I started a project last night concerning issues like the contracts that US Cellular clients will be held to should they wish to switch to another service. I'm focusing on public utility commisions at the state level that regulate them. Question: Have the telcos violated their contracts?
Also a number of individuals are posting questions on dumping DSL at AT&T and going to Earthlink, Yahoo ect. Standby.... All DSL's are still coming through the same four companies (re:equipment cited right at the switching termals). Qwaist would be excteptable of the four, however they can only provide in thier service area. This has been a burning issue amoung ISP's for a number of years and could very well push this issue back to FCC in an attempt to over turn recent rulings that ignore the laws in the Hatch Act that probits monopoies from utilizing thier position in one monoply to move into and establish monopoly in new areas. This violation far exceeds the Microsoft encrouchments, especially in the sence that the telephone companies are not simply satifide with thier control in the land line service, they've used that monopoly to enter into the telco of DSL provision. Now what's worse is they have moved into a new area. They seem to be wanting to be AOL, MSN, ect. also. This is hurting ISP's and killing the small service providers, (like me) tremendously and is the single greatest factor in the failior of 2/3 of the indipendant ISP's nationwide over the last 3-4 years and contains us to stricly old 56K dial-up service. This has been by design as they want to force us out of business. This is a triple layer deep violation of Hatch at this point. The administration has shown no propensity whatsoever to enforce these laws because, as you may have guessed, piles and piles of contributions for the telephone companies to repubs in congress. Exsessive greed and control is not merely rampant at the oil companies it is belching profusly in land line telephone, cell phones and the Internet under this admin.
Here's some background on this issue for those wishing to bone up on these issues. I'll post a position paper, probably tommorro.
http://www.cispa.org/positions/CISPA%20Position-FCC%20DSL%20ruling.pdfthis is two pages and somes it up briefly pretty well
http://www.sonic.net/whatsnew/fcc/Here's how they fooled the country by saying it would increase competition, another lie
http://www.broadbandweek.com/news/020225/020228_biz_access.htm