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From: johnl@ima.UUCP (John R. Levine)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.misc,comp.dcom.modems
Subject: Re: Re: Pending FCC ruling threat to modem users
Message-ID: <379@ima.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 17-Dec-86 10:18:18 EST
Article-I.D.: ima.379
Posted: Wed Dec 17 10:18:18 1986
Date-Received: Thu, 18-Dec-86 02:38:50 EST
References: <1575@brl-adm.ARPA>
Reply-To: johnl@ima.UUCP (John R. Levine)
Followup-To: comp.dcom.modems
Organization: Javelin Software Corporation
Lines: 36
Summary: monopoly means monopoly
Xref: mnetor comp.sys.misc:133 comp.dcom.modems:67

In article <1575@brl-adm.ARPA> OCONNORDM@ge-crd.arpa (OCONNOR DENNIS MICHAEL) writes:
>Second: the goverment does not "mandate" a "pernicous" monopoly, it
>simply allows it. You or I can go out, get right-of-way on the
>utility poles like the cable companies, and start our very own 
>telephone system. ...

Sorry, but that's just not true.  Your local phone company has a monopoly
franchise to run phone wires down the street.  As a case in point, a few years
ago at Yale, we wanted to run an Ethernet cable from one building on the campus
to another, running down the street for a block.  We could not legally do it --
it fell into the phone company's franchise.  Eventually we ended up getting
a microwave link because the phone company had no reasonable service to offer.
(High speed?  You mean 56KB?  No, we mean 10MB.  Uhh...)  The cable company has
a separate franchise to run cable TV.  Some cable companies want to use their
spare capacity for switched data, but that's legally interesting at best.
Some comanies have private internal phone nets but that's legally quite
different from being a public phone company.

I suspect the real wave of the future is in things like ConnNet, which is a
packet switched network run in Connecticut by SNET, the local telephone
company.  You can gateway from ConnNet to other networks.  The same logic which
says that local voice service is a natural monopoly would suggest that local
data service is similarly a natural monopoly and services like Telenet are
more analogous to MCI or Sprint than to and end-to-end phone company.

The local monopoly on data service also addresses the issue that data calls
are more expensive than voice calls.  AT&T, for example, has a 1PSS packet
switch exchange designed to sit next to the voice exchange and to pull the
data calls off the voice circuits as close to the user as possible, to avoid
tying up voice circuits with data.  The standard rate review process is supposed
to ensure that the rates charged for such service are reasonably related to the
costs.  We'll see.
-- 
John R. Levine, Javelin Software Corp., Cambridge MA +1 617 494 1400
{ ihnp4 | decvax | cbosgd | harvard | yale }!ima!johnl, Levine@YALE.EDU
Where is Richard Nixon now that we need him?