U S West, just as the other RBOCs (Regional Bell Operating Companies) do, is fighting to get permission to offer long distance and in general escape regulation, claiming to have big financial losses adding data infrastructure. At the same time, it refuses to offer other services that make more sense for the infrastructure it owns, such as "dark copper" for DSL using customer-owned equipment. It also spends considerable sums of money on telemarketing high-margin "extended" services, such as call waiting and voice messaging. In a competitive environment, a local voice telephone service would probably offer such things free, or charge per event based on the few pennies per month all such services actually cost for a typical customer. The state of New Mexico has its unique problems with U S West, but probably every one of the other 12 states does, too. U S West also handles nearly all its customer contact in interstate fashion, trying to avoid the jurisdiction of any single state, and for the most part federal jurisdiction, too. Of the original 7 RBOCs after Judge Greene's 1982 decision, SBC (Southwestern Bell, Texas to Missouri) bought Pacific Telesys (California,) Bell Atlantic (Virginia to Pennsylvania and New Jersey) bought Nynex (New York and New England,) and Ameritech (around Chicago) wants to merge in with SBC, too. So now there are 5, or 4. AT&T, the national survivor in the break-up, bought TCI (Tele-Communications,) the largest cable TV company. And U S West is being purchased by Qwest.
Judge Greene died a couple of weeks ago. We should respect the departed, but he should have split the AT&T local phone companies into 3 national companies instead of 7 regional ones. That way, large cities would have immediately had competition in local phone service, and eventually even communities down to the size of Los Alamos and smaller would have gotten competition. Competition in long distance has worked. Calls that used to be \$1.50 per minute are now routinely 30 cents, 15 cents, a dime, even 7 or 5 cents per minute. All my long distance is 9 cents per minute with no monthly fee or minimum, even calling card ones are 9 cents with just a 40 cents per call fee added. What has worked for the long distance business needs to be unleashed on the local telecommunications business. We need local competition in phone services, both voice and data. Eventually we need voice service to be via data. We need to leave the current structure of the RBOCs behind. Currently they can cross-subsidize several businesses that have nothing to do with providing wire or fiber from central offices to customer premises (or between central offices.)
· U S West is in the Internet Service Provider business, competing with customers one layer down such as New Mexico Technet and its for-profit division Oso Grande Technologies and two layers or more with customers such as Southwest Cyber Port and Route 66 Internet.But not interstate long distance. Thank goodness, so far, for that last impediment to them harrassing us more than they already do.
· U S West is in the business of publishing directories.
· U S West runs a web site, and sells advertisements on it. There may be several U S West web sites operated this way.
· U S West is in the cable television business (they bought Continental Cablevision.)
· U S West is in the business of voice mail, competing with customers who run answering services.
· U S West is in the business of enhanced services by the dozen such as caller id, three way calling, call forwarding, call waiting, various call blocking features, camp on busy, 800 service, 900 service, on and on.
The entity that owns the right to have telecommunications cables that cross everybody's property should be in no other business. Too many games with cross-subsidization and discrimination are played the way things are now.
I have my own tale of woe in dealing with U S West. I'm trying to get ``dark copper'' to run Lucent DSL equipment between my home and two other locations. I placed an order on August 31, 1999. U S West has been using tactics of delay, obfuscate and pleading ignorance, and haven't delivered this order yet. I call that DOPI, as in dopey (delay, obfuscate and plead ignorance.) They say, from Phoenix over the phone,
[U S West] We can't do it.
[Dale] You mean you won't do it, obviously you can.
[U S West] No, we can't.
[Dale] Please put that in writing, in a letter to me.
[U S West] Our management has forbidden us to put any of this in writing.
[Dale] I'll just need to make an audio recording of you saying it then.
[U S West] I won't repeat it for an audio recording.
[Dale] This is really getting weird.
I think U S West has what we need, they just won't sell, or even rent, it to us. Of course, they always rent everything, they never sell anything. Selling would be too fair.
5 comments:
The Bell Atlantic / NYNEX merger became Verizon. SBC did acquire Ameritech, and then AT&T. Qwest and U S West decided they are just Qwest. So now there are 3. If they now just all go nationwide in real terms, my recommendation would replace Judge Greene's order after all. More likely they'll just all become AT&T again, though, I suppose. The young generation has no clue how much like the master (maybe no, overseer) of the plantation "the phone company" was to us former slaves. How'd you like your phone (the thing with the receiver on it) for $50 per month?
Verizon is actually installing fiber. However, they did shed the state of Maine so they wouldn't have to do it there. Too rural, distances too great.
Qwest now sells DirecTV. I guess the new SBC-based AT&T sells some small dish satellite TV, too. Maybe there were even problems when one merger partner was selling DISH, the other DirecTV. Verizon has some TV service method on its fiber system. Verizon's fiber system is called FiOS (FIber Optic Service.)
Qwest has a new marketing ploy, "bundling." I was working for Control Data Corporation when they and the United States Justice Department got the courts to rule that IBM (International Business Machines) had to stop "bundling." Maybe Qwest will have some judgements rendered against it, too, one of these days.
I notice that when Qwest talks to me on the phone now, they tend to have conference calls with about 3 people on their end. Maybe they think they need witnesses. Maybe they're a check on each other to make sure nobody says too much. It would be funny if it weren't so pitiful.
Anyway, for what I could get by buying a half-dozen business DSL lines and combining them, which is technically possible, the DS-3 way of getting about the same bandwidth costs over twice as much.
But there are substantial volume discounts, so if the separate Qwest customers in Los Alamos act in concert instead of circling their wagons and protecting what's "theirs," we could do as well as the multiple DSLs. And the real answer is to bypass Qwest unless Qwest offers products for a fair price. We can help the neighboring communities, too, and we should partner with them, too. You know, San Ildefonso, Santa Clara, Espanola, El Rancho, Jacona, Pojoaque, Nambe, Ohkay Ohwingeh (formerly San Juan,) Tesuque, La Cueva, Jemez Springs, Jemez Pueblo, Cuba, even Santa Fe.
We need to propagate community fiber not only towards Santa Fe and thus Albuquerque (although we might go through Cochiti, too, not just Santa Fe, serving Bandelier on the way,) but we need paths toward both Denver and Salt Lake City to be part of the plan, too. Even more important, part of the doing, not just planning, who cares if it's planned, anyway, just let it happen. We can do some wireless, but we really should do fiber.
Oh, Qwest did get its wish to be in the long distance business, too, I think. I think all 3 are selling long distance nationwide.
Convergence is coming, though, so probably phone via VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) and TV programs will all come through our internet fiber, no Bell or coax or satellite dish required. So the satellites can just send stuff to cars, buses, trucks, boats, etc.
I should put a link here to Robert Cringely of PBS (Public Broadcasting System,) too, for his excellent coverage of the lobbying of legislatures and regulatory bodies, undue influence, by telecommunications carriers, both phone and cable, but mostly phone. First, his "ThePulpit":
I found these along the way:
Broadband Reality Check
July 2006 FCC Report
June 2007 FTC Broadband Report
But this is, IIRC (If I Recall Correctly) the shocker, and I haven't even had time to read all of it yet, maybe I never will:
$200 Billion Broadband Scandal
Which I found via this ThePulpit:
$200 Billion Cringely Pulpit
which I found via this SlashDot summary:
$200 Billion SlashDot summary
I get long distance service for 2.9 cents per minute to anywhere in the U.S. and have for several years. Anytime, anywhere. This company makes a profit and is staying in business so the cost of long distance service is some number lower than 2.9 cents per minute.
The above comment about long distance price is the first comment by anyone other than myself to fiberlanm. Thanks to whoever posted it for making the effort to add to the conversation.
Is the point here that the long distance business has competition, whereas because of the Qwest monopoly on connections outside Los Alamos the internet business is missing similar competition?
If one pays a high enough fixed monthly fee, long distance is 0 cents per minute, 0 cents per hour, 0 cents per day. That fee could be around $25 with Vonage or a similar VOIP company, or around $30 with Qwest itself or around $100 with a cellular carrier.
My landline long distance plan has a higher per-minute fee, around 5 cents per minute according to my latest bill, but the monthly fee for 4 lines plus a toll-free number is relatively low. I usually don't have a lot of minutes per month, last month was just a total of 25 minutes on 11 calls, for instance, so my total bill is lower by paying a higher monthly fixed fee.
If we had competition in local phone service, I think we'd have lower prices for landline phones, despite having duplicate infrastructure associated with the competing companies. Maybe we'd have higher non-broadcast TV prices if we didn't have DISH, DirecTV, BUD (big ugly dish, that's what I use) and free-to-air satellite competing with Comcast in that market locally. We do have local competition of Qwest, Comcast, re-seller DSL, Black Rock wireless, LA Commnet, cellular delivery of internet and at least three choices of satellite internet. Despite that, cellular and satellite are are both higher-priced and generally slower than the others. And all of the others have exactly one choice for their path out-of-town, which is Qwest, unless they use wireless to bypass Qwest. So there is a Qwest monopoly on data transport, no competition. For the DSL re-sellers, even the in-town path is actually owned by Qwest and rented to the end customer via the reseller. In theory, the New Mexico Public Regulation Commission has some influence over Qwest that might prevent abuse. In practice, theory often is only theory.
I missed one of the original "Baby Bell" companies in both my comments 8 years ago, and last week. BellSouth was merged into what is now AT&T, along with SBC, Ameritech and whatever AT&T had become through other aquisitions.
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