calvoiper
join:2003-03-31
Belvedere Tiburon, CA
| On the Baby Bells killing the 'Net....
In his blog, Lessig makes the point that if the Bells had been able to, they would have killed the Internet early.
He's right. Recall their ISDN products. Their world view was one where when you wanted a broadband connection to Amazon, you would dial Amazon's phone number and then you would be connected. After that, you could dial ebay or Overstock or whoever else you wanted to.
Each a separate call.
Each billed separately, over and apart from your monthly service charge.
(Oh, and of course, the merchants you wanted to call could provide a toll-free number for you, if they wanted to pay for it.)
Fortunately, this didn't happen (yet), but allowing the extortion of protection money from content providers will put us in about the same place if we let it.
calvoiper
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VoIP--the death knell of remaining voice monopolies! |
