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From: iiasa!wnp@relay.eu.net (wolf paul)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: Telecom in the News, Part 1
Message-ID: <14135@accuvax.nwu.edu>
Date: 27 Oct 90 10:11:46 GMT
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Reply-To: wolf paul <iiasa!wnp%iiasa@relay.eu.net>
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X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 774, Message 5 of 12


In article <13989@accuvax.nwu.edu> croll@wonder.enet.dec.com writes:

>TELEPHONE SERVICES:  A GROWING FORM OF `FOREIGN AID'

>in minutes -- meaning American phone companies have to pay fees for
>the surplus calls.  The F.C.C. is concerned that foreign companies are
>demanding much more money than is justified, given the steeply falling
>costs of providing service, and proposes to limit unilaterally the
>payments American carriers make.

Would someone care to tell us how they might enforce this?  Americans
are much more dependent on international phone calls for their
international business; Europeans and I suspect residents of other
countries are much more likely to use correspondence and/or TELEX than
intercontinental phone calls.

So if the FCC limits how much AT&T can pay the German TELEKOM or the
Austrian PTT, etc., and as a result these foreign phone companies
simply suspend telephone service to the US, it would primarily affect
U.S. businesses.

I am not justifying the high rates charged in many places for phone
service, I have to bear them myself, but the idea that the FCC can
dictate to foreign phone companies how much they can charge for access
to their networks is laughable. The mere thought is enough to bring
forth the national pride of the bureaucrats running these phone
companies, to resist any American attempt at interfering in their rate
structures. Why should a European phone company be concerned with the
effects on the American trade deficit of competition among U.S.
carriers? Every call originating in the US instead of Europe is a loss
of revenue to them, so why should they not try to recover that revenue
by charging the U.S. carrier who lured away their customer by his
lower rates?

Mind you, it is a different matter if AT&T, MCI, Sprint, etc., told
the foreign phone companies that they consider the rates too high,
they are their business partners; but a U.S. government agency like
the FCC is out of order when it tries to dictate foreign companies'
prices.


Wolf N. Paul, UNIX SysAdmin, IIASA, A - 2361 Laxenburg, Austria, Europe
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