Bellsouth can 'go legit' thanks to Legislature
Rusty Tanton | Bio
An ideal government strikes a regulatory balance between protecting constituents and not strangling businesses with over-regulation. It's an imperfect art form that to do well requires a delicate touch and a moderate temperament, both of which this Republican-run Georgia Legislature lacks.
SB120, which strips the Public Service Commission of all power to regulate wireless broadband, is an example of this Legislature's heavy touch approach.
Most of us can probably agree that the government-created monopoly BellSouth enjoyed on phone lines was a recipe for technological stagnation, bureaucracy run amok and price gouging. I'm supposed to pay 50 bucks per month for local calls and no long distance? Please.
So, then, the answer to wipe away the BellSouth's monopoly must be to wipe away all the rules that gave it a monopoly to begin with, right? Strangely, no.
It should come as no surprise that BellSouth was lobbying heavily for SB120's passage. See, thanks to this bill, BellSouth (or whatever AT&T renames it) gets to carry all its unfairly-gained wares into the Wild West broadband market of the next decade.
It will play out like a mafia family using its racketeering money to "go legit" (investing illegally-gained money in legal enterprises).
This comes at the same time BellSouth has asked Congress for the ability to double-bill content providers who provide rich content.
Already, America ranks somewhere between 12th and 16th in broadband Internet adoption (according to a Sept. 2005 report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project), a statistic that puts the U.S. at a competitive disadvantage compared to the rest of the world.
If BellSouth gets yet another government-created stranglehold and leverages its monopoly to fine the most innovative content providers, that's exactly where the U.S. (or Georgia, at least) will stay.