SCOTUS To Hear Small ISPs' Case Against AT&T

snydeq writes "The US Supreme Court has agreed to hear an antitrust case that alleges AT&T squeezed out small ISPs by charging too much for wholesale access to its phone network. The case, originally brought to US District Court in 2003, had been appealed to the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. But AT&T requested the case be heard by the Supreme Court on the grounds that prior conflicting appeals court decisions in this area should be resolved at that level. As part of the case, the Supreme Court will likely also ascertain whether AT&T could be held to violate antitrust law without setting its retail prices below its own cost."

Comments

Ownership of the network

[Kenz0r]

IANA US Citizen, so I only have a limited understanding of how you handle things over there. But I think things like a telephone network should not be privately owned. Shouldn't the US government have invested in laying telephone and network infrastructure, and then lease it out to telco's? Then there could have nice fair competition, which would be good for the customer, right? What happened down here in Belgium, is that the government used to own the telephone network, but then partly privatized the phone national company, which now owns the entire network and sells access to smaller companies (similar to the situation described in TFS). Down the line, it's us customers who get overcharged and get really crappy DSL lines.