SBC: ain't no way VoIP uses mah pipes!

SBC’s pending acquisition of AT&T will make the resultant merged companywhich is expected to take the name of ATTthe largest telecommunications company in the United States. And with big britches come big statements, as illustrated in this exerted interview with SBC’s CEO Edward Whitacre. I suspect that you might want to sit down and take deep breath before reading Whitacre’s response to the following question:

How concerned are you about Internet upstarts like Google (GOOG ), MSN, Vonage, and others?
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! (YHOO ) or Vonage or anybody to expect to use these pipes [for] free is nuts!

Whiteacre’s sleight of hand is cutealmost endearing. He tries so hard to make this about cost and competition, but he leaves out the most important part: their customers. It’s SBC’s DSL customers who are paying to "use these pipes," and the idea that certain kinds of usage are categorically different than others has a fair share of problems. On the technical level, IP traffic is IP traffic. The customer downloading scores of images from NASA isn’t really different from someone making a call on VoIP. If, like SBC, you sell your DSL at speed-based packages, then aside from limitations you have spelled out in your Terms of Service, that traffic is the customers’ to use. Furthermore, where do you draw the line? SBC wants to charge you for VoIP, but why not charge you for your access to the Wall Street Journal, or your iTunes Video downloads, or your pr0n site subscriptions? Forget that, why not charge website owners when your users visit their pages?

Of course, we can all see what’s going on here. As I warned last week, the issue of "network neutrality" is going to become increasingly large as companies who provide Internet access get jealous of the companies that are using internet access to offer new products and services. And, as I noted then, there’s software in development aimed squarely at death by nickel and dime.

The irony of all of this, and it is a fantastic example of real irony, is that SBC decries the likes of Google and Vonage because of "unfair competition," when plenty of SBC customers will tell you that they use SBC because their local market doesn’t have any other competitive choices. In fact, not only is SBC the sole choice in some areas, but SBC also forces its customers to also have landline service, even if they only want naked DSL.

I’ll make a prediction: if SBC starts in with implementing this inanity, their customer base will dwindle. In the meantime, let’s all pull for better telecommunications laws, while keeping our eyes peeled for backdoors bought and paid for by the lobbies.