{"id":142,"date":"2006-01-06T16:40:35","date_gmt":"2006-01-06T21:40:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mathewingram.com\/work\/index.php\/2006\/01\/06\/the-telecom-payola-gang-strikes-again\/"},"modified":"2006-01-06T16:40:35","modified_gmt":"2006-01-06T21:40:35","slug":"the-telecom-payola-gang-strikes-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2006\/01\/06\/the-telecom-payola-gang-strikes-again\/","title":{"rendered":"The telecom payola gang strikes again"},"content":{"rendered":"

They’re at it again. As Om Malik reports<\/a>, a story in the Wall Street Journal (which is now behind the pay wall), says the big U.S. telecom players are continuing their campaign for a multi-tiered Internet<\/a> in which Google and Yahoo and Microsoft pay for their bits to get better treatment than someone else’s bits. Best quote: \u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00c5\u201cDuring the hurricanes, Google didn\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2t pay to have the DSL restored,” said BellSouth spokesman Jeff Battcher. \u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00c5\u201cWe\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2re paying all that money.”<\/p>\n

What are the big telecom companies smoking? They charge people $40 a month or so for high-speed Internet service, then put caps and download limits on them, or use “traffic shaping”<\/a> to give some services priority over others — or even prevent some online applications from working at all<\/a> — and then argue that Google and other companies should pay extra. Russ Shaw calls it a “shakedown.”<\/a><\/p>\n

As John Battelle points out, this is all something that Internet users are already paying for<\/a>, something Vonage CEO Jeffrey Citron also mentions in the WSJ article. Former Wall Street brokerage analyst Henry Blodgett says he wonders what all the fuss is about<\/a>, but to me it is clear: the telecos want protection money from the big Net companies. I think Jeff Jarvis is right to call them “robber barons,” and of course the inimitable Doc Searls has written a treatise on the subject<\/a> as well. Fred calls it a simple matter of jealousy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Update:<\/b><\/p>\n

Larry Page of Google and the chairman of the FCC both comment on the disturbing trend towards a tiered Internet in this Register story<\/a>. And I also came across an excellent (and long) discussion of the issue by Mitch Shapiro over at IP Democracy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

They’re at it again. As Om Malik reports, a story in the Wall Street Journal (which is now behind the pay wall), says the big U.S. telecom players are continuing their campaign for a multi-tiered Internet in which Google and Yahoo and Microsoft pay for their bits to get better treatment than someone else’s bits. … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “The telecom payola gang strikes again”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crsspst_to_mathewingramblogwordpresscom":false,"mf2_syndication":[],"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}