Mike, You wondered if you were missing something after examining Kennard's remarks on DSL, including his stated encouragement of rapid DSL deployment. I think you have to ascribe an agenda to the FCC Commissioners as much as the industry participants (even more so?) and perhaps consider the following from an ILEC perspective:
< Local phone companies have complained that it's unfair for the FCC to make them open their lines to ISPs, while not requiring cable operators to do so.
Kennard responded in Tuesday's speech. "Let's look at the facts," he said. "We put a proposal on the table for the Baby Bells to operate advanced services in a de-regulated environment. The Bells have been given the roadmap to their liberation. All they need is the courage to compete." >
Well that is his view. The "facts" from the record show that the FCC "proposal on the table" was indeed an FCC construct. ILEC opposition was nearly universal (I believe Ameritech did not oppose the terms of the separate subsidiary alternative, but they were silent in the record as to their thinking on that.) Now he acts like he cannot understand why the dogs don't leap at the dogfood he is serving up. This is much more complex than what an FCC Commissioner pops into a soundbite prefaced by "Lets look at the facts." There is no consensus by the participants just what the relevant "facts" are -- but there is an FCC Report and Order that represents their politically distilled view of an appropriate course of action based on their culling of fact.
The ILEC logic behind their opposition to significant aspects of the FCC NPRM proposal is well established in the record, but it is a stack of turgid prose that is no fun to pore through. So, I will mention just one highlight of ILEC commentary that the FCC failed to meaningfully address in the R&O. To wit: There is no problem with economic deployment of xDSL to business customers. Look at all the DLECs that are doing just that as fast as they can -- COVAD, Rhythms, Northpoint, HarvardNet, on, and on, and on. There is a significant common denominator with all of the active DLECs, though -- they have a totally business orientation, both with their service offerings, and especially, their pricing. (I use the industry convention that communications facilities to a residence to support work-at-home that is paid for by the employer is a business line. This is a big part of the current activity.)
If the FCC is really serious about encouraging xDSL deployment to residential consumers at consumer rates (say, $29 to $49 per month), then the separate subsidiary business construct will fall short. It adds costs for the ILEC that will necessarily add to retail prices. This is leveling the table by cutting all the legs off altogether. For lower priced, best effort high speed interconnect connectivity, the ILECs, operating with integrated network facilities, provisioning capabilities, and ubiquitous (as much as xDSL allows!) service presence look like the best answer to provide residential consumers with a low-priced option to cable modem service. COVAD and Northpoint executives have stated in public that they have no plans to enter this market space, and it is a logical presumption that similarly operating companies with similar business plans would not, either.
IMHO, the FCC seemed most interested in demonstrating their cleverness with the Sep Sub proposal as a tidy answer to many conflicting positions in the record. This seemed more important than in really producing a set of rules that could more fully support real competition where it already does and will exist -- the business segment, while creating a structure with some regulatory certainty that supports economical residential consumer deployment to a similar degree. The single minded emphasis is on competition, but no one at the FCC really figured out how competition would or could come to the consumer segment under the regulatory regime they set out. The certainty issues apply to what ILEC network components will be considered UNEs and which will be subject to wholesale pricing for resale. That clarification was deferred to another proceeding, based in part on the court decision that remanded the UNE definitions.
So you decide, is it really true that:
<To encourage competition in areas where high-speed Internet access is possible through cable modems, the FCC tried to make it easier for local phone companies to offer digital subscriber line, or DSL service, Kennard said. >
I say there is more than one way to view this, and certainly more than one way to spin it. There is definately more than simply an issue of corporate "courage."
|
