FCC Chief Martin “seems to be no friend of either Business or Consumers”:reuters, and seems to be firmly planted in the pocket of the incumbent telco’s.
bq. There is no immediate need for the U.S. Federal Communications Commission to adopt rules protecting consumers’ ability to surf anywhere on the Internet, the agency’s chairman Kevin Martin said on Wednesday.
bq. …
bq. “I’m hesitant to adopt rules that would prevent anti-competitive behavior where there hasn’t been significant evidence of a problem,” Martin said at a conference luncheon by Comptel, a group representing competitive telephone carriers.
This announcement comes a day after “BellSouth declared that they want the ability to prioritize their own services over those of everyone else”:/2005/12/13/telecoms-want-their-products-to-travel-on-a-faster-internet/ that uses their networks, and a few weeks after SBC CEO Whittaker announced that he thinks that “SBC has the right to install a toll booth on his networks wires”:/2005/11/02/sbc-ceo-claims-he-owns-the-internet-and-will-charge-everyone-for-its-use/.
So where does this leave us, the consumers? After helping to fund the wires built by incumbent, monopoly telco’s in the form of tax breaks and subsidies, we’re being subject to a bait-and-switch executed by these same companies (or their corporate owners) who claim that they own everything and that they will use their monopoly power to extract more revenue out of us and businesses. And to top it all off, the FCC appears not only powerless, but willing to let these companies do this.
More info at “Broadband Reports”:http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/703960
[reuters]http://today.reuters.com/investing/financeArticle.aspx?type=governmentFilingsNews&storyID=URI:urn:newsml:reuters.com:20051214:MTFH69691_2005-12-14_22-25-22_N14302230:1
Filed under: Network Neutrality, News, Policy
