Justin Playfair
@198.231.x.x
| reply to mishaq
Re: dont care about verizon
And I know, people dont like the idea of one company providing a service, but we all (or most of us) have on power company, one water company, one gas company. If they can be regulated and work to maintain satisfactory service, all can be well.
Either you're too young to remember what it was like when there was just one phone company or it's just been so long that you've forgotten. The service was much more expensive (in real dollars) than it is now, especially long-distance. In fact, making a long-distance call was something of a luxury, and it was only after AT&T was broken up that the cost began to drop. As far as the quality of the service goes, you can still occasionally see the old Saturday Night Live skits where Lily Tomlin plays an operator and in at least one case closes with, "We don't care. We don't have to. (Snort) We're the Phone Company."
It's debatable whether or not service has improved since "Ma Bell" was broken up, but what's certainly true is that we have more choices than we did and prices have dropped. Where I live, I can choose between Verizon or SBC for my local phone service, Verizon, SBC, or Covad for my DSL (or Comcast for a cable modem), and I have lots of choices when it comes to long distance. Then there are options like VOIP, cell phones, etc., that provide even more choices and that have served to drive prices down -- which is exactly what competition is meant to do.
You mentioned utilities in your post, which is a good example. Where I live, I can choose between electric providers (but not gas or water service), and as a result my electric bills are about 10% lower than they would be if I had stayed with the "incumbent" provider. The prices I pay for monopoly-provided gas and water, on the other hand, have continued to gradually increase.
For another example of the effects of competition, look at the falling prices (and increasing speeds) offered by DSL and cable providers to compete with each other. Do you suppose that they'd be offering lower prices and higher speeds if they had no competition? Why would they do that -- just to be "nice"?
Competition doesn't necessarily improve the quality of service received, but it most definitely does drive down prices. My long distance service works at least as well as it did 30 years ago, but it's a heck of a lot cheaper. |
