Verizon asks the FCC for a favour

US TELCOM Verizon Communications asked the FCC for regulatory changes Wednesday to help it compete for customers with rival cable service providers.

It wants the FCC to make it just as simple for consumers to change their home video and Internet vendors as it is for them to switch their phone companies.

The largest US telecoms such as Verizon and AT&T are offering cable quality video services over fibre-optic links that compete with cable television vendors. Meanwhile, the major cable providers such as Comcast and Time Warner are selling VoIP based telephone services.

According to FCC regulations, phone companies accept cancellations directly from competitors, but many cable operators require their customers to call in disconnection orders themselves.

In its petition to the FCC, Verizon said: "The process to switch video providers is more cumbersome for consumers. This significantly complicates the process of switching video providers, thereby entrenching the cable incumbents' dominant market position."

It's reasonable for phone companies to switch customers from one long-distance service provider to another on demand. Accomplishing that trick requires just a few database changes -- one at a local phone company's central office switch and one at each long-distance phone company. No muss, no fuss.

But switching away from cable video service to a competing fibre-optic based video service -- which is what Verizon is obviously seeking to facilitate here -- isn't nearly as straightforward. That requires two onsite service calls, one to disconnect the cable service and another to install the fibre-optic link. It's just naive to imagine that both providers will manage to coordinate those service calls well between themselves, without any interruption or overlap of services.

Anyone who's ever ordered the installation of broadband DSL service requiring logistics coordination between the local phone company and a competing local exchange carrier (CLEC) such as Covad knows what we're talking about here.

The FCC should do consumers a favour and decline to grant Verizon's wish. µ

L'Inq
Reuters