A great article alleging corporate collusion among regional Bell Operating Companies (RBOCs). This is occurring with full complicity from the Republicans, who apparently see no problem with monopolistic threats to the free market when it affects their cronies in the industry.
"It's not like some seeds fell on the rocks, and there were patches where no grass grew. No grass grew, period, and that means only one thing: that the ground was poison," Berninger says.
Berninger is not the only observer who sees a problem with how local competition is developing, although other critics aren't quite as vehement.
U.S. Reps. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) and Zoe Lofgren (D-San Jose) recently urged Attorney General John Ashcroft in Dec. 2002 to initiate an antitrust review of RBOC out-of- region competition because having an arrangement to carve up markets would be a violation of antitrust laws. The letter apparently has elicited no follow-up.
"It's not like some seeds fell on the rocks, and there were patches where no grass grew. No grass grew, period, and that means only one thing: that the ground was poison," Berninger says.
Berninger is not the only observer who sees a problem with how local competition is developing, although other critics aren't quite as vehement.
U.S. Reps. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) and Zoe Lofgren (D-San Jose) recently urged Attorney General John Ashcroft in Dec. 2002 to initiate an antitrust review of RBOC out-of- region competition because having an arrangement to carve up markets would be a violation of antitrust laws. The letter apparently has elicited no follow-up.
