it's-all-about-the-control dept
Tue, Dec 13th 2005 12:43pm —
Mike Masnick
A couple weeks ago, we had the story about BellSouth saying it wanted to prioritize traffic and services from certain (paying) partners -- or just its own services. This wasn't a surprise, as the telcos have been leaning towards this for a while. While we had thought that any move in this direction would lead to public outcry and an FCC mandate for network neutrality, we hadn't counted on Kevin Martin being so willing to roll over for telcos. It's certainly not as clear any more what will happen. This morning there's lots of buzz about an article in the Boston Globe saying that telcos are lobbying for just this right, with Slashdot, Boing Boing and Broadband Reports all weighing in. What's not entirely clear, though, is how serious this is. The Boston Globe article seems like it's really just a riff on the earlier BellSouth story without much new -- just tying together the obvious loose threads.