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Free to Compete is designed to educate consumers on the invaluable role competition plays in bringing innovative technologies and services to the marketplace. This website will enable you to reach out to your representatives in Congress and voice your support for the preservation of a vibrant competitive communications marketplace.

Leading competitive communications service providers have released an independent economic study demonstrating that, if Verizon's petitions for forbearance are granted, there would be a $210 million increase in retail telecommunications expenditures in the Providence and Virginia Beach MSAs annually, including a $66 annual increase in residential household bills. Click here to access the complete study.

In June and August respectively, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit remanded the FCC's decisions denying forbearance requests from Verizon and Qwest, directing the FCC to better explain its reasoning. Because the unbundling relief Qwest is seeking in its most recent Phoenix MSA petition is the same as the relief sought in the earlier petition that is before the Commission on remand, the Commission extended the time for filing comments on the new Phoenix petition to coincide with the time for filing comments on the Court remand. The FCC must rule on the new Qwest Phoenix MSA forbearance petition no later than March 24, 2010.

For the past year, competitive carriers that rely on Verizon's facilities to serve their customers have spent a tremendous amount of time and money fighting Verizon's forbearance petitions so that millions of consumers in Rhode Island and Virginia Beach would continue to have a choice in service providers. Is this the best use of resources?

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	Studies of long distance and local calling bills over the last six years show that as competition goes up, bills go down. After VoIP entered the competition in 2002 there was a 13% decline from 2002 to 2005 in long distance costs. Bills were decreasing as the competition increased.