> The Biggest Threat to the Internet > By David Coursey > November 3, 2005 > > http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1881338,00.asp > > an excerpt: > No, Mr. Whitacre, Google, Yahoo, MSN, Vonage, and the whole rest of > the Internet isn't nuts, you are. Worse, you're the nut who is > running our country's largest telecom provider. > > A truly great, great piece!! > > ------------------------> Joe
I agree that Whitacre is off his rocker to think up a plan like this. But that aside, I'm not sure I see what the fuss is actually about. I mean, all this sounds like to me is an incredibly stupid plan by SBC whose net result will be to hand all of its broadband customers over to their competitors! First off, his reasoning is absurd: "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* [emphasis mine] would like to do is use my pipes free, but I ain't going to let them do that" By "they", he means Google, Vonage, etc. But he's mistaken. The real "they" is his customer base - SBC's broadband customers. And that real "they" is not trying to use his pipes for free. They are paying to use his pipes. And they expect to receive the service that they're paying for. If SBC decides to block access to Google, Vonage, etc. unless those companies pay up, then it seems to me that he's not delivering to his customers the service that they're paying him for. That may or may not be a breach of contract, as SBC might be able to tweak their TOS sufficiently to somehow make this allowable. But I doubt very much that he'll have many customers left if he does this. Who would continue paying for an ISP that blocks some of the most popular sites on the Internet? The only way he could pull this off is if he were to collude with other large provides and try to do this as an oligopoly. But that's not likely to succeed for 2 reasons: 1) I think that this would likely attract a good deal of unwelcome government and/or regulatory attention 2) there's no way that he could possibly muster up enough collusion amongst the large providers to be able to pull this off. The broadband business is highly competitive with every provider dying to get as many broadband customers in as possible so that they can make money off of them with high margin stuff like video-on-demand and other special "content" services (e.g., special deals they might strike with Disney or something). Plus, barriers to customer switching from one provider to another are pretty low. So with all the broadband companies itching to grab more customers (from competitor cable and DSL companies to numerous other mid to large regional and national DSL companies) I imagine they'd all react like "Yes! Please, do this ... so that we can feast on your customer base!". As far as Google and Vonage and the rest. It seems to me that he's basically just trying to get them scared enough that maybe they'll pay him some money. But if I was them, I would just sit tight, not pay him a cent and wait for this whole joke to blow over. I mean, can you imagine? SBC cutting off Google?!?!? Their (SBC's) customers would scream bloody murder - and Google must surely be able to see that! So IMO the story sounds scary on the surface, but I think if people give this another look, it's just foolish saber rattling. Agree/disagree? DR ============================================================================== Please access the attached hyperlink for an important electronic communications disclaimer: http://www.csfb.com/legal_terms/disclaimer_external_email.shtml ============================================================================== -- NYCwireless - http://www.nycwireless.net/ Un/Subscribe: http://lists.nycwireless.net/mailman/listinfo/nycwireless/ Archives: http://lists.nycwireless.net/pipermail/nycwireless/
