Electric Competition Failing

The New York Times via IHT:

A decade after competition was introduced, long-distance telephone rates in the United States had fallen by half, air fares by more than a fourth and trucking rates by a fourth. But a decade after the federal government opened the business of generating electricity to competition, the market has produced no such decline.

Instead, more rate increase requests are pending now than ever before, said Jim Owen, a spokesman for the Edison Electric Institute, the association for the investor-owned utilities that provide about 60 percent of power in the United States. The investor-owned electric utility industry published a report in June titled "Why Are Electricity Prices Increasing?"