Gene Kimmelman Quotations

What they're doing is combining local telephone monopolies from the Rio Grande all the way to the Great Lakes plus California. These are markets that have not been opened to competition.

Ultimately, dialing up an Internet Service Provider will be treated as a long- distance phone call. Everything about the FCC's analysis indicates that this will cause a price increase for the consumer.

We'll be extremely disappointed if antitrust officials do not require more substantial divestment of assets.

The prices are soaring. With the end of final government oversight of cable rates, the prices will continue to soar, because most consumers do not have a choice. There's only one cable company in their community.

If approved, this merger will lead to higher local, long distance and cell phone prices for consumers across the country.

I think we are on a slippery slope to something that hopefully will be much better for consumers. Consumers could wind up with more choices and more control over what they spend and what they get.

We think this is really going to open up a whole new debate on the benefits of letting consumers pick their own channels on cable television.

There is no reason why they shouldn't be able to serve everyone in a community.

What happened today was (Martin) just blew an enormous hole in the fortress of the cable and broadcast monopoly,

We are asking the Justice Department to step in and block this.

Every potential benefit they describe is exactly what monopolists always say: You can get new services, but you have to pay more.

Congress and federal regulators need to look carefully at the lifeless competition their flawed policies have created and reject this merger.

Congress and federal regulators need to look carefully at the lifeless 'competition' their flawed policies have created and reject this merger. The government has been deceived before by promises that somehow more concentration would produce more choices and competition, when the result has been just the opposite. It shouldn't be fooled again.

These were exaggerations. The market isn't developing to a competitive status nearly as fast as they had predicted and prices are going up for consumers. Consumers are getting the short end because these exaggerations drove Congress to a plan that was premature,

Rubber-stamping these mergers is an embarrassing milestone in this nation because it puts an end to any real hope of head-to-head telephone competition.

This is the government making your TV go black and then only paying part of the costs for some of the people to make it work again, and none of the costs for others.

This demonstrates the enormous failure of antitrust oversight of the phone industry.

This is a devastating blow to the consumer. This one will lead to the end of the era of falling prices for telephone and cell-phone service.

AT&T is taking these cost reductions as profit.

It's a clear industry strategy: They are trying to find ways to push customers to spend more. There's no other reason for this other than their greed.

It might be at such an astronomical price that it won't be a very useful service.

It is the inevitable backslide toward monopoly and results from excessive deregulation and weak antitrust oversight.

The ballgame becomes now how each of the two industries that controls a wire can determine what content, what access, at what speed consumers and technologists can offer and retrieve services over those networks,

The bad news is that we may have lost the opportunity to also preserve enough spectrum for a fourth strong competitor in this market.

It's an elite clientele, probably the top 20 percent of the market that's attractive.