One Big Telecoms Company

[Duncan Frissell <frissell@panix.com>]

At 01:12 PM 11/13/96 -0800, Declan McCullagh wrote:

>* Dave warns us to consider "what would happen if one parent company owned
>*all* communications media." Then we have problems. I've written about
>this in an Internet Underground magazine column. However, this is not the
>case now. Or are you arguing the government should get involved and force
>Gilmore to allow Vulis on his list?
>

The risk of "one big company" owning all communications that lefties on the
net spend a lot of time worrying about is a real screamer.  We had "one big
company" controlling telecoms in most countries on earth for the last 100
years (those were the government monopoly PTTs).  In spite of the fact that
those PTTs were protected from competition by everything up to and
including (at least in the case of BT and France Telecom) nuclear weapons,
they lost their monopolies.  Two days ago, the UK announced that they were
granting licenses to all 46 companies that have applied to carry bits into
and out of the UK.  DT is being sold off starting in January.  If
government monopolies can't hack it, what chance do private companies have?

DCF