roundtable: Release: CME-CFA Consumer Campaign

roundtable: Release: CME/CFA Consumer Campaign

Release: CME/CFA Consumer Campaign

Center for Media Education (cme@access.digex.net)
Tue, 8 Mar 94 15:06:02 EST 

Date: Tue, 8 Mar 94 15:06:02 EST
From: Center for Media Education <cme@access.digex.net>
To: telecomreg@relay.adp.wisc.edu
Subject: Release: CME/CFA Consumer Campaign
Message-Id: <CMM.0.90.0.763157162.cme@access3.digex.net>


PRESS RELEASE
MARCH 8, 1994
CENTER FOR MEDIA EDUCATION
CONSUMER FEDERATION OF AMERICA

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         PUBLIC INTEREST GROUPS ESTABLISH CONSUMER 
"HIGHWAY PATROL" FOR THE INFORMATION SUPERHIGHWAY

WASHINGTON, DC -- The Center for Media Education (CME) 
and the Consumer Federation of America (CFA) have 
launched a joint campaign to ensure that America's 
information superhighway is built in an efficient and 
fair manner.   The kick-off of the campaign was marked 
by the filing of comments in two proceedings involving 
efforts to create information megafirms:  the US 
West/Time Warner request for certification of a Video 
Dialtone service at the Federal Communications 
Commission;  and the Bell Atlantic request for an 
expedited waiver of the long distance restriction on 
local exchange carriers at the Department of Justice.  

"The information superhighway needs a consumer highway 
patrol," Jeff Chester, Executive Director of CME said.  
"Our purposes in launching this campaign are twofold:

o   to ensure that telephone ratepayers do not bear 
an unfair share of the burden of the massive 
build-out of the phone network to provide video 
and advanced information services; and

o   to ensure that consumers have access to a broad 
range of programming, on a non-discriminatory 
basis, including public interest programming."

"A direct by-product of our efforts will be the 
creation of an efficient, competitive and open 
information superhighway," said Brad Stillman, 
legislative counsel for CFA.   

"A massive array of regulatory activity, just like the 
ones we have intervened in, will be necessary to 
implement any changes to the Communications Act," Dr. 
Mark Cooper,. Director of Research at CFA, noted.  
"The rhetoric of the information superhighway paints 
beautiful images of a free-flowing information 
teletopia, but the reality can degenerate into anti-
social, anti-consumer and anti-competitive 
programming, pricing and marketing practices.  We 
intend to prevent that."

"The US West Video Dialtone filing makes a mockery of 
the regulatory process," Chester added.  "It is so 
vague and incomplete as to make consumer protection 
virtually impossible.  It fails to identify facilities 
or architectures, gives no technical information, 
defines no network interfaces and makes no cost 
allocation.  As a result, consumers and competitors 
are at the mercy of US West/Time Warner, because it is 
impossible to ensure that cross subsidies will not 
take place, to prevent discrimination in access, or to 
provide competitors with open network opportunities."

"We are also deeply troubled by the prospect of 
electronic redlining in these Video Dialtone 
applications," Chester added.  "There is a strong 
likelihood that these new broadband facilities will 
only be built in the more affluent neighborhoods, 
bypassing lower income areas.  That would be 
unacceptable as we try to bring the information age to 
all Americans."

"The Bell Atlantic petition paints a caricature of 
competition," Cooper said.  "It promises, at best, a 
vertically integrated duopoly, with two--and only two 
firms --able to get on the information superhighway.  
Such an outcome is unacceptable to us, as it should be 
to the Department of Justice."

"Our response to the Bell Atlantic petition 
demonstrates that there were few public benefits to 
the now aborted Bell Atlantic-TCI merger.  Nor are 
there benefits for the public interest in the granting 
of a waiver," Cooper said.  (While the merger between 
the two companies  has been called off, Bell 
Atlantic's request for a waiver, which would allow the 
company to enter the long-distance market, is still 
pending at the Justice Department).    

The CME/CFA response points out numerous examples of 
contradictory policies advocated by Bell Atlantic 
which would place consumers at grave risk.

o   Bell Atlantic tells the Department of Justice 
that "go-it-alone undertakings by telephone and 
cable companies simply do not begin with 
adequate technical expertise and other resources 
to challenge well-established incumbents."  At 
the same time it tells regulators in Virginia 
that "the technology to provide a wide range of 
services over cable is entering the market 
today.  Cable firms therefore are perfectly 
positioned to evolve from their video niche to 
serve a much wider range of telecommunications 
markets."

o   Bell Atlantic changed its position on rate 
reductions for cable subscribers after they 
proposed to buy TCI.

o   Bell Atlantic tells the Department of Justice it 
can rely on MFJ prohibitions on manufacturing 
and Congressional prohibitions on direct sale of 
video, while it is working vigorously to 
eliminate these protections."

"In this campaign, we are committed to pursuing a 
broad public interest policy for the information 
superhighway at all levels of government--legislative, 
regulatory and judicial," Chester concluded.  "The 
question of electronic redlining and further analysis 
of excessive concentration resulting in anti-
competitive and anti-consumer practices will be the 
immediate areas of inquiry for our campaign."

                             # # #

The Center for Media Education is a non-profit public 
interest policy and research organization dedicated to 
promoting the democratic potential of the electronic 
media.  The Consumer Federation of America is the 
nation's largest consumer advocacy organization, 
composed of over 250 state and local groups with some 
50 million members, whose purpose is to represent 
consumer interests before Congress, Federal Agencies, and 
the Courts.


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         C E N T E R  F O R  M E D I A  E D U C A T I O N
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                      Washington, DC   20005
                        Tel: (202) 628-2620
                        Fax: (202) 628-2554
                        cme@access.digex.net

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