What If Competition Didn’t Exist?

Posted: 2/2003

What If Competition Didn’t Exist?

By H. Russell Frisby Jr.

IMAGINE
A WORLD IN WHICH no competition existed. It would be impossible to find your car
in the parking lot because everyone would be driving the same kind of blue
sedan. There would be only one flavor of ice cream. There would be no Super Bowl
or World Series.

In essence, the world would be
boring a place.

Competition in all aspects of life
creates a dynamic tension that makes everyone strive to go further, to explore,
and to innovate. To paraphrase noted industrialist Andrew Carnegie, competition
might be difficult for individuals, but it tremendously benefits the common
good.

There is no better illustration
about the benefits of competition than the advances in communications over the
last two decades.

Imagine if Ma Bell had not been
forced to split up. Would long- distance rates still exceed 20 cents a minute?
Yes.

Could we get in touch with family in
times of emergency, check the weather or send pictures using our ultra-small
mobile phone? No.

Would the Internet, and broadband
connections to it, exist? No.

These
cost savings, conveniences and technological innovations would have never
occurred, or at least developed at such a rapid pace, without competition.

Since well before the days of
AT&T divestiture, CompTel has been fighting on behalf of entrepreneurs and
the promise of competition. For more than 22 years, the association has
represented competitors of all sizes and types — from the small long-distance
companies taking on the goliath AT&T during the first monopolistic breakup
in the early 1980s, to the many local, national and international service
providers currently battling incumbents across town and around the world.

Throughout the last two decades,
CompTel has been at the forefront of addressing issues that impact competition
in all realms of telecommunications. CompTel is the association that Congress,
the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and state regulators look to when it
comes to understanding the concerns of competitors. As such, CompTel has taken
the lead in advocating policies and proposing solutions that benefit consumers
and competitive telecommunications providers.

CompTel maintains a close
relationship with key members of Congress, having played an important role in
the negotiations that ultimately resulted in the enactment of the 1996
Telecommunications Act. Now CompTel is actively working to establish
relationships with newly elected members of Congress, and is continuing to
strengthen its ties with committee leaders, to ensure that lawmakers understand
the telecommunications issues before them. In fact, members of both the Senate
and House often seek out CompTel’s input on important legislative issues because
the association is trusted for its deep knowledge about complex issues and is
valued for its pro-competition, pro-consumer stance.

The FCC and administration, too,
rely on CompTel’s input to help shape regulations on a variety of topics. The
industry has benefited tremendously from CompTel’s forward-looking approach. The
association often has broached vital issues before regulators and individual
companies realized there were potential problems. These issues range from
fighting for access to the unbundled network element platform (UNE-P) and
developing performance metrics and encouraging stricter enforcement of FCC
regulations, to establishing principles for access to rights-of-way and
monitoring the behavior of monopolies around the world to ensure that
competition prevails.

It is clear that CompTel’s efforts
have made a tremendous impact on the competitive landscape. Just consider the
progress that has been made in the seven short years since passage of the
Telecommunications Act. There is at least one competitor now offering services
to end users in 67 percent of the zip codes across the United States.
Competitors, the FCC noted in a recent report, now serve at least 21.6 million
switched access lines — about 11.4 percent of the nation’s lines. More
impressive is that about half of those lines are connected to residential and
small business customers — users that typically do not receive a high level of
service or innovative packages from the incumbent Bells.

Moreover, look at the growth of the
Internet and broadband — two revolutions that would not have happened without
the pressure of competitive companies rolling out DSL and other high-speed
access services. There are at least 12.8 million high-speed lines connecting
homes and businesses to the Internet, according to the FCC’s last count.

These are just a few distinct signs
that the ’96 Telecom Act is beginning to work as Congress intended. It is
abundantly clear that consumers want competition and that they enjoy the
alternatives our member companies provide. The lower prices, increased options
and innovative services are among the primary reasons for this groundswell.

The pro-competitive momentum will
not be easy to stop, even if the FCC’s key rulings take a decidedly pro-Bell
turn.

And, like that pro-competitive
force, CompTel cannot be stopped. True to Carnegie’s words, the last 18 months
have been difficult for many individual companies, as well as CompTel. However,
we all recognize that the end results are positive for consumers and the
country’s general economic well being.

CompTel will not let all this hard
work go to waste. The association will continue to be the eyes, ears and voice
of the competitive telecommunications industry, representing these interests in
Washington, D.C., and around the world. Our members will long benefit from the
policy representation, educational efforts, networking opportunities and
tremendous resources that CompTel puts forth in the defense of competition.

CompTel will not rest until it can
be assured that competition is well established and consumers are justly
rewarded.

H. Russell Frisby Jr. is
president of the Competitive Telecommunications Association