 
DaveNJ
No Fear
join:1999-09-01
New Jersey | reality kicks in Verizon actually fiqured out what people said 5 or 6 yrs ago. This will only be a metro area thing anyway.
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Alright DR. Slotkin do your worst. | |
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tonekilla
Pipe Dreams
Premium
join:2003-07-26
Gunnison, MS
clubs: | atleast its progress.. or is this just some more of their worthless bullshit to keep them in the headlines? | |
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| clecrupt9
join:2002-01-22
GA
| Re: atleast its progress.. Depends, Ivan (ceo)may actually be serious. If it were any other Bell, I'd say its BS. Until there is no competition we won't see FTTH. Bell employees have public stated this is what they would like. But again Verizon appears to be somewhat more futuristic, for lack of a better word. I can't help but think of PA though. | |
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rit56
join:2000-12-01
New York, NY
| business is business I like the bit where he evaded the part about opening their lines to competitors. As far as I'm concerned if they keep getting tax breaks like they do and if we are still forced to pay the Universal Slush Fund then they should be made to allow competitors to use the lines. Their using public funds so we should benefit. | |
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| JohnA
Premium
join:2003-09-16
Pittsburgh, PA
| Re: business is business Sharing has been the whole drawback to Verizon fiber. Cable is not forced to share their lines and they do digital telephone on them. If you step back and look at Verizon's competition, you can't hardly expect them to make that kind of investment, just so someone else can use it to sell their service, over their lines, with someone else's brand name on it, like they're forced to do with POTS. | |
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| | clecrupt9
join:2002-01-22
GA | Re: business is business Well, I hope that since 96 won't be enough, maybe massive market decline from cable will force the Bells to do something- Fiber or wireless. | |
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Eat Me
join:2002-09-25
Sussex, NJ | You're forgetting one thing though. Cable was built with private funds, whereas the telco's are using taxpayer money. | |
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boogie74
join:2001-06-19
Neenah, WI
clubs:
| Re: business is business said by Eat Me  :
You're forgetting one thing though. Cable was built with private funds, whereas the telco's are using taxpayer money.
Ummm... this myth has been dispelled long ago. Telcos are private industry- not public. The way to tell the difference is this: Public industry does not trade on the stock market- whereas private industry does. Another clue: Public industries don't revolve around "profit margins". If telcos were public and not private, no one would be bitching about "profits" being too high or "stock options" for executives.
Boogie | |
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| | lesopp
join:2001-06-27
Land O Lakes, FL
| Re: business is business Regarding tax breaks, I know for a fact that Verizon off-shores to India which means they are playing in a global economy. Since they and any others involved in off-shoring are benefitting at the expense of American tax payers any and all tax breaks should stop immediately. Furthermore they should receive equal treatment as foreign companies seeking to expand into American.
About infrastructure sharing, the law is what it is until congress changes it or the courts declare it unconstitutional.
So you now admit they broke their promises? | |
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dvd536
as Mr. Pink as they come
Premium
join:2001-04-27
Phoenix, AZ
| Re: business is business said by lesopp :
Regarding tax breaks, I know for a fact that Verizon off-shores to India which means they are playing in a global economy
Do you think they could be as competitive if they were paying american workers full minimum wage instead of people in india 50cents to 1.50/hour? that cuts those expenses 75% and theres no benefits or unions to squabble with(thats just gravy on top)
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You can never be too rich, too thin or have too much Bandwidth | |
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| | | | lesopp
join:2001-06-27
Land O Lakes, FL
| Re: business is business Interests could mean monetary only investments, no problem there.
My position is that if a company has moved operations and is making payroll to either permanent or contract off-shore employees, that company should not be allowed to benefit from incentives or tax breaks. Whether domestic job creation is intentional or merely a byproduct of these tax incentives, the benefit should go to America and no other country. | |
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boogie74
join:2001-06-19
Neenah, WI
clubs:
| Re: business is business said by lesopp :
Interests could mean monetary only investments, no problem there.
My position is that if a company has moved operations and is making payroll to either permanent or contract off-shore employees, that company should not be allowed to benefit from incentives or tax breaks. Whether domestic job creation is intentional or merely a byproduct of these tax incentives, the benefit should go to America and no other country.
Unfortunately, unless you have a reasonable way of having regulatory oversight over exact accounting and payrolls for every US company, there is no way whatsoever to say that the exact amount of tax incentives can be applied ONLY to paying for US jobs.
There is absolutely no way to trace this. One might as well argue that parents should only get a tax write off for each child if they can prove that they spend the amount in tax savings for that child and nothing else. How does one insure this at all? Perhaps the tax savings for mortgage interest should be required to be accounted for and proven to go toward home improvement expenses only? Again- not possible- not even reasonable.
Further, to try to apply such a rule to a company so as to require that all employment (whether direct or to the "nth degree"- meaning any vendor that has overseas contracts, etc) be only in the US if any tax incentives are to be received at all would be impossible. There is just no way to do this. In a global economy, you'd have no companies (US or otherwise) getting ANY tax incentives to do anything! That includes food distribution from the US.
One must realize that companies are at an advantage (that we WANT in the US) when they go global- even if it means shipping some jobs overseas. This is a trade-off. We agree to create jobs in other countries if they agree to purchase our products at higher tariffed prices. It's all business. This is no attempt to screw over the "Average Joe" (which btw, wasn't the best tv show in the land).
Boogie | |
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| | | Beeper
Part Of The Problem
join:2001-09-27
Dayton, OH
clubs:
| said by lesopp :
Regarding tax breaks, I know for a fact that Verizon off-shores to India which means they are playing in a global economy.
If they buy Alcatel or Nortel equipment, they are playing in a global economy.
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Guaranteed Fear and Loathing. Abandon all hope. Prepare for the Weirdness. Get familiar with Cannibalism. | |
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mocycler
Premium
join:2001-01-22
Naperville, IL
 ·AT&T Midwest
4 edits | You forgot something...if you say something supportive of the CLECs, you're "pro-consumer". If you say something supportive of the Bells, you are a "shill".
The Telecom Act has been in effect since 1996. Since then there has been substantial technological upgrades and broadband penetration...and it's not because the CLECs have been hard at work building out their network. What have these CLECs been doing for the last eight years to improve things? This is less about interference from a monopoly and more about CLEC management being so lame that most of them can't stay out of bankruptcy court even after having a fully-functional network handed to them on a silver platter.
And boogie is right about the "but RBOCs get government breaks" bit. Most of the broadband infrastructure was implemented after the Telecomm Act, so arguing that AT&T got a right-of-way in 1920 now entitles every Joe Telco to a free ride on Ma Bell's bus is just a red herring...and a dumb one at that. If that's really true, the CLECs are an equal party to the BS since they are using the exact same network the taxpayers allegedly subsidized.
Peace,
mocycler
www.lp.org | |
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Rothan Tik
Destroyer of worlds
Premium
join:2000-11-07
Danvers, MA | sweet mother of mystery... as long as they actually do it, I gots no problems... | |
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Bleek
yo, just chill
Premium,MVM
join:2002-06-10
Brooklyn, NY
 ·Optimum Online
| Re: sweet mother of mystery... said by Rothan Tik :
as long as they actually do it, I gots no problems...
It's all good...;) | |
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BranTON
@optonline.net
| -= As long as it will work =- I don't care about what they say etc, but when they actualy start hookin' up and putting their things to reality then the words will have a meaning backed by the results.
Although, they said a while back that they will improve their DSL and I think they did to some point. So who knows... | |
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nasadude
join:2001-10-05
Rockville, MD | believe it when you see it "-- we can't do any of that acceleration unless we have clear guidelines."
How about this guideline:
If you don't get off your @ss to reach more customers with faster speeds and better service, you will be buried by cable. | |
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bilbo4fun
Premium
join:2002-02-18
Camden, SC
·Windstream
·AT&T Southeast
| I can't compete Hi All,
I am a local ISP and sell DSL service. Verizon doesn't sell it here. Verizon charges me $37.50 per line 768/128 higher speeds are more. I still have to pay for my Internet bandwidth and equipment along with a frame-relay line, router etc. to them for DSL. Open up their lines??, give me a break. They will eventually come to this market and offer $29.99 a month DSL service. How can I compete? The telco's do what they want and we subsidize them??
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Wireless, Dsl and Dial up provider. | |
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| clecrupt9
join:2002-01-22
GA
1 edit | Re: I can't compete As long as that loop is owned by them, you can forget trying to play the game by their rules. And the sad part is that VZ has LD because they meet the "opening of the lines" requirement for 271 relief. Perhaps the Gov could begin looking at taking that away if a bell now is anti competitive. | |
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| | gpancner
join:2001-09-27
Nine Mile Falls, WA | Re: I can't compete new govt. regulations have freed the local phone companies from the requirement to share their lines if they rebuild their systems and put fiber-optics in. If they continue to use copper instead of fiber, they are required to share their lines. | |
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| | SBC ST
join:2003-08-05
Strongsville, OH | So let me get this straight. You would want the telco to open their lines, real cheap to you, let you resell or provide your own signal over their lines...and fix a rate so that they cannot compete with you. Okey. Makes sense to me. | |
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| | | clecrupt9
join:2002-01-22
GA
| Re: I can't compete It much more complicated than that.
First, SBC has long distance services because they meet criteria , one of which was open access to network elements.
Second, the prices at which SBC sets for network are the subject of debate- and you can make a case that SBC (and the others) intentionally try to drive this cost up to keep people out.
Third, the Bells make money off people who choose this as a business. That is to say that now you have a customer market ans a wholesale market. A lot of industries operate very successfully having wholesale units- the core company makes money either way. I don't see where the bells get hurt, other than in brand, which here in ATL is fading fast.
Time and time again these companies show their colors. They are monopolists any way you slice them. | |
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| | | | gpancner
join:2001-09-27
Nine Mile Falls, WA | Re: I can't compete Monopolists? Phone companies and cable companies are monopolists on video and broadband as much as mc'donalds is a monopolist of cheeseburgers. care for some cheese with your whine? | |
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| | | | | clecrupt9
join:2002-01-22
GA
| Re: I can't compete I like Beer much better than wine, pass me a miller lite if ya got one.
I have seen and been through enough to know first hand that, while limited competition exists, and C-lec's arent perfect, the Bells want to have a Monopoly.
Do some research on Fiber to the house and what the FCC has done, and see what other conclusion you can make. | |
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| hoyleysox
join:2003-11-07
Long Beach, CA | Unless you oversubscribe your circuit.
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I_hate_bells
@Dial1.Dall
|  Re: I can't compete
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That's not what the Bells have done. They talked the government into giving the a monopoly for 100 years. Their lines have all been subsidized by this monopolistic history, which NEVER should have happened to start with.
Let's not forget where all this copper infrastructure came from. It most definetly did *NOT* come from some company who took a gamble and invested fairly in building it alongside others in the same competitive game. It came from a government guaranteed monopoly where Bell was GUARANTEED a profit by the government, no matter how much they invested. No others were ALLOWED to invest in building a this infrastructure.
Not only that but Verizon and the other ILEC's did not even build any of this infrastructure themselves. They stole it from AT&T in 1984 by government fiat.
So all you Bell shills, your arguments are worthless. It's like you want to pretend nothing from 1880 to 1984 ever happened and everything is a level playing field. That's just like typical crapola you hear from a TWA union member.
OK you want it to be fair to the CLEC's and etc? You give them the same government assurance that they will always make a profit, make it so no one else can compete, make it so *by law* they actually own the phones inside your house, etc. etc., for 100 years just like Ma Bell had.
Then, it would be fair. Otherwise, you are just blowing smoke. | |
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Theg NArlot
@gnilink.net
| Nobody is forcing you to rent Verizon's phone line. You're more than welcome to Build a CO, run lines from it to your customer's building, and run any service you can imagine over it.
Granted, you'd have to take the time to become a "utility company" in your locality. Verizon managed to do it.
suddenly ~$40.00/month doesn't sound like such a bad deal does it? | |
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mocycler
Premium
join:2001-01-22
Naperville, IL
·AT&T Midwest
| While I hate to see anyone run out of a job, your business plan is fatally flawed in that you are depending on a competitor for the very resources you need to make money.
What do you expect them to do...sell you a circuit below their own cost just so you can turn a profit? Sounds like you're the one fishing for a subsidy.
I'm not a big fan of the ILECs, but you gotta be crazy if you think they are going to help you steal their customers.
I hope you stay in business, but I think your attitude is a greater threat than anything Verizon is doing.
Peace,
mocycler
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www.lp.org | |
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clecrupt9
join:2002-01-22
GA
| Its the Right Move Verizon moving to a "broadband" company is the right thing. The Bells are anti-competitive, so it should come as no surprise that we will probably only see Fiber to the house when the Gov deregulates the industry.
Personally I think Cable will seriously hurt these companies for the next 5 years. The strategy of competing against the Gov instead of competitng for customers, won't work in this new environment.
The Bell here claims it wants slow, steady, growth...and in 1965 that would be fine. What they cant see is that the industry is changing and will change with or without them. Not a drop of sympathy from me, other than to the people who don't understand that they need to be looking for another job, and are layed off.
Its one thing to have new competition, its another to have competition from a company with millions of existing customers. We should thank the Cable companies for finally putting these companies in check- should the cable company be able to execute. | |
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| lvas
join:2001-05-17
Glen Carbon, IL |  Re: Its the Right Move
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| | clecrupt9
join:2002-01-22
GA
| Re: Its the Right Move No, they have plenty of problems too. I just think we might get lucky and see these two battle it out. That will lead to better, more advanced services, plus low prices.
If Cable really does put the hurt on the bells, they will have to compete. Be it fiber to the house, or some new offering. Like wise the cable company will counter, and so forth until we have elevated the technology and service. At least thats what I hope. There is a possibility that the RBOC's just drift into shadows of what they are now- kinda like AT&T has. | |
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| scott492002
join:2003-10-27
| Let me just say this. Have the government force all cable co. to provide service to anyone, anywhere, at any time, only to have them disconnect the service in a month or switch to another carrier after the install is done. I see this happen all the time. BellSouth installs the line and a month after the customer switches to a clec and no money is recouped for the installation. The cable co would go broke if they had to do this. Better be glad the rboc's are investing money in broadband. God knows resellers wont and cable co will only to who they want too. Oh yeah anyone ever heard of une-p pricing? Look into it. Makes me sick at how low the clecs get dial tone and other features. Thank God they cant get their grubby little hands on dsl. | |
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BosstonesOwn
join:2002-12-15
Everett, MA
clubs: | Finally a bell gets "it" Finally one of the bells understands that there is more then just pots to make a profit on. Welcome to the new millenium Verizon. Hopefully the rest of the US will see this as well.
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This package does not contain a winner... | |
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SBC ST
join:2003-08-05
Strongsville, OH
| Good-bye Catv Co. too??? I think its great for Fiber to finally be brought to the prem virtually ending bandwidth/speed needs and wants. But what will happen? Will telco want to bring in fiber, then Cable Co.? In my area there are 2 competing Cable Co.'s. I wouldn't want 3 or 4 sets of cables on the poles running down the street, much less 2 or 3 terminations on my house from competing data providers. In a perfect world i would think there is enough bandwidth on one piece/set of fiber to enable competing providers with data solutions, to minimize add'l lines wiring going down the street. In an effort to beatify the neighborhood. Wouldn't it be great to look on the poles going down the street, and in your yard and seeing only 2 utilites; power and fiber. Thats it. From my point of view (a telco installer) this would truely be a thing of beauty. | |
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| clecrupt9
join:2002-01-22
GA | Re: Good-bye Catv Co. too??? But SBC has been against fiber until the rules change. How many homes does SBC plan to light in 2004?
I suspect if the Bells were to run fiber, wireless would come next. | |
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| 2farfromCO7
join:2000-10-14
Farmington, MI | What are your basic cable rates? Under $30? Does anybody have satellite in your city? I wouldn't. Your city is not the norm | |
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| | SBC ST
join:2003-08-05
Strongsville, OH | Re: Good-bye Catv Co. too??? Not sure what the cable rates are. Are you sure you don't have two cable co's??? No Wide Open West (formerly Americast)? In our five state region, (Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin) there should be alot of WOW lines runnin. Oh well. | |
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ih8microsoft
join:2003-12-29
Tampa, FL |  Start Learning about customer service
Start learning about customer service and quality support. I think your learning that your old school network is done, the future is IP and if you keep pissing off your customers the lights will go dim. | |
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Goodbye Telco
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