They do. But I'm sure you know the FCC has capped some of the funds, with
plans to cap more of it. That may be good or bad, depending if you're a
wireless or wireline carrier drawing on those funds or not.
Frank
The classic problem of the ILECs is that they have a government backed
monopoly on the local loops everywhere and they leverage that monopoly to
compete with companies that don't have government backing.
For my $0.02,there are two good options.
1. Eliminate the FCC Universal Service/Coverage funds and let that farmer
pay the full rates for connecting his hog barn. (If we had pursued this
option years ago, wireless would be much more mature and ubiquitous by now.)
2. Have the government meddle with the ILECs... er, ILEC (singular) and
divide the local loops into a different company that provides a platform for
selling standardized products and services at wholesale rates to all CLECs.
This resulting company would not be allowed to sell to end users just
registered CLECs.
I hate government created monopolies. It is obvious to the rest of the
world that the US does not follow our own principles of "democracy". (More
correctly it should be termed a "republic").
With corporate commercial welfare rampant, the free market does not exist.
Lorell Hathcock
The Verizon lay-offs article you linked to ("Verizon just laid off thousands
of people "<http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9900E2DE113CF93AA15751C1A9649C8B63>)
in the blog post is dated December 29, *2002*
Cheers,
Jayfar
Lorell Hathcock wrote:
The classic problem of the ILECs is that they have a government backed
monopoly on the local loops everywhere and they leverage that monopoly to
compete with companies that don't have government backing.
Monopoly? Really? I could have sworn someone devised the idea of CLEC.
1. Eliminate the FCC Universal Service/Coverage funds and let that farmer
pay the full rates for connecting his hog barn. (If we had pursued this
option years ago, wireless would be much more mature and ubiquitous by now.)
I might accept this if wireless carriers are required to maintain the same levels of service an ILEC is supposed to carry. Oh, the reports to fill out if you take a substantial outage, and the excuses as to why it was unavoidable.
2. Have the government meddle with the ILECs... er, ILEC (singular) and
divide the local loops into a different company that provides a platform for
selling standardized products and services at wholesale rates to all CLECs.
This resulting company would not be allowed to sell to end users just
registered CLECs.
What's wrong with the current method? CLEC moves in, borrows plant from ILEC to start service. Over time, CLEC puts their own plant into the ground. Both companies take a hit as they now have fewer customers in the profit zone to cover the cost of plant, and ILEC loses out more due to the hog barns which the CLEC won't dare extend plant to.
I hate government created monopolies. It is obvious to the rest of the
world that the US does not follow our own principles of "democracy". (More
correctly it should be termed a "republic").With corporate commercial welfare rampant, the free market does not exist.
It's not a monopoly when competition is allowed, yet no one wants to compete in a business that won't generate them a profit. Most CLECs stick to highly populated areas and won't even bother with the mid sized towns. If you own a CLEC, please, feel free to lease some lines from AT&T in Ardmore, OK while you put some plant in. I'm sure people there would like more choices than wireless, cable, and ILEC.
Jack
workgroup:
http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/ecrit-charter.html
mailing list archives:
http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ecrit/current/maillist.html
internet drafts, past and present:
http://tools.ietf.org/wg/ecrit/
someone else will have to speak to implementations..
-- bill
The only disaster I experienced which affected telecoms was the July, 2005
terrorist attack on London. Although the infrastructure wasn't affected,
there were significant load challenges for the GSM nets especially. It was
widely assumed by the unclued that either one or two GSM operators failed
under peak load; by the clued that the Access Overload Control process,
analogous to the PSTN's Government Telephone Preference Scheme, had been
initiated to deal with the peak load.
In fact, it turned out much later that AOC had indeed been declared, but
unnecessarily, and against the decision of the lead agency dealing with the
emergency. The Metropolitan Police didn't request it, but the (smaller) City
of London force did, although the network in question was coping - the
entire outage was caused by mismanaging the TDM call-gapping and QoS
features.
Both the Internet, and our corporate VoIP system including its peering with
the wider PSTN, worked throughout.
Yes, that's correct as far as I know -- though you might not be able to receive a return call from the dispatcher.
- S
No POTS line here. New office is all VoIP, too. For my own use, though, I'm sticking with cell. Don't recall the last time that there was an outage to the point where I couldn't make a voice call in the past few years (though I've seen EVDO data go down for my region and have had to fall back to 1xRTT for an hour or once in the past couple years).
Naturally, that doesn't really disprove a negative, but the chances of there being, all at the same time:
- a sufficiently localized disaster where I'd have to call 911, and
- a sufficiently broad disaster where the cell infrastructure had completely failed for all the CDMA carriers in my area, and
- nobody near by who could help or had a landline, and
- despite said broad disaster taking out *ALL* CDMA cell networks within range, a condition that still permitted landlines to operate
...seem to be quite vanishing to me. Not impossible, but there's a whole lot more likely concerns to deal with than that, nowadays. The only likely types of situations that might result in that, in general, would probably be things like wide-area hurricane-style events. Those typically provide enough advance warning to get out of harm's way. (Not that I would have to worry about hurricanes in the middle of the continental US, anyway.)
- S
Skywing wrote:
No POTS line here. New office is all VoIP, too. For my own use, though, I'm sticking with cell. Don't recall the last time that there was an outage to the point where I couldn't make a voice call in the past few years (though I've seen EVDO data go down for my region and have had to fall back to 1xRTT for an hour or once in the past couple years).
Ditto for my GSM/EDGE/3G service; coverage has simply gotten too good (and too cheap) to bother with a land line at home anymore. And that, more than VoIP, is what is killing the ILECs.
Naturally, that doesn't really disprove a negative, but the chances of there being, all at the same time:
- a sufficiently localized disaster where I'd have to call 911, and
- a sufficiently broad disaster where the cell infrastructure had completely failed for all the CDMA carriers in my area, and
- nobody near by who could help or had a landline, and
- despite said broad disaster taking out *ALL* CDMA cell networks within range, a condition that still permitted landlines to operate...seem to be quite vanishing to me. Not impossible, but there's a whole lot more likely concerns to deal with than that, nowadays. The only likely types of situations that might result in that, in general, would probably be things like wide-area hurricane-style events. Those typically provide enough advance warning to get out of harm's way. (Not that I would have to worry about hurricanes in the middle of the continental US, anyway.)
And, of course, if such an event _did_ occur, the authorities would certainly already know about it without your call -- if you could even get through to them. Even in everyday conditions, calls to 911 here have hold times of several minutes to get an operator. I wouldn't even bother trying, land line or otherwise, if I had an actual emergency; it'd be faster to drive to the nearest hospital/fire station/police station for help. (Unfortunately, the police and fire depts. have stopped publishing their direct numbers, and if you can still find them somewhere, all you get is a recording telling you to call 911 -- even for non-emergency calls.)
S
I believe its still the case, but you can order from the local LEC a
soft-dial tone. You hear dial tone, however the only calls that can be made
are to the LEC's Billing & to the PSAP(911). This might be a good option for
people w/ kids, etc. without paying the full price of a land line. I used to
work for Hawaiian Tel and we had an earthquake. It knock out the power for
several days. Most of our CO's stayed up & supported PSTN due to generators
& DC. People who had telephony w/ the cable company lost communications
along with their TV. Just a thought.
BN
Even "disconnected" customers due to non-pay have access to E-911....
Frank
On the heals of the rabble-rousing post above 
come this from
BusinessWeek:
"AT&T Layoffs: The Tip of a Telecom Downturn"
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/dec2008/tc2008124_185061.htm
I'll stop now.
- - ferg
This is my first post on this list.
Does anyone on the list knows what happened with the ARCOS submarine cable
last night?
Last night at 07H14PM Two out of the Three ISP from HAITI connected to the
internet backbone on the ARCOS submarine cable through the Dominican
Republic at Puerto Plata, experienced a complete outage of internet
connectivity.
The connectivity was re-established at 10H46PM when the traffic was
re-routed through the Antillas submarine cable through Puerto Rico.
As we have no direct contact with ARCOS and are buying internet connectivity
through operators in the Dominican Republic, it is difficult to obtain clear
information as to what exactly happened and or what is the problem.
Any info is appreciated.
Thanks
Reggie
Reginald CHAUVET, Ing.
President
HAICOM
Haiti Communications, S.A.
10, Delmas 29;
Port-au-Prince, HAITI, HT-6120
011-509-246-2068 Office
011-509-246-2309 Fax
011-509-410-0044 Mobile GSM
011-509-510-0044 Mobile CDMA
305-888-7336 VoIP
rchauvet@haicom.com
I ran through ARCOS(CN) and I didn't get any connectivity disruption yesterday.
911 services are heavily used when a geographical area has an emergency,
and that emergency usually includes not having power.
Yes, and it usually involves several thousand people all phoning to
report the same damned thing, clogging up the emergency service's lines
so that *other* emergencies (like, say, someone having a heart attack)
don't get dealt with.
Unless you live in a natural disaster prone location.
So don't do that. It's really rather silly.
I've always thought that people who choose to live on flood plains or on
the side of active volcanos etc are at least a little bit crazy. Of
course, if they're so poor that they don't have any choice (Bangladesh,
perhaps) then they can't afford the non-existent POTS infrastructure
anyway - but someone in the village might have a mobile.
Or if your
grandmother's alert bracelet requires a phone line for notification.
That's no reason for almost anyone to have a POTS line, because almost
everyone doesn't live with their grandmother, and almost all
grandmothers don't have alert bracelets.
Folks,
I doubt the incumbents are the most vulnerable in this situation. It is debt-laden competitive providers that face the greatest difficulty.
Look at balance sheets and who is struggling to generate a profit or who has never generated a profit.
Roderick S. Beck
Director of European Sales
Hibernia Atlantic
13-15, rue Sedaine, 75011 Paris
http://www.hiberniaatlantic.com
Wireless: 1-212-444-8829.
French Landline: 33+1+4355+8224
French Wireless: 33-6-14-33-48-97.
AOL Messenger: GlobalBandwidth
rod.beck@hiberniaatlantic.com
rodbeck@erols.com
``Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.'' Albert Einstein.
Yup, there is a defective card in the Bahamas. They should be flying in
this morning to have it replaced.
It's been out since yesterday evening.
911 services are heavily used when a geographical area has an emergency,
and that emergency usually includes not having power.Yes, and it usually involves several thousand people all phoning to
report the same damned thing, clogging up the emergency service's lines
so that *other* emergencies (like, say, someone having a heart attack)
don't get dealt with.Unless you live in a natural disaster prone location.
So don't do that. It's really rather silly.
I've always thought that people who choose to live on flood plains or on
the side of active volcanos etc are at least a little bit crazy. Of
course, if they're so poor that they don't have any choice (Bangladesh,
perhaps) then they can't afford the non-existent POTS infrastructure
anyway - but someone in the village might have a mobile.
There is literarily no place on the planet that is safe from natural disaster.
It's just that the recurrence times differ, and can be rather long in places, giving
an illusion of safety. For example, for the recent tsunami in
Indonesia, India and Sri Lanka, the recurrence time is estimated to be ~1000 years.
Most people would think that they do not have to worry about a once per 1000 year
danger, until the water starts entering the second story.
Regards
Marshall
Thanks for the confirmation.
Regards
Reggie
I wonder if having a spare card there would have been cheaper than this outage and resulting flights and labour?