[9666] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: Telecommunications Competition Act of Washington State
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Lynne Motley)
Sat Jan 15 22:47:23 1994
Date: Sat, 15 Jan 1994 22:26:57 -0500 (EST)
From: Lynne Motley <lmotley@cap.gwu.edu>
To: Marvin Sirbu <ms6b+@andrew.cmu.edu>
Cc: com-priv@psi.com, adam fast <adamfast@u.washington.edu>, com-priv@psi.com,
In-Reply-To: <chC6yMG00iV0Q4cGR3@andrew.cmu.edu>
Today's Washington Post mentions FCC studies show the percentage
of households with telephones in Washington, DC, dropped from 94.6 in 1988
to 91.5 in 1993.
The article goes on to say that Bell Atlantic did a door-to-door
survey last summer to find out why so many people didn't have phone
service -- and "it found that large numbers of people lost service because
they failed to pay their phone bills."
A Bell Atlantic spokesperson said those customers ran into trouble
because of their long distance calls.
Bell Atlantic says further they and other local phone companies
have a growing problem with unpaid bills and cites $32.8 million in unpaid
telephone bills in 1993 in the state of Maryland and $12.8 million in 1992
in Virginia.
On Sat, 15 Jan 1994, Marvin Sirbu wrote:
> 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.
>
>
>
