Dear Frank, Over the past two years I have noticed that the Regional Bell Operating Companies, the RBOCs [PacBell for sure, perhaps Southwestern Bell (the two are now merged), Bell South, Bell Atlantic/Nynex, Ameritech, USWest] have lobbied to hit ISPs with local access fees.
For an example please see the next post.
Their efforts were quite visible earlier (at least PacBell's in California). I believe the RBOCs became more subdued... because hiking Internet fees by charging local access fees is not politically popular.
Now the FCC happens (by chance?) to parrot what RBOCs were saying, "if it walks like a duck, etc." regarding Voice over IP, which looks suspiciously like the first step in trying to charge local access fees when connecting to ISPs.
The big, easy, simple money for the RBOCs is to collect local access fees for ISP connections, if at all possible. And yes, the RBOCs are so big that a hit to one portion of their business may help another. However, the distance broadband business is yet to be developed. Regarding section 706 there is an explanatory reference (for other readers) on reply #3 for this thread.
The RBOCs have huge lobbying efforts and huge budgets that go on behind the scenes all the time. The only time for them to "go public" with any agenda is when it is politically popular. Otherwise, why not get surrogate advocates (FCC) who are perhaps surrogates for certain Senators? The RBOCs just want results not negative publicity.
All I'm doing is making a judgement call and connecting dots over 24 months or so. At this point in time my judgement may be in the minority, but if everybody were in agreement there would be no horse races and life would be dull.
Best,
Francis |
