February 27, 2002 -- The Maryland Coalition for Local Telephone Competition said today that H.R. 1542, a bill being considered in the U.S. House of Representatives, may be the final blow for competition in the telecommunications industry, if passed into law. The House is expected to vote on H.R. 1542 on Wednesday.

Sponsored by Congressmen, Rep. Billy Tauzin (R-LA) and Rep. John Dingell (D-MI), the Coalition said that the Internet Freedom and Broadband Deployment Act is purely special interest legislation that favors the Baby Bell mega-monopolies, like Verizon, at the expense of Maryland consumers. At risk, are the hundreds of companies and Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in the state who want to compete with Verizon for local telephone service and high-speed Internet service.

The Tauzin-Dingell bill lets the Bell monopolies into the lucrative data long distance market without first opening their local phone markets as required by the Telecommunications Act of 1996.

"What appears to be an effort to promote deployment of high-speed Internet service to rural and underserved areas is really a Trojan Horse bill to undermine current federal law when competition is beginning to take hold," said Maureen O'Connor, executive director for the Maryland Coalition for Local Telephone Competition.

Moreover, provisions in H.R. 1542 remove the authority of federal and state regulatory commissions to regulate prices and service quality of high-speed Internet. More than 30 state regulatory agencies are opposing this bill, including the Maryland Public Service Commission.

"With no competition and no regulatory safeguards to protect consumers, Verizon effectively becomes an unregulated monopoly of local phone service and high-speed Internet service," said O'Connor.

O'Connor added that House members should be wary of the powerful Bell lobbyists who are pressuring them to support H.R. 1542. "Their tactics are similar to those used by Enron to push electric deregulation through. Now, we're paying for the consequences."

The Maryland Coalition for Local Telephone Competition is a broad-based group comprised of consumers and small businesses, industry groups, and associations. The coalition was organized in 1997 to advance local telephone competition, to keep consumers and small businesses informed about local telephone issues and to give consumers a voice in shaping the issues that will affect them as telephone customers.

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