
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, August 5, 1993                   TAG: 9309100368
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A13   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: GENE KIMMELMAN
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

BABY BELLS: THE FOX LAYING LINES TO THE HENHOUSE?

FEW WOULD dispute that improving America's telecommunications network is an important national goal. Clinton administration officials speak in terms of an ``information superhighway,'' connecting people to each other, their offices, their schools and libraries. Depending upon what form it takes, such a network could promote economic expansion, create jobs and contribute to the quality of life. There is, however, considerable disagreement about the best way to get there.

The Regional Bell Operating Companies (also known as the ``Baby Bells'' or ``RBOCs'') would have us believe that they are the logical choice to design and construct this information superhighway, as well as run its toll booths. Others interested in sharing access to this multibillion-dollar business opportunity contend the RBOCs' long and well-documented history of anti-consumer and anti-competitor abuses demonstrates that such a move would be tantamount to putting the fox in charge of the henhouse.

In exchange for building a ``fiber-optic-to-the-home'' network using $400 billion of ratepayers' money, the RBOCs want to leverage their monopoly local phone networks to get into new businesses. They are spending tens of millions of dollars on lobbying, advertising and public relations to make the case for ending the antitrust safeguards that keep them out of long-distance and telecommunications equipment manufacturing and to fight all potential legislative safeguards on their participation in other businesses.

They also want more flexibility to raise rates on captive ratepayers and more flexibility to shift costs from competitive services to the monopoly rate base. In a nutshell, they want their captive ratepayers to bankroll their bid to take monopolistic control of this gigantic new industry, and then they want those same ratepayers to pay whatever the Baby Bells demand for access to new technology.

The RBOCs' actions under current regulation do not support their requests to further limit consumer protections. In the decade since divestiture, each of the Regional Bells has repeatedly broken laws and betrayed the public trust. In Virginia alone, abuses costing ratepayers billions of dollars have been documented, and in several cases, successfully litigated.

For example, C&P Telephone and other subsidiaries of the Bell Atlantic RBOC have settled out numerous complaints by state public utilities commissions alleging, among other things, deceptive marketing techniques in selling optional services such as call-waiting and call-forwarding, improperly disconnecting service to customers who had paid past-due bills or had legitimate medical reasons for not paying their bills, and charging customers for optional toll calling plans they never ordered or had canceled. The company has been forced to pay out tens of millions of dollars in refunds and customer education efforts.

And in Virginia, a small company has asked the State Corporation Commission to examine whether C&P is manipulating its service pricing to harm would-be competitors.

Organizations representing consumers, business telecommunications users, competitive local telecommunications service providers, information service providers, telecommunications equipment manufacturers, and long-distance companies believe that Congress should enact a national telecommunications policy founded on the principles of protecting consumers and fostering competition. The competitive marketplace serves the needs of telecommunications consumers for fair prices, customer choice and product innovation.

The progress America has made in bringing the benefits of competition to telephone consumers must not be turned back. Congress must act now to ensure that the information superhighway will be affordable and open to all - not a private toll road monopolized by the Baby Bells.

\ Gene Kimmelman is legislative director of the Consumer Federation of America, a coalition of 240 consumer organizations.

by CNB