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Article: Taking the telephony plunge: why now? (Forum).(six reasons why the cable industry should offer local telephone services)
- Article from:
- Multichannel News
- Article date:
- June 24, 2002
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. (US). This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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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 ...