Internet users to boycott Telecom

Internet users to boycott Telecom

For three weeks, there has been one hot topic on the Czech internet. Providers of the most- used Czech internet servers are trying to stop Telecom from implementing its planned increase in the price of local calls.
The most important goal of the new association "Internet against the monopoly" is to block all decisions which might prevent individuals access to the most advanced, most interesting communication system known to man.
The association disagrees with the continual increases in the price of local telephone calls which increase the cost of internet access. If the SPT Telecom monopoly increases prices again, the internet might indeed become a luxury, the association warns.
Internet providers see the situation as unbearable, so they have called a boycott of Telecom for Wednesday, November 18. They have appealed to each and every Czech internet user who does not agree with the steady, uncontrolled price increases to stop using all Telecom services for one day, even staying off the Internet.
Most of the important Czech servers will be out of service for the day. On their screens will appear an appeal to boycott and a petition to be signed through the internet.
Organizers want to focus public attention on the monopoly situation, where Telecom fully controls all of the least expensive modem contacts to the internet and decides the prices, which are already out of reach for most users.
If SPT Telecom the telephone network operator, a monopoly guaranteed by law, really increases the price of local calls again, then I am sure that we will go back to the level of some of the world's most underdeveloped countries.
In the USA and some of the larger cities in Russia, local calls are free. Here, Telecom charges unbelievable prices only because people have limited their phone use after the last price increase. There is an important battle being waged here between the monopoly's right to set its own prices and the right of the public to information.
I must admit that my sympathies lie with the providers and the more than fifty thousand people who have signed the petition demanding that these unfair price increases be stopped. I do understand, however, that profit of the shareholders is the ultimate goal of a joint-stock company.
There is no competition on the market, and no one stops Telecom from making its own decisions. I believe, however, that this monopoly was created by a lack of experience with these kinds of situations and fear of the free market.
But I would like to set the facts straight: the government probably cannot get rid of the monopoly without risking international scandal. The shareowner TelSource is unwilling to give up the monopoly, as the managing director of SPT Svatoslav Novák confirmed recently. And the Finance Ministry does not care about the increase as long as it is not greater than 4 percent. The formula defining this limit is so flexible that even a 62.5 percent increase can be officially seen as 4 percent.
As I found out looking through materials accessible on the internet, TelSource bought only 27 percent of Telecom stock on July 28, 1995. Therefore, I do not think that SPT is being pressured as much as its management wants the public to believe. More likely, the intended price increase is the result of the way monopolies typically think: because of their exclusivity on both local and international connections, guaranteed by the government, they can do whatever they want until the end of the millenium.
It is a very difficult situation, and I am afraid that even though the internet is not widely used in our country, at least half of its users may stop using it altogether because of the price increase.
Of course, not only individual users are involved. Only the timely development of internet can bring our companies a quick connection to electronic sales system and to modern banking systems.
What a pity that TelSource executives from Switzerland or the Netherlands see things differently here than they do in their own countries. In their own countries, support of the informational technologies, including internet, is of the highest priority.

Marek Prchal
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