Category Archives: DSL

Copper-Based Competitors

highlander.jpg The chutzpah:
Ed Shakin, a lawyer for Verizon, said network-sharing requirements are no longer needed in certain cities now that cable companies and other competitors have rolled out Internet and phone service. “What competitors want are artificially low prices,” he said. “It comes down to a fight about price, not availability.”

— Telecom Changes Put Competition on the Line, By Kim Hart, Washington Post Staff Writer, Thursday, September 6, 2007; Page D01

So Verizon is reducing the number of competitors, but as long as there is at least one, that’s enough, they say. Apparently Verizon thinks its competition is the Highlander: There Can Be Only One.

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Warp Speed From Behind

JBrbop02.jpg As we’ve mentioned before Japan has Internet connections much faster than those in the U.S. This point is getting more mainstream media play:
Broadband service here is eight to 30 times as fast as in the United States — and considerably cheaper. Japan has the world’s fastest Internet connections, delivering more data at a lower cost than anywhere else, recent studies show.

Accelerating broadband speed in this country — as well as in South Korea and much of Europe — is pushing open doors to Internet innovation that are likely to remain closed for years to come in much of the United States.

The speed advantage allows the Japanese to watch broadcast-quality, full-screen television over the Internet, an experience that mocks the grainy, wallet-size images Americans endure.

— Japan’s Warp-Speed Ride to Internet Future, By Blaine Harden, Washington Post Foreign Service, Wednesday, August 29, 2007; Page A01

So is it just for video? If so, maybe we’d better let the telcos have their way. Continue reading →

It’s Good to be King!

melbrooks.jpg How are those merger conditions coming along?
Remember the story back in June about how AT&T had extremely quietly started offering $10 DSL as was required in its deal to buy BellSouth? The company was promoting many other, more expensive, DSL options, but the only way you could get the required $10 version was if you specifically knew to ask about it. Broadband Reports points to an interview from an Atlanta newspaper with AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson where he’s asked about the $10 DSL. The interviewer points out that no story about AT&T resulted in a more irate response from AT&T customers as its story about the hidden offer for $10 DSL, suggesting that this was a huge issue for AT&T customers. Stephenson’s response? First he denies that the company made it hard to find, and then he says that they’re not promoting it because customers don’t want it. This, despite the clear response from customers to the very newspaper who was conducting the interview. Then, he basically admits that the $10 DSL doesn’t work very well, saying that they don’t promote it because they don’t want to give customers a product that sucks. Of course, he says that as if it’s not his company that has quite a bit of control over whether or not the product sucks.

— AT&T CEO: We Don’t Promote $10 DSL Because No One Wants It, Techdirt, 1 August 2007

This is even though the AJC reporter introduced the question with:
Of all the things the AJC has written about AT&T lately, none has caused more reader irritation than AT&T’s $10 a month DSL offer, which was required by the Federal Communications Commission when you bought BellSouth.

— Q&A: AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson, By Scott Leith, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Published on: 07/27/07

The techdirt writer goes on to point out that this is what SBC used to do with naked broadband, too, i.e., dance around and do nothing. After all, without regulation or competition, it’s good to be king!

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Global Media Consolidation

mediabrands.jpg In case you thought media ownership in increasingly fewer hands was a uniquely U.S. problem, here’s a handy graphic illustrating its worldwide scope. There are links to the research behind it.

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AT&T’s Striped Bass

ph_striped_bass.jpg You may recall that the FCC at the last minute in 2006, after the elections and before the electees took office, agreed to some conditions on the merger of Bellsouth with AT&T. Among them was a $10/month DSL plan.
The merger commitment specifies that the plan had to be offered. That means to me that it has to be put forth as an option!!! (If there’s a fifty pound striped bass somewhere out there in the ocean, that’s not an offer of fish!)

So I don’t think AT&T is honoring its $10/month commitment.

— Is AT&T Honoring its Merger Commitments? David Isenberg, isen.blog, Friday, July 06, 2007

This is the same $10/month service USA Today announced AT&T was developing back in January. Maybe they’ll just keep “developing” it until the 48 month time limit expires, or make it available to a few people and claim they’ve honored their commitment.This is what SBC used to do: claim availability if one person per ZIP code could get a service, and the FCC let them get away with that.

Isenberg asks:

Do you think the FCC will investigate?
Continue reading →