A column from today’s Washington Post, “Civil Rights Unplugged” by C. Delores Tucker, begins as follows:
(C. Delores Tucker, who was active in numerous civil rights causes for many and was co-founder of the National Congress of Black Women, died this week at 78. She submitted this column to The Post earlier this month.)
Picture for a minute a major financial institution petitioning Congress for special rules to allow it to provide loans only in certain communities throughout the country. “The cities are off limits!” says this fictional creditor, “and the moderate, middle-income communities . . . forget about it! They’re not high-end enough.”
Were such a corporate actor to step into the political arena, civil rights and political leaders would be quick with their denunciations, attacking the proposal as the kind of odious bigotry seen in a bygone era. Yet this is exactly what the Bell telecommunications monopolies — Verizon and SBC — are proposing to Congress and to legislators in California, New Jersey and other places around the country. They are insisting that lawmakers bless their proposal to roll out new digital television and advanced broadband services only to the more affluent.
I am not familiar with the telecommunications policy issue Ms. Tucker discussed and so have nothing to say about the substance of her column, but I do urge you to …
“Picture for a minute” virtually all of our large corporations, media organizations, and elite (and not so elite) educational institutions in effect petitioning the courts (they would probably be afraid to petition Congress) for special rules to allow them to engage in racial discrimination so that they could avoid having to hire, admit, promote, etc. too many people from certain racial and ethnic groups.
Were such [corporate actors] to step into the political arena, civil rights and political leaders would be quick with their denunciations, attacking the proposal as the kind of odious bigotry seen in a bygone era.
Wouldn’t they?
Now, understand that I undergo terrible withdrawal symptoms whenever I’m out of town and have to do without broadband, but even I can’t see access to broadband as a civil right.
My favorite part:
If you think that gas prices are soaring, wait until you see what happens to phone prices as a result of the elimination of competition in that industry. Hearing SBC and Verizon preach competition is like listening to Ron Artest preach good sportsmanship at an NBA game.
The late Ms. Tucker did not understand that the old-style phone companies are in a major dither because there are a lot of broadband providers, and an increasing number of internet-phone-service providers who, together, make it possible for anyone with broadband access from any source to get unlimited phone service for a ridiculously low flat rate. We are currently paying twenty bucks a month for unlimited phone calls anywhere in the US, and while calls to other countries are metered, they are also ridiculously cheap. Result: some twelve or thirteen phone calls from SBC to my home office, each slightly more desperate than the last, each offering an ever-so-slightly better deal (none approaching the one we already had). Until, after pleading with the well-meaning callers about six times that they were only wasting time and money calling us, one of them mentioned that they had a do-not-call list, and would I like to be placed on it? Um, yes, please.
My point is that the ex-Bells are desperate, because people in those “affluent communities” are deserting the old phone system for Internet-based services left and right, and the only way they can compete is to switch themselves. But it’s likely prohibitively expensive to do it all at once, so naturally they’d “wire up” first the places with the largest numbers of people likely to switch already. People with fast computers, people likely with some sort of broadband already. People with the means and the gadget-fascination to try out services like this. People whom they are losing very, very rapidly as customers.
There are only two drawbacks that I know of to Internet-based phone services, by the way. The first is that if your computer crashes or your power is out, they don’t work, obviously. (This is what cel phones are for.) The second is that ordinarily you have to dial a full (ten-digit) number rather than skipping the area code in your own locality, and you can’t dial out 911 as emergency number, but have to know the local emergency number and dial all ten digits. Except that the latter is being fixed as we speak, at least here: our provider says seven-digit dialing and three-digit dialing of emergency numbers are both imminent.
Michelle, I don’t even have to have myh computer on for the phones to work. The interface goes through my router.
The same whining by those left out was done back when the phone companies were converting switching offices to handle tone dialing and the attendant features this kind of equipment brought.
This equipment went in in exchanges handling a lot of business traffic, and of course it was available to residential lines running out of the same office.
I remember the folks in Sucker Creek Oregon (known more conventionally as Lake Oswego). Their exchange fed mostly houses and small local offices and businesses. They got tone dialing last, even though they whined about not getting it as soon as “those people” in North Portland.