🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <MPG.111538cd95397149897b2@ispnews.walltech.com>,
For_Email@ddress.see.below_plea.se (Philip J. Koenig) wrote:

> Read what I wrote.  Telcos *can't* dictate ISP choices for traditional
> old-fashioned modem dialup accounts, since modems leverage a line which
> has no special data features.  

Actually, one of the courses PacBell has been pursuing with the CPUC
_would_ let them gain some influence... imposition of trunking
fees on ISPs whose modem pools aren't in the same CO as the dialup
customer, which biases choice toward large ISPs (or subcontractors
of those ISPs), especially to Pac Bell Internet, who I am sure would
get first-rate service on its requests to collocate modem pools at
PacBell's central offices (or even inside PacBell's switches).

That last resembles the kind of vertical integration cable companies
are demanding in return for cable modem services, and I've heard even
worse things anecdotally.  My local TCI rep told me that the company
indefinitely postponed deployment in Sunnyvale and had scheduled a
new pilot in Fremont because its new owner, AT&T, wasn't interested
in upgrading older cable systems to provide cable modem service
_UNLESS_ new pilots suggested they could forcibly bundle cable,
data, local and long distance telephone service.  In plain English,
AT&T sees the traditional "expanded basic" cable tier ripoff as
an entry point for a cable, voice and data ripoff.  No wonder they
paid so much for TCI.

-- 
John R. Grout
j.grout@computer.org