AT&T ready to set up toll booths for all of us

Submitted by acohill on Wed, 06/06/2007 - 08:50

In an astonishingly candid remark, the outgoing head of AT&T, Ed Whitacre,
remarked, when asked about network neutrality, "Well, frankly, we say to hell with that. We’re gonna put up some toll booths and start charging admission."

The public Internet, whether we like it or not, is about to undergo great changes over the next three to five years. The original design of the Internet was never intended to support billions of connected computers, and in particular, it was not designed to support bandwidth-intensive applications like voice telephony and video.

So changes are necessary so that innovative new uses of the Internet can evolve, but the real question is not so much about architecture but control. Do communities want toll booths controlled by a third party that has no obligation whatsoever to the future prosperity and economic competitiveness of that community? It is extremely risky for a community or region to allow third parties like AT&T to decide their economic future.

Instead, communities have to begin viewing telecom, at a certain level, as essential community infrastructure, and begin making appropriate investments that will allow the communities a measure of control over their economic future. Services can still be provided by companies like AT&T, but AT&T should be paying tolls to the community for the use of the infrastructure, not the other way around.