[kitteh]

It was the 1996 telecom act and it was implemented poorly and the telcos made it super difficult to operate within.

Note that cable companies were exempt (which is because they had better politicians) and telcos had a lot of runway to put up barriers for a clec to provide services. In the end, the telcos moved the goal posts, could subsidize customer equipment better and could delay your installs.

[jessaustin]

This was always the plan. Pretend to follow and enforce UNE regulations for a few years, so that lots of investors would be fooled into thinking that competition could exist in USA telecom. Then after lots of infrastructure has been built out that the Daughters Bell would like to acquire for pennies on the dollar (to subsidize their simultaneous large investment on the wireless side), completely stop enforcing any UNE program. CLEC pitches to new customers: "If you sign up today, we'll be able to start your service in one to five months!" Poof, there goes the business. Now you have to sell all your customers, equipment, marketing, etc. to the same assholes who colluded with FCC to screw you over, at fire-sale prices. ILEC execs, bankers, and politicians got rich. Telecom investors learned they have to wire around anything that FCC/PUCs can reach. In dense locations that may be fiber. Everywhere else it will be higher-GHz-band wireless. Absorption will make anticonsumer regulation more obviously corrupt, and there will be only so much that FCC can do.

In general, this is how massive new laws in USA work. Lots of consumers/citizens/normal people are somewhat dissatisfied with the status quo, and so some public-interest people start pushing through a big change to benefit humanity at the slight expense of entrenched interests. Lobbyists for entrenched interests aren't stupid; they know you don't step in front of a speeding train. Instead, they flip all the right switches (i.e. they pay massive bribes) to direct the train along the tracks they prefer. "Oh, we're going to have competition in wired telecommunications, are we? Yes, let's pretend that, just for fun..."

[kitteh]

Yes. This was the reality. A ton of money went into DSL/clecs that were gone within years. Saw it first hand.