Tag Archives: high speed

I have a friend who lives in a small city of ~30,000 people. The entire city is controlled by a greedy phone company. If you want landline phone service or local internet you must use them. The prices are not competitive. He is paying $20/month for a dial up internet account + $30/month for the stupid phone line to use said account. The phone company will offer him “high speed” DSL internet for ~$80/month (750kup/750kdown) which is not even that fast. There is no option to use Sprint, MCI, AT&T, etc…just his crappy greedy phone company. Is this legal? It’s a total monopoly.

I have a friend who lives in a small city of ~30,000 people. The entire city is controlled by a greedy phone company. If you want landline phone service or local internet you must use them. The prices are not competitive. He is paying $20/month for a dial up internet account + $30/month for the stupid phone line to use said account. The phone company will offer him “high speed” DSL internet for ~$80/month (750kup/750kdown) which is not even that fast. There is no option to use Sprint, MCI, AT&T, etc…just his crappy greedy phone company. Is this legal? It’s a total monopoly.
I believe that this company did indeed install the phone wiring for the city…but for some reason I didn’t think that would make them exempt from maintaining a monopoly. Unfortunately there are no other companies for him to choose from. I’m just irritated to see this company ripping off so many people.
And yes, this is in the USA. The website for his phone company is www.solarus.net or www.wctc.net
Bringing other companies in would be good. Unfortunately it would need to be a BIG company like AT&T, MCI, etc. because this phone company keeps buying out the other companies that startup.