-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On (28/02/06 20:59), Joe Abley wrote:
On 28-Feb-2006, at 20:28, Regan Murphy wrote:
Is this dual-charging common in the other OECD countries - especially those with LLU?
Yes. It's also very common for people to be annoyed by it. Sometimes this makes things change; sometimes, however, the changes are highly theoretical and in practice the song remains the same.
The situation is quite similar here in the US, despite legislation to the contrary... The incumbant can charge a 'reasonable' access fee to competitors for use of their facilities, which in my experience comes out to be $20-50 USD/month added to my DSL bill. The more well developed metro areas have better prices and availability, while the more rural areas are generally monopolized... Some recent court decisions have favoured the imcumbant cable providers in denying access to competitors, and the telcos are pushing for a similar interpretation in their favour. So the grand deregulation legislation meant to encourage competition and better pricing/service to the end user is being twisted to legalize monopolization Legislation sounds good, but it usually ends up being written to favour the companies with the most resources to spend on maintaining their monopolies.
Perhaps we should all move to the UK, where apparently broadband will be free in 2009.
and here I am planning to move to NZ... :) /joshua - -- A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools. - Douglas Adams - -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFEBcNmJr8VjiIHVH0RAoJpAJ46DTEEGlKDrJG7+j8x5A4Rpb7bfACeOsM7 bO93R7j8O2j28hsAUixbqt0= =Du05 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----