Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!usc!apple!bionet!hayes.ims.alaska.edu!accuvax.nwu.edu!nucsrl!telecom-request From: 0002909785@mcimail.com (J. Stephen Reed) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: A Choice, and Then a Choice Message-ID: <13514@accuvax.nwu.edu> Date: 12 Oct 90 07:54:00 GMT Sender: news@accuvax.nwu.edu Organization: TELECOM Digest Lines: 95 Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 734, Message 1 of 9 Today (Oct. 12), in the (and, I presume, in other large daily newspapers) there appeared a full-page ad from the Seven Sisters of local telephony. The message from the BOCs read, in part: "America's students could have low-cost access to the nation's leading scholars over existing telephone lines. But government restrictions limit their choice. [Picture of three students standing rapt before a monitor.] "You could have instant access to all kinds of time and money saving services over the telephone. Europeans, for example, have access to advanced electronic yellow pages over the phone on a mini-screen. But government restrictions limit your choice. [Pix of a monitor with French viewtext service displayed.] "DOESN'T AMERICA DESERVE A CHOICE? "[Summary of the argument for allowing BOCs to provide information services and long distance, familiar to most tuning in here.] Let Congress know that you want the right to choose. And, you want it now." Methinks the BOCs doth protest too much. I have no wish to rehash the breakup of the Bell System on here (your Moderator and I have done so for hours on end over Chicago pizza). But I have to wonder how long the BOCs are going to insist on having their many restrictions removed ... yet resist any notion of a removal in law, as well as in fact, of their local monopoly powers. The problem that some raise of duplicating networks and phone numbers under local competition is not a real problem -- beyond getting obstacles out of the way. Bellcore and the ITU can work out details if they are allowed to do so. Some screwy and onerous antitrust laws would have to be discarded, but they ought to be anyway. And there is likely to be tremendous pressure toward one-home-one-number on the part of residential consumers, for few people would live with yet another phone hassle. (Residential service is the only "two numbers" area at issue. Businesses already put up with two systems, in a sense. Have you noticed how little outcry there has been over having to handle fax numbers voice numbers? If businesses can deal with this -- and telex and MCI/AT&T/etc. mail numbers as well -- they'll either absorb handling more than one voice number system or will stampede in the marketplace to what they have now.) Multiple local telco connections to one instrument or PBX may not have been physically possible for most of this century, but the only real thing that stands in its way these days is the local regulatory apparatus. Bandwidth and channel capacity? Two-thirds of the nation has a second cable coming into the house already. Were any of you as impressed as I was by the special edition here by Donald Kimberlin (end of August) and its facts on ending the local dial tone monopoly? The unused capacity on cable TV systems that are is enough for another Bell System network! Why shouldn't they be free to interconnect and resell it? Even if the arguments of T. Vail & Co. for one unified near-monopoly system were justified in the 1910's on technical grounds (I doubt it), they are being undercut more each day. Everything from Motorola's new Iridium satellite system to your cellular phone is undercutting those ideas. I, a telephone non-junkie, can see this. So can the BOCs. And they'll fight to the death under law for power that they are highly unlikely to keep in an open marketplace. At one time there were no phone choices, period. Market pressure and, I admit, overhasty action on Judge Greene's part has opened up choices within the home, or apartment building, and from the CO out to most of the world. The only place we still have monopoly is from the junction box in the basement to the COs. Why must this last segment of the phone network remain a monopoly cast in concrete? If the Seven Sisters let go of the local monopoly -- and admit to it under law, as well as in fact -- they might just get their chance to compete in those lucrative information services. We'd all be better off. Steve Reed Liberty Network, Ltd. * P.O. Box 11296 * Chicago, IL 60611 0002909785@mcimail.com [Moderator's Note: Steve is correct about the many discussions we've had 'over pizza', but he forgot to mention how many pitchers of beer were also involved; and that of course has a direct relationship to the lucidity and validity of the arguments presented as the night goes on. :) PAT]