Telecommunications: Ameritech Corp. is my local phone carrier; the company serves five states in the Midwest: Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio. Ameritech has been fined approximately 50 million dollars over the last three years (it was fined an additional 3.5 million dollars on Monday), for lack of adequate service and displaying a total disregard for competition clauses written into the deregulation laws. In Illinois it can take an average of two months to get new phone service hooked up, and its worse in Ohio and Michigan. Service calls—even emergencies—can take upwards to two weeks or more to get resolved, and customer service is abysmal; it take me on average three calls to Ameritech to resolve one issue!
My phone bill, which used to average around $11.00 – $12.00 a month local and another $8.00 or so long distance, before the breakup of Ma Bell, and the resulting deregulation, now hovers around $40.00 a month, and that is BEFORE I make a single call! When all is said and done, my average phone bill for local and long distance from two different carriers is about $100.00! Tell me who wins and who loses in this situation?
I thought deregulation was supposed to improve customer service, spur competition, and decrease prices!
Ameritech’s (and the other regional Bell’s) lack of service and responsiveness to outside providers of local phone service and DSL, has stifled competition to such a degree that many wholesale and retail DSL providers are going out of business; Northpoint Communications, my DSL wholesale provider was the latest victim. In it’s bankruptcy filing the company sited lack of cooperation from the regional Bell’s (including Ameritech) as a contributing factor in the company’s inability to generate revenue and provide DSL service to the customers in a timely manner. Case in point: it took 4 months to get DSL up and running in my apartment, mostly due to Ameritech’s stonewalling and low level of service and professionalism. It took three visits from Ameritech technicians to finally correctly install the last mile DSL connection onto my phone line!
