Deregulated: airlines, banking, cable TV, electricity, telephones.(special section - deregulation and consumers)(Industry Overview)

Imagine Bank of America simply reneging on your "free checking for life"; Sprint signing you up for eight-times-higher phone rates; AT&T Broadband charging $44 a month for a poor-quality cable-TV signal, kiss-off customer service, and not even The Weather Channel.

Unfortunately, there's nothing imaginary about treatment like that. There are no apologies, either. Broken promises, deceptive marketing, and dreadful service have become accepted business practices in an increasingly Wild West marketplace, where incessant telemarketers interrupt your dinner but customer service won't answer the phone.

Talk to Michael Jacob, a technical writer from Oakland, Calif., one of hundreds of consumers who wrote us about such problems over the past two years. Bank of America told him that it planned to add a monthly fee of up to $12 to his free-checking-for-life account. When he protested, the bank told him he would have to produce his original 1985 agreement with the bank. Of course, he couldn't.

How did business practices get so shabby? One root cause is an economic experiment begun in the 1970s: deregulation.

During the previous 80 years, policy-makers believed it necessary to regulate certain industries that tend to create monopolies or oligopolies of two or three giants likely to collude. One aim was to protect consumers from the lusty excesses of concentrated business power: price fixing, poor service, and scarce choice.

In the 1970s, however, proponents of deregulation argued that government rules stifle competition and efficiency. Deregulation was supposed to undo that and give consumers lower prices, better service, and greater choice as companies vied for their business.

Airlines were the first major consumer industry to be deregulated, in 1978. Banks, cable television, and telephone service followed in the 1980s. Other deregulated industries include trucking, railroads, and natural gas. Now electric utilities are doing it.