Boston Globe – April 28, 2006:
Service to thousands of dial-up Internet users in Massachusetts was disrupted this week after a federal court ruled against a Quincy company in a lawsuit that could have broad impact on the cost of dial-up service.
The US Court of Appeals in Boston ruled April 11 that Verizon Communications Inc. can charge per-minute fees for calls to local numbers that dial-up users need to connect to the Internet — in much the same way that they charge for long-distance or other calls.
The ruling came after Verizon sued Global NAPs Inc., a Quincy company that supplies local numbers to 28 Internet service providers for use by their dial-up customers.
Global NAPs and others argue that Verizon’s victory could allow phone companies around the country to start hitting dial-up customers with per-minute fees that amount to a de facto tax.
What’s going on here? Telcos can now arbitrarily charge the same for local calls as they do for long distance?! Did the entire legal notion of common carrier suddenly disappear?!
Update: I missed it but last year the FCC did away with any common carrier restrictions on the Telcos in relation to the internet:
A unanimous vote on Friday essentially puts common carriers (aka the Telcos) on a the same light-touch regulatory rung as cablecos in the United States, based on the federal agency’s perception that such incumbents – as the nation’s biggest service-provider entities – need a level playing field to compete and survive. Yet by eliminating facilities-sharing requirements on facilities-based wireline broadband Internet access service providers, the actions will raise red flags among the smaller third-party competitors that have relied on telco facilities for access but have been unable on legal and regulatory grounds to access cableco local access networks.
That certainly sounds like what’s happening to Global NAPs.
I’ll say it again Verizon=M$. Both money hungry mega corps that will attempt to extract every single dollar they can from the consumer. All this will do is futher push consumers from telcos and force them to seek alternatives such as cable or wireless.
You’re used to Verizon being the sort of greedy, grasping thugs they have always been. What exacerbates the situation is yet another incompetent judge who (1) probably has to have a secretary turn on his computer in the morning; (2) only uses the Internet to cruise for porn; and (3) has no comprehension of the damage wrought upon the citizens of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts by his ignorant implementation of whatever decision.
Phaugh!
The point has been made many times. Corporations have no shame so they will both grovel and bully for profits to an extent that no human being can contemplate. Why come up with new ideas? That’s hard!
It appears that Verizon has probably found a way to herd customers of another ISP toward Verizon’s own broadband service. By raising local calling fees for dialup connections provided by those other ISPs, the pricing advantage of slow dialup service will erode, and many of those customers will now sign up for Verizon broadband service.
The technical economics terminology for this is “greedy bastards.”
This shit is getting scary. Odviously the legal system here is completly fucked.
I smell an appeal. (In on my new Maxthon browser; we’ll see how it does.)
Ah, the commies rise again.
First off, if verizon is changing the terms of the contract with the local user, then that is wrong, and the judge would have ruled as such.
That being said, when somebody offers an all-you-can-eat (flat rate) type deal, they are expecting their costs to be a standard curve around the mean. If they find there costs are too much because there are lots of “outlyers”, they they have a right to change their policy appropriately. It is very possible that the flat rate local, combined with the dial up ISPs, pose much more of a cost than other combinations.
For example, do you think someone with a flat rate (19.95/month) calls another number that is “receive” only (19.95/month) and stays on 24x7x365 is paying the proper amount? No.
So before everyone gets on Verizon’s case, we would have to know more about what their real costs are, and not automatically assume they are acting in a monopolistic sort of way.
It isn’t pretty to watch older, labor intensive technologies (ie: dialup) go up against newer, yes, cheaper ones (cell, Voice over IP, etc), but make no mistake, it will involve laying off workers (not repurposing them) and that ain’t pretty either.
Lou the regulated flat rate local calling area apparently now applies selectively. Way to address a totally different point!
Something about this didn’t sound right, so I dug into it a little.
It seems that this goes back to 1999 at least. Global NAPS is a competitor of Verizon, for customers, but uses Verizon lines and mostly their equipment. Their main business is connecting ISPs to the internet backbone through New England and New York. They set up virtual servers to transfer their calls to their home in Quincy MA. By using the virtual servers they would avoid having to pay Verizon long distance fees, but Verizon would still be stuck with the actual costs. Global NAPS took Verizon to arbitration on the properness (legality) of using virtual servers to effect local calls out of long distance calls. When they lost that round they appealed it which is what this is about.
Verizon is not about to start charging for local dial-up internet calls. They will charge long distance fees to companies using their equipment to effect local calls using virtual servers.
Milo said: “Lou the regulated flat rate local calling area apparently now applies selectively. Way to address a totally different point!”
Don’t read between the lines. If the contract (or whatever is in writing, whether it is a law, regulation, etc), said that a flat rate is a flat rate regardless of duration, or traffic, I’m SURE the judge would not have even let it get to trial.
I know for a fact that in the ’60’s and ’70’s, phone companies were allowed to overide the “local call is one message unit” billing, if the call wasn’t a “normal” call. In the NYC area, many companies (and in my case, my high school), had modems, where users could dial up from home and stay in days at the time. The phone company caught us, and put an end to it. (ah, the nostalgic 110 baud connection!).
It is not, reasonable that flat rate calling replace “leased lines”, and I would bet you (in fact, guarantee), that is written in either law or regulations, and that is why the judge ruled for Verizon.
You may not like the laws or regulations, but that is different than accusing the judge of chaning the english language.
This is the last gasp of the local telephone companies. Everyone knew this was gonna happen sooner or later. POTS is wildly over priced from the get go, $60 ($40 for a phone line $20 for a dial up isp, your mileage may vary) a month is wildly to expensive for 56k. You can get 5Mbs down and 512Kbs up from your cable company for $50 a month(or something similar from DSL), and add on local voip termination for another $10(coming soon to a ma and pa business near you).
This is simply verizon beginning to phaze out POTS telephone service, and get these customers to switch to something more reasonable. Sorry for all the ISP’s who are gonna go out of business, but thats the life of the buggy wheel maker.
What in the heck is going with the FCC and our legislature (courts enforce and validate laws and rule, so I kinda leave them out)?!? The Constitution and Bill of Rights talk about indivdual rights and liberties, not corporate rights and liberties. Hmmm… This kind of continuous attack on citizens should be addressed at the top and fixed, but wait the companies line all of Washington’s pockets!
ARGH!
Global NAPs and others argue that Verizon’s victory could allow phone companies around the country to start hitting dial-up customers with per-minute fees that amount to a de facto tax.
When I first started reading this post, i was under the impression that Verizon was going to start billing the individual customers at a per-minute rate for local calls.
Then Mr Fusion’s comment made me read a little closer – and see this:
Verizon claims it is owed more than $65 million by Global NAPs. The court did not rule on damages, but Verizon cut off Global NAPs’s access to its network,…
So, individual customers are not charged per-minute fees on their phone bill, but the Appeals Court agrees that Global owes Verizon $65 million for sevices rendered – and Verizon stopped carrying Global’s traffic.
I get the impression that the local call will not be billed per minute, but the behind-the-scenes traffic from that local modem to the remote server will be billed per-minute. The cost of dial-up to remote servers goes up, but “local calls” are not billed per-minute.
The joy of deregulation: everything is a revenue stream, bill accordingly. 🙂
Cable, Telco, Wireless, or Satelite should have the same advantage if they are providing the infrastructure. That said, the user shouldn’t be penalized for their choice of content. Verizon does get this.
Another example would be payiing for a gym membership. Popular equiptment may be more in demand during peak times (hence harder to access) but the user doesn’t usually pay a premium to use the more popular equiptment, unless their are tiers of service (higher price for more hours/days) However there is only so much floorspace and some equiptment providers may pay a premium to get their gear into the gym, since the gym has to pay to expand the premises.
Well, believe it or not everyone… I live in Virginia and have seen my latest bill from Verizon for my basic phone line. I use dial-up, and I am now being billed a “per-minute-rate” for using dial up, which has amounted to several hundred dollars. Verizon is attempting to squeeze as much money out of their customers as they can. I can definitely say that I will NEVER use them again. This is highway robbery… and what’s worse, they just started putting this on my bill without ever giving me any warning. I had to catch it myself…. I guess they were just trying to see if I would just pay it without asking any questions.. what a bunch of turds. BUYER BEWARE!