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California landline deregulation brings sharp rate increases

Los Angeles Times business columnist David Lazarus has been looking at California landline cost increases since the 2006 deregulation and found something interesting – and appalling. Instead of the promised competition and drop in rates residents have endured huge increases.

Natalie Billingsley, at the PUC’s consumer-protection arm, the Division of Ratepayer Advocates, told Lazarus, “It has substantively been a failure. All we have seen since deregulation is a constant increase in prices.”

Lazarus cited a subscriber who had a 260 percent increase since 2008 for basic AT&T measured service, and a simultaneous cut in available minutes. As a result, The Utility Reform Network (TURN), a San Francisco non-profit, is filing complaint with Public Utilities Commission (PUC) on behalf of all AT&T customers, saying that their rates for measured and flat-rate service far exceed “just and reasonable levels.”

And there have been increases across the board. The Times wrote, “There have been double- and triple-digit rate hikes for nearly all phone services, from call waiting to call forwarding, even though those services are automated and cost phone companies almost nothing.”

But 260 percent is meager compared to some increases. Lazarus wrote, “A 2010 report by the state Senate's Office of Oversight and Outcomes found that, thanks to deregulation, the cost of an unlisted phone number in California had skyrocketed more than 600 percent.”

Speed Matters has long warned about the downsides of telecommunications deregulations, and the problems it causes consumers.

Since deregulation, landline costs skyrocket (LA Times, Dec. 5, 2013)