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"Why is congress considering such anti-consumer telecom bills?"

Bruce Kushnick of TeleTruth, the most active of telecom activists, asks this question in an informative piece at the Nieman Watchdog. Don't just read it, Digg it.

These bill names use D.C.-Speak, a modern Orwellian vernacular. Both would give the Bells new incentives in the form of national franchises with no "build-out" requirements for states or cities to be fully wired. The cable companies currently have local franchises, where the companies have to meet specific requirements for local provisioning, such as local access channels. This new corporate “one size fits all” national franchise is not about customers but about expediency and lack of community services, as the House bill allows the new entrants (that is, the phone companies) not to worry about local, existing obligations. The House bill adds an additional 1 percent tax on the cable operators' gross revenues, and the language of the bill states that the operators can “designate that portion of a subscriber's bill attributable to such payment”, meaning that new taxes can be charged directly to the customer.

The phone companies have had extensive financial incentives before, but they have never fulfilled their obligations. Rewarding them for such a record is brazen, and raises the question of whether Capitol Hill lawmakers are in cahoots with the telecoms.

jon posted this at 1:09 PM
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