[Bogey78O]

'It is even very possible that BellSouth employees might profit from working for a leaner, more competitive BellSouth.'

No, unfortunately not.

Here's how it works.The two expenditures Bell controls is copper and manpower. So when they need to get lean they do it from those 2 areas. After all, why pay 10 technicians when you can squeek by with 9? BellSouth's cutting even more jobs next quarter. Mine's relatively safe.

I'm still waiting for CLEC's to help out with the last mile, the part of phone service where money essentially goes right down the drain.

[jayef]

This doesn't make sense for the reasons I stated earlier. Is everybody going to have a wire from every competitor coming into their home or business? The costs of maintining the copper plant are borne by your subscribers past and present as well as by the non-recurring and recurring charges that you collect from CLECs.

Well trained and qualified technicians will have opportunities in a competitive market. Lousy technicians will not. In my opinion, competition will end some of the welfare that the ILECs dole out currently to poorly performing employees.