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AT&T CEO Attacks Network Neutrality
Verteiron writes "The former CEO of AT&T, Ed Whitacre, had some interesting remarks to make about Net Neutrality during his parting speech. Choice quotes include his plans for getting anti-neutrality legislation through: "Will Congress let us do it?" Whitacre asks his colleagues. "You bet they will — cuz we don't call it cashin' in. We call it 'deregulation.' "
More information on AT&T's attitude problem and a video of the speech are available. There's no sign that his replacement is any better."
Why does AT&T hate America?
I once tried attacking network neutrality, however I ended up in hospital having a wifi antenna removed from parts indescribable.
liqbase
C:\>ping google.com
Resolved "google.com" to [64.233.167.99]
Hello! Welcome to AT&T PingSelect(tm). Please enter in milliseconds your desired ping time to website "google.com".
>25
Unfortunately, website "google.com" is not available at that ping time. Please contact the website administrator and advise them to upgrade their AT&T PingSelect(tm) package if you wish to ping website "google.com" at this value. Please select another time in milliseconds.
>50
Unfortunately, website "google.com" is not available at that ping time. Please contact the website administrator and advise them to upgrade their AT&T PingSelect(tm) package if you wish to ping website "google.com" at this value. Please select another time in milliseconds.
>100
Pinging google.com [64.233.167.99] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 64.233.167.99: bytes=32 time=100ms TTL=247
Reply from 64.233.167.99: bytes=32 time=101ms TTL=247
Reply from 64.233.167.99: bytes=32 time=101ms TTL=247
Reply from 64.233.167.99: bytes=32 time=100ms TTL=247
Ping statistics for 64.233.167.99:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 100ms, Maximum = 101ms, Average = 101ms
C:\>
Reminds me of Bush's candid comments we got to see in Fahrenheit 9-11. "This is an impressive crowd - the haves and the have-mores. Some people call you the elites; I call you my base."
Question: did this guy know there was a camera rolling?
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
I mean look at how well "deregulation" worked in the airline industry? More people can fly, flights are cheaper, to more destinations... crammed into tiny airplanes with more people... lousier food... more delays... bad customer service... bankruptcies... never mind.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
For those Americans here who are of voting age, I suggest you start voicing opinions to congress speak to your management if you are in the telco/networking field and make noise. All this "wah wah wah" on a forum is pointless. Sure I can hear you, the trolls can hear you, but I doubt political parties can hear you. Start filling up those blogs of parties who want to "strike a pose" on the technology sector "We're hip... We have a blog" ... Oh so you do Senator Whatever... Start /.'ing them for straightforward answers, comments and plans. Anything else is just linenoise
Infiltrated dot Net
I suggest we combine some tactics that are known to work.
Back in ancient times, the UAW would target ONE company for a strike, in order to get an agreement that could be used later as leverage with the others. Say what you like about the state of the auto industry today, but the tactic worked with great effect.
Next, we have the NRA, and their targeted boycotts. When they were unhappy with Smith and Wesson's push for high-tech gun locks, they instituted a very effective boycott. Their manufacturing slowed to a crawl as sales tanked. S&W was sold at a fire sale price as a result. The CEO landed at some lawnmower company. I heard the NRA considered boycotting the lawnmowers as well.
We can't boycott all of the ISPs at the same time, but we COULD pick one and boycott them. Even the dimmest bulb in the executive suite can understand poor revenue and trace it back to customer unrest.
I hope the fuzzier minded GOP congressmen don't get too confused on this - the "deregulation" banner AT&T are flying under sounds good but consider the financial equity markets: heavily regulated and you won't find an investment banker (paragons of free market capitalism) who'd want it any other way. Certain foundation structures like markets, networks need to be regulated to keep them neutral, transparent & useful. This enables freedom, paradoxical perhaps but pretty obvious.
Now, after a lot of ISP/webhost consolidation, some of the biggies want to reintroduce performance tiering. To differentiate commodity IP transport into various service levels. That's elementary marketing to capture increased revenue from those customers willing to pay more.
I'm far from certain this is a bad thing. Instead of everyone having the same (erratic) latency, some people will pay for better, and the rest will get slightly worse. Frankly, I'm far more concerned about preserving competition between ISPs at all levels, from comsumer last-mile broadband up through the long-haul links.
The people running these companies always espouse the advantages of the free market, how essential it is for their survival. And yet, these same jerks will be the first ones crying for government protection the second they start feeling threatened. All this serves to do is erode confidence in the free market system. Inevitably, once people start catching on to what's going on they start calling for excessive government control which can end up doing more harm than good. You'd think these idiots at these companies would be wary of that sort of backlash. Ultimately, it's not the system that's the problem but rather lobbyists, corrupt politicians, and an ignorant population.
That's the ultimate problem here. People don't know this is going on, first of all. I suppose the media doesn't deem it exciting enough to report this. But it wouldn't make a difference if they did because most people likely wouldn't care. Even worse, they probably wouldn't even see anything wrong with what AT&T wants to do.
People have gotten so used to paying for every little thing that they be able to justify AT&T's position. I suspect that's one of the underlying motivations for this trend. Companies are realizing just how tolerant consumers are of this nonsense. I've read that recent studies have found that consumers are growing increasingly comfortable with monthly payments. A company can raise rates on a regular basis and few complain.
People like to whine about gasoline prices, but Americans are still paying far less than most of the rest of the world. And it's still cheaper per gallon that a lot of other things they consume. They're getting screwed worse in other ways and don't even realize it or even care. It's frustrating sometimes to see all this ignorance and to see this disdain for the people on the part of the politicians.
Unfortunately my non-AT&T ISP throttles my bandwidth to any page than mentions AT&T. It took me 30 minutes just to post this.
Imagine being given access to public land for the benefit of the public, and the public then getting told that this company was going to now perform extortion because of the trust they were given.
You want access to public easements to run your fiber? You play by common carrier rules. The public owns that land and are granting you temporary, paid rights to use it and reserve the right to revoke it at any time, including seizing ownership of anything on that land. You lose temporary rights when you start serving yourself instead of serving the public.
If you don't like the rules, don't play them. Other companies will step up where you fail and provide the service the public demands and deserves.
Maybe it was when the courts broke up their happy family? Now that they got it back together they are out for revenge? AT&T Part VI: Ma Bell Lives?
s/©//g
Do you know what network neutrality is? Why would network neutrality prevent someone for charging for use of their network (which by the way was subsidized by our tax dollars to the tune of billions)? All the network neutrality proposals ever to see any support in congress call for a ban on charging different prices for traffic based upon who is sending the traffic... and that is it. You can still charge for traffic. You can still charge different amounts for different types of traffic. You just can't charge different amounts based upon where the traffic came from. This is to prevent AT&T from asking for money from some company who buys access from AT&T's peer's peer's peer, in exchange for not intentionally slowing down that traffic as it crosses their network. I might mention, in the situation I just mentioned AT&T has already been paif by their peer to carry the traffic, so it is not a question of them not being able to charge for it.
I work with a lot of ISPs and big network providers. Their side of the story is that they want to be able to charge people with lots of money extra for the same service they supply to other people, by using their location as a gateway and by telling their peering router "sure I'm the best way to get that traffic there" and then intentionally slowing the traffic down so their previous claim to the router was a lie. Quite simply, they want to be able to gouge people by ignoring the responsibility of a common carrier. It is a lot easier to do this, than to actually add real value through faster connections or services where they have to be competitive. I mean if you build out a DDoS filter service it might not be as good as Sprint's. They'd have to work hard and take risks. They'd much rather abuse their location in the network in order to collect money for nothing. It is extortion, plain and simple.
Deregulation isn't always a bad thing but in this case i think it will destroy many a business that can't or won't pay to play with the big-boys.I'm glad you're in favor of net neutrality, but I think your reasons are a bit off. We gave the network operators billions of our tax dollars. That is what prevents little companies from entering the market. We give them special protections from prosecution for the traffic they carry under the auspice that they are impartial, common carriers, not responsible for what crosses their network. Both of these were done for the common good. If they want to be mercenary and be unregulated let them, right after they pay the money back and after we start prosecuting them for transporting child pornography and contributing to copyright infringement. If they want to eb treated like any other company we should oblige them, but if they want to be supported and protected by special laws, we should be getting something back for the american people.
Let's say that your company spent BILLIONS of dollars rolling out new Fibre across the nation and then you were told that you cannot charge for access to that net?
:P.
To be fair usually infrastructure like that gets subsidies from the government and the govt has reason to limit the number of companies building such infrastructure in each area (because it has to pass over land not owned by the company placing it and having 20 wires where one would be sufficient if everyone could use it is a waste of material, space and time). In return the govt gets to say "you have to let everyone use that infrastructure for a reasonable price". Net neutrality isn't even preventing them from charging other companies that rent those lines for their services (e.g. smaller ISPs operating in the same area), it's about preventing them from demanding tolls for traffic routed through their network because the only reason that network makes any economic sense is because anyone on it can interact with anyone on any connected net.
Popular example: Google (and any other web service) is getting rich but not paying every ISP that has customers who access Google. But then again those customers are paying their ISPs to access those web services so the web services DO bring money for the ISPs since noone would want an internet connection if there weren't any useful services on it. Yet the ISPs argue that the web services profit from the ISP customers and as such have to pay the ISPs for those customers. Yeah, go ahead, block any web service that's not paying for access to your customers, see how many of your precious users you keep. If "pay us or we'll use our power to prevent customers from being able to reach you" isn't the reason antitrust (or extortion but that seems to never apply to big companies) laws were written I don't know what is.
I realize you weren't even arguing that position but I felt the need to complete that train of thought
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
It's called AOL, and people voted against it with their dollars.
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." -- Mussolini
AT&T and all the big telcos can have their net neutrality repealed. In return, AT&T and all the telcos will give back all of the government's money, adjusted for inflation and bearing the prime rate of interest, that was given to them as investments, tax breaks, and other "incentives" to build up their network. Shake on it?
I can't think of much less funny than the prospect of something analogous to this. Shitbags like Whitacre should be called out for their disgustingly open money grabs. As should their associated bagshits in Congress. Make it loud and clear: the US pioneered the internet, and users here expect, nay DEMAND, that our TAXPAYER FINANCED public networks be available under the most non-descriminatory conditions that can be arranged. This is not negotiable.
While Whitacre and his ilk are busy partying away megamillions, and brazenly demanding even more even though little has been done since 2000 to extend broadband reach here, other countries are passing us by to benefit from our investments.
A modest suggestion: AT&T, try plowing a billion or two back into the infrastructure in this country instead of whining for the ability to double/triple dip on connection charges, and you'll likely notice that your market grows without customers wanting to tar/feather/dismember you and piss on your grave.
Perscriptio in manibus tabellariorum est.
TFA, looks like a serious article - listing quotes repeated in slashdot story. Curious
about the accompanying video I click on that. Well surprise! That "video" is a PARODY (funny).
Am I missing something here?
we need Gore to run for President. He created the internet; so, I'd expect him to protect it.
Why is it getting warm in here?
What its about is ISPs faced with the rapid growth of sites like YouTube which their network just cant handle.
They have 3 options:
1.They can increase their prices so that they can afford to expand their network so it can handle the increased amount of multimedia traffic.
2.They can introduce limits on how much you can download so that your $x per month only includes 10GB of transfers or 5GB of transfers or whatever.
or 3.They can throttle access to the high bandwidth multimedia sites unless those sites are willing to pay money to the ISP to cover the fact that the ISPs network cant handle the traffic.
The ISPs don't want to pick option 1 because they would loose customers to other ISPs who didnt pick option 1 (or with networks that aren't yet congested enough for the ISP to need to pick an option)
They don't want to pick option 2 either because most consumers don't have a clue how much bandwidth they are using or how much data they are transferring (unlike, say, phone calls where costs are based on how long you are on the phone which is an easy thing to measure). So if ISPs start setting limits, they would loose customers who would think "I don't want to be hit with a bill at the end of the month and I don't have a clue how much I am downloading so I will find an ISP that has no such restrictions"
So, ISPs faced with increasingly congested networks want to be able to throttle back speeds to known high bandwidth sites. That or have the site pay up to get better treatment.
Anyone who says net neutrality is about QoS or common carrier or anything else is wrong. The issue at stake here is simply that ISPs want to throttle high bandwidth sites and protocols unless they are paid money by the owners of those sites.
I seriously doubt that. Most of the world does nothing, and then whines when we ultimately do what they wanted to do in the first place. There were legitimate reasons for going to Iraq. As a Canadian I spoke with just prior to the war beginning said, Saddam and his family are no good. His own son enjoyed feeding people to a wood chipper feet first and twisting mens arms off.
The reasons for us going to war weren't correct, but you can be sure that oil had very little to do with it. Anytime there is a war in a major oil producing country the price of oil spikes. This really does not benefit us at all. How it is that people assume that it is a matter of oil, when the oil producing nations are the ones which end up with windfall profits is beyond me.
And at any rate, the Australians and British were just involved in this as we were, but yet we are the ones that take all of the heat for it. I don't see the rest of the world taking on Darfur, eventually when we have the man power, we will probably be the ones that have to go in and clean up that mess.
When we send troops we get yelled at for being heavy handed, when we just want to send money we get yelled at for trying to buy our way out of harms way. I don't think that people at this point here really believe that this is anything other than anti-Americanism. If a different country were doing it I would be shocked if people took this sort of a tone over it. Mostly because as the BBC pointed out a while back, the Chinese have anti-satellite weapons, the Russians have a huge nuclear arsenal, and the British have a program of spying on their own citizens that puts anything we could do to shame; but it is clearly us bad Americans that are the worst in the free world.
'cause the barriers to entry in this market are so incredibly high that you often have no choice. If two providers (the cable and DSL co for a region) do this, that's sufficient.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
You seem to think that when people claim that "we" went to war for oil, that means that the US went to war for cheaper oil for its citizens. That is not what we mean. We mean that the rich and powerful took us to war to procure a reliable source of oil to sell to US citizens for outrageous profits. See the difference? There is no we. There is them getting rich, and you getting fucked.
And it's not just oil. We have outsourced much of our armed services to private contractors. The military industrial complex is having a field day, and making record profits. Citizens are scared into accepting all sorts of draconian restrictions. Huge bundles of cash simply disappear. The wealthy and well connected profit. And we lose rather than gain security.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Hang on, are you saying that Iraqis are the "murderous, rage infected and hyper-religious chimps"? Because I went all the way through that post before it occurred to me that that you weren't talking about Americans (I am an American, and I am proud of my country, but only up to about 1969. After the moon landing, it's been a pretty steady downhill)
Here is a brief article on the subject. For more in depth information on the current subsidies in place and the economics of them, check out "Internet Economics" By Lee W. Macknight and Joseph P. Bailey. There are a number of other books, but this one has better references and avoids sensationalism.
I was under the impression that the current backbone infrastructure was all privately funded pretty much since NSFNet went out of the picture.I can assure you, that has not been the case. A whole lot of the dark fiber in the ground was laid by the US government and then sold at much less than cost, to hide the subsidy. In fact, we've paid more per citizen than other countries that completely funded government owned infrastructure and have similar or worse population densities.
This is one of the problems we have in America. Corporate chiefs lean on the cry of the "free market," which is a concept that many Americans (myself included) do embrace. BUT, unfortunately we don't have a *true* free market, we have this bastardized hyrid of government + corporation.The idea of the free market is a good one and one that works, but extremists take it too far. It is not a panacea and it does not work well in some situations. Healthcare, for example, is a situation where the buyer is under extreme duress with impending death and pain and that does not make for a logical, self-interested transaction between equals. A true free market cannot persist because of the wealth condensation principal. As wealth disparity becomes greater and greater we move to feudalism and eventually most people are born poor and a few are born rich and make money by lending to the poor. This disparity of station due to birth leads to justified anger and eventually violent revolt and the system is destroyed (as it always has been historically).
I do support the free market and generally believe that private companies should not be regulated (much) in how the profit from their investments.Network operators are a special case. In exchange for being impartial common carriers, they are less regulated than even private citizens (in some ways). If I transmit child porn or make copies of disney films, I'm subject to a lengthy jail sentence, while ISPs are protected from such because they are providing a common good. Without net neutrality, they are no longer providing that common good, so why should they be more protected than I am?
Great God Almighty!!!! Are you hopelessly nuts? We have almost little or no actual news reportage in the US today - especially as opposed to when I was a kid back in the '50s. How many Americans are aware of the (at least) 2 attempted assassination/coups of democratically-elected President Hugo Chavez by the Bush Administration (can you spell o-i-l???)? How many Americans are aware of the second attempt - led by undersecretary of state, Otto Reich and his Cuban-American squads? Erroneously reported in American news as Cuban dissidents being sighted in Caracas at that time!!!! Un-frigging-believable!!!
Great God Almighty!!! Free press??? WTF have you been smoking, dood??? Any intelligent American is forced to read the foreign press and blogosphere for any and all news as the only breaking news in America today concerns either Paris Hilton or the deposition of Anna Nicole Smith's corpse. Nothing, but nothing gets reported in the news.
Forty and fifty years ago that testimony of Monica Goodling before congress (ya know, the one where she testified that the attorney general [Gonzo or AGAG], and the assistant attorney general both committed perjury, that there was massive election fraud ["caging"] and that the US attorneys were replaced to prevent any prosecution of past - and future - election fraud) would have been front-page news for days, if not months. Today, nothing........
I answer both of your challenges with one comment: The news agencies report the news that makes money. How many of our fellow Americans do you think would turn the channel or skip the news article about someone on the hill breaking the law and getting away with it? The answer is most. I'm not defending it, I'm just postulating. As further proof of my theory, I offer the common occurrence in the US of a story being run to death. Every bit of it being reported in sensational ways to get more ratings and sell more papers, even though nothing new is being said.
If Americans took more interest in what actually happened in D.C., more news agencies would report it. Unfortunately, they don't. I don't know, but is it any different in the UK (with the glut of tabloid magazines vs legitimate news outlets)? In the US we have crap like Entertainment Tonight and the National Enquirer because people watch/read it. The consumers support what they want (whether is is worth while news or not). This is true throughout the US news systems, even your beloved blog-sphere. Repeat after me: someone reporting something doesn't (1) make it true or (2) make it news.
I'm not saying that it is better than any other system or time, but this is how I see it from here (in Nebraska, of all places). You do have to admit that reporting just about anything (real or fake, important or not) is protected in the US. You may face a civil case afterwards, but the government does not stop you from reporting it.
"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." -Anon.