The Baby Bells Cry Foul As The Competition Intensifies
from the good-or-bad? dept
There have been a ton of articles in the past couple of days about how the FCC is reviewing how much the Baby Bells need to charge competitors to access their networks. I've been reading a bunch of the articles and was unsure of which ones were worth posting. I think Red Herring's article is a good summary of the issues involved, which also predicts that the FCC won't make any big changes - telling the Baby Bells to suck it up and deal (and to obey the law they've been ignoring). Everybody seems to have a different opinion on this subject and I've heard convincing arguments from all sides. It's clear that everyone (with the possible exception of the companies involved) believes that more competition is better. It's just that they completely disagree on what will stimulate increased competition. Update: Meanwhile, Baby Bell Verizon has used it's ability to offer long distance services to overtake Sprint as the nation's number 3 long distance carrier.
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SBC is guilty too
Since DirecTVDSL is going under, they've arranged with SBC/Yahoo! DSL for us to transition to their service.
I called SBC/Yahoo! DSL to make arrangements to transfer my service and was told that they can't provide me with service since I don't have an Ameritech phone number. Remember, SBC already provides the DSL service from the telco to my house.
I use MCI as my home phone service as it's $50 per month - period. Ameritech bills fluctuated between $75 and $100 per month based on long-distance usage, but even in months with no long-distance calls, the bill was never for the same amount twice.
I was told that unless I switched to Ameritech home service, then SBC would not be able to provide me with DSL service.
I told them that they're not a monopoly, even if they think they are, and called the cable company (who *is* a monopoly) to arrange for a cable modem instead. Not only will it be faster, but it will save me $5 per month as well.
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RBOCs, Enron, Worldcom
http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=26395&site=lightreading
and it could use some help in getting the word out.
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