Word: harpest
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...Will Harpest, a third-grade teacher who lives in Lisle, Ill., the ad campaign was the last straw. A longtime customer of one of the big phone companies known as Baby Bells, Harpest, 54, had grown weary of having to deal with separate phone bills for local and long-distance calls. But, like most Americans, he couldn't do much about it until recently. Sure, he could change long-distance carriers and chase the lowest rates as often as he pleased, but he was still a virtual captive of SBC Ameritech, the sole owner of the prized last mile...
...Then Harpest saw a couple of SBC ads telling customers that switching to the new local services offered by the likes of AT&T was as foolish as poking a fork into a toaster or sticking your tongue to a metal pole in freezing weather. Far from amused, Harpest thought the ad could "give kids bad ideas." But it gave him a good idea. He called AT&T, already his long-distance provider, to sign up for its local service, seeking only the convenience of a single bill. He was surprised to learn the switch would also save him about...
...Harpest is just one of the small but growing number of consumers who are firing their local phone companies. Six long years after the Telecommunications Act was supposed to help break the Baby Bells' hammerlock on local phone service, competition in the residential market is finally starting to heat up--and the Bells' once dependable growth is cooling down. Thanks to newly aggressive state regulators who are forcing BellSouth, SBC Communications, Verizon and the much smaller Qwest to lease their networks to competitors at lower prices, rivals like AT&T and MCI are for the first time snapping up some...
...Washington office of Consumers Union, points out, "If Powell goes too hard too fast, he could end up with egg all over his face, with a more monopolistic market that cries out for new regulations." And surely the last thing he wants is to leave people like Will Harpest with fewer real choices and no one to call for help. --With reporting by Perry Bacon Jr./Washington and Noah Isackson/Chicago
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