You think the free market can provide service better than a state owned company? Well think again, apparently private business doesn’t want to provide phone service to certain people. The telephone companies in Kentucky have been arguing to the state that they want to stop offering landline phone service to people in mountainous and rural communities. Apparently the free market doesn’t think that the poor and elderly residents in those communities are worth phone service because it isn’t profitable enough.

Lobbyists have been hounding the government with the express purpose of eliminating legislation that makes offering phone service a mandatory in remote areas. Providing a service in mountainous and rural areas is much more costly, and there are fewer possibilities for profit due to less customers being available. Bill 135, or “the AT&T bill” is being pushed by lobbyists to eliminate the responsibility these companies have to provide service to those areas.

Essentially this bill is designed to eliminate state regulation over phone service that affects three companies AT&T, Windstream and Cincinnati Bell. The Bill would prohibit the state from investigating complaints made against the companies without their permission. Basically giving the free market the ability to cheat customers with impunity. Especially the elderly and poor who would be unable to afford legal services in civil court to seek lawful remedy.

Such a move is immensely dangerous for the working class and even more so for the elderly. Without a telephone service, there is no possibility of dialling 911 in an emergency. The elderly would be left without the basic protection every person is entitled to under the UN Declaration of Human Rights. This bill will specifically disadvantage the working and poor class to a much greater degree by denying them an essential communication service. Cell phone service isn’t even an option in the mountainous areas because mountains interfere with cell reception.

This is the true face of the free market. The elimination and marginalization of entire communities of people because they don’t fit into some capitalists’ plan for profit making. A clear indication that human life and the dignity and security of it is always secondary to the pocket filling of the bourgeoisie.

Kentucky Senate Bill 135:
http://e-lobbyist.com/gaits/KY/SB135