<A> Maryland Consumers Still Held Captive, Study Shows Bell Atlantic Controls 99% Of Local Phone Market
BALTIMORE -- The Maryland Alliance of Competitive Carriers (MACC), a new statewide coalition of competitive local telephone providers, today released a study revealing the anti-consumer and anti-competitive effects of Bell Atlantic's efforts to preserve its statewide local phone monopoly. In response to these findings, MACC has outlined a "Nine-Step Local Competition Action Plan" to end Bell Atlantic-Maryland's denial of customer freedom of choice and accelerate the establishment of a free and fair competitive local phone market in the state. Many of these issues are pending before the Maryland Public Service Commission (PSC).
"Although our members are business rivals we all face a common challenge -- the incumbent monopoly's unrelenting opposition to competition in local telecommunications," said Jim Falvey, MACC Executive Director and Vice President-Regulatory Affairs for e.spire Communications. "Without exception, from the smallest start-ups to the major carriers, our efforts to compete have been resisted by Bell Atlantic's maneuvers to maintain its control of the market."
The study, conducted by Atlantic-ACM, revealed that more than two years after the federal Telecom Act mandated an end to the local phone monopolies, Bell Atlantic still controls 99.45% of the local phone lines in Maryland. Even more telling is its comparison of Bell Atlantic's growth versus that of its competitors. In 1997, Bell Atlantic added 126,999 new local phone lines in Maryland while all of its competitors combined served a total of only 18,022 customer lines.
"This broad imbalance is indicative of a closed market," said Falvey. "It quantifies what we've all encountered in the marketplace and is a catalyst for our decision to join forces."
By uniting as a single industry-wide group, MACC provides every competitive carrier with a voice to address policymakers and the communities they serve.
"Our membership includes locally-based entrepreneurs, companies that are committing every resource at their disposal into starting and expanding their businesses in Maryland," said Falvey. "By pooling our resources, MACC allows the concerns of every competitive carrier - large and small alike - to be heard equally."
MACC's mission is two-fold: to fight for a fully competitive market through the enforcement of existing state and federal laws; and to deliver the overdue benefits of competition -- lower prices, higher quality, new innovative services and customer choice -- promised by Congress in the Telecommunications Act of 1996 to every residential and business phone customer.
To achieve its goals, MACC has introduced a "Nine-Step Local Competition Action Plan" (attached). The plan recommends a series of reasonable pro-competitive policies for PSC adoption, mandated by the Act.
"Once its mission is accomplished -- when actual and effective local competition is thriving in Maryland -- the Alliance will cease to exist," said Falvey. "This is one organization whose members are anxious to see it fold, so we can focus our full attention on competing in the marketplace rather than combating Bell Atlantic before the PSC and in the courts."
The Maryland Alliance of Competitive Carriers is a statewide organization of alternative local telephone service providers committed to an open, fairly contested marketplace and customer choice. MACC's membership includes: Allegiance Telecom, AT&T, ATX, the Association for Local Telecommunications Services, Commonwealth Telecom Services, Inc., the Competitive Telecommunications Association, e.spire Communications, LCI International, the Maryland-Delaware Cable Television Association, MCI, TCG, Starpower Communications, LLC, WinStar and WorldCom (formerly MFS Intelenet of Maryland, Inc).
NINE-STEP LOCAL COMPETITION ACTION PLAN
Maryland Alliance of Competitive Carriers
This action plan includes nine fundamental policies that can be immediately adopted and implemented to foster the development of local telephone competition and customer choice across all sectors of the telecommunications marketplace statewide. Its recommendations are fully consistent with federal law and mandated by the Telecommunications Act of 1996.
1) Require Bell Atlantic to provide new entrants with access to unbundled network elements for voice and data services (e.g., loops, switching) including combinations of network elements, needed to provide competitive local telephone service.
2) Establish pro-competitive, forward-looking prices (based on new
technologies that reduce the cost of providing local service) for unbundled network elements.
3) Establish and strictly enforce performance standards, with meaningful violation penalties, to ensure Bell Atlantic's compliance.
4) Require Bell Atlantic to provide new entrants with the fully automated operations support systems (OSS) needed to process customer orders, perform installations, process billings and handle maintenance requests, and to do so with the same speed and accuracy that the incumbent provides these services to its own customers.
5) Prohibit public and private entities from discriminating against new competitors or acting to delay competitive entry.
6) Ensure fair and speedy access to essential rights-of-way facilities such as poles and conduits, as well as to customer premises, in order to prevent unnecessary delays in service installation.
7) Ensure that competitors can collocate their equipment in Bell Atlantic wire centers on an expedited basis and require Bell Atlantic to lease space in those wire centers at reasonable, cost-based prices.
8) Create a separate, competitively-neutral Universal Service fund
administered by an independent non-competing party.
9) Require Bell Atlantic to prove the existence of actual and effective local competition to the Maryland PSC at least 120 days before applying to the FCC for permission to offer in-state long distance service.
For more information on local telephone competition and how it can become a reality in Maryland, please contact the MACC at 301-361-4298. |
