DSL subscribers may be forced to switch DSL services

[Mark J. Dulcey]

John Chambers wrote:
> 
> There are also the fun reports that once your phone line is  replaced
> by  FIOS, they won't let you go back.  So this would permanently lock
> us out from using speakeasy.

If Verizon gets its way, we'll be locked out of using Speakeasy anyway. 
They're trying to get permission to stop offering wholesale line service 
for resale. If they get it, all CLEC DSL services go away -- no Covad, 
no Speakeasy, no Earthlink, no Galaxy, no nothing. We'll be left with 
the cable/RBOC duopoly, and both of them only want to sell us 
second-class internet services -- no fixed IP addresses and no servers. 
If they have their way on another legal push, no net neutrality -- in 
other words, better QoS for content providers who are willing to pay 
them the biggest kickbacks.

This is one of the most important technology policy issues to come along 
for many years. If we want to preserve the Internet that we love, if we 
want to preserve the dream of an Internet for everybody, we must use 
government to protect it; the forces of capitalism will by their very 
nature try to take it away. (Sorry to disillusion the libertarians on 
the list; sometimes the free market doesn't work.) We can continue to 
require the RBOCs (and to be fair, there should be a similar mandate for 
cable companies and the occasional other player such as RCN) to resell 
their connectivity services on a fair basis, or we can require the 
wire-owning companies to offer fully capable Internet services on a fair 
basis and require them to preserve net neutrality, or both. If we do 
neither, we will regret the consequences.

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