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Search Terms: telecommunications act of 1996

Document 339 of 784.

December 5, 1999, Sunday

SECTION: Business; Ed. Final; Pg. 2G

LENGTH: 1040 words

HEADLINE: LETTERS

BODY:

U S West's 'cynical strategy'

The Dec. 1 News Business section contained two articles that crystallize the difficult transition from a telephone monopoly to a fully competitive market.

The first article that caught my eye revealed documents that U S West had tried to keep secret. During the economic boom times for the company in the mid- '90s, U S West was actually decreasing the amount of money they spent to maintain the local phone system. The resultant bad service has been well documented. The second article was an announcement from U S West that they deserved to be further deregulated in the long-distance market. This further deregulation tests the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which stated that U S West and the other Bell monopolies would be allowed into long distance only if there were full competition in the local telephone market. In addition, there will be a bill in the Colorado legislature to deregulate U S West in regards to local service.

These two articles dovetail in exposing a rather cynical corporate strategy from U S West: use monopoly customers as a ''cash cow'' while slowing investment and maximizing profit, keep competition out of the local market, and become a deregulated monopoly to avoid any obligations a monopoly owes the public it serves.

If the Legislature and the Public Utilities Commission cave in to the powerful U S West monopoly, we can expect higher phone bills, bad service, and a continued lack of competition for residential and small business customers. The Telecommunications Superhighway looks like Interstate 25 at rush hour - going nowhere fast.

Chuck N. Malick

Legislative director

Colorado Public Interest Research Group

% BC% Microsoft was hardly a pioneer

In regard to the Nov. 28 Wall Street West article by columnist Joseph Perkins, ''Fed 'Jihad' Against Microsoft Not Justice'':

Jihad-Shmeehad. Perkins is in the enviable position of being able to revise history. Microsoft Word was hardly ''light- years ahead'' of similar products. For years, it was the laughing stock of the word processor arena.

I wonder if Perkins ever tried Aldus PageMaker, WordPerfect, Borland Sprint, or (gasp!) an Apple Macintosh computer? Or did these things ever really exist? You can't find them on store shelves any more.

Does it matter that Bill Gates denounced the Internet as an immature curiosity a few years back and had to scramble to copy the functionality already available in browsers like Mosaic? Was denouncing the Internet part of his strategy of bringing it to consumers?

Did Microsoft invent the multitasking operating system, or did they copy functionality already available in products such as AlloyOS, Multi-DOS, DesqView or any of countless other applications that filled a gap left by the fact that such a version of Windows was still years away? Boy oh boy oh boy.

Look around, Mr. Perkins. The likes of Intel and IBM are pouring untold millions of dollars into operating system companies like Red Hat and Caldera. What gives? Part of a grand, secret strategy to funnel even more money into Gates' coffers? Or does it indicate desperation on the part of major independent hardware vendors to break Microsoft's cycle of dominance?

I suppose you've done your research and are simply not impressed with the other operating systems available on the retail PCs that people buy at CompUSA, Frye's, etc. Oops - forgot - there aren't any.

To complete that train of thought, if it hasn't practiced monopolistic or predatory practices, Microsoft must have been the only company innovating over the last 20 years. Therefore, they are entitled to whatever money they can shake out of American consumers'pockets. It stands to reason that if other people had innovated, there would be competition, no?

Otherwise, during that time, everybody else must have been asleep at the keyboard in a sort of Rumpelstiltskin-like reverie. Our fault. Geez, honey, I forgot to innovate at work again. My fault. Gates is going to clean our collective clocks now. Maybe if I innovated tomorrow, I could create an OS that ships on 96 percent of all consumer PCs. Yeah, that's it. I'll get a good night's sleep tonight, so I can innovate in the morning and probably start getting orders from all the big OEMs by afternoon at the latest.

Nothing personal . . . just thought that as a hardcore software developer that's been in the PC industry since its inception, I could shed a little light.

Jim Kelsey

Erie

Forget me in Microsoft lawsuit

In the Business Briefing section of the Nov. 24th edition, headlined ''Microsoft lawsuits piling up,'' the story of some other lawyer trying to file a class-action lawsuit on behalf of computer users makes me wonder which computer users he's talking about.

Are you honestly trying to tell me that $89 is too much for an operating system that performs as well as Windows does (most system crashes of Windows are caused by third party software code conflicts) and includes a browser with the power of Internet Explorer? How many computer users find Linux or Unix as easy to use as Windows, and since when is it considered illegal to maximize profits? You design a product, and you get as much as you can for it.

I wonder if this software-savvy lawyer has priced any other good software lately. There are hundreds of other programs that sell for well over $89.

The program that allows all of these programs to run at all, Windows, is a steal at $89.

I use Apple Computers and have used Netscape's browser, but I prefer and have been using Microsoft's products for about 15 years, so don't file any lawsuits on my behalf, thank you.

Bernie Shwayder

Denver

Hi Ho humph; let north Denver be

In the Nov. 24 Business section, I read about the two realty firms that are merging and want to call north (west) Denver ''Hi Ho.'' Please leave ''Hi Ho'' to the Seven Dwarfs; it's silly.

We are not even northwest Denver. We are north Denver. Just ask Gene Amole. North High School is in north Denver, East High School and Manual High School are in east Denver. Please, out-of-towners and media, don't change us.

Virginia E. Kelly

North Denver

NOTES:
LETTERS
OPINION PAGE

LOAD-DATE: December 7, 1999

Document 339 of 784.


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