You may have missed it this week. In the dead middle of a Business Week interview with SBC chief Edward Whitacre is a comment that foretells the future of broadband. At least, the future incumbent broadband providers are planning for. But it’s not a pretty picture for the rest of us.
When asked whether he was concerned about Google, MSN, Vonage, and other companies' plans to get into broadband services, the CEO of the telco giant let slip his plans to create a "walled garden" where your freedom to surf is sacrificed at the altar of SBC profits:
How do you think they’re going to get to customers? Through a broadband pipe. Cable companies have them. We have them. Now what they would like to do is use my pipes free, but I ain’t going to let them do that because we have spent this capital and we have to have a return on it. So there’s going to have to be some mechanism for these people who use these pipes to pay for the portion they’re using. Why should they be allowed to use my pipes?
The internet can’t be free in that sense, because we and the cable companies have made an investment and for a Google or Yahoo! or Vonage or anybody to expect to use these pipes [for] free is nuts!
Americans take for granted the diversity of information and services they find at the click of a mouse.
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