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Murrel.
Org
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Updated 2/20/2003
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FCC Decision Will Kill the ISP Industry
February 20, 2003
For the past two years the FCC has treated the ISP industry as a poor cousin in the battle between the Baby Bells and the Long Distance carriers. Today's ruling, viewed in the national press as a minor rules modification will kill off the independent ISP industry.
Yes, the very folks who changed the world by making the Internet into an affordable everyday utility for the common people will be forced out of business. The local ISP brought $20/month Internet to a country who had until then had to depend on the telecommunications industry who provided Internet at $1.25/hour plus phone costs.
It wasn't until over 6,000 local ISP nationwide had established an industry that the major telcos started to pay attention. The result was competition from AT&T and other major LD carriers. The baby bells for their part, started making excuses on why they couldn't fulfill their duties to provide data circuits to ISPs and began lobbying the FCC under the guise of competition to prohibit ILEC (which include all ILECs, ISPs and LD carriers) from access to their local fiber loops.
The FCC was duped into folllowing this line of reasoning, believing that competition would follow from other technologies such as the cable and wireless industries.
The flaw in their reasoning is that while businesses operating on a level playing field in a single industry produce competition, competing industries almost never battle on a level playing field. One industry or another will have an in-built advantage and over time will eliminate the other industries from the playing field.
This may be an acceptable form of business evolution when industries are populated by private industry, but when the industries are owned by monopolies, the result is disasterous for the public. Once the other industries fall away, the monopoly will set their prices as desired.
The baby bells didn't achieve their monopoly position by being better than their competition or by providing a better price/performance bargain for the public - they were granted their monopoly by the government and abused it so badly that finally the government had to spilt up the telephone company into AT&T and the bell operating companies. Now the bells are coalescing again like the monster in Terminator 2.
The small independent ISPs are small business. They built an industry. Small businesses in this country supply most of the new jobs and innovations.
Its too bad the Bush FCC is only interested in the health of the Bells. If they cared more for the public they might be making different decisions.
-Murrel Rhodes
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