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Court Upholds Internet Deregulation
Internet Voting writes "Big telecom companies seem to have won big with the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling upholding FCC's ruling deregulating the Internet. Opponents argued that telecoms could now deny third parties access to their telecommunications lines and eliminating competition. From the story: "In its September 2005 ruling, the FCC relieved telephone companies of decades-old regulations that required them to grant competing Internet service providers 'nondiscriminatory' access to their wirelines in order to reach consumers.""
After RTFA, I think some may be a little confused as to what this means from just the summary. Some seem to be interpreting this as a blow to net neutrality. As I understand it, that is not the case. What this means is that the owners of the physical lines (AT&T, Verizon, etc.) now can make independent deals with ISPs that don't own the lines (Earthlink, Speakeasy, etc.) instead of having to let them all have access.
Where this is bad, as I see it, is that now AT&T can basically tell Earthlink that if they want to use their precious copper to bring the Intertubes to peoples homes, it will cost them eleventy billion dollars. So basically, it means AT&T gets to set the price for DSL to whatever they want, and no one else can really compete on price because AT&T can make the cost of use to the third party provider so high that they cannot compete on price. Anyone feel free to correct me if I am misinterpreting something.