eCompany: The Potential Pitfalls of Telecom Deregulation. Under the guise of “competition,” Baby Bells are lobbying to keep competitors off their networks. Can this be good for consumers?
The answer, plainly, is no.
The phone companies have done more to thwart competition in the broadband arena than anyone. They have used every tactic in the monopolist’s playbook to prevent the competitive DSL carriers from creating a genuinely competitive market. Now they want the authority to simply kill off what little competition there is.
The local phone monopolies are lobbying Congress to allow them the same kind of exclusive control over their networks that the cable companies have maintained. Since the cable industry didn’t have to provide open access, they say, neither should they.
This gets everything backwards. The cable companies should not have been allowed to hold their monopolies, preventing third-party Internet providers from using their lines. Using this policy mistake as a reason for making another is the worst of both worlds.
The logical conclusion is that customers of broadband will have exactly two, or maybe three, choices — cable data lines, Baby Bell DSL service or wireless. The owners of the conduits will control the content and service.
The experience so far has been dreadful. I hear more complaints about Pacific Bell’s lousy Internet service than any other consumer problem. For that reason I deliberately got DSL from a competitor.
Congress should not let PacBell and its monopolistic cousins kill off the competing services. Unfortunately, Congress may do exactly that.