I have been holding back on commenting on the FCC decisions last week so that my brain could digest the ruling. There are both positive and negative aspects of this ruling.
I had to reflect on what I witnessed during the Baby Bell break up in the early 80’s the break-up allowed consumers more choices and the end result is we now pay a significantly lower price for long distance. This ruling ultimately will help the BIG 3 long distance providers.
But the broadband decision will definitely stifle the small & middle sized ISP’s with the change in rules they are now effectively blocked or in effect this allows the bells to charge a higher rate for access to there lines and will limit companies from rolling out broadband DSL services. Covad communications which has a huge DSL base nearly 40% of there total revenues may pull out of the DSL business.
The big names in telecommunications will continue to enjoy discounted access to the bells lines and be able to co-locate equipment which is probably the only good thing that came out of last week decisions. Companies like Sprint, AT&T will be able to add local phone customers. If I could pay less for local phone service I would jump ship in a moment. It pisses me off to pay like an extra $15.00 per month just to have call waiting and a few other standard services. Hopefully this will bring more competitors into the local market.
There a ton of links on the ruling so I have linked to several of the articles to get you started. [Yahoo Search] [USA Today] [AP]