jmorse's Journal: This Sucks

It's official. Michael Powell and the FCC are corporate whores. So now the RBOCs are being given an unregulated monopoly over lines that the public paid for. And they're doing this in the name of encouraging investment? Now maybe I'm missing something, but can't the RBOCs sit back and make a handsome profit off the existing (paid-for) infrastructure without incurring any risk? Even under the 1996 regulatory structure, the competing DSL providers had to pay the RBOCs a "competitive" fee for access to those lines. The RBOCs would then set that fee ridiculously low so that their broadband units could show a profit and they could complain to the FCC about losing money on leased lines. Say goodbye to any decent DSL service like Speakeasy. Say goodbye to Covad and Earthlink. And say hello to major increases in prices for broadband service. I guess it's back to dialup for me. This is something we need to be up in arms about. I'm salivating at the thought of people throwing molotovs outside SBC's headquarters. Of course, this is America, where our rights and interests are trampled by corporations and we stand by and suffer.