With all that's been in the news lately, plane crashes,
terrorist attacks, and the Freemen standoff in Montana,
somthing of major importance to all of us may have escaped
your attention: the proposed merger between Bell Atlantic
and Nynex.
This merger is about power,
about Bell and Nynex wanting to maintain and
expand their power.
Despite the Telecommunications Act, Bell Atlantic and Nynex
control a massive amount of communications infrastructure. This
infrastructure was given to them on a silver platter by
means of a regulated monopoly over the past 75 years.
While most consumers only deal with these companies on
a service-delivery basis, trying to do business with them
on an equal playing field is difficult, if not impossible.
They
have too much control now, and if they merge, it will get
worse. Bell-Nynex will use their power of the infrastructure
to force their competitors right out of business.
True, the law says that they must give access, but
there is no way to legislate cooperation, and these
companies can be extremely un-cooperative.
Large companies can play an endless game of referral,
denial and un-accountability, leaving smaller companies
with two choices: play the "run-around" game, or go
somewhere else. Only... there is nowhere else to go.
Their complacency and bureaucracy protects their control
of the very infrastructure the Telecommunications Act is
meant to open to private enterprise. Allowing these
companies to grow even larger, and more impenetrable,
will work against that goal, not toward it.
May 19, 1996 John Ward All Rights Reserved