Regulators Set Rules for SBC PacBell

“Lines Drawn in Battle Over Long-Distance,” [Dec. 23] missed the key point about our application to offer long-distance service: Regulators set the conditions for SBC Pacific Bell’s entry into the market, and we’ve met them.

Federal communications law requires that we meet a 14-point checklist to ensure that our network is open to competition. The California Public Utilities Commission has added hundreds of additional conditions since 1998. And we’ve fulfilled those conditions, too.

Now, as the CPUC is poised to vote on our application, competitors are desperately trying to spread confusion by raising issues unrelated to long-distance. For years, they’ve been trying to keep us out of the market--at a cost to California consumers of more than $1 billion a year.

The story failed to note that, at recent CPUC public participation hearings in Los Angeles and San Francisco, dozens of consumer, labor and business organizations representing thousands of Californians endorsed our entry into the long-distance market.

The testimony was overwhelmingly in support because these groups know the track record of long-distance competition that has occurred in nine other states. When SBC Pacific Bell is allowed into the market, competition will intensify for residential and business customers in both local and long-distance services.

The CPUC has spent nearly four years considering this issue--they raised the bar, and we’ve cleared it. It’s long past time for California consumers to receive, like more than 75 million other Americans, the benefits of long-distance competition.

Cynthia Marshall

Senior Vice President,

Regulatory Affairs

SBC Pacific Bell

San Francisco

Labels Need Good Albums, Not Just a Hit

I can’t believe the record companies are whining that they’re losing money because of their own stupidity [“Labels Singing the Blues Over Expensive Failures,” Dec. 26].

How many employers would give someone an $80-million (most likely non-recoupable) paycheck before they do anything for them? They invest millions in new acts that are signed on the basis of looks and one potential hit, which they build an entire album around.

With the advent of sites like Napster (which the record companies completely missed the boat on by not cutting a download deal), CD burners and cable modems, it shouldn’t come as a shock that people download the singles they like for free instead of spending almost $20 just for one song.

If the record companies really want to get people into the stores, cater a little more to the people who have the money to spend and put out an album with 10 or 12 great songs people will listen to from start to finish.

Mike Conley

Morristown, N.J.

I believe the reason CD sales are down is because of the demise of Napster.

Kids can’t sample songs anymore and the only thing left is the graft that is inherent in the lousy radio we get here in Los Angeles.

As a former managing director of the National Academy of Songwriters, I understand why writers and publishers went after Napster. But I think, in retrospect, it was killing the goose that laid the golden egg.

Napster allowed a free exchange of so many “album cuts” and other oddities, I believe it actually encouraged CD sales. Nobody buys music because nobody knows what’s out there that isn’t being promoted by the “those who think they know what we want.”

A smarter move would have been to measure the loss of revenue from Napster and write it off as “promotional investment.”

Steve Schalchlin

Valley Village

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