{"id":200059,"date":"2007-06-06T11:55:00","date_gmt":"2007-06-06T16:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2007\/06\/06\/f-the-phone-company-2\/"},"modified":"2007-06-06T11:55:00","modified_gmt":"2007-06-06T16:55:00","slug":"f-the-phone-company-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2007\/06\/06\/f-the-phone-company-2\/","title":{"rendered":"F%$# the Phone Company"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Specifically AT&#038;T.<\/p>\n<p>These guys are still thinking tarriff.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 153);font-size:130%;\" ><a style=\"font-weight: bold;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.savetheinternet.com\/blog\/2007\/06\/05\/ed-whitacre-gone-but-not-forgotten\/\">Save the Internet Blog \u00bb Blog Archive \u00bb Ed Whitacre: Gone But Not Forgotten<\/a><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\"> <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\">AT&#038;T chief Ed Whitacre handed over the keys to his replacement Randall Stephenson yesterday, but not before giving a rousing pep talk to fellow executives in the company\u2019s San Antonio board room. We just received exclusive video of the AT&amp;T chairman\u2019s parting speech.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\">&gt;&gt; Watch Big Ed\u2019s Swan Song<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\">Ed Whitacre Bids Fond Farewell:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\">Watch the Video<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\">\u201cThere\u2019s a problem. It\u2019s called Net Neutrality,\u201d Whitacre told the heirs to AT&#038;T\u2019s telecommunications empire. \u201cWell, frankly, we say to hell with that. <\/span><b style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\">We\u2019re gonna put up some toll booths and start charging admission.\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\">This statement echoes those made in the press by Whitacre and Stephenson over the last two years.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\">Despite claims of poverty whenever pressed to offer better services, these AT&#038;T execs are privately gloating over more than $35 billion in gross profits over the last 12 months. Moreover, Whitacre (and now Stephenson) are pressuring Congress to allow them to provide privileged Web access to their customers to companies that pay them a special fee.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\">The phone and cable companies claim that this sort of discriminatory \u201cdouble dipping\u201d \u2014 charging both consumers and content providers \u2014 is necessary to provide the high-speed services that Americans demand. But it\u2019s a fundamental shift in the neutral way the Internet has always worked. In essence, it takes away user choice \u2014 the most basic tenet of the Internet \u2014 and hands it to AT&#038;T.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\">\u201cWill Congress let us do it?\u201d Whitacre asks his colleagues. <\/span><b><span style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\">\u201cYou bet they will \u2014 cuz we don\u2019t call it cashin\u2019 in. We call it \u2018deregulation.\u2019<\/span> <\/b><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Specifically AT&#038;T. These guys are still thinking tarriff. Save the Internet Blog \u00bb Blog Archive \u00bb Ed Whitacre: Gone But Not Forgotten AT&#038;T chief Ed Whitacre handed over the keys to his replacement Randall Stephenson yesterday, but not before giving a rousing pep talk to fellow executives in the company\u2019s San Antonio board room. We &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-200059","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200059"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200059"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200059\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}