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protect them with regulatory oversight that includes rate structure and quality of service.
The initial bill met with serious opposition in the House of Delegates from competitive local phone companies, consumer organizations and rural Virginians. As a result, it has been modified toward a less direct way of accomplishing the goal, offering instead a two-sentence bill that keeps the SCC in charge but creates enough ambiguity in the law that a higher rate could be argued.
Proponents claim they want to see competition in rural communities too, and that if prices rise competitors wall begin to look at rural communities as opportunities to invest. That raises the obvious question of how high is high enough to attract competitors and how long would an unregulated monopoly be able to charge its customers without oversight before a competitor came in to offer a lower-cost alternative? It is also curious that none of the competitive local phone companies like this proposal either^) which suggests that they don’t see this bill as an avenue toward opening new markets for their services.
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