Note to Consumer from BellSouth: Bend Over

Since I am old enough to remember when AT&T was a monopoly, and its subsequent break-up by the g-men, the recent airing of commercials about the name change of AT&T/SBC back to simply AT&T has me wondering which set of regulators were wrong: the old men who said AT&T was a bad monopoly that had to be split up (birth of the Baby Bells), or the more recent ones that see no problem with the Baby Bells regrouping?

Now, I guess, seeking to revive a bit of the 'good ole days', some telcos are testing the waters of this whole Internet thing as a way to make more money. In Friday's Wall Street Journal, the subtitle says it all:

"Content Providers May Face Charges for Fast Access; Billing the Consumer Twice?"

Huh? Isn't that last part the type of sh*t the regulators are supposed to prevent in the name of consumer protection? [Stop calling me naive!] Well, according to the WSJ piece, BellSouth is negotiating to reach agreements on fees to "guarantee fast content delivery over the Internet." So wait a minute, are you telling me that if one of the Baby Bells feels it is not receiving the fees to which it feels entitled, then my DSL service (for which I pay one of them about $75/month) just won't be fast enough to make downloading content worthwhile. They will kick my a#@ back to the days of dial-up, 56K-style service? AT&T and Verizon seem to think BellSouth is on the right path. And BellSouth's Jeff Battcher seems to think they are entitled to the higher fees:

"During the hurricanes, Google didn't pay to have the DSL restored," said BellSouth spokesman Jeff Battcher. "We're paying all that money."

Well, from just where in the hell does Jeff think that money comes? "Jeff, that top line on your income statement, Revenue, comes from Us, man! Don't you remember? You said 'sign the contract and pay us on time and we'll provide you with this serivce called DSL. It's crazy fast!' So, Jeff, if something goes wrong on your side of the deal, it's your responsability to fix it. Not mine nor Google's, nor Yahoo!'s, or anyone else's. It's on you, man. So, Jeff, man up!

Fred, over at A VC, has put up a post whose title pretty much hits the nail on the head: Jealousy. Go give it a read.