Mike:
I am not sure I agree with you regarding cable and
copper unbundling. First, I assume that we are all in
agreement that there is no reason to treat ILECS and
cable companies differently. They operate within a
regulated monopoly framework, and while cable companies
are spending billions upgrading to 2-way HFC networks,
to accommodate xDSL service,the ILECs will need to
deploy a lot more fiber in the local loop. While it
is true they are spending billions to perform upgrades,
they are leveraging what are quasi-monopoly positions
granted by licensing boards. As such, they are not
different from utility companies, so that either they
should accept rate-setting boards for all services they
offer (including new ones, such as IP telephony over cable)
or accept unbundling of both copper and cable.
Unregulated monopolies are totally unacceptable in
a modern economy. So we must have either regulation
or competition. I do not like regulation, and I would
much prefer competition in the form of unbundling.
Of course, unbundling creates its own problems, since
one wants to ensure some uniformity in line conditioning
or cable upgrades, so that perhaps the answer will
involve what Frank C. was suggesting, which was to perform
the unbundling at the higher levels of the networking
stack. This would mean regulating ILEC and cable fees
at the level of the physical layer, and bringing competition
at higher layers [except that I would hate to see what this
would do to rate setting commissions-- I can't wait to see
local commissioners talking about ATM, IP, frame relay,
etc...]
Best regards,
Bernard Levy |
