Brian D Williams wrote:
>
> I've tried but since given up trying to explain telephone
> deregulation to people. People keep asking me, "When is there going
> to be competition." I explain that I hook up 2 to 3 "competitors"
> a day, for the last three years. But the fact is that residential
> phone service has always been subsidized by business, so nobody is
> interested in offering residential service, but competitors abound
> in the business market.
>
> This will (and has) led to a deterioration in the residential
> service market, and will eventually lead to HIGHER prices as the
> revenue subsidy drys up.
>
> They were sold a bill of goods, and bought every word.
Residential local service was always subsidized by long distance
charges. Now that interstate long distance companies are free of this,
your residential local service is subsidized by in-state long distance,
which still ranges from $0.20-0.39 /minute, which kinda stinks if your
computer gets smart and decides to call an in-state long distance number
for your internet access if it can't get through locally... or if the
ISP gives you a number claiming its local when its not (they got me that
way last year: $1200 in a month before I got my bill...)
I say jack up the prices, make people pay for what they are getting,
then they'll demand something better, and someone will be willing to
give it to them.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon May 28 2001 - 09:56:18 MDT