Fergie's Tech Blog

AT&T Pays UC-Berkeley Professor to Tout Their Vision

"Pay no attention to the man (telco) behind the curtain..."

Marguerite Reardon writes on C|Net News:

Competition in the cable TV market from phone companies could save consumers big bucks, according to a new study released Monday by an economist at the University of California at Berkeley.

Yale Braunstein, professor in the School of Information at UC Berkeley, analyzed data from the U.S. Government Accountability Office and the Federal Communications Commission and calculated that cable television subscription prices would drop 15 percent to 22 percent in California if cable companies competed directly with another wireline paid-TV provider, such as a telephone company.

Braunstein's report, which was commissioned and paid for by AT&T, is one of the first studies to quantify how much consumers could save if phone companies competed directly against cable operators in the video market.

posted by Fergie @ 4/18/2006 03:15:00 PM