Consumer and labor interests on service quality panel at NARUC wi...
Consumer and labor interests on service quality panel at NARUC winter meeting blamed telecom deregulation for general deterioration in telephone service quality in last 6 years. Consumer attorney Kathy O'Reilly said financial freedom under price-based regulation had encouraged diversion…
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of revenues away from network to shareholders. “Fines haven’t worked to halt this trend because of the low levels imposed,” she said. “The incumbents have been lucky so far that there hasn’t been a disaster attributable to their phone service failures.” She urged denial of long distance entry for Bells and further deregulation for non-Bell companies until they showed sustained top-quality service. Ken Peres, CWA regional economic research dir., agreed that service quality would suffer under deregulation “unless the standards are clear and the penalties big.” Consumer affairs consultant Barbara Alexander said incumbent telcos today were run by salesmen and accountants, not engineers. She said effective enforcement of service quality required states to “pick measures that reflect real customer interactions with the phone network, following recognized best practices.” James Shelley, external affairs pres., SBC/Ameritech, said effective service quality enforcement required “standards based on actual customer expectations, which regulators apply equally to everyone, incumbent and competitor alike.” He said company “isn’t here to pay fines” and wants to provide good service, but also wants its rivals to be under same service quality obligations.