Have The Phone Companies Faked A Consumer Group To Raise Fees?

from the sneaky,-sneaky dept

Mon, Apr 25th 2005 8:07am — Mike Masnick

A telecom industry watchdog is now claiming that a bunch of the big telcos have teamed up to create a fake "consumer group" to support raising universal service fund fees -- most of which go to the phone companies as subsidies, but which is rarely reviewed to see if it's actually being spent on extending service to rural areas not covered (the point of the universal service fund). It looks like some of the same groups may behind this as were behind the questionable report on muni-broadband.

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3 Comments

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Nathan, 25 Apr 2005 @ 9:10am

No Subject Given
At the risk of sounding like I don't love First Amendment Rights, I truly believe some sort of laws need to be put in place that prevent companies, pr firms, and politicians from engaging in 'astro-turfing'.

For instance disclaimers of who is funding what, etc. should be required.

These deceptive practices are plain sickening.
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Karl, 25 Apr 2005 @ 10:46am

Re: No Subject Given
I've been saying it for a while.

While corporations have the right to free speech, they should not have the right to push propaganda, pretend to be objective consumer-centric sources, etc...

There needs to be a law (both in politics and business) that you may say what you wish, but you cannot say it via a front-organization designed to covertly influence public opinion...

Swift Boat Vets were just a brain child of men who watched Issue Dynamics and these other groups at work.
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cesar, 8 Feb 2007 @ 7:59am

phone company monopolies
Called Verizon to get a dry loop so I could FIRE AT&T, was told that AT7T owned the lines (my tail) that this will never be a posibility. Who can I contact to change this or what do I have to do in order to do this? Can anyone tell me?
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