On 3/6/2006 7:17 AM, Omachonu O. Ogali wrote:

Section 271 of "The Act" prevented RBOCs from selling long distance unless if they truly opened their networks to competitive access by CLECs (UNE-Ps primarily

Right, LD was the carrot in the MFJ

Then, AT&T and Sprint exit the long distance market. MCI Friends & Family? Nowhere to be found.

...because as it turns out, nobody can compete when LD is ~$.03 per min (or worse, when it is $.00 with voip/skype/etc). Sure there was some effort by RBOCS to get into national LD at first but once it got down to sub-nickel rates nobody cared anymore, and even the existing market giants have long since bailed on it. Too bad their debt loads weren't tied to shrinking projections. So the use of LD as carrot was the prime failure here, and is arguably what [in]directly killed the old giants. Hoorah for regulation, which tried to pick a winner, and got it absolutely wrong.

Let me cut this very short. Local, long distance, and the newest children: cellular and Internet, all under one umbrella, well two.

Except that local service is also becoming available through non-telco providers, LD is already non-existent as a market, and POTS line deployment overall has been declining for years. Internet penetration in the US has pretty much stabilized. The telcos are supposed to just whither away? The reality of realigning markets and new technologies demands that the telcos adapt.

Competition? I guess I have cable.

I certainly agree that the limited range of low-latency broadband options is a problem. There is some choice there but not much. But fear of telco might also result in another scenario: cable only. -- Eric A. Hall http://www.ehsco.com/ Internet Core Protocols http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/coreprot/