This comes from my own point of view, not speaking as moderator. The Boston Globe, which has quite good reportage on telecom, printed several articles today about the merger between Bell Atlantic and Nynex. "Raymond W. Smith...as Bell Atlantic chief has aggressively promoted movies-on-demand and other high-tech services as the future." The statement implies that the new company will move fast to offer these things. Also, "A key reason Nynex and Bell Atlantic are combining forces is to enter the long-distance market, from which they had been barred until this year." The article didn't mention that the Telecom Act still doesn't allow them to offer long-distance--not until there's some evidence of competition in the local telephone market. Job loss is a major part of the merger, so the CWA is fighting it. We should all remember the rationale given by Al Gore and others for promoting the National Information Infrastructure: that it would lead to the creation of jobs. Yet, according to the Globe, "Already, telecommunications leads all other industries in job cuts....the major phone companies have shed 200,000 jobs since 1992." The conventional response is that whole new industries will arise from the new technological possibilities and re-employ all these people--does anybody see evidence of those jobs coming into being. (Maybe all those laid-off workers will have to be satisfied with lower costs for their movies.) Andy ~=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=~=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=~-~=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=~=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=~ Posted by Andrew Oram - •••@••.••• - Moderator: CYBER-RIGHTS (CPSR) Cyber-Rights: http://www.cpsr.org/cpsr/nii/cyber-rights/ ftp://www.cpsr.org/cpsr/nii/cyber-rights/Library/ CyberJournal: (WWW or FTP) --> ftp://ftp.iol.ie/users/rkmoore Materials may be reposted in their _entirety_ for non-commercial use. ~=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=~=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=~-~=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=~=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=~
