More Half-Truths

A new special interest coalition has propped up once again in Washington, purporting to stand up for small businesses, but it doesn't add up. This new alliance is relying on completely flawed data and half-truths to make its case.

As you all know, I follow telecom issues closely, first because there is no issue more important for the future viability of small business owners, and second, because I have a special interest in this area and once had two telecom companies. At WIPP, we represent a number of small businesses and most specifically female entrepreneurs who seek and need the advantage of a competitive marketplace. Many companies today currently provide the broadband services my members rely on, thanks in large part to a regulatory framework established in 1999 by the FCC. They do their homework looking for the best, most reliable and competitively-priced service providers - often looking to other women-owned companies for their business as well as the traditional phone company, the newer upstart providers and even the cable companies, who have been very aggressive in wooing their business.  

What shocked me is that this new coalition asserts that competition has been thwarted and investment is not occurring. However surveys reveal that nearly 70 companies provide competitive special access services. 

As we represent thousands of women in business, we are not buying what they are selling because we have first-hand knowledge of what is occurring in the marketplace. Policymakers should be focused on fostering the investments that are occurring in new network technologies, such as fiber, to meet the challenge and demand of bandwidth-hungry applications that adversely affect our ability to deliver our products and services. Resorting to re-regulation of yesterday's technologies is not a recipe to deliver broadband and the latest technology to business consumers.