Cable a la carte: pay per channel.(View point: the consumers union perspective)

Did you recently open your mail to find that your cable bill is going up again? Did it come with a cheery message that you'll be getting a bunch of new channels that you didn't ask for and don't want?

The fact is that cable companies are price-gouging and underserving consumers. Newspaper reports from across the country show that some consumers are being hit with annual increases of more than 7 percent. Residents of Kearny, Neb., and towns nearby have seen their rates increase 36 percent since late 2001.

This is not a new trend. In the eight years since the federal government started deregulating cable-industry prices, rates have skyrocketed 56 percent, almost three times the rate of inflation. Consumers fed up with those bills have nowhere to turn, since most have only one choice of cable provider or satellite service. And satellite sometimes lacks popular channels and can be costlier than cable.

While cable companies offer more channels than ever, consumers are forced to pick from a limited number of channel packages rather than choose the individual channels they actually want to watch. The government's investigative arm, the General Accounting Office, reported that households receiving more than 70 channels watch, on average, only 17 of them.

It's time for Congress to step in and deliver to consumers real choice and real competition. It is no secret that more competition means lower prices. The GAO also found that when consumers can choose between two cable providers, they pay 15 to 41 percent less than when only one cable company is available. Unfortunately, only 2 percent of all consumers have that option. If everyone had a choice, the savings could amount to about $4.5 billion a year.

How can we get more competition? Congress can make it easier for new companies to enter the cable market by preventing mergers between companies that create programming and those that deliver it. But ...