PERSPECTIVE ON COMMUNICATIONS : A Debate: Competition and Monopoly in the Information Age : Bell companies are bent on controlling all the information carried by phone lines. These are bullies to be feared.

With huge sums of money and little regard for public interest, the nation’s seven powerful regional phone monopolies are waging an expensive, outrageous campaign to turn seven years of sound telecommunications policy on its head.

Supposedly cut down to size by the 1984 breakup of American Telephone & Telegraph Co., the local phone monopolies are grown, regrouped and greedy, bent on controlling not only the wire running into your home, but the information it carries.

In this quest, as in others, they will let nothing--even the interests of consumers and the vitality of a free press--stand in their way.

Their target: the $49 billion-a-year market in electronic-information services offering everything from news and stock quotes to medical advice, beach reports and home shopping.

To hear them tell it, this is a duel of the titans: The “Baby Bells” up against newspapers and other current providers of information services. Don’t believe a word of it.

This isn’t a battle of corporate giants. It’s a David versus Goliath struggle over whether the phone company gets a green light to invade our lives to a degree never before imagined. With their heavy-handed tactics, the Bells have shown themselves to be what they’ve always been: not babies to be coddled, but bullies to be feared.

There are 15,000 information services in this country, offered by hundreds of suppliers. The telephone has become the gateway to a whole new world of electronic services, not because of the Bells, but because of the competition that has flourished under legal protection from their predatory behavior.

Since 1984, the Bells have been barred from this field--and with good reason.

For one thing, they hold an unfair advantage so long as their competitors must rely on Bell lines to deliver services. For another, the profits they’re guaranteed from their local phone monopolies can and have been used to finance new, expensive information services, forcing average ratepayers to pick up the tab.

If the Bells have their way, a vital element of our society and economy, the electronic lifeline into virtually every home and office, could be in the hands of what U.S. District Judge Harold Greene decried as “a few dominant, collaborative conglomerates.”

The consequences? At the mercy of the Bells, consumers could look forward to higher prices and less freedom of choice. Average telephone customers could wind up bankrolling the development of dazzling new voice, video or computer services that they don’t need or--worse yet--can’t even afford.

If the Bells are allowed to set the terms for competition in information services, the consumer will suffer. And if anyone doubts their readiness to exploit their government-granted monopolies to the fullest, just look at their record since 1984--billions of dollars in overcharges and abuses--and the strong-arming they’ve unleashed to prevent their greed from being restrained.

My office has been flooded with phone calls, letters and telegrams in an orchestrated drive by the Bells to head off legislation that would have them trade fair competition in local phone service for open competition in information services.

The Telecommunications Act of 1991, which I am proud to co-sponsor, would hurt no one and help everyone. Every communications business in America would enjoy greater freedom. Bell and non-Bell firms alike would be able to branch out into fields that they have sought for years--allowed to grow and prosper, but in a way that safeguards the public interest.

The sad truth is that the bully Bells have no interest in equality. With millions of dollars to spend, they’re pressuring Congress to let them have their way. Two of them, Pacific Telesis and Southwest Bell, have hit the airwaves with radio ads attacking those of us standing up for consumers. Another, US West, rigged special toll-free lines to inundate Congress with angry calls.

Don’t be fooled. The ads and frenzied phone calls are not signs of a public groundswell, but a slick, expensive lobbying effort that you and I, as telephone users, may be paying for. It’s an affront to consumers and a threat to something even more compelling: the future of a free press.

If the Bells begin offering news and advertising over their phone lines, hometown newspapers, deprived of revenues and readership, could be among the first casualties. Another would be consumer choice. The phone could supplant the newspaper and other independent providers as a major source of our daily diet of information, whether it’s sports scores, help-wanted ads or weather reports.

This is not a debate over market access; it’s about market control. It’s a question of having the chance to decide how and where we get the news and information so crucial to our daily lives.

This country was built on the principles of diversity and a free press. As we begin to realize the exciting full potential of the Information Age, I don’t want to see more American towns become media-monopoly towns--much less slaves to the bully Bells.