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The corporate toll on the Internet
Telecom giant AT&T plans to charge online businesses to speed their services through its DSL lines. Critics say the scheme violates every principle of the Internet, favors deep-pocketed companies, and is bound to limit what we see and hear online.
By Farhad Manjoo [2006-04-17]

  • End corporate subsidies, pipeline monopolies?

    How many dollars in corporate subsidies does a company like AT&T get? "What they would like to do is use my pipes free, but I ain't going to let them do that because we have spent this capital and we have to have a return on it." Your pipes, Whitacre? How long have you been CEO of AT&T?

    You have a corporation like Comcast that can use its influence to keep cable monopolies in regions of Philadelphia, block RCN from laying fiber optics in Philadelphia, and receive $20-30 million in tax abatements (I think) to build a skyscraper in Philadelphia.

    Admittedly, this is partly a political problem where voters should be able to vote the councilmembers allowing this insanity out of office. But if a company like Comcast, which gets so much from governments, were to claim (perhaps it does already), as AT&T does, that somehow its network is its alone, in the sense that it alone paid for it, using no one else's money, it would be incorrect.

    And P.S.: Let's work toward ways to ensure a smooth transition away from corporate personhood and towards human-focused and humane corporate policies.

    -- Aaron G. Stock
    [Read Aaron G. Stock's other letters]
    Sunday, April 16, 2006 06:59 PM
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