Business Week has a pretty candid interview with SBC CEO Ed Whitacre this week, and one comment made by the telco chieftain is already fanning the net neutrality flames. When asked about whether he’s concerned over Google and Yahoo’s efforts to diversify into VoIP and video, Whitacre flat out says that he expects both entities to pay SBC for access, or else.
How do you think they’re going to get to customers? Through a broadband pipe. Cable companies have them. We have them. Now what they would like to do is use my pipes free, but I ain’t going to let them do that because we have spent this capital and we have to have a return on it. So there’s going to have to be some mechanism for these people who use these pipes to pay for the portion they’re using. Why should they be allowed to use my pipes? The Internet can’t be free in that sense, because we and the cable companies have made an investment and for a Google or Yahoo! or Vonage or anybody to expect to use these pipes [for] free is nuts!
The teeth-gnashing has already begun, and Whitacre may end up issuing a big “clarification” before the brouhaha is over. Here’s Techdirt’s reaction to Whitacre:
In other words, he’s talking about going well beyond blocking some ports like BellSouth, to actually blocking out websites and services unless they first pay SBC a fee. It certainly has the feel of extortion: pay up or no one on our network will be able to reach your website. If you thought that mess Level 3 and Cogent was problematic, just wait until you can’t access Google from SBC, because Google fails to pay up SBC’s “connection” fees.
And here’s Kevin Werbach’s reaction:
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Cynthia Brumfield at 11:44 AM|Comments(0)
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