreme Court has made a string of decisions lately that seem to indicate the FCC is not entirely on the right path. It will not be soon enough that the access issues in the first article are back in the court for Supreme consideration.

Network, Policy competition, DSL, FCC, licenses, line sharing, NextWave, PUC, telecom, wireless