AT&T chief warns on Internet costs

[SOURCE: Financial Times, AUTHOR: Paul Taylor]
Ed Whitacre, AT&T’s chairman and chief executive, warned on Monday that Internet content providers that wanted to use broadband networks to deliver high-quality services such as movie downloads to their customers would have to pay for the service or face the prospect that new investment in high speed networks “will dry up.” “I think the content providers should be paying for the use of the network ­ obviously not the piece from the customer to the network, which has already been paid for by the customer in Internet access fees ­ but for accessing the so-called Internet cloud,” Whitacre said. The major US telecommunications providers, including T&T, have come under pressure from their investors in part because of their hefty investments in new fibre optic-based networks capable of delivering advanced TV and video services to their customers. “If someone wants to transmit a high quality service with no interruptions and ‘guaranteed this, guaranteed that’, they should be willing to pay for that,” the AT&T chief said. “Now they might pass it on to their customers who are looking at a movie, for example. But that ought to be a cost of doing business for them. They shouldn't get on [the network] and expect a free ride.”
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/3ced445e-91c5-11da-bab9-0000779e2340.html
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* Keep network neutrality
http://www.mndaily.com/articles/2006/01/31/66882

* More (Negative) Thoughts on Prioritized Bandwidth
http://www.technologyevangelist.com/2006/01/more_thoughts_on_pri.html