HOW THE TELECOMS PLAN TO KILL THE INTERNET

MICHAEL WEISMAN, SEATTLE TIMES - Living in the Silicon Forest, we've
come to take certain things for granted. Our tech startups and
venture-capital firms have learned to assume that Internet and telecom
networks will be a platform for innovation open to anyone who can pay
the freight for success. Workers have come to rely on fast and plentiful
Internet access open to any type of device or application. Major
retailers like Amazon, REI, Powell's Books and PC Connections have come
to rely on the Internet as a route into the living rooms of customers
all over the world.

Under Stevens' bill, all that will change. The telecoms will be able to
split Internet access into premium lanes, segregating access to
customers based on the content, origin and purpose of the data or bits.
Amazon will have to pay the network operator for access to customers,
finally legitimating the dream of telecom executives to tax the
eyeblinks of every user. Apple will have to pay the networks to allow
its customers to download iTunes music and video. If it chooses, the
network can simply block iTunes music or Amazon book purchases,
redirecting customers to another service the network operator prefers.
In fact, there is no guarantee that Internet access, as we know it
today, will continue to exist at all.

The thousands of startup visionaries living in the Northwest might want
to find their passports, because creating new business models in the
U.S. will become much more complicated, and expensive. In the rest of
the developed world, it won't be a problem, because every developed
country has a strong network-neutrality law in place, extending not just
to the Internet, but also to mobile networks, cable TV and television.
Stevens' bill puts the U.S. out of step with the rest of world, a world
that is fast passing us in productivity, the knowledge economy and
broadband connectivity. . .

The telecom and cable duopoly will find its respective monopolies
enshrined in the law, with no obligation to play fairly with new
entrants to the market (there can't be any under Stevens' bill), no
requirement to carry traffic for "freeloaders" like YouTube, iTunes,
Amazon, Real Networks or MSN, and no fear of future entrepreneurs like
Jeff Bezos, Sergey Brin or Craig McCaw horning in on the action. . .

Every other major developed country has strong network-neutrality laws
in place, far stronger than anything the Congress is considering in any
of the many amendments to Stevens' bill.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2003092244_telecom29.html