Phone Companies Bill Public for Nonexistent Equipment 612
Srinivasan Ramakrishnan writes "Forbes has an eye-opening article on the scam that lets the Bells scoop $5 billion every year from the consumer with the sanction of the FCC. The FCC Line charge that appears on every phone bill is a vestige of a deal that was struck by the FCC with the Bells. The deal was touted by the FCC as a historic win that saved $3.2 Billion a year for the consumer - Forbes takes a closer look at the deal."
Nationalize local phone access! (Score:5, Insightful)
If you ask me, any kind of 'infrastructure' system should be run by the government, like the highway system, and companies should only be allowed access to things they can't have exclusive control over.
Is anyone *actually* surprised by this? (Score:4, Insightful)
Step 2) Get Cable or Satelite Internet - Better mediums altogether IMO
Step 3) Rejoice that the "Bells" are screwing you any more. I've been w/o a phone line for 1 year plus now ( I'm sure others have been longer), and I couldn't be happier w/ the arrangement.
Step 4) Profit! (Or, actually the Bells stop profitting).
another good example... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Nationalize local phone access! (Score:2, Insightful)
Regulated industry is the way to go, but the problem is, the FCC won't regulate. Probably because the industry has its nose (and wallet) so far up the rear of a bunch of senators it's hard to legislate against.
Hmmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
You and I both know that the cost of using those lanes would NEVER go down. They'll always find a way to charge more for what they've built, simply because people become so adjusted to things (like telephones) that they become a "necessity" instead of a "luxury" and people pay them blindly for the service. Look at cable TV -- how many of the channels you get in your huge bundle do you actually watch?
Monopoly (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm no advocate of government regulation, but in economic terms, there is only one workable solution to prevent this sort of abuse. If the FCC and state regulators would get out of the way and let communities implement this, the cost and quality of phone service would improve to accurately reflect a competitive market value.
1. The community should purchase the network: all the last mile copper and rights of way should be owned by the commons and not monopolized by any private entity.
2. Any company (including the Baby Bells) can bid to rent the use of the network for the provision of any service (dialtone, DSL, etc.) to any customer. These rents should be for a term that allows for regular adjustment as the market changes.
With this approach, the Baby Bells would be in a good position to maintain a dominant market position in the near term, but not a monopoly which they can abuse. And if other firms can enter the market and do a better job of providing value to consumers and businesses, they will take market share away from the Bells.
Re:cut the line! (Score:3, Insightful)
An enigma... (Score:4, Insightful)
The government establishes regulations on how much money welfare recipients should get. The recipients abuse the system (we've all seen stories about this at some point, somewhere)....and people scream about "the system".
Re:Nationalize local phone access! (Score:5, Insightful)
This moring I sent a letter to the middle of nowhere over 1000 miles away for under 40 cents.
Does that count?
Re:Nationalize local phone access! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Who do you think owns your wireless service? (Score:4, Insightful)
Many people who are canceling their land-lines are doing so because they already have wireless devices that basically de-value their land-line.
While canceling land-lines might not make any of the bells suddenly "see the light", it will shift more of their income to their wireless markets, which have competition, which *might* just force them to offer competitive services/prices.
Even if canceling land-lines doesn't fix anything, there is no point in paying $40/month for a useless service.
Re:Nationalize local phone access! (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, if we are talking the voice side, allowing 911 calls on disconnected phones seems pretty beneficial to people who dont want a phone, but can still use 911.
If we are talking Data side of the telco, I'll agree with you 100%. Telcos fight tooth and nail to keep everyone out of their business, and make money for the stock holders. While bad for the customers, good for the stock holders.
What we need is a group of people looking at whats fair for both the companies and the consumers. I wouldnt trust the FCC as much as a DHS Orange Alert.
There is no step 3... (Score:3, Insightful)
This is just a three step process, there are no question marks.
The four step one is the Microsoft DoJ changes
1) Monopoly found guilty by Goverment
2) Monopoly has word with new candidate
3) ???
4) Goverment lets Monopoly off.
With the Bells the worst thing is that everyone KNOWS how they are getting the money, but its not exactly something we can all reproduce.
Re:cut the line! (Score:1, Insightful)
and they're not exaclty out of business yet
Re:Nationalize local phone access! (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason it really sucks is that when the U.S. government, for example, privatized the post office, there was no corresponding tax cut. ("Hey, my $5 post office tax went down...") They just spend it on something else.
In theory, privatizing the post office should have little to no effect on price, but in reality, government spending insures we'll never see the money that previously went to the post office.
Itemized taxation and making people pay a tax bill every year, instead of deductions from pay each month, are the answer.
Re:Nationalize local phone access! (Score:5, Insightful)
How about a slightly different approach. The natural monopoly is the last mile - just about everyone agrees on that.
Half of the fees on your phone bill are for other than last-mile stuff though. Local Number Portability? That's a switch located in a central office. Ditto for 911 service or long distance access.
The government should eminent domain all the local lines. A fee of a few bucks a month should be charged to anyone who wants to use them. A rental fee should be charged for space in central office facilities. Any company who so desires can set up their own switch in the central office and pay rent on it to the government and sell their services to consumers. The only fixed fee would be for the local loop and this would be a non-profit operation. If a company has an old pulse-dial-only switch lying in the basement and figures they can make money by charging 75 cents a month for zero-feature phone service more power to them. If somebody wants to spend $500k for a state of the art switch they can offer phones which support voice dial. Anybody could get access to the local loop to offer DSL, or cable over phone, or whatever crazy wild creative thing somebody things they can serve over a copper loop. There would be minimal regulation to ensure that whatever goes over the local loop doesn't interfere with other signals or create a hazard, but that would be it.
That's the route that is being taken with electricity generation - generation is going competitive with transmission and distribution remaining a monopoly. It has worked pretty well in most states that have tried it. I still think that the government should take over the transmission and distribution, or the company which runs them should be forbidden from generating power. Otherwise the company has incentive to structure transmission lines in a manner that makes its power delivery costs lower than for competitors, or reduce transmission capacity so that out-of-state generators can't compete at all.
Where'd you get that list ???? (Score:4, Insightful)
Cingular is owned by Bellsouth
Suncom by AT & T
Verizon was Bell Atlantic and others
Sprint owns Sprint (and the former 360)
There are lots of LARGE independent cell companies. You named one. Nextel
The others are: TMobile and PowerTel with 3.8 million and 1.4 million respectively plus TMoblie has the sexy Catherine Zeta to whore for them. Man, I wish she'd "rouge her knees" for me ;)
There are others I can't think of. You are partially right. But, the cell phone companies (even if they are the same companies) are in a new era growth of competition, the phobne comapnies and the branches that formed were on a dead tree to begin with.
You might be eating a shit sandwich *right now* (Score:1, Insightful)
You think we're getting screwed by the powers that be, check out your brothers in the third-world. How would you like to be diseased, uneducated and starving and every time you try to get your shit together the CIA and US Army come over and kick your ass back into the stone age?
If you're like me you're one of the top-slaves. You're a well-educated milk-cow and generate prime product for your masters. You've probably grown accustomed to the 9 inches of abrasive corporate schlong in your ass and your discomfort is only occasional. Working all week, giving a third or more of what you make to the government and suffering so many rules that you've lost count is tolerable.
I call it ugly as hell!
The present system is a consortium of tumors victimizing the less-consolidated cells. If us peace-loving citizen cells could get organized the tumors wouldn't stand a chance.
I think that the best way to go about it would be simply to seceed from the system en-masse. Organize via email, name a day and, on that chosen day, everyone involved would stop engaging in commerce with the tumors. Switch to an alternate system. It'd be a bloodless revolution.
The new system? I'd choose something non-centralized and simple: An officialless direct-democracy (everyone votes on everything) with proxy-voting. Or something like that.
Average costs (Score:2, Insightful)
But do we want everyone to pay their own costs if the average is reasonable? The cost of a business sending a letter is several times the cost of the stamp (letterhead, envelope, writer, mail room). I benefited from Rural Electrification and its cousins (telephone, highway, etc.) and so did you. There's less disease, the National Guard is called out less, less crowding in the cities. Averaging out infrastructure expense means more of the country can be used; there are less problems with "backwardness".
If you don't believe it, look at a country that doesn't have a big infrastructure. Or just look at the U.S. in 1860.
Chuck that phone line! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Nationalize local phone access! (Score:5, Insightful)
Tho I wonder how much interest the IRS makes on withholding tax even before they have to refund most of it to average taxpayers. We could just as well be making that ourselves with forced savings deposits from every paycheck, except then they'd raise our taxes to make up their budget loss, and tax us on the interest income from the savings accounts...
Why does telephony even cost money anymore? (Score:3, Insightful)
Now, if i, in theory can have 390 phones for $27/month how much is it really worth having one?
1896 federal 3% phone tax still alive and well (Score:2, Insightful)
Way back in and around 1896, way less than 1% of the people could have phones so the tax was on the rich. Funny how this tax on the rich now applies to everyone.
Taxes never die. Don't let anyone create any new ones.
Re:Another reason to cancel landlines (Score:3, Insightful)
My problem with ATT wireless was that when the tower was down (we have one tower in this town), there was nothing they would do, nor would they compensate us for loss of service, so we switched to Verizon.
Joe
Re:Nationalize local phone access! (Score:5, Insightful)
If people got hit with *HUGE* tax bills, say around the end of October, the income tax would either go away or be largely reduced.
Convenience is the enemy of tax reform. Nothing radically changes unless many people get very pissed off.
Re:Nationalize local phone access! (Score:4, Insightful)
The last time we had a national local phone monopoly was a disaster. There was NO incentive to innovate. Features like caller id, 3-way calling, call-waiting, and ISDN could have happened YEARS AND YEARS before they came into prominence in the 90's, after we started getting at least a little competition.
Let's see... (from SBC [sbc.com])
All of these services have an incremental cost of just about zero. All they consist of is someone flipping a bit in a database in the central-office switch.
Are you sure we're better off than when we had the monopoly? Are you sure we don't still have a monopoly in most places?
I can't get the features you mentioned anywhere except SBC. No other carrier offers local service in my area. The monopoly is still strong, for practical purposes, in most places.
I don't think these features came about due to innovation brought about by competition. I think they cam about by innovation due to ability to profit, since after breakup of the "monopoly" phone companies could charge whatever they wanted for services that fell outside the core, basic, regulated phone service.
Re:Nationalize local phone access! (Score:2, Insightful)
Ummmm, wouldn't such a neighborhood organization be a sort-of grass roots-level government? Expand the scope of ownership just a little bit, to cities and towns, and what would you have? Government ownership of equipment!
I see your point, but I don't think we should be afraid of The Government. The Government is us. We just have to be willing to be more involved. At the local level anyway, I imagine it would be fairly easy to get involved if you wanted to.
I'm not suprised... (Score:3, Insightful)
But they should have fairly decent records for now from that audit process.
Re:Nationalize local phone access! (Score:3, Insightful)
No, if they don't have to pay taxes, they are not "getting money from the government". Instead, the government is not taking money from them.
Probably too subtle a point for some people, but there's a significant difference between giving someone money vs. not taking money from them.
Re:Nationalize local phone access! (Score:3, Insightful)
The actual, Constitutionally mandated functions of government are very limited. About 90% of what government does is unconstitutional. Some of it is good, lots of it is a waste at best.
If people really want these expenditures the Constitution should be amended.
Not quite (Score:3, Insightful)
Google is my friend. Google should be your friend too.
Taxes never die.
This one did, several times. The first resurrection took 12 years.