Regulation
There are multiple and intense regulatory battles over triple play services as incumbent telcos and incumbent cable operators attempt to keep out new competitors—since both industries historically have been regulated monopolies, regulatory capture has long been as much a core competency for them as have been prices and terms of service. Cable providers want to compete with telcos for local voice service, but want to discourage telcos from competing with them for television service. Incumbent telcos want to deliver television service but want to block competition for voice service from cable operators. Both industries cloak their demands for favorable regulatory treatment in claims that their positions favor the public interests. In March 2007 cable operators scored a major victory when the FCC overruled two state public service commissions by ruling that incumbent local exchange carriers must connect to VoIP services . Regulators in South Carolina and Nebraska had been allowing local telcos to block Time Warner Cable from offering local phone service in their states. In the other direction, also in March 2007 the FCC limited the powers of municipalities and states over telcos that want to compete with cable TV companies ; consumer groups expressed displeasure with this FCC ruling because they fear telcos will only offer service to the richest neighborhoods (a major bone of contention between telcos wanting to offer television service and local governments is that local governments typically impose "build-out" and community access requirements so a cable provider is forced to wire the entire town within a specified period of time). All three Republican members of the FCC voted for this decision, while both Democratic members voted against it and one predicted either Congress or the courts would overturn it. In October 2007, The Hartford Courant reported that Connecticut regulators have ordered AT&T to stop signing up new customers for its IPTV service until they got a cable license; AT&T said they would fight this decision in court .
Read more about this topic: Triple Play (telecommunications)
Famous quotes containing the word regulation:
“Lots of white people think black people are stupid. They are stupid themselves for thinking so, but regulation will not make them smarter.”
—Stephen Carter (b. 1954)
“Nothing can be more real, or concern us more, than our own sentiments of pleasure and uneasiness; and if these be favourable to virtue and unfavourable to vice, no more can be requisite to the regulation of our conduct and behavior.”
—David Hume (1711–1776)
“Nothing changes my twenty-six years in the military. I continue to love it and everything it stands for and everything I was able to accomplish in it. To put up a wall against the military because of one regulation would be doing the same thing that the regulation does in terms of negating people.”
—Margarethe Cammermeyer (b. 1942)