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from: Independent Weekly

MAY 17, 2006

Technobarons of the 21st century

Telephone and cable companies are trying to create a vertical monopoly. If they succeed, they'll destroy the free market, along with everything else we love about the Internet.

BY FIONA MORGAN

John D. Rockefeller realized that the way to control the oil market was to control the transport of oil. So in 1871, he colluded with the railroad industry to form a cartel called the South Improvement Company. The rate to ship oil doubled, but Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company would get rebates for every gallon of oil shipped, even those shipped by his competitors. South would also collect information on the destinations, costs and dates of competitors' oil shipments.

from: Technology Daily

Telecom Sector Donates To Senate Commerce Chairman

By David Hatch

(Friday, May 12) Telecommunications, media and Internet conglomerates seeking regulatory relief from the Senate Commerce Committee are giving generously to the campaign coffers of panel Chairman Ted Stevens, R-Alaska.

from:The Black Commentator

The Black Stake in the Internet
By Bruce Dixon, The Black Commentator
Posted on May 17, 2006

America's black misleadership class, which is nearly indistinguishable from its black business class, has struck again. In a stunning coup, a mainline African-American voting rights group has been enlisted on the side of AT&T and other telecom monopolies in their legislative push to privatize the internet and roll back hundreds of agreements with local communities that force these monopolies to extend internet and cable service to poor and rural communities around the country.

from: In These Times
Views May 16, 2006

Information Highway Robbers
By Joel Bleifuss

Mike McCurry, the former press secretary for President Bill Clinton is not amused at the 'net neuts.'

What makes the Internet revolutionary is that it is democratic, open to anyone with a computer and an Internet connection. That could soon change.

We have some report-backs and media from Wednesday's actions!

AT&T certainly put a new spin on their slogan "Your World. Delivered" with the recent news (USA Today) that the company willingly turned over the phone call records of millions of citizens to the National Security Agency who requested the information without a legal warrant. The NSA is now in possession of what one employee described as the 'biggest database ever built'.

from: Digital Destiny

Telco/Cable TV lobbying Blitz Costing Nearly $1 Mil Per Week in DC Market/ Big Bucks Spent to Pave Way for Broadband Monopolies

Everyone has seen the TV ads from both the phone and cable lobby urging Congress to support their plans to control the future of the broadband Internet in the U.S. Companies such as Qwest, Comcast, Time Warner, and AT&T want to be broadband barons—with all other content providers and users reduced to serving as merely consuming digital surfs.

from Maine Townsman, March 2006
By Lee Burnett, Freelance Writer

These may be the good old days of public access TV.

The funding mechanism for public access TV – local franchising – is under attack in Congress. The big telephone companies Verizon, AT&T and SBC want to enter the lucrative home video market without having to negotiate local franchise agreements with every community, as cable TV companies have been required to do. The telcos are pressuring Congress for a national franchising system or, at the very least, a state franchising system.

The Telcos

The Ma Bell monopoly was split up by anti-trust legislation in 1984 resulting in seven regional or 'baby' bells. Through mergers and buy-outs only three of these companies will remain (pending the AT&T - Bell South merger announced recently). The three survivors are AT&T, Verizon and Qwest. Today they are much stronger than before and combined they control virtually the entire country.