This artical makes me happy.
--- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, "Eric" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Excerpt from http://opinion.latimes.com/opinionla/ > > > A little more than a year ago, Ed Whitacre, CEO of SBC (since renamed > AT&T), famously told Business Week, "For a Google or Yahoo or Vonage > or anybody to expect to use these pipes [for] free is nuts!" The > response from Google, Amazon and other Web-based companies was, in > essence, "It's ON." And now it looks like Whitacre was nuts to think > he could say something like that and not be the one to pay. > > Today, the FCC approved the latest in a string of Whitacre > acquisitions, AT&T's $84.5 billion acquisition of BellSouth. But it > did so only after AT&T agreed not to charge Google, Yahoo, Vonage or > anybody else for priority delivery of its data. The restriction, which > lasts for two years, specifically bars AT&T from offering "any service > that privileges, degrades or prioritizes" any data transmitted to its > broadband customers. > > In other words, the FCC told AT&T that it was stuck offering a "dumb > pipe" to DSL users for at least two years. The two exceptions to the > Net neutrality requirement were for managed corporate networks and for > the TV service AT&T is starting to introduce. Those carve-outs make > sense because they draw a bright line between what happens to data > transmitted by an Internet access service and how traffic can be > managed in other services running over the same network. And a > temporary restriction is appropriate, given the promise of more > competitors emerging (particularly in wireless broadband) as well as > the new Democratic majority in Congress' interest in Net neutrality. > Other interesting new concessions by AT&T include agreements to bring > 3,000 jobs back to the U.S. that BellSouth had sent offshore; to offer > relatively low-speed broadband (768 kbps) for less than $20 a month > with no obligation to buy AT&T's phone service, too; and to offer > wireless broadband to at least one fourth of its service area by 2010 > (if it doesn't, it will lose those wireless licenses). >
