VoIP You

Oh AT&T, will your quest for world domination never end?

Apparently not anytime soon. Salon.com posted in depth coverage of the global telecom juggernaut’s latest attempt to go one-up on the little guys and other slightly smaller global juggernauts:

“AT&T is back, it's big, and according to consumer advocates and some of the nation's largest technology companies, AT&T wants to take over the Internet.

The critics...point out that AT&T, along with Verizon and Comcast, its main rivals in the telecom business, will dominate the U.S. market for residential high-speed Internet service for the foreseeable future.”

The article goes on to specify what AT&T plans, or at least allegedly plans to do:

“Specifically, AT&T has hinted that it plans to charge Web companies a kind of toll to send data at the highest speeds down DSL lines into its subscribers' homes. The plan would make AT&T a gatekeeper of media in your home. Under the proposal, the tens of millions of people who get their Internet service from AT&T might only be able to access heavy-bandwidth applications -- such as audio, video, and Internet phone service -- from the companies that have paid AT&T a fee.”

The Salon article has, not surprisingly, caused quite a fervor among bloggers and industry insiders alike. A recent post on Boing Boing vents:

“AT&T's justifications for this are transparent crapola…saying that only giant companies like AT&T itself care about this, since "the little guy [in the garage] is not streaming movies" -- despite the existence of companies and nonprofits like YouTube and the Participatory Culture Foundation.”

The author also laments:

“I think it's pretty clear that this is nothing more than raw greed from AT&T, but I'm not sure what to do about it. The leading proposals are to get the FCC to regulate AT&T to ensure neutrality.”

For a clearer picture of what net neutrality means to both consumers and providers, let’s take a look at what guest blogger Daniel Berninger had to say on Jeff Pulver’s blog:

“Companies selling Internet access argue for property rights as the basis for unwinding long standing net neutrality. However, the companies deriving revenues from Internet access do not own the Internet any more than a company making money from a port owns the ocean…Net neutrality prevents discrimination by limiting billing for transport to generic measures of performance and capacity rather than the nature of the user or usage. Neutrality allows for Internet enabled alternatives to monopolist voice and video providers...”

Jeff Pulver returned to his blog with a rallying cry:

“We might not have the lobbying muscle, money, resources, or connections of the entrenched players in the communications debate, but we surely have the individual and collective will and creativity to transform the debate.”

Jeff has started a contest that he hopes will help spark this ‘transformation.’ It is a forum for those who believe the Internet is worth fighting for, and it is also a creative outlet for anyone who fancies him/herself a filmmaker.

It is easy to focus on only the perks and the present, but decisions that are affecting the future of VoIP, the Internet, and the price of information are being made. If you have an opinion on the matter, you owe it to yourself to voice it before the other side stops listening altogether.