[9661] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: Telecommunications Competition Act of Washington State
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Marvin Sirbu)
Sat Jan 15 17:37:12 1994
Date: Sat, 15 Jan 1994 17:35:04 -0500 (EST)
From: Marvin Sirbu <ms6b+@andrew.cmu.edu>
To: com-priv@psi.com, adam fast <adamfast@u.washington.edu>
Cc: com-priv@psi.com, communet@uvmvm.uvm.edu, nii_agenda@civicnet.org
In-Reply-To: <Pine.3.89.9401150925.H2734-0100000@goren1.u.washington.edu>
Excerpts from internet.com-priv: 15-Jan-94 Re: Telecommunications Comp..
by adam fast@u.washington.e
> why has the level of telephone service actually been /declining/ since the
> sixties? market forces are /not/ achieving universal service.
This is patently false. The percentage of households with telephone
service is higher today than it was at any time before divestiture. As
a condition for letting the FCC impose subscriber line charges, the
Congress made the FCC promise they would commission the Census to do a
special monthly survey of telephone penetration following divestiture to
see if subscriber line charges led to a reduction in universal service.
In fact, penetration went up.
Furthermore, the definition of what constitutes universal service has
been improving qualitatively. It used to be that universal service for
a rural farm family meant having four-party line service provided on an
electro-mechanical switch. Today, it is likely to mean a single party
line served by a stored programmed controlled switch that provides call
waiting and other features. For example, the Vermont PUC struck a deal
with New England Telephone that required all electromechanicals to be
retired by 1992.
