‘Probably the greatest problem under the Telecom Act has been the...
“Probably the greatest problem under the Telecom Act has been the difficulty in getting the FCC to write rules that meet court scrutiny,” American Enterprise Institute fellow Harold Furchtgott-Roth told reporters Mon. “If someone said in 1996 that 6…
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years later there would not be final rules, a lot of [Hill members] would be surprised,” said Furchtgott- Roth, ex-FCC comr. With 6th anniversary of Act approaching on Feb. 8, he questioned how corporations could operate without final rules governing their businesses: “It must be very difficult to make investment decisions.” Also speaking at news briefing, AEI fellow Gregory Sidak said he and economist Jerry Hausman of MIT had completed study showing that people with low incomes and poor education paid more for long distance service than other people. They tended to use higher cost basic services for reasons Sidak said he couldn’t explain. However, he said, such people are doubly hurt by fact that cost of basic phone service has risen while discount services and access charges have dropped. AT&T spokesman reacted strongly to study, saying there was “no correlation between income levels and those who subscribe to the basic rate schedule.” Furthermore, he said, “it’s patronizing and demeaning for this paper to say low-income people don’t shop around for long distance or any other service they are buying.”