As I’ve been noting, both AT&T and Verizon have been busy trying to gut absolutely all regulatory oversight of those companies, in the process severing the DSL and landlines of tens of millions of users, who’ll have to flee to an even less-competitive cable monopoly, more-expensive and capped LTE service, or even pricier and more-heavily capped satellite broadband.
The gadget-obsessed press and incumbent-beholden regulators so far have napped through the implications of this, AT&T’s claim that regulations simply need to be “modernized” as we go all IP appears to have lulled most of them into a compliant slumber. This is however the biggest shift in telecom in the last thirty years, and it deserves more than the usual fringe attention broadband telecom policy receives.
Free Press Research Director Derek S. Turner has posted a good read over at Wired clearly illustrating what’s at state if the country dumbly plays along with AT&T’s efforts to sever the PSTN while killing off nearly all serious regulatory oversight of the industry giant. Namely, higher rates, seniors suddenly without landlines, and worse service:
Seniors, low-income families, and rural residents all of whom are more likely to rely on fixed-line voice services or dial-up internet access would especially feel the pinch. Carriers that are now required to offer universal service will be free to redline poor neighborhoods and disconnect consumers at will. Elderly grandmothers living on fixed incomes rely on rate-regulated landlines to stay connected, but they need not worry: AT&T has an expensive wireless plan they can purchase instead.
That sounds dramatic, but it’s a very real outcome. Turner doesn’t even get into the fact that AT&T and Verizon’s exit from the fixed-line broadband market creates a much stronger cable broadband monopoly, driving up costs for those users as well. All of this will be swatted down by paid industry pundits despite the fact that historically, you’d be hard pressed to find a time when deregulating AT&T didn’t make service considerably worse and more expensive for the end user.
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via DSLreports – front page http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Free-Press-ATTs-About-to-Make-Broadband-Market-Much-Worse-123344
