February 27, 2002 -- Cbeyond Communications, a telecommunications services carrier, added its voice to the outcry against HR 1542, also known as the Tauzin-Dingell Bill.

"The Bells want to use HR 1542 to reverse the 1996 Telecommunications Act, paving the way for re-monopolizing the local phone and Internet markets," said Cbeyond CEO Jim Geiger in a round of meetings that commenced today on Capitol Hill. "Gone would be competitive choices for a local phone provider; and local phone service and high-speed Internet connection prices will rise. This could be devastating to very small businesses (1-5 lines of local service) that finally have been able to acquire and afford the communication services they need to run their businesses in today's market.

"Most importantly there will be little incentive for the Bell companies to provide the innovative products and services that competitive companies like mine have delivered since passage of the 1996 Act," he said.

Geiger points to the 1984 deregulation of long distance services as an example of how competition benefits the consumer. "Today a business can make a long distance call from Atlanta, Georgia to London, England, for about the same price as a call to Macon, Georgia. This is because competition since the 1984 deregulation has driven down prices in the long distance market. That same kind of competition from the 1996 Act is now starting to take foot in the local phone market, and the Bells are trying to reverse that with HR 1542."

Less obvious, he noted, but maybe even more important is the dramatic stimulation in innovation and investment in the underlying network that has occurred over the past 17 years. "Without the framework put in place in 1984," said Geiger, "this evolution from one monopolistic long distance provider to a robust and technologically competitive market would not have occurred. It is fair to say, that the Internet, as we know it today, would not exist were it not for innovative pressures from competitive companies. Dial-up access, IP backbones and broadband deployment were not the brainchild of legacy phone companies."

In 1996, Congress set out to continue its efforts to promote competition by passing powerful, pro-consumer legislation in the form of the 1996 Telecommunications Act, which sought to break up the local telephone monopoly in much the same way it successfully deregulated long distance. That Act specified among other things that BellSouth and its sister companies were required to prove that they had successfully opened up local markets to competition. In return, they would be permitted entry into long distance. That prize has eluded BellSouth to date.

"It has been only six years since this groundbreaking legislation was passed and in that time, competitive providers who offer innovative and cost-effective services have taken nearly 10% market share away from the Bell companies. The biggest beneficiaries are small business customers who now have big business communications capabilities at prices they can afford," Geiger said.

"This bill, if passed, will bring the delivery of competitive local phone service to a screeching halt, ultimately raise the cost of local telephone service and further slow down the delivery of broadband access to these businesses," he continued. "And that would be sad indeed."

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