With more firms competing, long distance costs have lowered.

With more firms competing, long distance costs have lowered

Competition is the environment in which consumers come out better, but monopoly is the environment favored by those who want to control the marketplace.

There is no better example of these forces than the long distance telephone marketplace. For 50 years, from 1934, when the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) was created, to January 1984, when the American Telephone & Telegraph Co. (AT&T) agreed to divest itself of its 22 Bell Operating Companies, competition in the long distance market was practically impossible.

In its Notice of Proposed Rule Making dated April 13, 1990, the FCC listed …