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Justice Department Probes Telecom Industry
Have the telecom giants been behaving badly? According to The Wall Street Journal, "The Department of Justice has begun an initial review to determine whether large U.S. telecom companies such as AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. have abused the market power they've amassed in recent years." The investigation is in its early stages and isn’t targeting any specific company yes. One potential benefit of the investigation? It could free the iPhone from AT&T: "Among the areas the Justice Department could explore is whether wireless carriers are hurting smaller competitors by locking up popular phones through exclusive agreements with handset makers, according to the people."
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How about the Government investigates its own illegal spying on Americans via the telecom giants? How about THAT? The Bush illegal spying on America plan has morphed into the Obama spying on American plan, and AT&T, Sprint, et al. are just lining up to help them break the law and peep at our email and listen to our calls.
Oh noes! Now the government will know my secret Enchilada Recipe! No one is safe I tell you! No one!
It doesn't bother me one bit if big brother wants to peek at my emails and phone calls. Know why? Because I have nothing to hide. Do you really have to think about it when faced with the choice of safety or privacy? If you would rather have terrorists run amok because you don't want some clerk at the feds pilfering though your messages it's probably because you are a criminal. In which case you deserve to get caught. The feds don't care about you scoring a bag a weed from your drug dealer. They care if you are trying to hurt Americans and American interests. Get over yourself for Pete's sake!
I think that the comment is valid, it probably does help our government invade our privacy when the mood suits them if the phone companies are giant behemoths. Don't have to mess around with a bunch of little guys and all these big execs love to glad hand each other all over the place.. Yikes! That is not a pretty picture. It is quite annoying to me, however, that these companies have soooo much power.
Here we go again! There was a reason that they busted up AT&T the first time!
Just another area where the Europeans outrank us, quality reasonable telecom services.
Yes, so easily forgotten. Local phone co. offered great service, such a change from Ma Bell. Now we have Ma Bell again and it all goes down hill. Only in America does lower or reasonable price mean less service!
Have they done what?!?!?
Have you gotten a phone bill in the last century?
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Don't go gettin your panties in a bunch.
The only change you will see is more increased fee's sub-standard service!
It's the flesh eating utilities (AT&T and Verizon act like utilities) especially the electrical utilities and the ass holes that regulate them are the worse. The two phone companies are pirahanas. Check your fone bill ! Go solar, wind and geo-thermal. Even hydro.
Increasing competition is a good thing... our country is now run by a relatively small number of massive corporations.
We aren't a nation for the people, of the people, by the people... We are a multi-national corporation which the people serve.
Socialism is the least of our concerns. Socialism is market control by the government. What we have now is Corporate Socialism. Which is worse? (At least the government is responsible to the voters...)
Yeah, nice to have someone big enough to stand up to corporations? We the people will just have to vote with out dollars and when we do corporations dump on the gov't, hence, we the people. Something about this system isn't right?
As an A T & T customer since 1999, I don't need a govt investigation to figure out that they've abused the free market place. For instance, when they made the AT & T cellphone customers "Cingular" customers and I had to pay a $35.00 fee in order to switch my service over to "Cingular" and I couldn't replace my broken phone unless I upgraded to "Cingular" - highway robbery and I made some definite complaints about that - even my cable company (which has changed names/companies four times in 20 yrs) isn't that bloodthirsty - 3 months later "Cingular" customers were again AT & T - obviously it was all a ruse in order to raise money. And I've always complained about the fact that the type of phone you use has to be based on your cellphone provider - it's a bunch of nonsense!!!! I agree with the Corporate Socialism comment!! Massive corporations have been growing since the early 80's during Regan's administration - so sad it's taken 29 years for our country to start waking up!!
Interesting. When you click on the WSJournal link, you get the WSJ webpage, a single additional paragraph, and an invitation to sign up as a WSJ subscriber, and pay yo $ for the
rest of the article. - Alas, I did not subscribe, but did read the one free paragraph.
"The review, while in its early stages, is an indication of the Obama Administration's aggressive stance on unenforcement. The Justice Department's antitrust chief, has said she wants to reassert the government's role in policing monopolistic and anticompetitive practices by powerful companies."
This "free" paragraph is splendid in getting to the crux of the matter. This story is obviousl a "plant" of some propaganda seed by our present Administration. Oh, this isn't an indictment of the Obama group, this is what always occurs with whatever Administration is in office.
When an Administration wants us to take our eye off of the ball. The question is what ball do they want us to not see?
While we are all now breathlessly watching what happens to AT&T and Verizon, will we forget about the banks jacking up interest rates on credit cards? Or is there some other little shim being slipped in somewhere?
Whatever...,I guess we can continue to munch on the Michael Jackson thriller news.
Thank you.
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