Around the world, the planet's largest ISPs have been whining. They've been whining about how the dropping cost of bandwidth & hardware, their significant profit margins, and abundant new revenue streams (advertising via webmail, BVAS, selling your clickstream data, DNS Redirection revenue, charging to get around spam filters, targeted behavioral advertising) make it hard for a poor, government-pampered, immensely profitable conglomerate to build out enough capacity to handle user demand.

This logic was what started the entire "network neutrality" debate. In 2005, then-AT&T CEO Ed Whitacre (who's now headed to GM) told Business Week that because people use Google, Google should help pay for AT&T's network deployment (or as Ed put it, Google ain't usin' his pipes for free). Perhaps "Big Ed" didn't know Google already pays for bandwidth and owns their own infrastructure. More likely he did, and the goal of all this whining was to please investors by offloading necessary video-driven upgrade expenses on to others.

We can't give the content providers a completely free ride and continue to give customers the service they want at the price they expect. -British Telecom

In the UK, ISPs have been complaining for years that the BBC's new media player actually uses bandwidth, so they've tried to argue the BBC should subsidize their network expansion. Except for British Telecom, they've done the absolute minimum when it comes to preparing for the Internet video future and network upgrades, aided by weak-kneed regulators every step of the way.

Last week the carrier was busted for taking connections advertised as 8Mbps, and throttling them back to 896kbps when people use their connections most. This week they're back targeting the BBC's iPlayer and the mythical "free ride":If British Telecom was really worried about capacity, they could upgrade to fiber to the home, instead of fiber to the press release. Instead, British Telecom's takes a page out of the Ed Whitacre playbook and whines when people actually use their product. Of course, like Ed, British Telecom spoiled monopoly executives are jealous of content company ad revenue. BT thinks that if they cry long and loud enough, mommy (government) will let them force content companies to pay for neglected network upgrades -- making daddy (investors) happy.

But the truth is, in this business, it's often clear that what makes investors happy often isn't good for either the company, or the consumer. For instance, investors whined incessantly about Verizon's decision to spend $23 billion on deploying fiber to the home -- some going so far as to declare the company doomed. Several years later, with Verizon in the competitive catbird seat and poised to see huge returns, investors are finally coming around. Perhaps instead, Verizon should have incessantly whined about content providers getting "free rides"?