posted
This is one of the stupidest justifications I've ever read. Essentially, he's claiming that Yahoo nad Google should pay him when SBC internet customers connect to their sites.
The users have purchased the right to access "the Internet," which, while not precisely defined, most assuredly includes Google and Yahoo. Further, Google and Yahoo are paying someone for their bandwidth. It might even be SBC (although it won't be for long if it is).
The proposed legislation makes sense to me from a consumer fraud perspective. You promise someone "Internet access" and you better provide access to the Internet, not the portion you feel isn't worth extorting cash from.
quote:The head of a major telecommunications company stirred up a hornets' nest this week by suggesting that he wants to charge companies like Google and Yahoo a fee for bringing them into consumers' homes.
SBC Communications Inc. Chairman Edward E. Whitacre Jr.'s comments to Business Week magazine prompted Internet companies to accuse him of aspiring to block access to their Web sites and to extort money from their businesses.
A spokesman for San Antonio-based SBC said the second-largest U.S. telecom company is committed to giving customers unfettered access to the Internet and that the comments were misinterpreted.
But Whitacre's characteristically blunt remarks -- published as his company this week won federal approval to buy AT&T Corp. for $16 billion -- revived a debate on whether Congress should make sure that consumers can go wherever they want on the Internet and keep phone and cable companies from blocking legal Web sites and services.
Asked about Internet firms such as Google, Microsoft Corp.'s MSN and online phone service Vonage, Whitacre told Business Week that those companies were dependent on SBC's lines -- or "pipes" -- for their success in reaching consumers.
"Now 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. So there's going to have to be some mechanism for these people who use these pipes to pay for the portion they're using," he said, according to Business Week Online's edited excerpts of the interview.
"Why should they be allowed to use my pipes? The Internet can't be free in that sense, because we and the cable companies have made an investment and for a Google or Yahoo or Vonage or anybody to expect to use these pipes free is nuts," he said.
Internet companies said Whitacre was stating what they have long feared -- that SBC and others may manage their networks to choke off access to Web sites or to target competing firms such as Vonage Holdings Corp. and Skype Technologies SA, which provide Internet-based phone services.
"It seems like a rather monopolistic attitude," said Michael Jackson, vice president for operations at Skype. "If the line were free to the user, or the bandwidth were free to the user, then perhaps he'd have a point. But the line isn't free to the user. The customer is paying for the bandwidth. . . . He's already paid for it. Why should he pay more?"
"It sounds like SBC is going to block me, try to block me, or try to charge me for something," said Vonage Chairman Jeffrey Citron.
"Any notion that SBC or anyone else . . . can get paid twice on the same service is a bit ludicrous," he added, saying it would be like UPS demanding the sender and recipient of a package both pay for delivery.
I don't think he's going to get very far with this... there's simply too much competition out there and the FTC has been doing a passing fair job making sure no one has a monopoly on internet access.
Posts: 3846 | Registered: Apr 2004
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posted
SBC: "Google, pay us this fee or we won't let our users get to your site" Google: "Screw you" SBC: *cuts off access to google* Every internet user: *switches to a different internet provider*
Posts: 5656 | Registered: Oct 1999
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posted
He's also making it more likely Congress will pass the neutrality law. With Vonage and Skype, he had the potential to get some sympathy, because they directly compete with SBC's other services.
But Google and Yahoo? There's no way he gets away with this, from either a consumer or a government perspective.
He shows a keen lack of insight into what it is his company sells.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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quote: Whitacre told Business Week that those companies were dependent on SBC's lines -- or "pipes" -- for their success in reaching consumers.
Strange, I always considered that the consumer was dependent on SBC, or whoever their provider is, to provide access to those sites. That's the way it is with me and Brighthouse. Amazingly, I pay Brighthouse for that dependence.
So if I take a toll road to a business, that business should also pay a fee because the business is dependent on the toll road to get me there?
Posts: 4625 | Registered: Jul 2002
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posted
Typical jackass figurehead, trying to milk both ends of the cow while showing himself to be criminally ignorant of the way his company and industry works.
Posts: 5462 | Registered: Apr 2005
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Am I to understand that this guy wants to block me as an SBC customer from accessing a Yahoo or Google page if he doesn't get this money from them? Very interesting, considering SBC's DSL service is partnered with Yahoo, at least here in Chicago. They're going to stop me from getting to THEIR services? LOL
Posts: 4515 | Registered: Jul 2004
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posted
That type of "agreement" might be what he is trying to gain elsewhere in the country..his company gets a share of the money from that partnership, I am sure.
Too bad, SBCYahoo DSL is only $14.99 a month...I was hoping it would be available here in FL when I moved last month... Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
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quote:SBC Communications, Inc., the U.S. Baby Bell in the West, has asserted that it is the exclusive owner of a technology for "structured document" browsing - the use of frames to provide hyperlinks to documents displayed by a browser. SBC Intellectual Property, the IP management division of SBC Communications, has reportedly contacted companies conducting sales operations on the Internet with an invitation to pay royalty fees for use of SBC's patented approach to frames at a Web site. This is not the first instance of a telecommunications company making a claim of ownership for a widely used technology on the Internet. British Telecommunications Plc ("British Telecom") has pursued royalties from Internet Service Providers (ISPs), such as Prodigy Communications Corp. ("Prodigy"), based on its patent allegedly covering the "hyperlink" -- the document linking technology commonly used by Internet users to "surf" among web pages by merely clicking on a highlighted link.
SBC is clearly most interested in money.
Posts: 30 | Registered: Sep 2005
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posted
The clearly idiotic nature is what worries me the most.
I've seen lots of bad ideas. I've seen lots of bad ideas vested in a sense of inappropriate entitlement. But this one seems to go so far beyond that. It requires an utter redefinition of the concept of the Internet to support this idea.
My worry is that in five years an idea like those won't generate the universal ridicule it does now. If that's the case, it will mean we've lost something very good about the Internet.
I wonder if people were as incredulous about the guy who first thought of charging a monthly fee for television.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
To advocate for the guy a second, while he's, yes, an idiot -- I see where he as the CEO of a traditional phone company is coming from. He knows his industry's dying. It looks like he's trying to salvage it by charging (as named) Yahoo!, Google, and Vonage (all of which provide VoIP) for their access, rather than innovating his own company into a workable model.
SBC doesn't make the bulk of their money off providing Internet service -- usually, they want to bundle that $15/month Internet access with much costlier phone service. If they're going to lose that revenue over the years to come (and they're going to), they want some way to make it back up.
Of course, now I wouldn't trust this CEO to innovate his way past an empty toilet paper roll. Shareholders beware.
Posts: 3293 | Registered: Jul 2002
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posted
Okay, I didn't understand that he was going after VoIP access rather than website access. I can understand that to a certain extent.
Posts: 4515 | Registered: Jul 2004
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