Taking the telephony plunge: why now? (Forum).(six reasons why the cable industry should offer local telephone services)

Multichannel News, June, 2002 by Lowe, Randall

The concept of telephone service provided by cable operators is far from a novel one. At least as far back as the early 1980s, cable operators began experimenting with using their facilities to provide the "last mile" for long-distance telephone calls, thereby bypassing the local telephone companies.

As regulatory policies developed in recent decades favoring competition in the provision of local telephone service, the idea took hold that cable operators were among the most likely candidates to provide local telephone service in competition with the local Bell companies and other independent local phone companies. Now, six years after Congress passed the Telecommunications Act of 1996--a law hyped as encouraging widespread competition in the provision...

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