Verizon's Deal With Big Cable Spells the Demise of the Telecom Act
By Alliance for Community Media
Opening up communications markets was the purpose of the 1996 Telecommunications Act. The Act was designed to help phone companies get into the pay-TV business, and cable companies get into the phone business. Yet after a series of regulatory blunders, this promise of increased competition and lower prices has become a distant memory, like 7-Up Gold. And the situation is only getting worse.
Just last month Verizon announced it had signed a $3.6 billion deal with its erstwhile competitors Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks. In many ways, this announcement placed a capstone on the grave of the 1996 Telecom Act's biggest promise to America: genuine competition in communications service offerings.
Link to complete article--
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joel-kelsey/verizon-cable-tv_b_1186219.html 