[IP] Copps , DC etc DSL prices in France, with competition; ATC
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Date: Sun, 21 Dec 2003 21:06:56 -0500
From: Dave Burstein <dave3@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: DSL prices in France, with competition; ATC
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To: dave@xxxxxxxxxx
Dave
Free.fr is providing DSL over 1 Mbps in in much of France for 29.90 Euro,
including 500 minutes of national phone calls without charge. They supply
all customers a Freebox home gateway with a VOIP plug and a video
connection, now offering 50 channels. LD Com, another competitor, is about
to release similar, and to meet the competition, France Telecom is dropping
prices and bringing in video.
Competition can work - this list has reported that Japan is offering 7
Mbps for $25, and the latest announcements are for 45 Mbps downstream and 3
Mbps upstream for about what 1.5/256 costs in Atlanta. (Effective speeds
are lower to most users more than a block from the telco office, but most
get 10 Mbps or more.)
Which is why the Gurley piece about protecting the net is uninformed.
The rules the ninth circuit upheld were not limits on the net, but an
attempt to protect competition and keep the net open. That's worth fighting
for.
If you believe in the end-to-end principle of the internet, you have
to watch this kind of stuff. That's what we're fighting for ("net
neutrality" is D.C.'s term,) and a well paid cable lobbyist is hunting down
reporters like me to argue they should not be prevented from blocking part
of the net, as a way to charge more for what they permit through.
FCC Commissioner Copps is currently a lonely voice in D.C. trying to
protect the internet against a much more real risk: a DSL/cable duopoly
that can squeeze higher prices by blocking all but favored content. Two
days ago, a telco VP described to me plans that would impose crippling
charges on video over the net, except the channels they carried in their
favored group. A CTO of a large cable company at ITU Geneva said "if it
goes over our wires, we have to control it." They all are smelling the
revenue possibly by erecting tollbooths on the internet. Sure, we all
oppose heavyhanded government action, but in a network with only one or two
last mile carriers we also need to keep them open.
Here's my writeup of an important speech by Copps
Copps: Internet "teetering on a precipice"
"monopolies stifling its openness and connectivity"
FCC Commissioner Copps wants to make sure the current hidden battles over
control of the Net don't "remain inside-the-Beltway games even though they
will cause gigantic seismic shocks all across the country. I don't want
that to happen. I don't think most of you do, either.
If we embrace closed networks, if we turn a blind eye to
discrimination, if we abandon the end-to-end principle and decide to
empower only a few, we will have inflicted upon one of history's most
dynamic and potentially liberating technologies shackles that make a
mockery of all the good things that might have been."
Dave Burstein
Editor, DSL Prime, Telecom Insider, and Fiber News
Author, DSL, A Tech Brief (Wiley, 2002. With Jennie Bourne)
Special Correspondent, WBAI-FM 99.5 Personal Computer Show
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