Guest Editorial


This article was originally published in ComputerLink, a weekly publication of the San Diego Union Tribune, November 5, 1996.

PacTel Is Telling Only Half
the Truth About Congestion
By LARRY M. EDWARDS

PacTel’s corporate arrogance surfaces yet again. Chief Executive Michael Fittzpatrick’s comments at Westcon/96 regarding the impending “data tsunami” — “Internet Use Seen Choking Phone Lines,” (San Francisco Examiner, Oct. 23; Union-Tribune, Oct. 24) — are both self-serving and disingenuous.
    While we, indeed, may experience this data tsunami, PacTel is not an unwitting victim in the explosive growth of the Internet as Fitzpatrick wants us to believe. What’s missing from his picture? PacTel’s own culpability.
    Fitzpatrick would have us feel sorry for him and his unsuspecting company, the victim of Internet service providers (ISPs) who are able to offer low-cost Internet access because their operations are being “subsidized by the telephone companies.” As a result, according to Fitzpatrick, PacTel has spent $14 million upgrading its switching centers, and will have to ante up $500 million over the next five years to remain one step ahead of the “tsunami.”
    This hardly is the whole picture. What Fitzpatrick conveniently chose to ignore -- and the writer of the story failed to point out -- is that PacTel’s operating company, Pacific Bell, is one of the primary perpetrators of the very thing Fitzpatrick criticizes: Flat-rate fees for unlimited access to the Internet. 		OPINION                                

    Pacific Bell began hyping its own Internet access last summer, offering a free 30-day trial and unlimited Internet access for $19.95 a month. (Union-Tribune’s ComputerLink, Oct. 1) The marketing success of this new service is evidenced by the fact that, as a subscriber since early August, I now frequently get a busy signal when attempting to go on line, and even if I do connect, I am, at times, unable to send or receive e-mail, or to find an open gateway to the Internet.
    If PacTel/PacBell is a victim, it is of their own success in offering competitive prices — though certainly not competitive service, which leaves much to be desired in terms of customer support — for Internet access. Ergo, PacTel is a key element of the very problem Fitzpatrick blames on his competitors, the independent ISPs.
    This is not an unintentional oversight. The hidden agenda is that PacTel wants to raise the fees it charges ISPs using its infrastructure. This will give PacTel a competitive advantage in the lucrative Internet access market now experiencing exponential growth in this state, and would make PacBell a major player as the inevitable ISP consolidation takes place over the next two years or so.
    Fitzpatrick’s comments should be taken for what they are, shameless half-truths with which to marshall support for giving PacTel a leg up in its effort to close the gap between its slow entry into the Internet arena and those pioneers who showed PacTel the way into the cyber wilderness.

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Copyright © 1996, Larry M. Edwards