You SBC broadband customers might want to beware: the CEO of your ISP, Edward Whitacre, is thinking of shutting off your access to Google and other handy dandy sites unless they cough up payola for using his "pipes." He wants everyone using his service---customers and internet sites---to pay up as they come and go and make stops in between.

{...}How concerned are you about Internet upstarts like Google, MSN, Vonage, and others?

How do you think they're going to get to customers? Through a broadband pipe. Cable companies have them. We have them. Now what they would like to do is use my pipes free, but I ain't going to let them do that because we have spent this capital and we have to have a return on it. So there's going to have to be some mechanism for these people who use these pipes to pay for the portion they're using. Why should they be allowed to use my pipes?

The Internet can't be free in that sense, because we and the cable companies have made an investment and for a Google or Yahoo! or Vonage or anybody to expect to use these pipes [for] free is nuts! {...}

Mike at Tech Dirt correctly lays the blame for this odious suggestion on the FCC's inhibitions about allowing for market competition:

{...}Notice that the only reason this is possible now is because there's less competition in the broadband space, not more. If there were real competition, SBC would never even dare to suggest that they might cut off a Google, Yahoo or Vonage.

Michael Powell had a huge opportunity to get something done about how the FCC regulated the telecom industry; he had the opportunity to create competition and he didn't do it.

Chickenshit.

Posted by: Kathy at 12:08 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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