Well, I'm still trying to annoy SBC into giving me DSL. I've placed two DSL orders within 5 days. (and they cancelled both of them, apologizing and telling me that my lines won't support DSL).

As I screw around with SBC, I've been thinking about this situation, and I've concluded that the real problem here is the ownership of the infrastructure. SBC isn't going to make DSL available in my area, but no one else can either, because SBC owns the core infrastructure. I'm caught between monopolies (dsl vs cable). I think a possible solution would be for the government to own and maintain the telecom infrastructure. Then you could have any number of companies compete in the business, using that common infrastructure, without any one of them being able to bully the others and or lock them out of the business while giving their customers the shaft. I admit I don't even know how feasible this idea might be though. Could the CO and the lines to house and businesses be public owned; then the providers could connect their lines to the COs and rent space for their equipment to service that CO? I don't know, but there must be a better way of ensuring healthy competition than the current, sorry state of affairs.

I'm sure many people would dismiss this government-owned idea as unworkable, but I think it can be compared to another government owned/maintained infrastructure. What if roads were privately owned? What if UPS owned and maintained all the roads in my neighborhood? Suppose they charged a nominal monthly fee for all the residents using those roads. They could use the roads themselves to delivery packages to my house. They could also prevent competitors like Fedex or DHL for reaching my house; or at least they could charge them steep fees in order to use their roads to reach my house. So naturally, almost all packages would be delivered to my neighborhood by UPS.

Now suppose that I live far back, deep in my neighborhood, and the roads leading to my house are old and narrow and aren't in very good shape. Subsequently, deliveries to my house take much longer than others because UPS has to put my packages onto smaller trucks that run less frequently, and because of the roads they have to drive slower to get to my house. I'm not happy with this, so I talk to UPS about paying a higher monthly fee, in order to have to roads improved and widened, so they can drive the bigger, faster trucks to my house. Only, I find that UPS is uninterested in improving my roads and my service, preferring to invest in other parts of their infrastructure; or perhaps skimping on improvements in favor of higher profits.

Even if Fedex and a super-speedy exclusive delivery service that I wanted to use, I wouldn't be able to. I would be stuck with UPS' monopoly of my neighborhood, stuck paying their fees if I wanted any packages delivered at all, and stuck behind their unwillingness to invest in its infrastructure. Down with competition, long live the monopoly, eh?

Well, there is one other option. Another company, Trans World Corporation creates their own trails connecting all the houses in the neighborhood. Instead of trucks, they use very fast birds that run on their trails to deliver packages (specifically, a bird known as Geococcyx californiana). The problem here is that the birds occasionally run off with your packages, or they get lost; and after dark they sometimes smack into trees and die, meaning you'll get no more packages until TWC resurrects the bird or gets a new one trained for your route. The other quirk is that this company's billing and customer service departments are also run my birds. (or was it bird-brains?) So they are typically very difficult and frustrating to deal with.

So while all I really want is to pay one of UPS' competitors for their fast services using the roads, I am instead stuck subscribing to TWC's expensive, unreliable, suck-ass package delivery service with their stupid birds. Meanwhile UPS goes to the government and prevents it from forcing them to let competitors use their roads, so they can continue to neglect them and keep the competitors out, so they can keep their prices high and their quality and breadth or services low. Later that day I hear that in Japan, South Korea and Western Europe, they are upgrading to rocket trucks, providing near-instant delivery. The price of the rocket truck service happens to be comparable to, if not cheaper than, my bird-shit service from TWC.

I could go on, but I think I better stop here before I lose 75% of my blog readers. (that would take me down to 0.25 readers, I'm afraid). The point is that SBC is a fuck-opoly and they piss me off almost as much as TWC and I want DSL or FTTP or even WiMAX and I want it now.

This entry was posted by ra on Thursday, 27 October 2005 at 18:35. and is filed under rants. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own blog.