Ed Markey: “Mr. Chairman, the importance of this debate can only be understood by looking at history. If the monopolies had their…”

“Mr. Chairman, the importance of this debate can only be understood by looking at history. If the monopolies had their way, we would still have one phone company. We would have one company providing cellular phone service. We would have one company providing Internet service. That was their vision in 1980, 1982, 1984. But our country decided that our great opportunity was to unleash the technological and entrepreneurial skills of our country. We believed that hundreds of companies could compete in this telecommunications sector, that it did not have to just be a story about one company. We can look at analogies. We had one long distance phone company. In all of our families when we were younger, it was a big day when someone was on the phone calling grandma because somebody would be yelling in the background, 'Remember, that call is long distance. Hurry up and finish,' because those calls were so expensive. The Bells said it was impossible to have low-cost long distance, but once MCI and Sprint and dozens of other companies got in, we reached a point where it became so inexpensive to make long-distance calls that now everyone thinks it is normal just to call to another State.”