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Comment by gervase | Hacker News Reader

FIOS wasn't actually why that market segment died; it was due to the FCC decision to re-classify DSL [0]. This was in response to a lawsuit resolved a few months earlier that did the same for cable internet connections. [1]

By re-classifying both cable and DSL as Title 1, rather than Title 2, that meant that they were no longer common carriers, and could kick all the competing ISPs off their network. This is why it seemed that most of the third-party providers went away nearly overnight.

[0]: https://www.cnet.com/news/fcc-changes-dsl-classification/

[1]" https://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/technology/cable-wins-int...

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> The phone companies say that the ruling will free up more of their resources to improve their broadband services, although at least one FCC commissioner says he will be watching to see if that's really the case.

> ISPs such as EarthLink, which already have a hard time competing on price, may still negotiate access contracts with the phone companies but are looking for alternative ways to deliver their services.

EarthLink sold the next year to Windstream for $673 million in an all-stock transaction. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/11/dial-...

Three years later... Windstream unloads legacy EarthLink internet assets for $330M https://www.fiercetelecom.com/telecom/windstream-unloads-leg...

And Speakeasy to Covad.

Is that what happened? Makes sense. Back in 1999-ish I was a software programmer for a regional ISP. We served the San Francisco-San Jose-Monterey-San Luis Obispo areas. We did dial-up, DSL, ISDN, T-1, 3, OC, wireless (certain areas). We also had a data center and offered a lot of so-called “cloud” services, before it was a buzzword. We did a lot of cool things. But after I left it seemed like the company died when the big ISPs took over.

Looks like I got out just in time. Verizon's DSL options were notoriously overpriced and slow in my area, and I seriously doubt they got any better once they weren't forced to compete anymore.

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