Federal Court Ruling Hopefully Only a Temporary Setback to Competition, Says Western Coalition for Consumer Choice in Telecom.

Business Editors

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 17, 2004

The executive director of the Western Coalition for Consumer Choice in Telecom (Western C3 Telecom), Carroll Cagle, released the following statement regarding a recent federal court ruling in a telecommunications lawsuit:

It is vital that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) act quickly to appeal an anti-consumer ruling by the Washington, D.C.-based court of appeals.

The circuit court's ruling exemplifies yet another in the seemingly unending supply of delay tactics by the regional phone monopolies to delay benefits of competition in local phone service to American consumers. Hopefully consumers will not have to experience the delay too much longer, if the FCC acts quickly to appeal this wrong-headed ruling, which surely it must for the greater good of the public.

The ruling is a lamentable milestone, because it is almost exactly eight years ago that the 1996 Federal Telecommunications Act was enacted, the premise of which was to usher in the better service, better technologies and lower pricing that inevitably flow when competition replaces monopoly.

But it has been only in the last two or three years that millions of Americans have started to benefit from finally being able to have a choice in local phone service, resulting in estimated annual savings to consumers of up to $10 billion.

Too bad that the Regional Bell Operating Companies (RBOCs), the monopolies that brought this latest suit, prevented those savings from going into American consumer pockets years earlier.

No one should be surprised that the RBOC monopolies have struck again, but everyone should be aware of, troubled by and angry that they have. The anti-public actions of Verizon, SBC, BellSouth and Qwest have to go down in the books of cynically self-serving corporate behavior.

It is well established, beginning with competition in the long-distance business in 1984, that enlightened public policy in America is to simultaneously empower consumers and the competitive marketplace. Inevitably, more consumers will escape the monopolistic dead hand of the past.

It also is well established that in a country as large and diverse as this one, that the way this can best be achieved is via the workings of the public regulatory commissions in the individual states. Thus the court ruling was not only a setback to consumers but to states' rights.

If the FCC acts quickly and wisely, as it previously has on this very subject, then it can be hoped that, upon appeal, this poorly reasoned ruling will turn out to be as short-lived as it was predictable.

Western Coalition for Consumer Choice in Telecom (Western C3 Telecom) is an alliance of organizations, in turn made up of consumers and competitive telecom companies, advocating for consumer choice in the American West.