posted 01-31- 01:32 PM            

The whole power thing here is ridiculous. PG&E (provides power to pretty much the entire northern half of the state) apparently has a cash flow of zero... not in the negative yet but they say it won't be long. Meanwhile Southern Edison (power for the south state) seems to be making more money than they know what to do with. Seems to me that PG&E are inept at running their business and maybe Southern Edison should buy them out as opposed to having the consumer pay artificially inflated rates to bail out a poorly manged and run company.

There have been a myriad of "power saving" suggestions as of late... one the ones I heard was a suggestion in the state assembly that they order the phone companies to cut all internet access between 7:00pm and 8:00am to prevent people from using their computers and thus saving all that "wasted" power... meanwhile, the spotlights that light up the capitol building stay on all night every night. Apparently that is a needed service to the people of California...

posted 01-31- 06:36 PM               

It ends up being 90 a month equal billing.

AND thats canadian so more like 50 US.

I don't know whats up with deregulation, here it seems to be a great thing. I was paying 7 cents a minute for long distance all over canada, Bell will have to compete and their for be better with prices and service. I can't see that as a bad thing.

Cali is having major problems but I still think thats better then a monopoly. In the long run maybe anyways.

posted 02-01- 10:51 AM               

Caps are good sometimes, Every time the phone company wants to raise a rate they half to ask the CRTC first here.

LOL

Its wacky, just local phone use always goes up a bit but long distance always goes down.

I don't care about long distance, just give me basic phone use for 10 bucks

posted 02-01- 01:42 PM            

The problem here with deregulation is that there are very few power companies in California and the entire power infrastructure is owned by just 2 or 3 of them. This means that they can effectivly deny other companies the right to use their lines from the substations out to the consumer... makes it very hard for any competition to occur. They need to have a law as part of the deregulation forcing the larg companies to allow the smaller companies to use their lines... like we have with the local phone company deregulation, which seems to be working out OK.

FOr a change, those dirtbags at the capitol were at work until 3AM last night... they still didn't pass any legislation to help the situation. Some of the Republicans refuse to support any bill that will raise the rates for the average citizen and small business as opposed to raising rates for the large corporate consumers. At least it looks like they will get something together today... though it may be a while yet before we see any actual changes in the situation - and there is no guarantee that what they come up with will actually improve things in the long run.

I am glad to see that the Reps in the legislature are concerned about the effects of large rate hikes on the average citizen though... seems odd that the Dems are showing more support to big business than the Reps though. I mean, with some of the points of view we see around here you'd think that this could never occur...

posted 02-02- 02:04 PM               

Here i'm pretty sure its law that they half to let the other companies use the lines.

Its the same with phone and DSL and I think maybe even cable soon, for cable modems anyways.

Really cause of the prices that bell nexxia charges the local ISPs to use the line for DSL they can price them right out of the market. Funny thing is it would probly be better for bell.

Rent the line for 20 or so, and the local ISP has to use the other 20 for taking care of the customer, running all its DSN and mail servers AND all the bandwidth those users are going to use.

PLUS the local ISP has to buy a certain modem cause thats the modems that bell has the dslams for. AND bell will only sell them in a lot of 50 at a time for i think 175 each. AND they are only warrentied for 30 or 60 days, If its bad they just trade you straight for a new one, if not oh well. And if you order say 200 but have 160 customers and those other 40 sit there for 2 months and a couple are bad your screwed out of those.

Its a messed up situation.

REALLY sucks cause i would rather work with my local ISP then a large faceless corp who doesn't give a crap about their customers.

Boy I ran on there. LOL

posted 02-02- 02:06 PM               

When I build A house I'm going to try to make sure I only have a phone line coming in and maybe power for my shop.