Consumer Groups Condemn Us West Tactics Watchdog Agencies Contend Company Stifles Competition

Consumer groups Wednesday condemned a litany of tactics they said US West Communications uses to foil competitors and confound consumers more than a year after passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 was supposed to deregulate the industry.

From access fees to the Yellow Pages, they said, the provider of local telephone service in 14 Western states has tried to maintain its monopoly and squeeze more revenues from captive consumers.

“This is the strongest indictment yet that US West has been blocking competition,” said Judy Krebs, associate director of Washington Citizen Action and one of the authors of a 16-page report entitled “US West’s Monopoly Game.”

“This is a report that will hopefully be a wake-up call,” she said. “We are very far from where we thought we were when the act passed.”

Krebs said the study is the result of common concerns identified by her group and others in the West fighting US West efforts to raise rates and discourage competition.

Last fall, the groups formed US West Territory Consumer Watch.

Spokesmen from several of the groups participated in a conference call in which they expanded on their conclusions, summed up in a list of 10 anti-competitive, anti-consumer tactics.

Bob Jenks of the Oregon Citizens Utility Board said US West was trying to back out of a commitment made five years ago that it would not try to spin off its Yellow Page operations.

Without revenues from that business, he said, consumer rates could be $50 million higher.

In Washington, a U.S. District Court last month threw out a US West attempt to separate Yellow Page revenues from the company’s rate base.

Jenks said US West also is pushing a change in the formula that determines how fast it can depreciate its equipment. If accelerated, consumers will pay more for phone service, he said.

Other US West actions that the watchdog groups cited as concerns were:

Blocking of interconnection agreements with other phone service providers.

Mandatory measured service instead of a flat rate for local calls.

Denying consumers ownership of their phone number, which could make it difficult or impossible to switch carriers.

US West spokeswoman Dana Smith said the claims indicated the groups were more interested in maintaining regulation than improving consumer choice.

“Competition is good for our customers and good for US West itself,” she said.

The company, Smith noted, has negotiated interconnection agreements with 17 other service providers, and wants to do more as it moves toward entry into the long-distance market.

But she said the effort to split Yellow Page revenues from other US West business was appropriate. The publisher, US West Direct, is a separate business, she said.

US West two weeks ago asked the utilities commission for a $50 million rate increase to improve the rate of return on its investment in Washington.

Last year, the company lost a major rate case before the commission. That ruling has been appealed to the state Supreme Court

Smith said the company has not been able to keep up with demand for new service in the state, where business depends on a high-tech infrastructure.

WUTC spokeswoman Marilyn Meehan said many of the issues raised by the groups are already before various federal and state regulatory bodies, or the courts.

Sorting them out, she said, will take time.

“You don’t want to do it in a way that causes irreparable harm,” Meehan said. “There’s lots of money at stake for everybody involved.”

, DataTimes