Baby Bells Open to Antitrust Lawsuits 146
jobugeek writes "A New York appeals court has opened up the abililty for consumers to sue the Baby Bells for antitrust violations. The question now is, will anyone try to."
Where there's a will, there's a relative.
The Case Against Verizon (Score:3, Interesting)
Verizon is evil and vile, it would bring a stangation to American land lines
Verizon is also after your money. They have been raising phone rates constatly for the past 2 years at the rate of 0.2 cents per month. Please collect all your bills and do the math. This means eventually they'd be charing you a lot more than what you were playing with non-verizon.
Verizon needs to be dismantled. This would be good for you, for the DSL ppl, for the Internet providers and phone sex in general. Please lobby against this vile corporation. They are akin to Microsoft and Clearchannel (story for another day).
Lord Ranamaari
Triple Damages (Score:1, Interesting)
Well, maybe I'll get a check for $9 or something in the future... though more likely, free caller ID or something else not of the green paper variety.
Money for Homebrew DSL wannabes? (Score:3, Interesting)
you're running your own DSL connection on a dry-copper
pair (they don't like the fact that you're getting 1.5-2+ Mbs
and only paying about $20 per month).
I wonder if this decision (if it stands) will allow us to pursue
legal action against the Baby Bells? If it did, and the Bells
allowed Homebrew DSL, you'd see the fastest rollout of broadband ever!
Anyone up for a class action suit here?
Re:I would still like to see telephone companies (Score:5, Interesting)
First, it's we'll sell you caller ID. Then they sell the spammers an anonymous account. Then, they sell you a feature to block anonymous callers. Then they sell the spammers a feature to get through to people that block anonymous callers.
It's a frickin racket. This is what the MOB does.
Pay us some money and we'll protect you from spammers. Oh, the protection isn't working? Pay us some more money.
Not entirely their fault (Score:3, Interesting)
The first time I asked for a copy of my office's phone account info from the phone company -- several POTS lines, a couple of ISDN BRIs, an ISDN PRI and five DSS trunks -- I expected a page or two detailing the billing for the lines and maybe a page or two for some extras (DID blocks, etc). Naive me, I got what amounted to over *50* pages of billing information, often for each trunk member there were multiple entries for small charges of around $.50 each. I discovered why our phone system maintenance vendor employs a full-time ex-Qwest employee to decipher these things.
Anyway, the telcos deserve a rap on the knuckles for advertising just their tarrif rates, when they know that's not what people are going to be writing checks for. But the regulators and regulatory processes *also* deserve a (bigger) rap on the knuckles for making telephone billing so overly complicated; many of the charges on a phone bill are multi-layer (fed, state, local) taxes and fees.
It also doesn't help that what most non-rural customers pay for phone services isn't what it costs to deliver those services; cross-subsidies between service types further complicate simple pricing. Again thank the regulators.
It'd be nice if one day you could order telecomms services that had a price that you actually paid and could understand instead of a sea of regulutory nonsense.
More Interesting Still... (Score:3, Interesting)
BlackGriffen
Re:Triple Damages (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm convinced they're a conduit for passing money to lawyers while eliminating the public's ability to recover actual damages. Here are some examples:
I was involved in a suit against B of A in California. They were overcharging on something for home loans. While I have no idea how much the total settlement was for, I still have my check for $0.23. (yes, 23 cents)
I just got my check for NFL Sunday ticket's suit resolution. It seems two bar owners sued because they coulen't get single games - just the season package. I think the settlement was just under $3.5 million. The lawyers got a third, the two bar owners got $1,000 each (this is not a typo), and I received $32 and change although I have yet to realize that I was injured.
In some cases you don't get anything. I think Sears settled with a service lawsuit (again in CA) years ago where the lawyers got serious cash and everyone else got discount coupons on future Sears work. Let's see, they screwed me that last time they worked on my car. I'll feel better when they screw me this time at a discount!
There are numerous examples of class action suits putting good companies with good products out of business (think Silicon breast implants). No proof that there's any abnormal danger but the lawsuits have killed and industry and prevented good products from coming to market.
While there is limited good from these types of lawsuits (asbestos comes to mind) one questions if there isn't a better way. Most of these lawsuits border on the frivolous and the injured parties, if they are in fact even injured as in my two examples, get next to nothing. But with lawyers as the prime beneficiaries and lawyers as the primary law makers, I don't see this changing during my life time.
DSL ISPs? (Score:2, Interesting)
So I guess what I'm saying is that yes, individuals may very well take this action as a good thing and start suing the RBOCs for opening up their DSL to other ISPs (even if we have to use the RBOCs for just the local loop). This also might be a good thing for those looking to get into opening up cable lines to alternate ISPs.
It's just a thought (but right now I'm suffering from sleep deprivation, so it might be a dream).
Regulated monopoly? (Score:3, Interesting)