FCC's righteousness a bit rich

摘要

In these times of global conflict, there's nothing a lesser government agency likes to do more than bare its small but perfectly formed fangs at a nasty foreign country, especially if it does something particularly immoral, such as raise prices. Outrage was obviously the FCC's mood when it wrote its order banning U.S. carriers from making payments to the Philippines as a result of its government-backed decision to lift termination rates by 4 cents a minute to 12 to 16 cents. Nine orders were typeset in capital letters, seemingly to show that the FCC was really angry. Almost all international carriers signed on to the new rates, except Cable & Wireless, WorldCom and AT&T. C&W went quiet and presumably caved in, while WorldCom and AT&T ran to the FCC. Meanwhile, the Philippines operators began blocking as many as a third of calls from WorldCom and AT&T, seriously deteriorating the service to the U.S. carriers while maintaining full connections with other countries.