Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, July 26, 1995 TAG: 9507260017
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
It is time they did.
The Senate - where telecommunications reform was but one significant piece of legislation left to die while Republicans filibustered last year - came back this session to pass a bill. Now it is up to the House to act, and it should follow suit - but not without making some consumer-friendly changes to the legislation being sponsored by Virginia's Thomas Bliley and Texan Jack Fields Jr.
The legislation in both houses is supposed to create competition among various carriers of electronic services now separated by regulatory barriers: telephone and cable companies, and long-distance carriers. In theory, when telephone companies, for example, are allowed to offer cable in their service areas, they will have the incentive to wire houses with the necessary fiber-optic lines and compete with cable companies.
As the various segments of the telecommunications industry are allowed to vie for each other's customers, consumers presumably will benefit as they are able to shop for the best service at the lowest price.
In their deregulatory zeal, though, lawmakers would eliminate cable-rate regulation prematurely. A competitive marketplace would be a better regulator, and an end to rate regulation ought to happen sooner rather than later. But it won't work until serious competition to cable operators emerges - and analysts say that is still years away.
While taking away government controls protecting consumers, legislation in both houses would relax the current ban on merging cable and phone operations in franchise areas with populations under 50,000 - which, all told, account for more than one-third of the nation's population. Rather than becoming a competitor, one company could end up holding a double, unregulated monopoly where it now holds a single, regulated one. Such "one wire" communities would be left without regulatory or market protections.
The House bill further would allow media companies to own different kinds of media - such as a newspaper and a local television station - in the same market. Supporters of the change say technologies such as cable and satellites offer such diversity that there is no need to fear dominance by a few media giants in the marketplaces of ideas and advertising.
But what looks like diversity can be the many arms of a single, giant octopus. The Center for Media Education points out that two companies, Tele-Communications Inc. and Time Warner Inc., own the cable TV wires reaching 40 percent of subscribers in the United States. One important consideration is to assure that common-carrier monopolies providing services on their own lines cannot discriminate against companies renting their lines to provide competing services.
Ninth District Rep. Rick Boucher, who has worked for years to craft telecommunications-reform legislation, believes the current House bill can be amended to offer greater consumer protections. It should be.
Entrepreneurship offers the best hope of speeding the nation down the information superhighway to the array of information and entertainment choices promised by incredibly rapid technological advance. Competition is the best agent to drive that change.
Telecommunications reform should cultivate competition, not reduce it.
by CNB