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Bar News - July 23, 2004 Opinions ~ Federal Court Decision on Internet Access Fees Must Not Stand By: Carol Miller A RECENT DC COURT of Appeals decision on wholesale leasing rates that favors Regional Bell Operating Companies (RBOCs) has many people focused on the effect it will have on the competitive environment for voice phone service. Verizon’s courtroom coup against a free market in telecom could kill competition for Internet access as well. This would mean the end of the affordable Internet access Americans have become so accustomed to over the past decade. The wholesale leasing rates that Verizon and the other three RBOCs charge to competing telecom firms are the foundation of a promise Congress made to open up the nationwide Bell monopoly to free-market competition when it passed the Telecom Act of 1996. Congress reasoned correctly that potential competitors were entitled to the chance to get started by leasing capacity on the publicly subsidized local Bell networks at reasonable wholesale rates. State regulatory agencies, better positioned to assess the telecom markets in their own states, were given authority to oversee introduction of fair competition into their local markets. If allowed to stand, the decision issued by the US Appeals Court for Washington, DC will not only kill local telecom competition by eliminating the network sharing requirement altogether, it would kill the authority of our New Hampshire public utility commission to protect us against monopolistic abuses. Consumers faced with problems with Verizon rates or services would have to take their complaints to anonymous bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. instead of their own regulators in Concord. It does not look like the Supreme Court will alleviate this problem. This issue, of course, goes well beyond the borders of the Granite State. Despite eight years of non-stop political lobbying and litigation by the four big Bells, competition is taking root in states across the country. Almost 30 percent of the households in America now have a competitive alternative available to the local RBOC. This system is generating the kind of healthy competition that generates lower prices and faster introduction of advanced technology, by both the Bells and their new competitors. I strongly believe that this federal court decision is bad for our business as well as for consumers. Carol Miller is president of the New Hampshire Internet Service Providers Association. She is the owner of Berlin-based North Country Internet Access (NCIA).
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