John T
@northgrum.com
| reply to jjoshua
Re: Cherrypicking plus USF?
said by jjoshua  :So the phone co wants to cherry pick and then they will expect the USF to pay them to build out the less desirable areas? Did I get that right? No, or not exactly. The phone companies expect the USF to pay them to build out phone service in less desirable areas. All of this has to do with the difference between being the monopoly incumbent and being the new competitor.
Phone service: Phone companies, as the ILECs, are heavily regulated. Cable phone service via VoIP is very lightly regulated (per the FCC), and allowed to cherry-pick.
TV service: Cable companies, as the incumbent franchised monopolies, are regulated, though somewhat lighter than phone companies since cable TV is seen as more of a luxury than phones. Phone companies, seeing their landline business slipping away to cable companies, want light regulation and the ability to cherry-pick.
Of course, it's all more complicated than that since the phone service and TV service (and Internet service) goes over the same physical infrastructure in many of these cases, particularly once the telcos upgrade an area.
I also never quite understand the editorial position on the USF. It appears to be for some kind of nebulous "reform" without specifying it. Somehow the current system is bad, but abandoning efforts to subsidize rural service would also be bad, and expanding the USF to affect new services is also bad. I'd be very interested in concrete suggestions as to the proper reform. I think that the FCC suggestions for competitive bidding for the local phone service USF-subsidized service are interesting, and possibly make more sense than the current system, where subsidies to at least some locales seem to be too high. (See the free long distance and free conference call businesses that rely for their profits on the regulated termination rates being too high.) |
