Internet toll lanes appear less likely

INTERNET TOLL LANES APPEAR LESS LIKELY
[SOURCE: Los Angeles Times, AUTHOR: Jim Puzzanghera jim.puzzanghera@latimes.com]
Edward E. Whitacre Jr., then chief executive of SBC Communications Inc., ignited an impassioned online debate about creating toll lanes on the Internet in late 2005, when he called Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. "nuts" for expecting free use of his company's network to deliver their content. A little more than a year later, Whitacre may have taken a big step toward dousing that debate. As head of the muscular new AT&T Inc. — SBC took the name when it acquired the venerable long-distance giant — Whitacre surprisingly agreed last week that his company would not sell premium delivery of Web content for the next two years. His decision could spur Congress to extend the prohibition to all Internet providers. AT&T and other telecommunications companies fought furiously last year to block congressional proposals mandating such nondiscriminatory treatment of content, known as network neutrality. They warned that those rules would inhibit new spending on high-speed data lines and deprive network builders of a way to recoup their investments. But AT&T was forced to agree to treat all online content the same to gain Federal Communications Commission approval of its purchase of BellSouth Corp. The $86-billion deal, which the FCC unanimously approved Dec. 29, makes AT&T the dominant phone company in 22 states, including California, and the nation's largest provider of high-speed Internet service. Advocates of network neutrality requirements now contend that if a behemoth such as AT&T can build its data highways without charging websites for faster delivery of video and other bandwidth-devouring services, so can other providers.
http://www.latimes.com/business/printedition/la-fi-neutral5jan05,1,50420...
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-- See also --
* AT&T planning a big price hike for call waiting
[SOURCE: San Francisco Chronicle, AUTHOR: David Lazarus]
Just as AT&T was trumpeting the benefits to consumers of its $86 billion takeover of BellSouth last week, the company was mailing notices to California phone customers saying that prices for a variety of popular services are about to go up -- in some cases by between 24 and 57 percent.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/01/05/LAZARUS.TMP