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Politics : A Neutral Corner -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (2209)	7/13/2007 12:49:38 PM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 2253

I've personally noticed lately the deficit in what I call the "little old lady" niche. Telephones. The cheapest land line service is now costing me $22 a month. About five dollars of that is the service, itself. The rest is tax. On a really busy month there may be five phone calls in and out of my home. So that's a good five bucks a call. Outrageous. And that's a regulated service. There's no cell phone service for low volume users. None. I have a really old plan from a time when the carriers were desperate for customers that I'm hanging on to. Sprint doesn't offer it to new customers. My car came with XM radio. I enjoyed it for the trial period. But $150/year to listen to classical music an hour or two a week? I don't think so. My point is that metered service is rarely offered any more. The metered service I have on my land line is a vestigial regulated service. Businesses go for the heavy users or business users that aren't price conscious. Deregulation has had a role in that. Not saying government should do something about it, only recognizing a need unfilled by business and the pressure on government to intervene on behalf of those left out when the left out are among the least able to do for themselves. IMO, there should be wireless plans out there for granny so she can affordably call someone other than 911 to help her when she can't make it all the way home from the grocery store. I wouldn't propose federal action on that. But there should be a mechanism of some sort to make that happen.