Editor: Nigel Woodford

Author: Chris Hunter

Large communications companies have been absorbing smaller ones for decades, systematically buying out any perceived competition on the horizon. The industry has settled into a select few companies that control the majority of the market share, therefore, news of power abuse is hardly a surprise to the rest of us. However, congress has finally noticed a major issue affecting America today. The speed comparison aside, our free and prosperous Internet is being hijacked for commercial gain. Telecoms have been testing their limits. It was only a matter of time before the parents would have to swoop in to regulate their 160 million dollar children. Our Internet stands to become historically similar to subsidized railways and telephone lines. It is reminiscent of the “walled garden” days of AOL and others.

Telecoms have become increasingly lazy with each merger. Only performing enough maintainence on their networks to keep the public off their backs, this business model, unfortunately, works for them. This is mostly due to a lack of direct competition. Monopoly oriented contracts negotiated with housing developers and apartment management companies are a large factor in the on-going telecom olympics. These tactics are similar to the common Coke/Pepsi agreements of the beverage industry and cell phone locking of today, all of which limits consumer choice to a single provider of a given service within a particular locale.

The common backbone that all service providers connect to is more than enough for our needs, but the problem lies in the last mile of service. That is where the middlemen come into play. Companies, such as Comcast and AT&T, oversell their network bandwidth in the hope that not everyone will use their connection at the same time. With the arrival of social networking, VOIP, streaming video, and ultimately, bit-torrent, this simultaneous usage is becoming the norm. Thus, the load on cable companies has tremendously increased. Without the necessary preparation, cable service across America is suffering.

Rather than simply upgrading, many ISPs have been toying with varying degrees of ethically challenging methods. This includes impersonating both ends of a connection, effectively tricking each computer into stopping transmission of data. Comcast  systematically intimidates high volume users with disconnect warnings for those who exceed their monthly bandwidth usage. Even if the user exceeds their allowed bandwidth on their “unlimited” connection, they are "shaken down" without a hint as to what that limit is. Another method is to prioritize traffic, for a royalty, and purposely assign lower grades of service to anyone who does not pay.

The mounting complaints against Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T have reached a critical point; congress has been left no choice but to address the issue. Once again, the corporate children have demonstrated that they are unable to play without supervision. Senators Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) have called for an inquiry by the SCST. They hope that the committee will probe these companies. The purpose of the investigation is to determine whether these business practices are legitimate, or are they deliberately excessive and anti-competitive measures. Regretfully, cell phone providers are in the same boat as cable companies. The Senators have serious concerns about telecom companies and their “power to discriminate against content”.

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Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved.