IP Democracy: Is AT&T Willing to Pay Access Fees of Its Own?

Alex Curtis of Public Knowledge put up this gem last week that raises a really interesting question: Will AT&T, the biggest advocate of a two-tiered Internet, pay other broadband providers when customers access its MobiTV-powered 30-channel streaming video service?

You may recall that early last week, AT&T announced a new service called AT&T Broadband TV that, for a monthly fee of $20, streams live TV channels over the Internet to anyone with a broadband connection. The video won’t be restricted to just AT&T’s network. Comcast, Verizon, EarthLink and even Google, through its Wi-Fi network in Mountain View, will all be giving AT&T’s Broadband TV a “free-ride,” which is what AT&T has accused Google of getting all these years, if AT&T doesn’t cough up some bandwidth access money.

As Alex notes, if AT&T isn’t willing to pay access fees to other broadband network providers, then the company is a big fat hypocrite.

As a viable service, it makes a lot of sense to stream the television regardless of the broadband pipe, but if AT&T isn’t going to “compensate” those broadband providers for the bits it plans on using, isn’t AT&T being a bit hypocritical? They want Google to pay when Google uses AT&T’s pipes, but what about AT&T paying when AT&T uses Googles wireless pipes?

Posted by Cynthia Brumfield on September 18, 2006 3:48 PM to IP Democracy