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IP: cannot tell who is who -- from telecom Digest
From: Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>
Date: Tue, 27 Jan 1998 06:52:12 -0500
From: Adam Gaffin <agaffin () nww com> Subject: Telecom Snow Job Date: Mon, 26 Jan 1998 13:05:01 -0500 Organization: Network World Fusion Reply-To: agaffin () nww com In a special report this week, {Network World} Senior Editor David Rohde takes a look at the proliferation of groups purporting to represent corporate and consumer telecommunications users and finds that many are little more than fronts for phone companies. You can read his complete report at: <http://www.nwfusion.com/news/0126snow.html>http://www.nwfusion.com/news/01 26snow.html If you haven't used NWFusion before, you'll have to register first, but it's free. Here's the beginning of his piece: Washington - Last October, the Federal Communications Commission received a 40-page legal briefing with three appendices from a group calling itself the Ad Hoc Coalition of Corporate Telecommunications Service Managers and Telecommunications Manufacturing Companies. The coalition, on behalf of signed users, urged the commission to approve BellSouth Corp.'s hotly debated application to enter the long-distance market in South Carolina. The group said it was certain that doing so would give users another option for long-distance service and force recalcitrant long-distance carriers to finally start competing for local business. There was just one problem: None of the users were in South Carolina. The brief was written by Washington, D.C., communications lawyer Rodney Joyce, but the users contacted by Network World said they never paid Joyce to write the brief. Instead, they said Joyce contacted them to cosign what they thought was an objective statement to the FCC on increasing competition in telecommunications. Who paid for the brief? Joyce's client: BellSouth. Welcome to Washington, D.C., where the 2-year-old Telecommunications Act of 1996 is falling apart and two groups of warring carriers have desperately sought to marshal a confused public to their way of thinking with ''user groups'' that produce surveys, filings and studies proving it is the other guy's fault. Adam Gaffin Online Editor, Network World agaffin () nww com / (508) 820-7433
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- IP: cannot tell who is who -- from telecom Digest Dave Farber (Jan 27)