Really has nothing directly to do with WWW, rather it's to do with what carriers want to charge for carrying data packets, it just so happens that at the moment the WWW is what's making up the bulk of that data. Worse news for their revenue stream is that traffic is now becoming what used to be carried on the same pipes but at a premium price.
Not so long ago telcos almost gave away internet access, we'd buy a T2 connection back to the USA and they'd give a part of that pipe as a free internet connection. Of course with the march of technology we'd no longer need that T2 connection and half or less as many phone lines so goodbye revenue stream.
Of course the data carriers have been having it very easy for the last few decades and now they're getting nervous, very nervous.
The one thing though that they need to keep in mind is Gray's Law, it's almost the inverse of the economy of scale. Telcos give HUGE discounts to the largest users, except thhe value of the network is proportional to the number of connections (any comms system that only has one connection is useless), add more connections and the value increases and for little extra cost. What costs is making the pipes fat enough and that is determined by the number of large users (i.e. businesses) but hold on, they're getting to send their data way cheaper than grandma. Makes no economic sense at all.

I suspect that's where this is coming from but it's still flawed. Let's say Google make a motza and start to clog up the pipes, well that creates more demand for connections by you and me, and from that the telcos get more revenue.

The other aspect though is that the telcos have bandwidth to burn, most fibre cables have 90% of the fibres dark and the cost of much of that fibre is already recouped.

Bob.

he's lying here. Customers pay net providers who pay ot use the "pipe's". Google/Yahoo just get a big discount because they're a business like you said.

Vonage a problem? How come AT&T hasn't started their OWN online phone service cheaper? They own the data pathways so it should be cheap for them. And, AT&T uses the internet for business.... they're guilty of doing the same thing with Sun servers & Google servers. They're just stuck with their heads up their butts, like the car industry.

Plus, their a PUBLIC utility. They get govt help. If they want to own the "pipes" then drop their givt funding, pay back taxpayers for govt help building the pipes over the years and then charge outragious fees while another telecom company takes that funding & provides cheaper service.

I don't really care. :)

All this is, is a further consolidation of who controls the flow of information to the public. It is part of the unholy marriage of media and government. Americans are among the most ill informed people in the world. This explains much of the friction between the United States and the rest of the world. When Americans discuss issues with those from other countries (including Great Britain) they are on different wavelengths because of what they think are the facts of the matter.
I sometimes follow the conversations and it is clear to me that those from the foreign nations don't realize where the garbage they are hearing is coming from. Unfortunately, our Republican party has been the biggest proponent of media mergers because we have realized since Ronald Reagan that controlling the flow of information can make us rich and powerful.

In 1983, 50 corporations owned the vast majority of the media in the United States. Today it is in the hands of FIVE corporations and will probably be four when Disney sells their share to one of the others eventually. One of them is a large defense contractor (General Electric). Ruppert Murdoch (who ownes Fox News and scores of other entities) is only one of several who have been buying up internet assets.

The AT&T/Bell South merger gets by with little scrutiny from the media because our party have been the ones who have promoted it. It is how THEY are enjoying their dynasties as well. Less competition and more money in exchange for controlling the flow of information to the public to camouflage the lies those who gave them the monopolies tell the public.

Concentrated ownership of the nation's digital networks eliminates any real chance of vigorous competition or innovation and lower prices for consumers. At best, the new network giants in telecommunications will square off against the cable behemoths — a cozy cartel of two companies in each market splitting up the profits from telephone, broadband and video services.

In 1984 and 1996, Congress broke up the telecommunications monopolies to enhance competition and innovation. In exchange, the industry received dramatic loosening of consumer protections in rates and quality of service. In 1996 our Republican party would only agree to it under those terms.

Now the telecom monopoly is being reconstituted, but the consumer protections we swapped for competition have not returned with the network giants. This merger represents a giant leap backward — trading a regulated monopoly in telephone service for an unregulated duopoly in telephone, broadband, and video. The time to stop it has passed and if you recall my other posts regarding the media it is yet another blow to the public that went unreported by the media when there was time to stop it. They always report that which government wants AFTER it it too late to stop it.

John

Having grown up in the ATT/Bell Labs/WesternElectric era there are some things that were accomplished not known to todays internet bread siblings.
1.....Invented the process to purify silicon.
2.....Invented the transister.
3.....Perfected gun fire control radar & auto tracking
4....."0" lash mechanical gears
5.....Wire spring mechanical relays to last 20 years
6.....Transisters that can be placed both ways into a circuit and still function.
7.....Telephones dropped from two stories and still function for 20 years
8.....Packing crate lumber for their equipment that is far superior than the junk they put in homes today.
9.....Anti missile system that worked only to be junked by the ABM treaty.
10...Construction of the Dewline in 3 years which was considered by many to be impossible.
11...Sprint rocket and electronics to withstand 3000 g's on launch which has never been duplicated.
12...Successfull mathematics to determine real and dummy missile warheads with up to 14 warheads per missile, they don't know how to do that now.
13...Test electronic gear for 10 years before being implemented into production.
14...Manufactured their own transisters and chips with a reliability of one failure per 40,0000 years. Even NASA isn't that good.
15...Vacuum tubes designed to last for a minimum of 20 years
16...Helped perfect lasers.
17...Invented Unix, still in use as core for Mac OS X, Linix, etc.
18...Helped perfect fibre optics.
18.1..Incredible audio filters 70db down at the 3 db points
18.2..Test equipment the rival of the industry
18.3..Forced by the government to destroy all older comm equipment when upgraded.
18.4..Low noise flourescent lighting fixtures that didn't eat bulbs.
18.5..Oak stools and ladders that would make Norm Abrams sigh with envy.
19...People in those days would throw up seeing the reliability of products being constructed now. There is much more that I forgot.

JJK

Cool,

And let's not forget this handy invention as well.

John

Bell Labs created a lot of great stuff, let's not use that as a reason to bring back the Phone Company.

There was a now camp 60s thriller/comedy movie about The Phone Company as the bad almighty, anybody remember the title? It was quite funny and serious at the same time.

AT&T does have its own VOIP service called CallVantage, it's even gotten pretty good reviews.

In any new field of human pursuit, there will always be those who want to put up gates and charge an entrance fee to make an easy profit. At best, this is like the toll road checkpoint in the desert in Blazing Saddles, at worst they lock up all alternative entrances.

The new phone company behemoth covers 44 million U.S. households and businesses so far for local lines and DSL, all as a monopoly without meaningful competition (the Cable Company monopoly is only competing for who can get to the bottom first). They have also locked up cellular with a huge nationwide network that has only one real competitor left, soon to be "Borged" (assimilated).

In large parts of Europe and Asia, even households get high quality 30Mbps Internet access for less than $30 per month.

Apartment buildings under new construction in Sweden now get 100 Mbps Internet for the tenants, at about the same price. That's to residences...

We can be slaves or we can be free men (and women!). The choice is ours.

Perhaps it's time to take a heart defibrillator to our anti-trust laws. Those laws came out of very very similar problems a long time ago, but people have already forgotten.

I suppose I overreacted. I wonder how the internet would work today if ATT built it----$1000.00 per month service or your first born---but they would have an entire internet system just sitting there for backup in case the primary failed. Also it would be a tertiary system for transferring data so at least one would get through. The silver, tan, or white colored box would be 100 bucks a month extra. At least the Cell phones would have big buttons for another 100 bucks a month. Mr. Alezander Deming would crap his pants.

JJK

It is part of the unholy marriage of media and government.

If the relationship between the "media" (newspapers, radio, television, Internet) and the government is a marriage, then it is a pretty barren marriage. Yes, there is some regulation, but mostly trying to decide whether we are going to allow full-frontal nudity during prime time. Most other censorship has long since faded (I remember when Jack Paar left the air for trying to say "water closet" during the "Tonight Show," which aired after 11:30 pm. By contrast, most anything goes today. Big change, and the direction of that change has NOT been in the direction of more control).

If you think the media is beholding to government officials, then I honestly don't know what you've been listening to. Every paper I pick up, radio station I listen to, or TV broadcast I watch (including FOX) is critical of virtually every member of the Republican party, and many on the other side of the aisle as well. Hardly a love fest. Talk radio, of course is generally pro-conservative, but if you actually listen to them, they are hardly pro-Bush, except for his stance on the war terror.

Americans are among the most ill informed people in the world. This explains much of the friction between the United States and the rest of the world.

Neither statement is true. We are perhaps not as well educated in certain areas of study as the people in a few of the European countries, but we are well informed. Yes, you can find various surveys and studies, or the "Jaywalking" segment on the Tonight Show that find some morons to interview and, from that small sample, extrapolate to the rest of the country and try to make it seem like everyone is stupid. As to friction with the rest of the world, that is almost entirely explained by the fact that we are the sole remaining "superpower," with an economy and a way of life that is still the envy of the rest of the world. There has been resentment towards this country almost as long as we've been in existence because of all the blessings we enjoy. It seems implausible that I should even have to offer proof of these statements, but if you really need it, just look at emigration figures vs. immigration figures. Are people leaving in droves from the US to Asian countries or to Europe, or is it the other way around? And yet, in most of those countries they have these wonderful governments that provide all sorts of free services for their citizens (health care chief among them). Why would people want to leave to come here, given those advantages? And the people that are coming are the elite, not the down and out. The last company I ran was 95% people from France and Israel, all here on H1B visas. The number wanting to come here is larger than the number of H1B visas we can issue, so that cap is probably going to be increased.


Unfortunately, our Republican party has been the biggest proponent of media mergers because we have realized since Ronald Reagan that controlling the flow of information can make us rich and powerful.

You must have been totally asleep during the Clinton administration. Remember Exxon and Mobile? They merged in 1998. Citicorp and Travelers? 1997. Oh yes, telecommunications. SBC bought Ameritech for $62B in 1998. I can go on and on and on. There is absolutely no evidence at all that Bush is any different than Clinton or that the Republicans are different than Democrats. Mergers are, and always have been, a way of life in this country.

I actually agree that these mergers are not necessarily a good idea, although not for reasons of anti-competition or lack of inventiveness. As already pointed out, Bell Labs developed some of the most important inventions in history during the time it was a regulated monopoly (that monopoly, by the way, was the result of a century-old government decision to create certain monopolies -- a sensible idea, actually, given the impossibility of creating parallel infrastructures. It was NOT the result of takeovers and acquisitions.)

Big mergers are bad because they create companies that are unwieldy and inefficient, and therefore not particularly competitive. This is bad for shareholders because smaller, more efficient companies can kill the bigger companies.

Yes, that's right. Mergers lead to competition, and they make the big companies more vulnerable.

Just look what happened in the early 1970s when Toyota and VW and other foreign companies absolutely clobbered the "big three" by producing cars at lower prices, with better quality. Anyone that thinks that mergers result in skyrocketing prices and no competition just hasn't studied history and doesn't understand economics. Except in rare instances (like delivery of electricity or water) there are very few "natural" monopolies, and therefore the forces of competition will ALWAYS eliminate the inefficient, high-cost competitor. Look at Microsoft, the company that everyone loves to hate. Yes, they have a huge share of the desktop market in operating systems and in two office applications (Word and Excel). However, they have huge competition for server O/S market (from Linux and others), and have had their head handed to them when competing in the Internet space.

And, of course, if size and monopoly were everything you say it is, DEC, Data General, Prime, and other minicomputer makers could never have killed IBM in the 1970s. And, in the 1980s, Compaq, Cordata, AST, and eventually Dell and Gateway, would not have been able to kill not only IBM, but those three "monopolistic" minicomputer companies as well.

In 1983, 50 corporations owned the vast majority of the media in the United States. Today it is in the hands of FIVE corporations ...

I assume that what you say is true, but does it really mean anything? Do you actually think they control anything? You think Rupert Murdoch wakes up and decides, like the character in that James Bond film "Tomorrow Never Dies," that he's going to make up stories and get people to believe them? No.

I know that many people believe that the huge spike in oil prices was due to the consolidation in the oil industry, but those that think this clearly know virtually nothing about basic economics. If we had twenty more oil companies, but still had huge demand from formerly "third-world" countries rapidly increasing their usage, coupled with artificial limitations on supply, coupled with futures speculation resulting from the political instability in several countries that supply petroleum to the world -- if we had all these things we would still have high oil prices, whether we had 5 or whether we had 5,000 oil companies.

The AT&T/Bell South merger gets by with little scrutiny from the media because our party have been the ones who have promoted it.

Then how do you explain the merger of SBC and Ameritech during the Clinton administration?? Remember, it is the Justice Department, which is under Executive Branch control, that regulates this, NOT Congress (which was under Republican control). No, this is not the result of "media scrutiny," which is a ludicrous concept to begin with. Since when does the media have anything to do with whether a merger is approved or not? You certainly cannot argue that the media has failed to cover mergers, since they are front page on every paper, and the lead story in most TV and radio broadcasts (does anyone NOT know that Disney and Pixar are merging??).

Less competition and more money in exchange for controlling the flow of information to the public to camouflage the lies those who gave them the monopolies tell the public.

Where does all this come from?? "Camouflage the lies ..." ??

Concentrated ownership of the nation's digital networks eliminates any real chance of vigorous competition or innovation and lower prices for consumers.

That just isn't true. As I stated earlier, it is true that larger companies are almost always less efficient, and this can lead to higher prices for a short time, not for reasons of greed, but simply from the higher costs that result from inefficiency. However, any price umbrella simply provides an opening for competition.

Quick, name one situation in the past thirty years where industry consolidation has resulted in higher prices (measured in inflation adjusted dollars). Just one. Let's see. How about computers. How many PC companies were there in 1986? About fifty, maybe more. How much did a 386 computer cost? About $5,000 - $8,000. How many PC companies are there in 2006? Fewer than ten. What does a PC cost? Under $1,000, and it is 1,000 times faster. Telecommunications? We've seen nothing but consolidation. In this case, your bill may be going up, but that's mostly because you are likely subscribing to email, video feeds, text messaging, etc., and in addition have a service that provides "anywhere, anytime" service that lets you call 3,000 miles away for the same rate as calling next door.

Predictions of gloom and doom are not just annoying, they are just plain wrong. Lighten up, and enjoy your life a little more. I just got through going through all the effects from my parent's estates and have read their letters and seen the pictures from both their generation and my grandparent's generation. Do you know what it was like in Europe during World War I ? Do you know what it was like during the depression? Do you know what people had to go through in the US during World War II when everything from butter to gas to aluminum was rationed? Life is so amazingly good now compared to what those generations had to endure. They understood what mattered and what didn't, and sure didn't spend their time inventing problems in order to have something to worry about.

I don't want to be mean, but some of this stuff borders on fantasy, and I want to make sure that people that read it get encouraged to base their understanding of the world around them on facts that they read, along with actual observation of what happens to them every day.

BTW, in response to the original post topic, yes, the Internet IS doomed. But it has already died and been reborn a half dozen times (remember Archie and Veronica? Remember “push?” ).

nintendo brought the video game industry back from a fatel crash thanks to atari in the early 80's but I don't see one member of this forum saying "Hey, screw PSP's, I'll buy nintendo because they INVENTED the modern home & portable console market!"

screw what AT&T/Bell/etc/etc/etc did 60, 50, 40.... years ago. it's now, I don't want to be charged for servies that were born & died BEFORE I was born. :)

John,

You have a lot of good points, but I have to smile at one statement and disagree with another:

1. And, of course, if size and monopoly were everything you say it is, DEC, Data General, Prime, and other minicomputer makers could never have killed IBM in the 1970s. And, in the 1980s, Compaq, Cordata, AST

Today IBM is still as alive as it was back then and has been since, but its supposed "killers" died a painful death a long time ago. :O)

2. You're not concerned about a local monopoly on DSL, where nobody can get it except from the Phone Company?

The Cable Company has a monopoly on the second high-speed Internet technology, so they don't care about your complaints either.

Other high-speed options (such as various types of wireless Internet) have much higher infrastructure costs (and the largest wireless Internet providers are owned by the same Phone Company).

This is as big a problem as the old railroad monopolies were, and they were a problem even for John D. Rockefeller, never mind the litle guys.

The lack of real Internet competition in this country is bad for business, both for media content providers who can only sell to customers who can afford high-speed internet access, and the residential and small business customers who generally can't get anything beyond 1Mbps at best.

We will fall behind the rest of the world who are already laughing at us and shaking their heads over the Internet rates we pay here.

New technology companies and new media businesses may end up getting nurtured elsewhere, and we may see Hollywood bought up 100% by foreign investors who want the content produced here (or increasingly produced elsewhere but at least managed from here) for their inexpensive overseas high-speed networks for consumers.

"Those who fail to learn from history are bound to repeat it."

This still rings as true as it ever did.

In a very real way though. ATT *did* build the internet, because if it weren't for the lines placed by the Bells, we wouldn't have had a method of exchange, and cell technology was still far off. However...eventually it would have come to pass one way or another.
That said, ATT is very well compensated for the use of "their pipes" both in terms of subsidized development and eased right of way, not to mention overpayment by the government for services. It's a little odd that we have one elected government that destroys big business in favor of creating a competitive landscape while we now have another elected government doing everything in their power to allow big business to become bigger. No one in power today seems to recall the struggle to disband monopolies of the oil industry in 1911 that most of us probably learned about in junior high history. Today, all 30 of those companies have re-merged into 7 oil companies, and two of those are planning to merge with an expected layoff of 16,000 employees between the two companies.
I'm very much in favor of capitalism, businesses being encouraged to grow, and prosper. To the converse,in the face of a Walmart, ATT, or Exxon, how can any business get a foot in the world?
That said...just because everyone uses it doesn't mean that the product should be public domain, or be free. ATT and/or the companies that built the infrastructure that allows us to have the internet today, be it wireless, wired, or fiber, all deserve their due. Problem is, they have inflated their worth and feel they're due much more than what is reasonable, right, and fair to the people that use it.
Since our government funded a lot of their development and paved the way to make their development easier, the government should provide a means for the people (via breaking up the monopoly) to compete and access fair pricing with alternative choices in the communications field. Competition drives fair business. With no competition, nothing can be fair.
But the internet "doomed?" Not by a long, long shot. We'll see a serious revolution if this integral form of information exchange and communication were touched by the government or threatened by big business.

The only thing that scares The Phone Company right now is Google buying up as much dark fiber as they can nationwide, with the intent of "bypassing" The Phone Company over the air in the same way MCI (originally known as Microwave Communications, Inc.) did it in the 1980s.

Of course MCI was later assimilated by The Phone Company, but they did a LOT to reduce phone rates by breaking the monopoly on long distance traffic.

Bob said 90% of Oz fiber is dark (unused), that's the same number as here in the U.S.

The fiber could be put to good use if the local bottlenecks (The Phone Company is Public Enemy #1 here) could be bypassed, and public Wi-Fi, Wi-Max, etc. are a possible mechanism for Google to do that. They even utilize some of the same microwave frequencies used by MCI 20 years ago...

Support your local bypass!

:O)

Lt. Col. Philip Corso claimed he made some interesting contributions to Bell Labs back in the late 40's.

Like showing Bell Labs how "aliens' bodies might have been genetically engineered for space travel"?

You're not concerned about a local monopoly on DSL, where nobody can get it except from the Phone Company?

Actually, from a personal standpoint I AM somewhat concerned, because we don't have a viable cable company here. Having said that, the DSL prices have plummeted here in the past twelve months, even without viable local competition.


In most places, Internet is provided via both cable and phone lines, and the price competition is fierce. I suspect that some of the prices being offered are not sustainable, so there will be price increases at some point, not because of monopolistic behavior, but because the low initial prices are being subsidised by the marketing department.

In addition there is another HUGE change happening in the Internet which will keep downward pressure on prices for a long time. It is something I participated in during its earliest phases:

Wireless.

Up until fourteen months ago, I had several antennas on my roof and was broadcasting wireless Internet via 802.11b, to sites up and down the valley here (you can get VERY long range on 802.11b if you use parabolic antennas at both ends -- you then create a wireless cloud around each receiver, and then can re-transmit to other sites, very much like a cell system). As many of you doubtless know, this technology is now being adopted by many communities, some of them even rolling out free wireless Internet access. I have no idea whether this experiment in free access will continue (I suspect it will not), but the infrastructure will definitely continue and I suspect that wireless delivery will become a viable competitor to DSL and cable within the next few years.

Ha Ha.....laughing already. Pavlov trains well.
No, of course not. But he did make some claims. But why would anybody trust a high ranking military official?
Here's some claims:
The Colonel divulges how he spearheaded the Army's supersecret reverse-engineering project that "seeded" extraterrestrial technology at American corporations such as IBM, Hughes Aircraft, Bell Labs, and Dow Corning - without their knowledge. He describes the devices found aboard the Roswell craft, and how they became the precursors for today's integrated circuit chips, fibre optics, lasers, night-vision equipment, super-tenacity fibers (such as Kevlar plastic armor), and classified discoveries, such as psychotronic devices that can translate human thoughts into signals that control machinery, Stealth aircraft technology, and Star Wars particle-beam devices. He also discusses the role that extraterrestrial technology played in shaping geopolitical policy and events; how it helped the United States surpass the Russians in space; spurred elaborate Army initiatives such as SDI (Star Wars Projects), Project Horizon (to place a military base on the Moon), and HARP; and ultimately brought about the end of the Cold War.

At this stage of the game, I figure the best way to squash a story, is to put a million other similar stories out there and let everyone get mixed up and not know what to believe.
So, it may just be more BS, conjured up by the government to mix up the facts even more.

he was a hoot, saw a history channel or discovery piece on him a couple a years ago. Entertaining and all , but i have to believe the best scientists out there would have reversed engineered most of that stuff a lot quicker if they had a working prototype. But , who knows ,................ ....twilight zone music..................................

LOL

There was a now camp 60s thriller/comedy movie about The Phone Company as the bad almighty, anybody remember the title? It was quite funny and serious at the same time.

You're most likely talking about "The President's Analyst".

Wireless internet is booming down here, very viable alternative to ADSL and cable. SImply to use, instant access.
We've also got a number of full roamimg capable services built on GSM and CDMA networks. Several companies running OBs to the WWW using wireless links.

I gotta say (again) the USA is one vast technoligical black hole and it's getting worse. 15 years ago whe I worked for a US company (Leeds & Northrop) we had quite a regular stream of Americans come over here and boy was it hard to get them to go home. Things that amazed them:

1) All our banks were national, you could get your money from any bank anywhere in the country.

2) You could call any phone in the country, all you needed to remember was the phone number and ther area code if the number was outside the local zone, that's 11 digits worse case.

3) An electricity supply that was just that, a supply, as readily and reliably available as water from the tap.

Things have in some respects gone a bit downhill since then, much of the downhill slide is due to privatisation. What I'm forever amazed by is the strange belief that private corporations are any different to public ones, they're all run by humans and human nature is what it is.
It doesn't matter if the $20M that MCI wasted installing redundant fibre around Sydney was paid for by their shareholders or out of the public purse, the ultimate effect on all of us is the same. Civilisations have collapsed because they squandered resources, they made bad decisions and paid the price. If those decisions were made by 'private' or 'public' bodies I doubt if history ever even bothered to record.
The same holds true today, big corporations make dumb decisions and we all pay even if we're not shareholders. No man is an island.

Bob.

...and the giro system that has been used for the last 60 years is still way ahead of how we pay most bills in the U.S. (write a bank check for each bill and put each bill+check in a separate envelope with full postage on each).

The giro system allows a consumer (or a business) to pay 12 bills in less than 3 minutes, and they all go in one envelope.

In Sweden, 60% of overall consumers have abandoned even this in favor of paying all their bills online. This is not 60% of some fraternity of geeks, but 60% of ordinary people.

Bank checks haven't even been available in Sweden since around 1990, and back then they were used only extremely sporadically. In fact, when I asked a lot of people last time I was there, not one person could remember what checks were used for!

(Last time a check was even accepted for payment of a mailed bill in Sweden was some time in the early 1960s).

Sweden also set up competition for local phone service, and did away with long distance charges entirely. The whole country (the size of California) is a local phone call away.

And they privatized the equivalent of "Amtrak". As I understand it, they sold all the trains to private companies, but kept the tracks, letting private competitors bid for track use. From what I hear, it is working very well.

And they privatized the Stockholm public subway system.

Ditto for many other areas too, maybe Sweden is now the seriously capitalist country we need to emulate here. :O)

Ironic, isn't it?

But the porblem with Sweden is that it's a socialist state, and that's not good. Recently, maybe a few months ago, I read a news item that said Sweden's social system was beginning to falter.