NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] Verizon's Deal With Big Cable Spells the Demise of the Telecom Act
----- Forwarded message from Dave Farber <dave@farber.net> ----- Date: Fri, 6 Jan 2012 08:34:02 -0500 From: Dave Farber <dave@farber.net> Subject: [IP] Verizon's Deal With Big Cable Spells the Demise of the Telecom Act Reply-To: dave@farber.net To: ip <ip@listbox.com> ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne@warpspeed.com> Date: Fri, Jan 6, 2012 at 3:26 AM Subject: [Dewayne-Net] Verizon's Deal With Big Cable Spells the Demise of the Telecom Act To: Multiple recipients of Dewayne-Net <dewayne-net@warpspeed.com> Verizon's Deal With Big Cable Spells the Demise of the Telecom Act [Commentary] Opening up communications markets was the purpose of the 1996 Telecommunications Act. The Act was designed to help phone companies get into the pay-TV business, and cable companies get into the phone business. Yet after a series of regulatory blunders, this promise of increased competition and lower prices has become a distant memory. And the situation is only getting worse. Just last month Verizon announced it had signed a $3.6 billion deal with its erstwhile competitors Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks. In many ways, this announcement placed a capstone on the grave of the 1996 Telecom Act's biggest promise to America: genuine competition in communications service offerings. The telco-cable deal comes in two parts. The first lets Verizon buy wireless spectrum -- the public airwaves over which iPads, cellphones and radios receive data -- that these three cable companies teamed up to purchase from the Federal Communications Commission in 2006. The second part of the deal maps out terms by which the companies agree to stay out of each other's way. While the terms of these agreements remain undisclosed, it's been widely reported that the deal is an accord for the companies to sell one another's services to common customers in their (sometimes overlapping) service territories. This means Comcast subscribers hoping to see lower prices as a result of Verizon FiOS competition shouldn't hold their breath. It means smartphone owners who wanted more companies to enter the mobile data marketplace got coal for Christmas. It means the future where consumers are empowered to choose the pay-TV channels they want, and not the 500-plus channel bundles they are coerced into buying, could be strangled in its crib. Ultimately, it means the quality of U.S. communications networks will continue to trail that of other developed nations as less competition leads to less incentive to invest in infrastructure. What's more, this deal directly contradicts the promise Congress made to the country when it passed the 1996 Telecommunications Act. <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joel-kelsey/verizon-cable-tv_b_1186219.html> Courtesy of the Benton Foundation <http://www.benton.org> Dewayne-Net RSS Feed: <http://www.warpspeed.com/wordpress> ------------------------------------------- ----- End forwarded message ----- _______________________________________________ nnsquad mailing list http://lists.nnsquad.org/mailman/listinfo/nnsquad