DIALUP: ALL DRESSED UP AND NO PLACE TO GO.

It used to be that Americans could boast about their superior telephone service to the rest of the world. -- Not anymore.

While half of the world's population does not have access to even a single telephone, basic telephone service in the United States has deteriorated to a point that it needs some serious government oversight and stricter regulations.

It may all be well that the U.S. government created the breakup of Ma Bell's (AT&T) monopoly in 1984, but the regional Bells (some of which are now merged) are still pursuing their own monopolies and poor service to both residential and business customers.

The 1996 Telecommunications Act has been the biggest joke of the 20th century and the telcos have pretty well run roughshod around it. - Only the 1934 Telecommunications Act appears to be more or less intact and the ruling law.

Although the AT&T breakup and deregulation was widely hailed as opening the door to new telecommunications technologies - it has been the political scene rather than the technical scene covering the telcos that has dominated FCC (Federal Communications Commission) actions ever since.

An early warning sign was the Subscriber Line Charge (SLC) - often referred to as a "Federal Access Charge" which is actually a subsidy to the telcos which pleaded poverty at the beginning of their creation. This charge was approved and endorsed by the FCC. -- The SLC has continued to rise nearly every year with no end in sight while the telcos earn excessively well over the average business return on investment (ROI), and even without any subsidies, despite the fact that most of them are still offering poor POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) over deteriorating lines.

However currently profitable, the regional Bell's present profit bubble may not last as long as many think while they pursue broadband, data, and other priorities while letting their obsolete networks, designed for voice, deteriorate and continue to install obsolete equipment to prop it up from falling over. -- What the regional Bells don't want to do is give up any of their control over what is known as the "local loop" - the link between the CO (Central Office) and the subscriber's premises - and that is where the majority of problems arise. -- Qwest could be the first regional Bell to go under.