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To: ahhaha who wrote (11165)	6/13/1999 1:15:00 PM
From: Frank A. Coluccio	Respond to of 29970

AHhaha, you may be right about the smoke screen component, but at least BLS has elevated the concept of deep fiber by an ILEC onto the screen for all to see. It's no longer an FSAN standard, located deep in the archives, causing folks to wonder if anyone will ever deploy it. It appears to be real at this time, if still not ready for prime time, altogether, due to there still being some marketecture shmoltzing to overcome. But I think that they will, with time, get to where they've already stated they are. The BLS announcement will serve to keep the other purveyors concerned and more proactive than they would be, otherwise, and in that sense I think it will aid competition. I'm not as altogether confident as you seem to be that it is a bona fide bait and switch, but considering the logistics involved, it probably will resemble one for many individual users experiences, for an interim (maybe extended) time frame, at least. I'm not sure how this plays into the ILEC's franchise responsibilities to provide comparable and universal availability of service coverage across all of their serving territories, i.e., whether this is a part of BLS's monopoly offerings, or if it is structurally separated part of their business like an independently-run enhanced service provider offering. Do you or anyone else here happen to know? It's not my intention to defend the RBOCs from a philosophical perspective, even though it may sound that way. My daily experiences guide me to looking at these issues from a realistic standpoint as well as the theoretically possible one. When I'm forced to land my rubber onto the pavement, some stark realities emerge. And they aren't always pretty ones of the type that would find their way onto the SR thread. Witness, the VPN example which I brought up last night. This example, and many other seemingly mundane aspects of enterprise level mega-deals, demonstrate to me, repeatedly, that we are still dealing with often rudimentary, and sometimes relatively primitive, technologies in the day-to-day goings on of telecommunications provisioning. In the presence of 38 Mb/s cable modem, and 52 Mb/s VDSL just over the horizon, enterprises are still forced to consider 56k and ISDN technologies <oi!> due to the unsynchronized delivery staging and availability of the former platform variations I cited. The BLS gesture was a departure, in this respect, that portends future better things, if not currently achievable ones while the bait and switch has time to exhaust itself. Incidentally, of all the RBOCs and larger ILECs in existence, BLS probably would have been the last one I would have suspected to launch such a platform. Let's see what they do with it as the war wages on. See my reply to Raymond, since you mentioned his post. I try to break down and compare the differences between enterprise level DSL offerings and residential offerings. Later, Frank

To: ahhaha who wrote (11165)	6/18/1999 11:40:00 PM
From: ahhaha	Read Replies (5) \| Respond to of 29970

The FCC, local governments, cable companies, ISPs, and the public have a problem. They all are imagining that there is a struggle going on between two sides, call them AOL and ATHM. The two sides perceive themselves as representing a market solution. The problem is that neither operates in the same market. Therefore AOL's "open access" solution has nothing to do with ATHM's proprietary distribution system. All these interests better get on the same page else they will recreate the cable TV disaster of the past. What is on the same page is the recognition that copper and cable based distributions are separate and distinct and represent two separate and distinct markets though they overlap in functionality. The two markets compete through technological change, but the companies within these two markets only compete with each other on a basis of quality and cost of service and content. Since the technologies are substantially different their respective qualities and costs are different which differentiates both markets up to technological advances. This makes each market a level playing field with respect to all existing competitors within their own markets. Copper ISPs don't compete with cable. Cable is far more expensive and potentially delivers more, but copper is adequate. cheaper, and proven. The battle that is being engaged in Portland and elsewhere like Los Angeles tries to pit separate markets against one another. This is a major error. The appropriate players in say, Los Angeles, for the cable market are given in this listing: The City of Los Angeles is served by seven cable operators, including AT&T, Time Warner Cable, Century Communications, MediaOne, Cox Communications, Falcon Communications, and Buenavision Telecommunications that operate in 14 franchise areas. That defines the cable market which is different from the below listed copper ISPs who also have a presence in Los Angeles and define the competitors in the copper market: AOL, Earthlink, MSN, Mindsprind, GTE, Prodigy, PsiNet, and 300 others. Century doesn't compete with Psinet and Earthlink doesn't compete with COX, but COX and Century should be competing just like Earthlink and PsiNet are. T's solution isn't addressing this any more than AOL's. T wants ATHM carried exclusively on all cable MSOs. That isn't a competitive market. It is an attempt to recreate the disaster of the past not only found in cable TV but in copper telephony. It always seems so expedient and promotional of competitive free markets to compromise the principals of the competitive free market. That's exactly what Congress did in the Telcom Act of '96. Everyone in this era believes so strongly in competitive free market capitalism, yet what we have as a result of such true belief is the most strangulating octopus monopoly corporations ever seen in history. Where is there a proposal to provide open access to several cable ISPs say, HSAC, RR, and ATHM, with others possibly to be created? Where is it supported that if the cable MSO will only carry one preferred cable ISP, then the public must be offered the possibility within any franchise to take another MSO's offering? When do I see corporate executives suggesting to the FCC through midnight letters that there must be at least 3 cable ISPs available to any subscriber following the Bork Rule defining the minimum necessary to promote competition? The answer is nowhere, nowhere, and never. Thus the AOL-ATHM battle is misdirected which obfuscates its purpose and brings about an undesirable end. The public's attitude is that they could care less as long as the battle delivers some kind of service and protects them against the greed and evil of the capitalist pigs. The corporations will adapt to whatever pile of nonsense comes out of this engagement, but it will have little to do with an effective solution. The solution starts with recognizing separate and distinct markets. Rather, the non-solution of the result of battle will slow the advent of BB:anything, make whatever is finally thrown up unnecessarily expensive in order to afford the "fairness" provisions, and redistribute poor service to the rich neighborhoods. There is no battle between AOL and ATHM, but if the people and corporations want one, I'm sure we'll end up with a BB:Vietnam.