ISPs Seek to Create Classism on Internet

Rob Updegrove 19 Dec, 2005 at 2:42pm ET Article published in Tech

AT&T and Bellsouth are lobbying the US Congress for permission to create a ‘two-tiered’ structure of information delivery speeds on the internet.

The proposal supported by AT&T and BellSouth would allow telecommunications carriers to offer their own advanced Internet video services to their customers, while rival firms’ online video offerings would be transmitted at lower speed and with poorer image quality.

AT&T and other telecoms want to charge consumers a premium fee to connect to the higher-speed Internet. The companies could also charge websites a premium to offer their video to consumers on the higher-speed Internet. That could mean that a company like Yahoo might have to pay AT&T to send high-quality video to AT&T subscribers.

Source: Boston.com

Comments

19 Dec 2005 ~ 2:46pm RWB BOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!

That is so ghey of them.
19 Dec 2005 ~ 2:49pm profdlp It's bad enough that they have a virtual monopoly on the connection itself, this is just too much... :shakehead
19 Dec 2005 ~ 5:00pm Leonardo

AT&T and Bellsouth are lobbying the US Congress

That's not a good sign. There are very few congressmen who understand technology very well. They are even more ignorant than the mainstream press.
19 Dec 2005 ~ 8:44pm BlackHawk

Leonardo wrote:

That's not a good sign. There are very few congressmen who understand technology very well. They are even more ignorant than the mainstream press.

They're gonna play the politicians in so many ways, it's not funny. :shakehead
21 Dec 2005 ~ 2:01pm stabface yes this very bad, lets find the petition and sign it or throw a brick
21 Dec 2005 ~ 2:30pm Armo I KNOW! get jack johnson to tell them what it is
21 Dec 2005 ~ 4:02pm jradmin This has got to be teh dumbest thing ever. I sware, is there no way to live without someone squeezing you for every friggin penny you make?