I'm gonna respectfully say that, from the inside, being told 'That not
one of our clients, don't worry about how long the repair lasts.' and
'Why should we bother to put a DSLAM out there? It's only gonna get
used up by them anyway.' and 'That pair of T1's is more than enough to
feed that subdivision... They aren't our users anyway.' and lots more
similar comments in the trenches tend to make me somewhat skeptical of that.
I won't say that it may not have been a part of it. I will say, that as
the workers saw it, when forced to give away their bread n butter, they
rightly felt that it wasn't their problem anymore. When I refer to
workers, I mean anyone who would have been CWA or equivalent. I'll even
include lower management.
Prior to Judge Greene, there was an /'esprit de corps'/ among the people
of the Bell System. It persisted under Ameritec... for a while. By the
time SBC was trying to become AT&T all over again, it was gone. And
when SBC became at&t, the employees, as far as I could see, didn't give
a damn any more. It became more 'Good enough to get paid. By the time
that becomes a problem, I'll be somewhere else...' . Prior to that,
people expected to be working on and using the plant forever. When they
fixed something, the fix was intended to last longer that the original.
Mary left after 28 years because the culture was gone. She no longer
liked working there.
--
//
On 11/22/2014 12:13 AM, Fred Goldstein wrote:
On 11/21/2014 7:39 PM, Blair Davis wrote:
Just and reasonable... Give me a break.
There is a reason the carriers let the POTS network decay... My
wife, before she died, spent 28 years with Michigan Bell... From
before Judge Greene, thru Ameritec and then SBC. She saw this from
the inside.
Because they were forced to allow others to use their wired plant at
prices below the cost of maintenance, let alone upgrades.
That was the Bell party line, for public consumption, but it wasn't true.
Section 251 (sections of the Communications Act, 47 USC, beginning
with 2 are in Title II) has the rules for demonopolization of PSTN
carriers. They had a de jure monopoly; they still have a natural
monopoly on mass-market services. So they have facilities that are a
necessary inpu to competitive providers. They built their networks
using rate of return regulation and de jure monopoly status
(essentially a guarantee of profit) and that put them at the 24 mile
line in the competitive marathon.
Section 251 says that ILECs specifically and uniquely have to provide
unbundled network elements at forward-looking cost. Just what "cost"
is is not a simple answer. Cost is not price. Cost can be embedded
direct cost, fully distributed (various methods), long-run
incremental, total service long-run incremental, total element
long-run incremental, etc. Lots of room to argue cost, and that was a
lot of fun back in the rate case days, to do cost studies and argue
over details.
Non-ILECs have fewer obligations than ILECs. There is a separate
fundamental right of common carriage if a company is deemed a common
carrier, but the "just and reasonable" standard is generally enforced
only to what I call a "shocks the conscience" level. No formulas,
just don't horribly offend the Commission. It is very rarely invoked.
The Bells stopped maintaining their plant because in 1992-1993, they
transitioned from rate of return regulation to price cap ("alternate
form of") regulation. Under rate of return, their total profit was a
percentage (11.25% return was the last number, still in use) of their
rate base (undepreciated capital plant). So the investment was to
invest heavily; investing in rural areas paid really well because the
high cost would be recoverable from urban monopoly ratepayers. Under
AFOR, though, some basic service prices are capped but not profits, so
they could increase profits by reducing costs. And they sure did!
AFOR was met by massive layoffs and a general decline in maintenance.
Accountants running companies devalue the future, so disinvestment
look good to short term profits, and CEOs live for quarterly bonuses,
which are not based on how they position the company for 10 years
out. Well, 20 years of AFOR and the chickens have come home to
roost. The plant is very heavily depreciated, not maintained, and the
parent companies have put their capital into wireless, which has been
more profitable lately. Such is deregulation, helping turn the USA
into a third world country while rentiers take the money and run.
Do you want to be forced to allow other to use your wireless
network? And have your costs and reimbursements determined by
bureaucrats?
This would not apply to WISPs even in the unlikely event that WISPs
were covered by Title II (which I've strongly opposed). They were
never common carriers, and WISP plant is generally not suited for it.
(There are wireless common carriers, and you could create one if you
wanted, but it would be a choice.) And non-ILEC prices are never set
by regulators. The Just & Reasonable standard is only raised when a
price is truly out of line, like the $68 3-minute pay phone call, or
prison phone calls (always collect, typically at dollars per minute,
which the FCC is cracking down on now). Not even ILEC retail rates
are set by regulators any more, just wholesale rates, which are
regulated as part of the must-carry nature of the PSTN.
Title II, if forced on the small wisps, will kill us.
Probably true, but it's not the facilities they're talking about now,
it's the data itself, which Title II was never meant to regulate, so
it wouldn't stand up in court.
--
On 11/21/2014 6:19 PM, Fred Goldstein wrote:
On 11/21/2014 5:47 PM, Drew Lentz wrote:
So here's what sparked the question. I was trying to get some
point-counterpoint going on with a friend of mine and found some
pretty good arguments on each. This article made me think about it
all a little differently:
http://www.netcompetition.org/congress/the-multi-billion-dollar-impact-of-fcc-title-ii-broadband-for-google-entire-internet-ecosystem
To Fred's point, the article mentions:
"That's because of the way the law and the forbearance provision
are written; they apparently do not allow for any immaculate ruling
where the FCC somehow rules the service and carrier of Internet
traffic are regulated, but not the Internet traffic itself that is
precisely what defines the service and carrier."
The article is pure garbage. Read the January ruling of the DC
Circuit. It was quite clear that the Computer II framework was
legal. And the Telecom Act was meant to memorialize that, not
overturn it. The Computer II framework very explicitly held that
the "basic" carrier function was regulated while the higher-layer
"enhanced" traffic was not. The reason the FCC keeps getting in
trouble is that they don't want restore that working model, since it
would hurt some carriers' fee-fees.
The idea that Title II requires metered pricing makes less sense
than the average diarrhea that comes from Louis Gohmerts' tuchus.
The .0007 rate is for termination of local telephone calls; it has
nothing to do with bits or data services. Whoever wrote the article
is either a) an utter ignoramus; b) an utterly contemptible liar, or
c) both.
There are all sorts of reasons why Title II would break the
Internet. But applied to the access layer, it would simply mean
that ISPs could lease DSL for a certain price per line per month,
and perhaps a certain number of cents per gigabit, but that price
would have to be "just and reasonable" in light of its actual cost
to provision.
Oh, and Scott Cleland is now a lobbyist for the Bells, a
professional liar who used to pretend to be an industry "analyst"
for the Wall Street crowd, but who always shilled for the Bells.
Anyhow, not trying to beat a dead horse, but this got me
questioning things :) Have a great weekend y'all!
-drew
On Fri, Nov 21, 2014 at 4:45 PM, Drew Lentz <d...@drewlentz.com
<mailto:d...@drewlentz.com>> wrote:
So here's what sparked the question. I was trying to get some
point-counterpoint going on with a friend of mine and found
some pretty good arguments on each. This article made me think
about it all a little differently:
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--
Fred R. Goldstein k1io fred "at" interisle.net
Interisle Consulting Group
+1 617 795 2701
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Allegan, Michigan 49010
269-686-8648
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--
Fred R. Goldstein k1io fred "at" interisle.net
Interisle Consulting Group
+1 617 795 2701
_______________________________________________
Wireless mailing list
Wireless@wispa.org
http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless
--
West Michigan Wireless ISP
Allegan, Michigan 49010
269-686-8648
A Division of:
Camp Communication Services, INC
_______________________________________________
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