Fighting AT&T, Verizon's chokehold on "middle mile" [ArsTechnica]
Several wireline telcos and a few consumer groups have banded together to encourage policy makers to investigate the pricing that Ma Bell - AT&T and Verizon in this case - are charging for special access lines to the Internet. Yesterday, the coalition, which calls itself the No Choke Points Coalition, held a press conference in Washington D.C. to announce that they're fed up with the prices that AT&T and Verizon are charging them to connect their customers to the Internet.
Sprint, T-Mobile, TW-Telecom, Clearwire, cbeyond, and several other telephone companies joined with Public Knowledge, Media Access Project, and New America to create the coalition, which has launched a web site explaining the issue at nochokepoints.org. On Friday, the group sent a letter to interim FCC Chairman Michael Copps that read in part:
"We urge you to act now, in 2009, to provide relief from this high-capacity broadband chokepoint (referred to as 'special access' in the FCC’s rules)," they concluded. "The inflated rates many are forced to pay the entities that control this market are taking dollars away from already-struggling consumers, companies working hard to save jobs, and innovators that want to expand broadband service across America."As this article explains, the roots of this issue run back to the 1996 Telecommunications Act and the deregulation of price caps for access to Internet middle mile connections in certain urban areas. According to the coalition pushing FCC intervention, in areas without the price caps, AT&T and Verizon are earning rates of return that are exorbitant in comparison to their costs from the companies that pay for access, who are in-turn passing higher Internet access rates on to their customers.
AT&T argues that the coalition is simply attempting to re-regulate the market to relieve some "short-term financial and business pressures," and isn't really interested in aiding consumers in achieving lower Internet access rates.
Comments