Gene Kimmelman Quotes (28 Quotes)

There is no reason why they shouldn't be able to serve everyone in a community.

I think we are on a slippery slope to something that hopefully will be much better for consumers. Consumers could wind up with more choices and more control over what they spend and what they get.

If approved, this merger will lead to higher local, long distance and cell phone prices for consumers across the country.

What they're doing is combining local telephone monopolies from the Rio Grande all the way to the Great Lakes plus California. These are markets that have not been opened to competition.

The bad news is that we may have lost the opportunity to also preserve enough spectrum for a fourth strong competitor in this market.

This competition is a phantom out there that's only visible to the high end of the market.

We are asking the Justice Department to step in and block this.

Every potential benefit they describe is exactly what monopolists always say You can get new services, but you have to pay more.

We will adamantly oppose this, ... This plan is like an industry cabal and demonstrates the lack of competition for the consumer business.

These were exaggerations. The market isn't developing to a competitive status nearly as fast as they had predicted and prices are going up for consumers. Consumers are getting the short end because these exaggerations drove Congress to a plan that was premature,

It is the inevitable backslide toward monopoly and results from excessive deregulation and weak antitrust oversight.

undermine more than 20 years of efforts to introduce competition into residential and long-distance telecommunications markets.

It's a clear industry strategy They are trying to find ways to push customers to spend more. There's no other reason for this other than their greed.

What happened today was (Martin) just blew an enormous hole in the fortress of the cable and broadcast monopoly,

The ballgame becomes now how each of the two industries that controls a wire can determine what content, what access, at what speed consumers and technologists can offer and retrieve services over those networks,

There's no question that there was an enormous exaggeration of the benefits of the new fee agreement that hid substantial rate increases at a time when the long-distance companies themselves are getting significant cost savings.

This is an earth shattering reversal in competition policy from an agency that broke up the ATT monopoly 21 years ago.

We are going to see fewer players, fewer choices for consumers, and that will lead to inflated prices and not as many good deals for consumers.

Congress and federal regulators need to look carefully at the lifeless competition their flawed policies have created and reject this merger.

Ultimately, dialing up an Internet Service Provider will be treated as a long- distance phone call. Everything about the FCC's analysis indicates that this will cause a price increase for the consumer.

The prices are soaring. With the end of final government oversight of cable rates, the prices will continue to soar, because most consumers do not have a choice. There's only one cable company in their community.

ATT is taking these cost reductions as profit.

This is the government making your TV go black and then only paying part of the costs for some of the people to make it work again, and none of the costs for others.

Approval of these mergers undermines more than 20 years of efforts to introduce competition into the residential local and long distance telecommunications market, ... The FCC promises cross-technology competition with Internet phone service on cable and telephone systems, but the Commission has failed to ensure that consumers will receive meaningful choices at fair prices.

We think this is really going to open up a whole new debate on the benefits of letting consumers pick their own channels on cable television.

Rubber-stamping these mergers is an embarrassing milestone in this nation because it puts an end to any real hope of head-to-head telephone competition.

This is an earth-shattering reversal of competition policy from the agency that 21 years ago broke up the Bell monopoly and today is coddling the dominant Bell companies who seek to re-monopolize each of their regions,

The government has been deceived before by promises that somehow more concentration would produce more choices and competition, when the result has been just the opposite. It shouldn't be fooled again.