| reply to boogie74
Re: The Bundling Arguement The difference between the bundling in the services you mention and the DSL/pots service is that the former does not duplicate limited resources while the latter does. Let me explain: How many different restaurants are in your city? 100? 1000? 10,000? Can one of those restaurants charge you $100 for fries if you order a burger? Sure, but you don't have to pay it. You can eat your burger and if you really want fries, you can go across the street and pick some up for 99 cents. It's cheap to build a new fast food joint. It's expensive to duplicate an international telecom infrastructure. On the other hand, if you want high-speed internet in your home, how many lines or airwaves coming into your home offer you service? 1? 2? 3? In my case (I live in Georgia), only 1: BellSouth DSL. They will not let me unbundle my phone service. It's either pay what they ask or go without. To use the analogy: either I pay $100 for fries or I don't eat high-speed internet.
On a related note, they lied about how much it would cost. They said there would be no setup fees. The setup fees cost $150. They said the first month would be free. They charged me $50 for the first month. They said I would get a free DSL modem. I didn't get a free modem. I've called to get all of these promised rebates, and they said they'd send me coupons for them (again not part of the deal but better than taking them to court) and they still have not done even that. So they lied again. It's now been six months since the promises were made and still they are unfulfilled. You think I would stay with BellSouth if I had an option? No way. That's why we need competition. Sure, it's good to give state sponsored monopolies for a while to prevent unnecessary duplication of infrastructures (like electrical lines, sewer, water pipes, etc that come into your home). But enough is enough. Once the monopoly abuses its power and has made enough economic profits to justify its investment in building the infrastructure, it should lose the monopoly. BellSouth should lose its monopoly. As soon as I can keep my DSL and ditch my phone, I'm going to either get a cell phone or get Vonage VOIP. |
