Phone Firms Offer Services We Don’t Need
The average consumer may not be all that thrilled about the recent federal court decision that regional phone companies can go into the business of information services.
Not being experts, consumers don’t get all the implications. But they know telephone service has been extremely complicated since the 1984 breakup of the Bell system. And if Judge Harold Greene, who decreed the breakup, issued this new order only “with great reluctance,” what new complications lie ahead?
The experts dwell on all the gee-whiz products coming. The clever phone companies will give us databases, shopping services and telephonic electronic Yellow Pages, maybe even seating charts, building plans and medical records right through the phone.
Other experts predict big problems. When phone companies provide content as well as transport, they could squeeze out other information providers, creating a new monopoly.
Let’s talk more everyday fears.
Most consumers don’t want gee-whiz products and have only academic interest in competition. They want phone service--the ability to call people on a working instrument at an affordable price--and, given their experience with deregulation, are afraid of losing it.
It’s the phone companies who say consumers want information services, desperately. “For years,” a Pacific Telesis Group spokesman said, “consumers and businesses have asked us to provide information services, such as electronic Yellow Pages, but we have been unable to do so because of the restrictions.”
Even Judge Green called this argument “preposterous.” But doubtless, somewhere, there are people who believe that customers have been sending in their phone payments with scribbled notes begging, “Please, please, let us have home shopping!”
Unfortunately, big advances, particularly in science and technology, don’t always turn out as expected, and everyone’s aware of it now. People wonder what they’re letting themselves in for even while they’re begging the phone companies to move forward.
Miracle food additives are shown, 30 years later, to cause bladder cancer in rats. The trash in landfills hasn’t biodegraded. Computers that made it possible to store, retrieve and manipulate data also make it easy to intrude on our privacy.
Even phone deregulation was a mixed blessing. Who’d have thought the new marketplace could be so complex we’d need articles, even books, to help us choose telephones, long-distance carriers, calling cards? Who expected that 800 and 900 numbers would be a boon mostly to market researchers, rock groups promoting records, “party” lines and telemarketers waiting to capture our phone number, and maybe our credit card numbers, too.
What’s more, deregulation let many companies compete to provide some phone services, but also made the phone companies yearn to sell us more--information services, telephone equipment, long-distance services. Indeed, the seven Baby Bells have conducted a big campaign to persuade everyone they’re the most “well-suited” to do so since in the words of just one advertisement, they’re “already providing services to most of our homes.”
Some of what they want to provide is already available from other companies. Many people use their phone keys to get account information from bank computers; those with personal computers may even do their banking. Others can already access databases, order specific information or services and telecommute to their offices.
Who needs the phone companies? Many consumers would just as soon they stay out of it.
Maybe it was the flap about inside wire “maintenance” and phone companies’ poorly calculated but well-inflated charges. Maybe it’s the flap about 900 numbers and the phone companies’ disinterest in providing relief or protection for consumers charged (on their bills) for fraudulent or worthless services. Maybe it’s the flap over Caller ID--in which phone companies may soon be pushing both a product that reveals the caller’s number and the blocking that keeps it hidden.
The consumer’s biggest fear may be the very connection to phone service that makes the Baby Bells so “well-suited” to these other enterprises. Let experts debate whether basic phone customers will subsidize the company’s entrance into the new field, or the new optional services will provide revenue to keep basic phone rates low.
Consumers have more critical concerns. Phone companies billing for optional services can conceivably cut off phone service if customers refuse to pay a charge from a 900 service, and certainly from a long-distance carrier. Better to keep home shopping services (or databases or automated banking) separate. That way, if there is a snafu--someone orders groceries and four movies are delivered--he can fight it without losing his phone.
