If one cares about competitiveness among ISPs, choice, and generally having quality options, this is one to pay attention to and take action on.
If you prefer negligible choices, and ISP services to only be provided by the large monopoly/oligopoly players, and generally with poor quality, higher prices, and most or all other players squeezed out, then feel free to completely and totally ignore this.
----- Forwarded message from mdurkin@rawbw.com ----- Date: Wed, 29 Aug 2018 00:03:31 -0700 (PDT) From: "Mike Durkin" mdurkin@rawbw.com Subject: Raw Bandwidth and other competitive Internet access providers need your help at the FCC today! To: michael.paoli@cal.berkeley.edu
Dear Raw Bandwidth Customer or former customer:
It's a rarity that I email all of our customers (and some former customers), but we are at a critical moment for competitive Internet access, so I hope you'll excuse the intrusion.
In early May, USTelecom, a lobbying group headed by large incumbent monopoly phone companies AT&T and Verizon, filed a petition at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to "forbear", that is to no longer enforce, provisions of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 which are critical to many independent Internet access providers like Raw Bandwidth reaching its customers with service. The Telecom Act rewrite in 1996 requires the incumbent phone companies to unbundle and rent discrete network elements to competitors at regulated rates--especially elements such as the pairs of copper wire running through the streets that they have a monopoly over and have no competition for--so that competitive providers can also use the elements in their services. I am writing to ask you to take action by filing comments at the FCC in support of independent Internet access providers (we'll help you do it), to tell the FCC what it means to you to have choice in your Internet provider, and to urge them to deny the petition. (The petition would also affect competition for voice phone service.)
Here is a good article that summarizes a lot of what's at stake: https://www.engadget.com/2018/07/11/small-internet-providers-face-a-fight-fo... (Note this article says the FCC would vote on the petition on August 6th, but that's incorrect; August 6th was a filing deadline for opening comments, and September 5th is the next deadline for reply comments. The FCC won't vote on the petition until late this year at the earliest, but informal comments need to be filed now.)
Explaining what's at stake takes a lot of words, so I've made a web page that explains what the petition is all about, and also contains links to help you easily file comments at the FCC (all done online) to support competitive Internet access. Please take a look at the web page and instructions here http://www.rawbandwidth.com/clec/forbearancepetition.html
The short version is that if the FCC grants the petition as requested, independent DSL and Ethernet over Copper providers like Raw Bandwidth will see cost increases (due to removal of rate regulation from monopoly network elements only available from incumbent monopoly providers like AT&T--a single provider of the element to any particular location) that will result in an increase in retail rates, and some coverage areas are likely to be lost over time. The petition should not be granted under the standards it is supposed to be judged on, and providers like Raw Bandwidth are filing detailed rebuttals to the petition, but the current FCC and political climate is one for gutting regulations, so despite that it should be denied, there is a significant risk that it may be granted.
Please take the time to weigh in with the FCC and tell them how important it is to you to have competitive choices at competitive prices, and urge them to deny the petition. Your comments submitted to the FCC by September 5th are important!
I don't intend to send any followups to this email by email so as not to be any more intrusive. Instead I will post updates to the status of the petition at the same web page http://www.rawbandwidth.com/clec/forbearancepetition.html including links to the FCC's decision once available and an explanation of how the result affects our business and service to customers.
As always, thanks for your business and support! Mike Durkin Raw Bandwidth mdurkin@rawbw.com
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