NC Lawmakers May End Local Phone Company Oversight

Advocates for consumers and the elderly argue that parts of rural North Carolina still lack wireless or cable telephone service.

"Many people in rural areas do not have other communications options," said Al Ripley, a consumer advocate for the North Carolina Justice Center. "It's going to be harmful for consumers because it deregulates service in North Carolina to such an extent that consumers will not be protected against rate increases and poor quality of service."

Tying price increases for basic service to inflation is good, Ripley said, but the Utilities Commission also has the power to cut rates, which happened four times this year in the case of Gastonia-based PSNC Energy.

Tennessee, South Carolina, Alabama, Indiana, Mississippi, Missouri and Nevada have passed similar legislation. A report last year by the National Association of State Utility Consumer Advocates was critical of the benefits to consumers from price deregulation efforts so far.

"We look at these efforts skeptically because, number one, we don't see competition" for residential services, with wireless service often not replacing a landline telephone but adding to it, said David Bergmann, Ohio's assistant consumer's counsel and chairman of the NASUCA telecommunications committee. "We see it as a way to raise rates and lower service quality."