August 1, 2005

I want my DSL!!!

Yahoo! News reports this PC World story about the FCC basically putting the kybosh on big cable selling their line capacity to 3rd parties at wholesale prices. The US Supreme Court said the FCC does not have to force Big Cable to give up its lines to mom and pops since they do not fall under stipulations of the 1996 Telecommunications Act. The FCC also hinted at amending the act so phone companies are not to be forced into losing money by selling line capacity at wholesale instead of selling bundled broadband/phone/TV services to the general consumer. Up until this point people have had a choice in their broadband service because phone companies have been forced to pony up their DSL capacity at cut rate prices to mom and pops around the country instead of having all of their potential customers buy all of their products at the same time. Now that the phone companies may not have to compete with people who are buying their services and re-selling them to consumers it seems small businesses who want to provide these services will have to be a little more innovative. I have an idea... Purchase the same bandwidth you would have to provide your DSL to your customers, but instead of relying on the phone companies DSL capacity and backhaul, use WiMax as a deployment structure. You can deploy a WiMax antenna for clusters of users on an as needed basis, or blanket a city with investment capital and recap with services sold, such as VoIP over WiMax, non location specific access, and other such things consumers are anxiously waiting for now anyway! Think about it this way... If phone companies aren't willing to make the switch because they'd have to maintain their land line systems as well as wireless then let innovative entrepreneurs take the leap. WiMax systems with wholesale purchased bandwidth to back them up will be infinitely less expensive than having to maintain the backhaul yourself! That's just me thinking, though. Talk about competition!

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