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.

239

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.

213

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

156

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.

152

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.

126

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

124

This is an earth shattering reversal in competition policy from an agency that broke up [the AT&T] monopoly 21 years ago.

119

This merger is extremely dangerous for consumers.

113

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.

110