I Told You So

Recently I was mentioning an article by Doc Searls on how the major broadband carriers are planning to exert leverage over the Internet content carried through their "pipelines," perhaps favoring some content while discriminating against other Internet content carried over their network.

Well, speak of the devil, now comes the news that Bell South wants to "strike deals to give certain Web sites or services priority in reaching computer users." To use an example given by the CTO of Bell South himself, the telco giant should be able to "charge Yahoo Inc. for the opportunity to have its search site load faster than that of Google Inc."

Or, said the executive, "his company should be allowed to charge a rival voice-over-Internet firm so that its service can operate with the same quality as BellSouth's offering."

If this plan goes through, I wonder if you could then pay the "suits" an extra fee not to make Google or Skype work worse on your computer than they did before??!