To the editor:

As a resident of Oakville and an employee of SBC, I feel that Mr. Milligan’s opinion of SBC was really unfair.

He makes SBC sound like this evil em-pire out to deceive their employees and their customers. He is misinformed; SBC has been through so many changes in its over 100 years, mostly guided by strict PSC and FCC rulings. SBC — along with AT&T — originally built this vast network with the hard work of people like you and me. People that have families; families in communities like Oakville.

SBC today is still under strict regulations, our competitors are not. We are losing customers every day because they can sell the service that we built for next to nothing. These companies do not have installers, repairmen, switchmen. frame attendants, circuit testers, system technicians, communication technicians and many other well-trained people that keep this huge network going 24 hours a day.  SBC must maintain this at our own cost. We are suffering because of all the strict rules. 

When Mr. Milligan said, “Any positives for SBC would be offset by job losses and taxes,” did you forget that real people work at SBC?? People that live here in Oakville will lose our jobs if House Bill 142 fails. I pay a lot of taxes to live here in this community, Mr. Milligan. SBC has afforded me to live here and put two children through college, another will enter — hopefully — in the fall. If HB 142 does not pass, the future of SBC will not be bright, not only because people — SBC families — will lose their incomes. But eventually it will hurt the consumer because the service not only for SBC will fall off, but it will also hurt the small phone companies that depend on our well-trained people to maintain service. If no one is there to maintain the network, all phone service will be in jeopardy.

And last, I’d like to say to compare SBC’s success in a free country to living in a post-Communist Russia — is insulting. Would you make a huge monetary investment in something that you would have to give away for next to nothing? No, I don’t think so. SBC is not being allowed to compete in Broadband — DSL.

That sounds un-American to me, Mr. Milligan.

Leslie Zerilli

Oakville