Jeannine Kenney Quotations

If you're a consumer who can afford to spend $200 or $250 a month on communications services, then maybe your total costs have come down. The reality is now that competition is all about the bundle of services, and each company has a vested interest in maximizing sales of bundled services within their own territory.

Anytime you're talking about bundles of services, you're really talking about making it harder for consumers to jump to other providers.

A second question is, will consumers be likely, even if there is education about what the government is conducting, will they even be likely to know what's coming and that they're eligible for this voucher? The answer is probably not.

We think this is unfair, unworkable and unacceptable. It virtually ensures that on Feb. 18, 2009, tens of millions of televisions go black.

There needs to be an explicit prohibition on discriminatory pricing.

Network operators have always functioned as neutral transmitters, meaning they don't control who you call, when you call, et cetera. So until this point, consumers were led to believe that they would not monitor communication on their networks absent a warrant.

Rather than provide for meaningful protections to ensure that large cable and telecommunications companies don't use their network ownership to impede competition, the bill strips the Federal Communications Commission of its authority to establish meaningful rules to protect consumers from these discriminatory practices.

If you are forcing consumers to adopt new technology -- whether or not they are ready -- you ought to provide full compensation for everyone.

Consumers should praise FCC Chairman Kevin Martin and Senator John McCain for striking at the heart of the cable industry's flawed pricing scheme which forces consumers to buy packages of television channels they don't want and shouldn't have to pay for. Today's action kick starts the national effort to give consumers' wallets a break and allow them more control over their television programming choices and cable bills.

Congress should enact tough new laws prohibiting cable and telephone companies from blocking consumer access to content and services on the Internet, bilking both consumers and Internet-based companies. If they don't, these big companies will use their market power to line their pockets by discriminating against competitors in favor of their own content and service offerings.