The Bells Will Take Nothing (And Like It Very Much)

By trying for a complete telecomm overhaul, under a bill called S.2686 Sen. Ted Stevens has managed to stall the debate about net neutrality, the Bells’ efforts to get a national cable franchise, and everything else.

The likely result is no bill at all will come out. Unless there’s something from the Senate, there can be no conference. Thus no telecomm bill.  The clock is ticking,  the campaign trail is calling, and Stevens is still locked in a committee room, with hundreds of amendments to get through. No time for a floor fight.

The Bells will say this is bad, terrible in fact. They will then be called upon, by Stevens and others, to put up whatever is needed to re-elect the Republican Congress. And they will likely put up enough to be a power should the Democrats win.

So who wins?

The Bells. (That’s Ed Whitacre of AT&T, nee SBC, at right.)

By having the FCC expand the “Universal Service Fee” and impose it on Voice Over IP, the Bells gain new subsidies without any obligation to be fair to their competitors. Remember, net neutrality language was designed to keep the Bells from doing things. No bill means they can do what they want.

But don’t despair. The bill Stevens was working on was worse than nothing. As Bruce Kushnick notes, the Stevens bill would increase USF fees – all of which go to the Bells – by 233%.

And what would the Bells do for that money? Nothing. They’ve been making money by doing nothing for a decade. Qwest was paid to wire Arizona schools for broadband  and did nothing. The same promises were made in Hawaii, in Alaska – everywhere the Bells wanted to consolidate, and buy one another out, they made big promises of fiber everywhere.

They built none of it.

So what happens now? In the U.S., hopefully municipal broadband happens now.
Hopefully, if you have a cable connection, you’ll close your account
with the phone company now. Hopefully, the idea that broadband is a
public utility everyone needs will start to grow.

And hopefully, each effort by the Bells to impose “Whitacre Tiering”
charges will just get you madder. Net neutrality was one issue on which
both Right Blogistan and Left Blogistan were in complete agreement. It
was perhaps the only issue. (Well, keeping FEC regulation out of the
blogs was another.)

Hopefully, as the FreePress writes, the Bells are now permanently a public issue – as in all of the public.
The Bells have become expert over the years at fooling some of the
people all the time. They can’t fool all the people all the time, not
if the people are watching.

Europe has already noticed the game. That is why they’re now
threatening their own carriers, threatening to split services from
networks. These guys
are still on Microsoft’s case, remember. They don’t back down.

America, once the example to the world, has become the example everyone runs away from.