Was Gore pro-telecoms deregulation?

[AP]

In Joe Stiglitz's _The_Roaring_Nieneties_, Stiglitz describes the problems caused by deregulation and starts with a discussion of telecoms deregulation..

He describes his participation in a task force which was supposed to discuss telecoms deregulation and advise Clinton. The short story is that Clinton was trying to balance competing interests. He used the threat of veto when the Republicans tried to go to far, and they ended up with a bill the thought would be good, and they were taken by surprise by a few developments they didn't predict (one of which was the degree to which the big telecom companies fought to further their intersests, especially in the courts after the bill became law).

He says that the task force was headed by Gore. Other members were Reed Hundt, Bowman Cutter, Ann Bingaman, and Gregg Simon. He says that the task force divided into two camps: ardent deregulators and those who thought regulation was important.

Other than himself, he only identifies Ann Bingaman's views. He and Ann were for regulation. He summarizes the arguments the deregulators made to support their position without saying who exaclty put them forward. The arguments sounded illogical, contradictory and downright right-wing. There's no way, I feel, that the people making those arguments could have believed what they were saying.

Now, I remember Reed Hundt talking about regulation once when he was the FCC chairman. He was talking about instant messaging. It sounded so inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, but I thought that he must have known something that I didn't about potential uses for the technoloyg.

After reading Stiglitz, now I think that he and Gore must have been on the side of deregulation. In retrospect, I bet he knew that IM wasn't that important and that it was just him trying to sound like a Democrat when he was really for lax regulation of telecoms.

[Gman]

1. Clinton signed the 1996 Telecommunications Act

which brought about, among other things UNE-P which has caused the loss of millions of Baby Bell lines to competition. The Clinton administration facilitated the Telecommunications Act of 1996 so I would assume that Gore also supported it. Also remember that Clinton/Gore talked about the "Informaton Superhighway" that I am now using to post this message.

Overall there is not "lax regulation" of telecoms. If anything, regulation is in fact very heavy for the incumbent LECs. The Internet is actually a long distance product and is regulated as such. Anyone except the Baby Bells can get into long distance very easily. The Baby Bells have had to open their local networks to an acceptable level of competition (whatever that is) before they were allowed into long distance which includes Internet and moving data across LATA lines.

[NMDemDist2]

2. thanks G-Man

[AP]

3. Clinton took advice from the task force Gore headed.

The task force had people with very divergent opinions. The product of the task force was a balance of opinions. Gore could have been the person farthest to the right on deregulation for all we know.

Stiglitz, who favored regulation, seems to commend Clinton for threatening a veto if the bill had included Republican overreaching.

He also says that the bill was written with very vague terms which each side thought favored their side, but the courts had to interpret. I think he says that, for the most part, the courts ultimately didn't give the baby bells everything they wanted, but that the court battles gave them a lot of time to work things to their advantage.

Also, the bill was about much more than the baby bells having to open their lines to competition.

One interesting thing that Stiglitz says is that the telecoms claimed to believe that the ultimate product of the bill would be a competitive market. However, there are two types of competition in a monopolizable marketplace. There are marketplaces that are competitive to get into, but become monopolies for survivors, and there are marketplaces that are competitive once everyone has entered.

In the former kind of marketplace, companies are willing to dump a ton of money into them at the early stages knowing that if they're the winner, they'll have a monopoly as the sole survivior. In the latter, you don't gain an advantage by dumping money early, so you don't do it. You make prudent investments instead. Stiglitz notes that the telecoms were claiming that the marketplace was going to be competitive after companies entered, but the way they behaved (dumping billions into early stage domination) proved that they didn't believe that. They believed that they had a pliant congress and courts and a piece of legislation that would allow them to make huge profits off of consumers.

[Gman]

4. The Baby Bells have made little progress in the courts

and the BB's made no progress when UNE-P came up for review before the FCC. Court opinions have been mixed at best. If anything, the BB's are forum-shopping to find friendly courts to rule in their favor. Even still, their results are mixed at best.

[AP]

5. That's what Stiglitz says...

...with the exception that (IIRC) he thinks that the lawsuits bought them time, which has helped them.

I think he also says they benefit a great deal from re-deregulation of cable rates (or maybe it was another group that benefitted -- do the baby bells offer cable???).

[Gman]

6. I don't know if BB's offer cable

SBC did some time ago but now offers a deal with Direct TV. However, the end game for DSL is not just high speed Internet. Its to also deliver interactive services such as movies on demand, games, etc. Go figure this: DSL is regulated but cable modem ISP's are not.