Neutralize the Networks
Several newspapers have been picking up the continuing story of the new business model that the Telcos are touting: two-tiered Internet access. In a nutshell, they will charge more for "better access" to certain sites.
Their metaphor? Airlines; it's kinda like flying business class vs. Coach.
Consumers' fear? Every other example of multi-tiered service that I can think of results in a generally flattened experience for the consumer with the profits being sucked up like a milkshake by the industry. Self-service gas started as a "benefit". It quickly became the norm. Cable television and Tivo started as a premium, "advertisement-less" service. After we settled into the models, they lowered the boom. In fact, Tivo's ad plans smell far worse than the networks, not in quantity but in creepy intrusiveness.
Oink appeal? Capitalism. Let them do it because they can. It's found money, right? They didn't build the Internet, the US government did. The hundreds of billions of dollars of E-Commerce are flowing through their lines as a benign pass-through. VoIP may be a different animal, but there's ways of handling that separately.
My solution? It's time to nationalize the telcos. Bernie Ebbers is in jail, the industry virtually collapsed in the late '90s, partly from rampant greed driving capital outlays in global fiber. Take them back into the government for half a generation and then privatize them after they've been rehabilitated. They don't deserve to survive the way they are.
Posted on January 23, 2006
