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Phone Companies Set Off a Battle Over Internet Fees --- Content Providers May Face Charges for Fast Access; Billing the Consumer Twice?
by noteworthy at 8:14 am EST, Jan 6, 2006

Today's Wall Street Journal has a feature article about emerging plans by BellSouth, AT&T, and Verizon to start charging fees to major content providers in order to guarantee "fast" access to/for their customers. There are no exclusives in this particular article, but the mainstream attention is itself noteworthy.

Given the paradox of the best network, I guess this is how Capitalism designs Quality of Service, but it sounds more like extortion to me.

In the article, a BellSouth spokesman whines about the fact that Google didn't ante up for the restoration of DSL service in the aftermath of Katrina and Rita. Give me a break.

Did Wal-Mart and Target pay fees to have debris cleared from the local roads leading to their storefronts? Perhaps; I don't know.

But if there is a silver lining in these pricy network clouds, it may be that the telcos' egos end up energizing the movement toward asset-based telecom.

RE: Phone Companies Set Off a Battle Over Internet Fees --- Content Providers May Face Charges for Fast Access; Billing the Consumer Twice?
by flynn23 at 12:26 pm EST, Jan 6, 2006

noteworthy wrote:
Today's Wall Street Journal has a feature article about emerging plans by BellSouth, AT&T, and Verizon to start charging fees to major content providers in order to guarantee "fast" access to/for their customers. There are no exclusives in this particular article, but the mainstream attention is itself noteworthy.
Given the paradox of the best network, I guess this is how Capitalism designs Quality of Service, but it sounds more like extortion to me.
In the article, a BellSouth spokesman whines about the fact that Google didn't ante up for the restoration of DSL service in the aftermath of Katrina and Rita. Give me a break.
Did Wal-Mart and Target pay fees to have debris cleared from the local roads leading to their storefronts? Perhaps; I don't know.
But if there is a silver lining in these pricy network clouds, it may be that the telcos' egos end up energizing the movement toward asset-based telecom.

YES. Those corporations did pay to have roads cleared and DSL lines restored. It's called TAXES! The fund the FCC, which itself collects fees, like the Universal Service Fund, which goes straight into ILEC's coffers. So fuck off BellSouth. You can't double (triple?) dip.

This is extortion, plain and simple. This is the ILEC's attempt at inserting a reciprocal compensation mechanism into the Internet. Except there isn't any reciprocity for the Internet. Should Amazon ask BellSouth for a cut of everyone that signs up for DSL, since the only reason why they're signing up is to use Amazon? They sure as hell ain't signing up to use anything from BellSouth.

The FCC is directly to blame for this. Their failure to keep these territorial monopolies in check after the unraveling of the Telecom Act in 2000 is the enabler of this kind of behavior. You'd never see this cavalier bullshit if there were more than 2 choices for broadband in any MSA. 'Give us what we want and we'll invest in new technology and services!' is all we've heard for 15+ years from the ILECs. And all we've gotten is extortion and rate increases.